Duolingo, the popular language-learning service, has recently hit more than 300 million users, across all 195 countries. This is a huge user database that can reveal a lot about what languages people around the world are learning, and this is where things get interesting.
You haven’t probably noticed, but the United States HAS slightly changed its name, so to speak. Some countries change their names over the course of time, but the way the US has done it is very different. We say different because the change is so subtle that is barely noticeable. Before the Lincoln administration, they …
The grammatical change that took The United States from ‘are’ to ‘is’. Read More »
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” —Through the Looking Glass. Mr. Dumpty led down the most linguistic explanation of how words get their meanings. We, the people, assign what combinations of sounds we want to the …
Made-up Words That Sound So Cool They Should Actually Exist. Read More »
Languages have different phonetic inventories. Some languages use more sounds than others. A perceptually distinct sound unit is technically called a phoneme. Two sounds are different if they are perceived to constitute two distinct phonemes by native speakers. The following list ranks the most common languages by the number of sounds they use. It is …
These Are The Languages That Have The Most Sounds. Read More »
Not everything you know about language is true. When you study languages objectively, you start to realize that you’ve been wrong about almost everything you believed about them. Here is a list of some of the most common misconceptions about language that people have to reconsider:
There are approximately 7000 languages spoken in the world today, the majority of which are spoken by very tiny populations. About 60% of the world’s population, approximately 4 billion people, speak one of the few languages listed below. In fact, only 40 languages are spoken by more than 30 million native speakers. These languages are listed below …
The languages with more than 30 million native speakers. Read More »
Ever wonder if all the words people use are words that actually exist? By exist we mean they are recognized and included in English dictionaries. Well, some of the words that people confidently use on a day-to-day basis do not exist. Some say that the use of these words highlights a crucial language feature (i.e. change), while …
As native speakers, we all have assumptions about the particular speed of languages other than our own. And most of the time, our assumptions are correct. Empirically speaking, linguists measure the speed of languages by how many syllables are articulated per second or per minute. Of course, we don’t have data from all the languages of …
List of The 7 Fastest Spoken Languages in The World. Read More »
Language belongs to us and we do with it what we please. We invent new words, new spellings and sometimes whole new languages. When it comes to words, we decide what they mean and we change their meanings at will. That’s what English speakers did to the words below. They used to mean something then took …
10 Common Words That Used To Mean Something Completely Different. Read More »
Idioms can tell us a lot about how people use language and interact with one another. They also somehow mirror certain people’s culture as they have very specific cultural meanings that convey societal standards, principles, and beliefs. Because the cultures of the world are beautifully diverse, the idioms that each language uses are unique and may have …