Category Archives: Descriptive
The Critical Period Hypothesis in Linguistics
Evidence is increasing that children are born with a natural facility to pick up language of any type. The Critical Period hypothesis is very controversial in Linguistics, but it seems to be true as any person on the street might … Continue reading
Filed under Applied, Descriptive, Language Learning, Linguistics, Psychology, Sociolinguistics
Afrikaans and English Redux
A friend of mine who runs a site on Germanic culture and linguistics links to an old article of mine, Is Afrikaans Close to English?. He adds at the end a several paragraph explanation of the question and possible answers … Continue reading
Filed under Afrikaans, Descriptive, Dutch, English language, Germanic, Indo-European, Language Families, Linguistics
Dual Pronouns
Repost from the old site. We do not have dual pronouns in English anymore, and they have dropped out of my most other European languages too, but they are still found in some languages, including American Indian languages. In these … Continue reading
Filed under Aborigines, Amerindians, Anthropology, Applied, Austro-Tai, Austronesian, Blacks, Descriptive, Indo-European, Indo-Hittite, Inuit, Language Families, Language Learning, Language Samples, Linguistics, Multilingualism, Papuans, Philosophy, Race/Ethnicity, Reposts From The Old Site, Semantics, Sociolinguistics
Tiki-Tiki Has 250 Words?
Repost from the old site. Forget it. Via Marilyn Vos Savant in Parade Magazine, we are told that Tiki-Tiki, otherwise known as Sranan Togo, a creole with 100,000 native speakers and many more second languages speakers on Suriname, has the … Continue reading
A Look At the Venetian and Friulian Languages
Repost from the old site. Here we will compare Friulian and Venetian with Italian. The Friulian language is spoken in northeastern Italy. Among Friulian speakers, the language is affectionately known as Marilenghe and is best known from the Udine, the … Continue reading
Is Afrikaans Close to English?
Cruising around the Net researching my piece on the Dutch languages, I read up on Afrikaans quite a bit. Afrikaans is the language, very close to Dutch, spoken in South Africa. It seems to be a Dutch dialect from a … Continue reading
Filed under Africa, African, Afrikaans, Anti-Racism, Blacks, Cultural Marxists, Descriptive, Dutch, Europeans, Germanic, History, Indo-European, Language Families, Modern, Race/Ethnicity, Racism, Regional, Scum, South Africa, Whites
Phrasal Verbs – A Nightmare for English Language Learners
Despite the idiot linguists who say that all languages are equally difficult or easy to learn, it’s clear that some languages are harder to learn than others. One of the maddening things about English is phrasal verbs – in most … Continue reading
Why Did I Get a Degree in This Hokey Field Anyway?
The more time you spend talking to linguists, the more you start thinking that the whole damned field is stark raving bonkers. Many questions that you could ask ordinary Joe Blow on the street about linguistics, he could give you … Continue reading
Filed under Applied, Cultural Marxists, Descriptive, Dialectology, Idiots, Language Learning, Linguistics, Lunatics, Scum, Sociolinguistics
More On The Hardest Languages To Learn – Non-Indo-European Languages
Note: Unbelievably, the PC nutjobs have accused this post, a Linguistics post of all things, of racism. See here for my position statement on racism. Caution: This post is very long. It runs to 75 pages on the Net. This … Continue reading
Filed under !Xóõ, Afroasiatic, Algonquian, Altaic, Arabic, Austro-Asiatic, Austro-Tai, Austronesian, Bahasa Indonesian, Bakjalukasha, Bantu, Basque, Cantonese, Cherokee, Chinantec, Chinese language, Chukchi, Chukotko-Kamchatkan, Cree, Dene-Yenisien, Descriptive, Dravidian, Eskimo-Aleut, Finnic, Finnish, Finno-Ugric Languages, Hebrew, Hmong, Hmong-Mien, Hopi, Hungarian, Inuktitut, Iriquoian, Isolates, Japanese, Japonic, Khmer, Khoisan, Kootenai, Korean language, Language Families, Language Learning, Language Samples, Linguistics, Malayalam, Malayo-Polynesian, Malaysian, Maltese, Mandarin, Maori, Min Nan, Mon-Khmer, Na-Dene, Navajo, NE Caucasian, Nguni, Niger-Congo, Niger-Kordofanian, Ojibwa, Oto-Manguean, Paleosiberian, Philippine, Quechua, Quechuan, Salishan, Semitic, Sinitic, Sino-Tibetan, Slavey, Tabasaran, Tamil, Tsez, Turkic, Turkish, Ugric, Vietnamese, Xhosa, Yamana
More On The Hardest Languages To Learn – Indo-European Languages
Note: Bizarrely enough, the PC headcases have accused this post, a Linguistics post of all things, of racism. See here for my position statement on racism. Caution: This post is very long! It runs to 88 pages on the Web. … Continue reading
Filed under Albanian, Applied, Armenian, Baltic, Bulgarian language, Celtic, Czech, Danish, Descriptive, Dutch, English language, French, Gaelic, German, Germanic, Greek, Hellenic, Hindi, Icelandic, Indic, Indo-European, Indo-Hittite, Irish Gaelic, Italian, Italic, Kashmiri, Language Families, Language Learning, Language Samples, Latvian, Linguistics, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romance, Russian, Sanskrit, Serbo-Croatian, Sinhala, Slavic, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish
