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:
12 Things Almost Everyone Gets Wrong About Language. Read More »
Words really don’t have any logic to them. You can’t just work out the meaning of words based on the sounds that make them up. That’s because words are arbitrary. So if you don’t speak Chinese, you can’t possibly figure out the words for, say, “breakfast” or “fridge”. Different people agree to give different combinations of sounds different meanings.
5 Words That Sound The Same In Almost Every Language. 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 »
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 phenomenon, it naturally evolved through centuries of accumulating changes that gave us the Alphabet as we know it today.
The Evolution of The Alphabet: From 1750 BC to Today. Read More »
Words are fun. They are what gets us, language nerds, turned on. When you speak more than one language, you realize that words mean different things in different languages. Sometimes an innocent word in a language can sound really bad in another, and that’s where the real fun is. Below are some words that are
Innocent Words That Sound Completely Inappropriate In Other Languages. 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 oxymorons and the result has been nothing short of hilarious. We’ve compiled them here for
No language has all of the words, and English is no exception. While you can express the complex feeling of “insecurity, fear, concern, and envy over relative lack of possessions, status or something of great personal value, particularly in reference to a comparator, a rival, or a competitor.” with one word (i.e. jealousy), some other
20 Fascinating Words From Other Languages with no English Equivalent. Read More »
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
Please like our new page Facebook about Dogs Visit our new website about Dogs : https://udoggybag.com Languages are interesting and beautiful, warts and all. There is not a single language in the world that is not associated with exquisite beauty and outstanding expressive potential. It is true that we still don’t know a lot about
People like counting. People like to compare things. These two trends are exaggerated even further on the internet. So it’s no wonder that there are websites like this, Global Language Monitor, that tout the number of words in English as some precise number (1,013,913 and growing at 15/day), compared to woeful 2nd place finisher Mandarin.
This is Why You Can Never Know How Many Words are in a Language. Read More »
