Our Most Powerful Tool

I believe language is the most powerful tool humans have to share information, learn about each other and the world we live in, and create change to improve the lives of humans here on Earth. This is a blog about all things language. I speak English. Hablo español. 我会说中文。 I am a university student working toward a Linguistics & Chinese double B.A. Feel free to browse my blog or follow me for linguistics and language related content. My inbox is also open as I know a considerable amount about these topics.

[aaoposts]

[sixpenceee]

A map of the human mouth where each word is preformed                          

[linguisticmaps]

Orthographic depth

Languages have different levels of othographic depth, that means that a language’s orthography can vary in a spectrum of a very irregular and complex orthography (deep orthography) to a completely regular and simple one (shallow orthography). 

English, French, Danish, Swedish, Arabic, Urdu, Tibetan, Burmese, Thai, Khmer, Lao, Chinese, and Japanese have orthographies that are highly irregular, complex and where sounds cannot be predicted from the spelling. These writing systems are more difficuld and slow to be learned by children, who may take years. In the medium of the scale there’s Spanish, Portuguese, German, Polish, Greek, Russian, Persian, Hindi, Korean, where there are some irregularities  but overall the correspondence of one sound to one phoneme is not that bad. At the positive end of the scale there’s Italian, Serbo-Croat, Romanian, Finnish, Basque, Turkish, Indonesian, Quechua, Ayamara, Guarani, Mayan languages, and most African languages (because there were no history of spelling, so a new one of scratch was made as very regular), they all have very simple and regular spelling systems, with usually a one-to-one correspondence between sounds and letters. These are very easily learned by children. 

Orthographic depth has several implications for the study of psycholinguistics and the study of language processing and also acquisition of reading and writing by children. 

Note: remember that there’s no objective numbering on the three categories I made, there are more than just these three categories, because it works like a spectrum. Three categories were used just as a means for simplification. 

[linguisticmaps]

Nasal harmony

Nasal harmony is a tendency for assimilation of other consonants and vowels to the nasality of a neighbouring nasal vowel or nasal consonant. For exemple in Guaraní certain affixes have alternative forms according to whether the root includes a nasal (vowel or consonant) or not. For example, the reflexive prefix is realized as oral je- before an oral stem like juka “kill”, but as nasal ñe- before a nasal stem like nupã “hit”. The ã makes the stem nasal.

Nasal harmony occurs in many South American languages like Guaraní, other Tupi languages, Emberá, Otomi languages, Chibchan languages (e.g. Ngäbere) and some Bantu languages (like Umbundu and Kimbundu). 

These languages are mainly in central and South America and in Africa. If you know other languages that exhibit this phenomenon please let me know!

[xuexiblr]

Mandarin exclamative particles and interjections

啊 (a) ah (surprise, just realized something)

呀 (ya) used instead of 啊 when the preceding word ends in a vowel (same meaning as 啊）

唉 (ai) sigh

哦 (ó) oh (ohhh I understand, that’s so)

喔 (ò) oh (aknowleges that you heard something but shows you aren’t happy about it)

诶/欸 (ei) hey (expressed sudden excitement, disappointment or can be used to get someone’s attention)

-I excluded the tone because depending on the context / tone of voice it has different meanings

咦 (yí) a sound that expresses confusion

哇 (wa) wow

哈哈 (hāha) haha

喂 (wéi) hello (on the phone) hey (getting a person’s attention)

嘿 (hēi) hey

嗯 (ēn) expresses agreeement / a groan

蛤 (há) what? huh? (used when you need a clarification or you’re so surprised you can’t believe)

哼 (hēng) hesitation grunt

哎哟 (āiyōu) ugh, ouch, darn it, whoops

哎呀 (āiyā) oh no (complaint / expresses something annoying)

我的天哪 (wǒ de tiān na) oh my god

我的妈呀 (wǒ de mā ya) oh my god (lit. Oh my mother)

真的? (zhēnde) really?

那当然了 (nà dāngrán le) of course, totally agree

太可惜了 (tài kěxī le) what a pity, that’s too bad

这样啊? (zhèyàng a) really? is that so?

原来如此 (yuánláirúcǐ) so that’s how it is

你辛苦了 (nǐ xīnkǔ le) you’ve worked hard (a thanks for efforts)

保重自己 (bǎozhòng zìjǐ) take care of yourself

好好休息 (hǎohǎo xiūxi) get some rest, rest well

那好 (nàhǎo) all right, ok (ends conversation)

就这样吧 (jiù zhèyàng ba) ok that’s all for now (ends conversation)

[hanyuzhongwen-deactivated202205]

Instead of  保重自己 (bǎozhòng zìjǐ) you can also say 照顾自己 (zhàogu  zìjǐ)

[allthingslinguistic]

How to teach yourself linguistics online for free

Wish you were enrolled in an intro linguistics class this semester? Starting a linguistics major and looking for extra help? Trying to figure out whether you should study linguistics and what comes after?  Whether you’re just trying to grasp the basics of linguistics or you’re trying to construct a full online linguistics course, here’s a comprehensive list of free linguistics websites, podcasts, videos, blogs, and other resources from around the internet: 

Linguistics Podcasts

Specific episodes:

The International Phonetic Alphabet and vowels

Constituency

Gricean Maxims and presuppositions

Kids These Days aren’t ruining language

Learning languages linguistically

Phonemes and palatalization

Prepositions, determiners, verbs

Morphemes and the wug test

Why do we gesture when we talk?

Syllables

Podcasts in general:

Lingthusiasm

The History of English Podcast

Talk the Talk

Lexicon Valley

The World in Words

A Way With Words

Vocal Fries

Linguistics Videos

Modular topics:

NativLang (cartoons)

The Ling Space

Tom Scott’s Language Files

Arika Okrent (whiteboard videos)

Structured video series like an online course:  

Introduction to Linguistics (TrevTutor)

Another intro linguistics series (DS Bigham)

Phonology (TrevTutor)

Mathematical linguistics (TrevTutor)

Syntax (TrevTutor)

Another syntax series following the chapter structure of a free online syntax textbook (Caroline Heycock)

The Virtual Linguistics Campus at Marburg University

“Miracles of Human Language” (on Coursera from Leiden University)

Blog posts

General

How much do I need to know before taking intro linguistics? (Spoiler: not much) 

28 tips for doing better in your intro linguistics course

How to find a topic for your linguistics essay or research paper

For typesetting linguistics symbols: What is LaTeX and why do linguists love it? (with sample LaTeX doc to download and modify).

Further linguistics resources about specific areas, such as sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, language acquisition (first/second), historical linguistics, neurolinguistics, prescriptivism. 

Phonetics & Phonology

How to make your own paper model of the larynx

Teaching phonetics using lollipops

How to remember the IPA vowel chart

How to remember the IPA consonant chart

IPA transcription practice

A detailed explanation of sonorants, obstruents, and sonority

A very elaborate Venn diagram of English phonological features

The basics of how Optimality Theory works, with coffee analogy

Allophones of /t/, explained with internet gifs

Several good visualizations and explanations of the vocal tract

How to type IPA on your phone (Android and iOS) 

Various ways to type IPA on a computer

Morphology & Syntax

Morphological typology cartoons

So you asked the internet how to draw syntax trees. Here’s why you’re confused.

Types of trees: a sentence is an S, a sentence is an IP, a sentence is a TP

A step-by-step guide to drawing a syntax tree, with gifs

Distributed Morphology

Garden path sentences: how they work, some examples

Structural ambiguity and understanding people in Ipswich

How to draw trees on a computer (TreeForm and phpSyntaxTree) 

Pronoun typology and “the gay fanfiction problem”

The solution to violent example sentences: Pokemon

Semantics & Pragmatics

The difference between epistemic and deontic, necessity and possibility (with bonus modals as Hogwarts houses)

Why learn semantics? Comebacks to annoying people.

Presuppositions, implicature and entailment, and more presuppositions in Lizzie Bennet Diaries

Gricean maxims in Welcome to Night Vale

Scalar implicature and a duck gif

Giving a shit about Negative Polarity Items, NPIs explained using Mean Girls references, and a follow-up on Free Choice Items

The lambda calculus for absolute dummies

The Lambda Calculator (software for practising in Heim & Kratzer style)

Teaching & Academic/career advice

Linguistics resources for high school teachers

Teaching linguistics to 9-14 year olds

On writing an IB extended essay in linguistics (& follow-up)

IPA Bingo

IPA Jeopardy and IPA Hangman

Practising syntax trees using cards and string/straws

Find a linguistics olympiad near you!

Editing linguistics Wikipedia articles instead of writing a final paper that no one but the prof will read (see also wikiedu.org)

Should you go to grad school in linguistics? Maybe

Figuring out if you actually want to go to linguistics grad school

How to decide which linguistics grad school to go to

How to look for linguistics undergrad programs

How to interact with someone who’s just given a talk

An extensive list of undergrad and/or student-friendly conferences - apply to one near you!

Advice for linguistics profs on increasing enrollment and supporting non-academic careers

Linguistics jobs - a series about careers outside academia

Languages

Linguistic approaches to language learning resource roundup

Will linguistics help with language learning? / Will learning a second language help with linguistics?

The problem with “economically useful” as a reason for language learning

Further link roundups

This list not enough? Try these further masterposts: 

A very long list of linguistics movies, documentaries, and TV show episodes

A list of books (fiction and nonfiction) about linguistics

A comprehensive list of language and linguistics podcasts, from Superlinguo 

A very long list of linguistics YouTube channels and other free online videos about linguistics 

20 linguistics blogs I recommend following

How to explain linguistics to your friends and family this holiday season

[gratefulgardens-deactivated2025]

“For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals. Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned to talk and we learned to listen. Speech has allowed the communication of ideas, enabling human beings to work together to build the impossible. Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking, and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn't have to be like this. Our greatest hopes could become reality in the future. With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.”

~Stephen Hawking

[mymodernmet]

Comic Artist Maps the History of Languages with an Illustrated Linguistic Tree

[frislander-deactivated20220305]

I’ve only just noticed this, but the first diagram seems to have a weird classification system for both Indo-European and Uralic. In the IE side we can note that Indo-Iranian somehow gets its own branch to itself separate from the rest of core IE, which gets the title “European”. This implies that we can somehow reconstruct a “Proto-European” using all of the living IE languages bar Indo-Iranian, which strikes me as unlikely to be distinct from PIE itself (heck this thing counts bleeding Armenian as part of “European”, which seems rather strange to me, maybe because historically it’s been thought of as Indo-Iranian for much of the history of IE studies).

There are also minor details which are just wrong; Corsican is known to be a variant of Tuscan, not Sardinian, despite appearances; it’s more closely related to Standard Italian than Sicilian for heaven’s sake! And of course it’s terrible at reflecting dialect continua, that much is inherent in the tree diagram, but at least they could have been sensible and put the Dutch-Flemish branch next to the Low German branch like it should be and not somehow separated from it by Anglo-Frisian. Similarly why is French and its close relatives spearated from Ibero-Romance by Italo-Romance, that’s not how this works. I’m also not entirely well-versed in my Indo-Iranian classification, but why is Sanskrit the only extinct language that gets a branch?

On the flipside you have the Uralic tree, which is equally weird. It appears to follow some variation of Finno-Permic, with all the non-Ugric, non-Samoyedic languages being part of the branch that ends in Finnic, or rather Finno-Samic, since this picture seems to follow that as a subgroup of Finno-Premic. this needless to say is a controversial grouping, and is difficult to find evidence for. The ordering of the branches too also seems to imply that Mordvinic would be closer to Finnic in such a grouping than Permic to which I’m just like ? Also I’m pretty sure Khanty and Mansi are not that closely related even if Ugric is a thing.

[ahsokabi-archive]

sp*niards: ‘vosotros’

the rest of the hispanohablantes:

[aoideew]

[nezu]

german emotions

[nezu]

i literally just reopen this website every once in a while to see if this post hit 100k notes yet

[chinesethings]

靜夜思

李白

床前明月光 疑是地上霜 举头望明月 低头思故乡

//

Quiet Night Thoughts by Li Bai

Bright moonlight before my bed; I suppose it is frost on the ground. I raise my head to view the bright moon, then lower it, thinking of my home village.

//

translation by eastasiastudent

[specgram]

Sexy Linguistics

Pragmaticist: “It’s hot in here” entails that I’m sexy.

[star-anise]

Okay, but how the hell do Americans say "about"? Every time this comes up I can sorta hear what I'm doing as a Canadian, but then I'm like, "How ELSE would you even say it??" Also, is the rider/writer (in fast speech I pronounce them the same) thing part of Canadian Raising too?

IDEK how to explain American “about”s. Abaht? Abowed? 

This is definitely getting out of my depth and into the realm of “questions we’d need an actual linguist to answer”.

[lemonsharks]

uh-BOW-t

(bow as in what you do when you meet the queen)

[star-anise]

The problem is (and damn I wish I knew IPA), that’s how *I* think I say it too!

We’re literally pronouncing the vowel in “bow” differently and any attempt to transliterate it using Latin characters is going to result in both sides saying, “I just pronounce it the normal way!”

I know you, and I know that when we both say “bow” we do it differently–your vowel is closer to “ow” or even “ah” and mine is closer to “oh” or even “oo”–but DAMN if I can explain it in the alphabet available to me.

[rhysiana]

I have found a video by a linguist so you can both see the IPA written out and *hear* someone demonstrate the difference!

Canadian vs. American Accent (Canadian Raising?) (skip to 1:25 for the relevant part to begin)

Short version: Canadians raise the “ow” diphthong being referred to above when it happens before an unvoiced consonant. The example the lecturer uses is the different in how it sounds in “around” vs. “about,” because n is voiced but t isn’t. Americans pronounce it the same in both words.

[star-anise]

Thanks so much! That’s a great example.

[demotica]

[screams-in-confused-teuton]

A Brief Evolution Of The Letter A

Over time, what may have originally meant “Ox” evolved into the first letter of various different alphabets and abjads. Potentially one of the most recognizable and popular graphemes in the world, this little dude is so significant that the word “Alphabet” itself is partly named after its name in Greek. If letters could have egos, A’s would be massive.

[olilonien]

Slovene Linguistics Vocab

Slovene linguists have been busy describing their own language (and others too!), so they had to come up with a bunch of terms. Below is a list of some of these terms, ordered alphabetically. Please note that the words are marked for stress (those graves, acutes and circumflexes above vowels and r), which is normally not written. 

abecéda (m) — alphabet

beséda (f) — word

besédna vŕsta (f) — part of speech

člén* / (spôlnik*) (m) — article

(nè)dolóčni člén (m) — (in)definite article

člének (m) — particle

glágol (m) — verb

fázni glágol (m) — phaseal verb 

modálni glágol (m) — modal verb

polnopoménski glágol (m) — lexical verb

pomóžni glágol (m) — auxiliary verb

(nè)prehódni glágol (m) — (in)transitive verb

mêdmet (m) — interjection

prêdlog (m) — preposition

pridévnik (m) — adjective

kakôvostni pridévnik (m) — qualitative adjective

vŕstni pridévnik (m) — relational adjective

svojílni pridévnik (m) — possessive adjective

prislòv (m) — adverb

samostálnik (m) — noun

štévnik (m) — numeral

glávni štévnik (m) — cardinal numeral

ločílni štévnik (m) — collective numeral

množílni štévnik (m) — multiplicative numeral

vrstílni štévnik (m) — ordinal numeral

véznik (m) — conjunction

zaímek (m) — pronoun

osébni zaímek (m) — personal pronoun

povrátni osébni zaímek (m) — reflexive pronoun

vprašálni zaímek (m) — interrogative pronoun

ozirálni zaímek (m) — relative pronoun

nèdolóčni zaímek (m) — indefinite pronoun

nikálni zaímek (m) — negative pronoun

kazálni zaímek (m) — demonstrative pronoun

besedotvórje (n) — word formation

čàs (m) — tense

prèdpretêklik (m) — pluperfect tense, past perfect tense

pretêklik (m) — past tense

prihódnjik (m) — future tense

sedánjik (m) — present tense

čŕka (f) — letter

dvóčŕkje* (n) — digraph

ênočŕkje* (n) — monograph

tróčŕkje* (n) — trigraph

dêblo (n) — stem

deléžje (n) — gerund / verbal adverb / adverbial participle

deléžnik (m) — participle

foném (m) — phoneme

fonétika (f) — phonetics

glágolnik (m) — gerund / verbal noun

glás (m) — phone, phoneme, sound

dvóglásnik (m) — diphthong

ênoglásnik (m) — monophthong

izglásje (n) — coda

polglásnik (m) — schwa (semivowel?)

samoglásnik (m) — vowel

soglásnik (m) — consonant

tróglásnik* (m) — triphtong

vzglásje (n) — onset

glasoslôvje (n) — phonology, phonetics

gôvor (m) — local speech or local dialect, subdialect

izgovoríti — to pronounce

izgôvor (m), izgovorjáva (f) — pronunciation

jêzik (m) — language

jezikoslôvje (n) — linguistics

jezikoslôvec (m) — linguist (male)

jezikoslôvka (f) — linguist (female)

končníca (f) — ending

korén (m) — root

ločílo (n) — punctuation

I’ll make a separate post for these.

morfém (m) — morpheme

načín (m) — voice

tvórni način / tvórnik (m) — active voice

tŕpni načín / tŕpnik (m) — passive voice

naglás (m) — accent, stress

jákostni naglás (m)  — stress accent (non-pitch)

tonémski naglás (m) — pitch accent

naklòn (m) — mood

pogójni naklòn / pogójnik (m) — conditional

povédni naklòn / povédnik (m) — indicative

velélni naklòn / velélnik (m) — imperative

vézni naklòn* (m) — subjunctive

želélni naklòn / želélnik (m) — optative

namenílnik (m) — supine

naréčje (n) / dialékt (m) — dialect

naslónka (f) — clitic

nèdolóčnik (m) — infinitive

oblikoslôvje (n) — morphology

obrazílo (n) — affix

okrajšáva (f) — abbreviation

oséba (f) — person

osnôva (f) — base

podstáva (f) — stem

póna (f) — affix

medpóna (f) — infix 

predpóna (f) — prefix

pripóna (f) — suffix

povéd (m) — sentence

pregíbati — to inflect

skládnja (f) — syntax

sklánjati — to decline

sklanjátev (f) — declension

sklòn¹ (m) — case

imenoválnik (m) — nominative

rodílnik (m) — genitive

dajálnik (m) — dative

tožílnik (m) — accusative

méstnik (m) — locative

oródnik (m) — instrumental

zválnik* / vókativ* (m) — vocative

ločílnik*/ áblativ* (m) — ablative

spòl (m) — gender

môški spòl (m) — masculine gender

srédnji spòl (m) — neuter gender

žénski spòl (m) — feminine gender

sprégati — to conjugate

spregátev (f) — conjugation

stávčni člén (m) — sentence element

osébek (m) — subject

povédek (m) — predicate

povédkovo določílo (n) — complement

prêdmet (m) — object

prilástek (m) — attribute (modifier)

prislôvno določílo (n) — adverbial

stávek (m) — clause

podrédni stávek (m) / podrédje (n) — subordinate clause

prirédni stávek (m) / prirédje (n) — coordinate clause

števílo (n) — number

dvojína (f) — dual

ednína (f) — singular

množína (f) — plural

víd (m) — aspect

(nè)dovŕšni víd (m) — (im)perfective aspect

zlòg (m) — syllable

dvózlóžna beséda / dvózlóžnica (f) — disyllabic word / disyllable

ênozlóžna beséda / ênozlóžnica — monosyllabic word / monosyllable

* These terms aren’t really applicable to Slovene (ie. Slovene lacks these features) but I included them nonetheless because they commonly appear in neighbouring languages.

¹ Unlike other terms, the cases are listed in the order they appear in Slovene grammar (NGDALI). Vocative and ablative do not exist in Slovene, of course.

[allthingslinguistic]

Guess the linguistics vocabulary, from Dr. Bethan Siân Tovey on twitter 

sem🐜ics ☎️tics syn💸 ty👕gy 💿ourse g🐏mar lexi⚙️raphy ⏲ectology ped😲y 🔥eracy ort🐖raphy rhe⛰ic 📊emics docu👬tation 🚛otics sty🧾ics vo🚕ulary 🧚‍♀️licature phonot🎭ics iconi🏙 🎨iculation phi😆ogy