Category: Linguistics

Indigenous Siberia: the Chukchi Language

A few years ago I ended up composing this tiny little “article” about the Chukchi language and people. It was one of my first articles and it’s just about as God-awful as you’d expect. To show you just how awful, I’ve taken a screenshot of the article and published it here as an image…  …
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Johannes Goropius Becanus, False Etymology and the Garden of Eden

Pre-Enlightenment-era Dutch linguists such as Johannes Goropius Becanus probably don’t make the list of things you think about on a regular basis. Typically, they wouldn’t make my list, either, but right now I’m on a little bit of a linguistic history kick and I have a few grievances that need airing.Click these—> The 15th, 16th,…
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A Linguist, a Polyglot and a Translator Walk Into a Bar…

The more I write the more it becomes painfully and abundantly clear that outside of language circles, the general population does not really understand much about the practical aspects of language or the differences between many of the titles bestowed upon various roles within the language community. Many people have done no more with language…
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What Language Will We Speak in Space, on Mars and Beyond?

  In the spirit of February’s massively successful maiden SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch, I wanted to throw together a short mini-post about space and language. Before we get into the languagey stuff, I feel like I need to briefly explain what’s going on. On Tuesday Feb 6th, entrepreneur billionaire Elon Musk’s private space launch company…
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What is the Best Age to Learn a New Language?

by Kamil Riaz It is a widely accepted notion that the best age to learn a new language is during childhood. This belief generally stems from the ‘critical period hypothesis’, which was popularized by linguist and neurologist, Eric Heinz Lenneberg, back in the 1960s. According to this hypothesis, the critical time for successful acquisition of…
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Why You Should Learn Two New Languages Instead of One

by Louise Taylor It’s not uncommon for school children to be taught two new languages at the same time, in much the same way that they would be taught different sciences at one time. So why, as adults wanting to learn another language, do we attempt to learn just one at a time? Why not…
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