A Guide to Sino-Tibetan Languages
Journey into the Sino-Tibetan language family, a vast linguistic world of over 400 languages spoken by 1.4 billion people. From the tones of Mandarin to the scripts of Tibetan and…
Unlocking the Universe of Languages
Journey into the Sino-Tibetan language family, a vast linguistic world of over 400 languages spoken by 1.4 billion people. From the tones of Mandarin to the scripts of Tibetan and…
Journey beyond the familiar and discover languages that defy expectations, from a whistled language that echoes through Canary Island valleys to a Dagestani tongue where a single verb can have…
AI language models can write poetry and translate languages, but their impressive abilities mask significant linguistic blind spots. Inheriting biases from their training data, these systems often perpetuate gender stereotypes,…
Music is often considered an auditory experience, but for the Deaf community, it's a world felt through powerful vibrations and seen through the stunning visual poetry of sign language. This…
Imagine a language that can express every human thought with only 12 letters. Discover the world of Rotokas, a language from Papua New Guinea with the smallest alphabet on Earth.…
In languages from Thailand to Ghana, you can say "go buy bring the book" and be perfectly grammatical. This fascinating feature, known as a serial verb construction, strings verbs together…
Why did the Chevy Nova supposedly fail in Spanish-speaking markets? This cautionary tale, though likely a myth, highlights the high-stakes world of global branding where linguistic blunders can be costly.…
We all know onomatopoeia, but many languages have something far richer: ideophones. These "adverbs of the senses" don't just mimic sounds; they paint vivid pictures of sights, textures, and feelings.…
Imagine a world without 'left' or 'right,' where you'd say "there's a bug on your south leg." This post explores languages that rely on absolute directions like north, south, and…
Imagine a world without 'left' or 'right,' where every instruction and description is given in cardinal directions. For speakers of languages like Guugu Yimithirr in Aboriginal Australia, this isn't imagination—it's…
Ever tried to say "two dogs" in Thai and been corrected? That's because you can't just count nouns; you need a special "measure word" called a classifier. This post dives…
While most languages belong to vast family trees, some stand utterly alone. These linguistic isolates, like the mysterious Basque of Spain or the endangered Ainu of Japan, have no known…
The Soviet Union's language policy was a dramatic paradox, beginning with the revolutionary promotion of over 100 minority languages through the *korenizatsiya* (indigenization) program. This ambitious project, which created new…
Why can we describe a shade of blue with a dozen words, but struggle to articulate the scent of rain? Our language seems to fail us when it comes to…
Beyond the simple "he/she/it" of English, many languages categorize the world in ways that are deeply tied to culture and perception. From the gendered objects of French to the elaborate…
Ejectives are a fascinating category of consonants found in languages from the Caucasus to the Americas. Made by building up air pressure in the mouth before releasing it in a…
This article explores the world of agglutinative languages like Turkish, Finnish, and Swahili, where long, complex words are built by snapping together morphemes like Lego bricks. We deconstruct a few…
What are the ethical responsibilities of a linguist who is the first outsider to document a language from a previously uncontacted people? This article explores the high-stakes world of first-contact…
On the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, a language isolate with no known relatives is fighting for survival. The Ainu language, with its unique polysynthetic grammar and rich oral traditions…
For most English speakers, "The dog chased the cat" is the only logical way to say it. But what if we told you that for over half the world, the…