Alex

World language families map https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Primary_Human_Languages_Improved_Version.png (Other language families map) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Human_Language_Families.png (Correction: The unity of the Niger-Congo family is disputed. Its largest branch is the generally accepted Atlantic-Congo family, which covers almost all of the same area.) Making a map of the world’s languages is certainly an imprecise art. And we looked last time at one […]

Online Etymological Dictionary https://www.etymonline.com/ Indo-European language family tree https://www.sssscomic.com/comic.php?page=196 Let’s look at another etymology here, this time of a similar word. We started with the word ‘word’, so how about the word ‘language’? So Online Etymological Dictionary, one of my favourite sites. Type the word ‘language’. Now here we get the search results page. You

Vulgar: A Fantasy Language Generator https://www.vulgarlang.com/ The world of conlang, or constructed languages, can be a very fun way to learn about linguistics, and also a creative exercise on its own, or part of some kind of fantasy/science fiction project of some kind, where you can really invent your own language. And doing so leads

World language families map https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Human_Language_Families.png (Correction: The unity of the Niger-Congo family is disputed. Its largest branch is the generally accepted Atlantic-Congo family, which covers almost all of the same area.) So what’s the big picture of the languages of the world? I like to look at this world map and just get an idea

Online Etymological Dictionary https://www.etymonline.com/ Indo-European language family tree (chart form) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/IndoEuropeanTree.png Indo-European language family tree (tree form) https://www.sssscomic.com/comic.php?page=196 (Correction: when I say “mostly the work of one man”, I mean the work of compiling this research into dictionary entries on this website. But of course, the work of generations of etymologists went into assembling this

https://ahadams.com Hi, my name is Alex Hartman Adams. I’ve been teaching and tutoring linguistics and English since 2004. I have a Master’s degree in linguistics from the University of Toronto. Linguistics is a very strange subject. It’s a whole bunch of different subjects thrown together: phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, writing systems, philosophy