swahili

The Fluid Verb: Tense and Aspect in Swahili

Swahili verbs are masterpieces of modular design, built by "gluing" prefixes for tense, person, and more onto a single root.…

2 weeks ago

Why Does ‘Mom’ Sound the Same Everywhere?

From Mandarin's 'māma' to Swahili's 'mama', the word for 'mother' is strikingly similar everywhere, but it's not a linguistic coincidence.…

3 weeks ago

The World’s Most Mysterious Book: Can Linguistics Ever Decipher the Voynich Manuscript?

Filled with otherworldly plants and an indecipherable script, the 15th-century Voynich Manuscript has stumped cryptographers for over a century. Linguistic…

3 weeks ago

Classifying Reality: The Social Impact of Noun Classes and Grammatical Gender

Beyond the simple "he/she/it" of English, many languages categorize the world in ways that are deeply tied to culture and…

3 weeks ago

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