language reconstruction

The Forbidden Language of the Inca Court

The Inca emperors, divine rulers of a vast Andean empire, held a powerful secret—a language spoken only among themselves. This…

1 week ago

The Sadesan Hoax: A Language That Never Was

In the early days of the internet, a mysterious language called Sadesan appeared, promising a lost branch of the Indo-European…

1 week ago

Re-voicing the Past: The AT-ST Project

We can read the words of Charlemagne's era, but what did they actually sound like? A groundbreaking initiative called the…

1 week ago

Cheshirization: The Vanishing Vowel

Named after the Cheshire Cat, Cheshirization is a fascinating phonological process where a vowel vanishes but leaves a ghostly trace…

1 week ago

Language Carbon Dating: The Science of Glottochronology

Ever wonder how linguists estimate when languages like Spanish and French split from their common ancestor? The answer lies in…

3 weeks ago

Proving Languages Are Related

How can linguists be so certain that English and ancient Sanskrit are cousins, while neighboring Finnish is a total stranger?…

3 weeks ago

The Great Germanic Sound Shift

Long before English vowels did their famous shuffle, a far more ancient and dramatic event rocked its linguistic family tree.…

3 weeks ago

The Great Bantu Migration: How a Language Family Shaped Half a Continent

Over several millennia, a wave of migration spread a single language family from West-Central Africa to cover nearly the entire…

3 weeks ago

The Outrigger and the Noun Phrase: How the Austronesian Language Family Conquered the Pacific

How did one language family colonize a third of the planet, from Madagascar to Easter Island? The answer lies in…

3 weeks ago

The Ultimate Ancestor: How Linguists Reconstructed the Proto-Indo-European Language

Imagine a language that vanished over 5,000 years ago, leaving behind no written records. This is Proto-Indo-European (PIE), the mysterious…

3 weeks ago

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