No one disagrees that English is such a weird language. It has been the largest language to have been thoroughly studied, revealing more its peculiarities. Today, we brought some of the strangest and most interesting facts about English that research has revealed. Aside from being a language where one drives in a parkway and parks […]
Interesting Facts About the English Language that You Didn’t Know. Read More »
What language do deaf people think in? This is a tough question to answer. Aside from the science behind what language deaf people think in and whether this question can be answered or not, there is a better way we can gain a clear insight into this. Why not ask deaf people themselves? Michele Westfall is our best candidate.
What deaf people say about the language they think in. Read More »
An oxymoron is a figure of speech in which two or more words side by side contradict each other. Their use in speech often leads to humor, irony, and sarcasm. We’ve asked our followers at The Language Nerds to share their favorite funny oxymorons and the result has been nothing short of hilarious. Funny oxymorons are always
The Alphabet of the English language and most of the European languages was not thought of at the spur of the moment. Like the case with most language phenomena, it naturally evolved through centuries of accumulating changes that gave us the Alphabet as we know it today. The evolution of the alphabet is a fascinating journey. In what follows,
The Evolution of The Alphabet: From 1750 BC to Today. Read More »
People so often assume that a linguist’s job is to learn as many languages as possible when it is not anything near that. In fact, linguistics jobs encompass a wide range of activities beyond learning languages. So, let us put an end to this incorrect assumption once and for all.
Here is What You Can Do With A Degree in Linguistics. Read More »
Arabic is one of the most ancient, varied, and beautifully scripted languages. It is spoken by nearly 400 million users, placing it among the most 5 spoken languages in the world. Its influence on Spanish since the time of the Moors is well known, but what’s less well known is how many commonly used English
Linguists, led by Chomsky, did a wonderful job in describing how language works. By thoroughly studying a handful of human languages, not including the Piraha language, they devised a theory, i.e. Universal Grammar, which could explain all possible human languages with all their hidden features and peculiarities. Every single language fits in there nicely. They could account
Piraha, The language That Disproves Universal Grammar. Read More »
If you are even slightly interested in language and linguistics, chances are you heard the term Universal Grammar a fair amount of times. It is a central concept in modern linguistics and the most controversial. It is a term that was born in the pursuit of trying to answer some very fundamental and old questions about language.
A wug is an imaginary cartoon creature created and first used by psycholinguist Jean Berko Gleason to test people’s ability to use the English plural morpheme*. The test usually involves two cartoon panels—one depicting one wug with the caption “This is a wug,” and the other depicting two wugs with the caption “Now there is another one. There are two of them. There are
Every language has a list of rarely used words that very few people know. They are not commonly known because they are rarely needed. Why bother learning something that you will not use..right? But for us, language nerds, that’s what gives meaning to our lives. Tracking down words and what they mean satisfies a curiosity
30 English Words That Are Rarely Known To Most People. Read More »
