What Is a Synthetic Language?

Sep 21, 2015 by

What Is a Synthetic Language?

The following is a question I have recently been asked by my former student and Facebook friend, David Benkof: “what’s a synthetic language? How synthetic is Hebrew? Esperanto? Latvian?”   As noted in my earlier post, the term...

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Dante Alighieri and the Italian Language

Jul 15, 2015 by

Dante Alighieri and the Italian Language

My recent trip to Italy has taken me to several places associated with the country’s leading cultural hero—Dante Alighieri. I have visited Florence, where he was born and spent his early years, and Verona, where he stayed for some...

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Hebrew proven to be the “original language” by a deaf pers...

Jun 13, 2012 by

Hebrew proven to be the “original language” by a deaf person?

A curious article at the Jewish Deaf Multimedia website claims that Hebrew (Ancient or Biblical Hebrew, that is, which is not the same as Modern Hebrew) has been proven to be the “original language”, that is “the first language to ever exist”. How was it proven? And is it actualy true?

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I love you!

Dec 24, 2011 by

I love you!

As linguists, we often tell our students — without giving it a second thought — that all languages are equally grammatically complex. As Guy Deutcher puts it in his Through the Language Glass, “equal complexity is...

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It’s not all black and white

Nov 30, 2011 by

It’s not all black and white

As was discussed in earlier postings, the cross-linguistic range of color terms is quite complex and languages differ as to how the treat the color spectrum (e.g., see how Hanunoo does it). But interestingly, not all uses of color...

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