syntax

The Death of the Latin Passive

Latin once expressed complex passive ideas with a single word, like amor for "I am loved". This post explores how…

3 weeks ago

Mozarabic: The Lost Romance Tongue

Journey back to medieval Spain to uncover the story of Mozarabic, the lost Romance language of Christians living under Muslim…

3 weeks ago

Germany’s Word-Engine: The Logic of Compounds

Go beyond the humor of long German words and discover the powerful logic that builds them. This article deconstructs the…

3 weeks ago

Waking a Sleeping Language: The Myaamia Story

What happens when a language’s last fluent speaker passes away? For the Myaamia people, this was not an ending but…

3 weeks ago

Killing the Verb: How the Telegraph Changed Writing

The telegraph, with its per-word cost, forced writers to perform linguistic surgery, stripping sentences down to their bare essentials. This…

3 weeks ago

The Phishing Lure: Linguistics of Scam Emails

"Kindly update your details immediately". It's a phrase that feels slightly off, and for good reason. This article breaks down…

3 weeks ago

How to Own Without ‘Have’: The Be-Languages

In languages like English, you 'have' a book. But in Russian, Irish, or Turkish, you would say "to me there…

3 weeks ago

10 UX Writing Rules from Linguistics

Every button, menu, and error message you read is a piece of micro-linguistics. This article reveals 10 crucial rules of…

3 weeks ago

The Code-Switcher’s Tightrope

Beyond the familiar concept of switching between languages lies a more subtle, yet equally demanding, linguistic performance: bi-dialectalism. For millions,…

3 weeks ago

My Hand, My Self: Inalienable Grammar

In English, you can talk about "a hand" as a detached object. But in many languages, the rules of grammar…

3 weeks ago

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