That title sounds a bit like an oxymoron, doesn’t it? But it isn’t. It’s a real language, spoken by some 240,000 Jews throughout the Arab world. For a quick intro, see the Wikipedia article, but I first want to make… Read More ›
Linguistics
Picard: Welcome to the Sticks!
No, no — not that Picard! Not Jean-Luc. I’m talking about the language called Picard, not the Star Trek character. You say you’ve never heard of that language? Well, read on… First, take a good look at the map below…. Read More ›
Everything you wanted to know about the Great Vowel Shift but were afraid to ask
Odds are that you studied a European language back in high school — most likely Spanish or French, possibly German or Italian — and you quickly realized that the vowels in those languages are not pronounced as they are in… Read More ›
Who’s better at understanding written English — you or some random teen in South Korea?
Statistically speaking, as a reader of this blog, you are most likely a native speaker of English, so surely you must understand written English better than a random South Korean teen. Right? Well, maybe so. Or maybe not. A recent… Read More ›
Will the real John McWhorter please stand up? (No, no, that’s not the real one; that’s the AI John McWhorter!)
John McWhorter is a professor of linguistics at Columbia University who is both a professional linguist and a popular linguist. In other words, he writes both for his colleagues and for the general public. He also podcasts for the latter… Read More ›
Enough is enuf.
This book would have made an excellent New Yorker article. But a whole book? Not so much. All right, I suppose many a New Yorker article does feel like an entire book — but Enough is Enuf by Gabe Henry… Read More ›
Is Modern Hebrew a conlang?
So I keep seeing references to posts on Reddit…and I always ignore them. But then I said to myself, “Why not give Reddit a chance? What’s there to lose?” That led me to sign up for a few subreddits in… Read More ›
Friends with words
Yes, you read that correctly: the title really is Friends with Words, not the more familiar phrase Words with Friends. And even the correct phrase, Friends with Words, has at least two meanings (think about it). If you yourself are… Read More ›
Claude predicts the future of English.
Recently I’ve been playing with Claude AI, so I asked it (him? are we personifying AI’s these days?) to predict how English will change over the next 600 years. (Why 600? Because Middle English was spoken about 600 years ago,… Read More ›
Two pop linguists who are worth listening to…
and whose videos nevertheless share one particular flaw. I’m talking about Julie Maksimova, better known as Julingo, and Dr. Taylor Jones, better known as Language Jones. You can see what they’ve both done there with their noms, but that has… Read More ›
“A language I love is…”
What took me so long? Today I learned about a new-to-me linguistics blog and podcast called “A language I love is…” This blog has been around since June of 2020, and the podcast since 2023, so I certainly should have… Read More ›
Language city: The fight to preserve endangered mother tongues in New York
The title and subtitle may make this book sound rather esoteric. But in that case they are unintentionally misleading. You don’t have to be a linguist or a cultural anthropologist to enjoy reading Language City. If I still have your… Read More ›
Truly these are oldies but goodies — songs from… wait for it… two millennia ago!
Back in the ancient world, when I was in high school, a friend and classmate of mine was named Dwight Wayne Batteau, better known (then and now) as Robin Batteau. For quite a while now he has been half of… Read More ›
Quick! Живојиновић and more
What is that strange word in Cyrillic letters in the title? At first glance it looks like Russian… but then the letters ј and ћ show that it isn’t Russian. Hmmm… Be patient now; you’ll find out soon what’s up…. Read More ›
They say that Welsh is impossible to pronounce — but is that really true?
Admittedly, Welsh does look impossible to pronounce, at least for Americans. But that’s mostly because of the frightening spelling, with words like ffrwyth, cynysgaeddir, and ymddwyn. (And don’t forget, of course, the famous town in Wales, Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. That name is… Read More ›
Concordia Language Villages
If only these language villages had existed when I was a teen! Actually, a few of them already existed — but unfortunately I hadn’t heard about them at the time. Such is life. Where, you ask, are they located? Well,… Read More ›
Singing in Mandarin? How is that even possible?
Your first reaction might well be one of puzzlement: Why shouldn’t it be possible to sing in Mandarin? What’s the issue here? The issue, of course, is tones. As you probably know, Chinese in general — and Mandarin in particular… Read More ›
Rare Tongues
“When a language disappears, a unique way of understanding the world vanishes with it.” If I had to pick a single sentence from Lorna Gibb’s Rare Tongues, that sentence (164 pages into the text) might be my choice. But the… Read More ›
Julingo teaches us the key points of ____________ [insert language here]
Who, I hear you ask, is Julingo? Well, her real name is Julie Maksimova, and she hosts a wonderful series of short and not-so-short videos giving you snapshots of quite a variety of languages, such as Papuan, Ukrainian, Sumerian, Estonian,… Read More ›
No need for instructions?
Usually a kit for building a model-railroad structure comes with instructions and pictures. On the other hand, the last one that I bought just came with this explanation:: Hmmm… couldn’t they have found a competent English speaker nearby? I guess… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 