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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Uzbek, “the penguin of Turkic languages”

Feb 25, 2011 by

A quick clarification about an earlier posting on Turkic languages. There I said that of the four major Turkic languages in Central Asia — Kazakh, Uzbek, Kyrgyz and Turkmen — Turkmen is the real “odd man out”....

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Faroese

Jun 1, 2010 by

To continue with our Scandinavian theme, let’s look at another Scandinavian language today: Faroese. It is spoken by 48,000 people on Faroe Islands (formally, part of Denmark, but self-governing in most matters). Faroese is an...

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Languages of Sweden

May 24, 2010 by

As promised, this week’s postings will deal with languages of Scandinavia, where I’ve recently travelled. Today I will review the linguistic situation in Sweden, the first country I’ve visited. The official language...

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So is Icelandic hard to learn?

Apr 22, 2010 by

So is Icelandic “one of the most difficult languages to learn”, as one of the CNN reporters said? I don’t think so! In general, the difficulty of learning another language depends on the degree of difference between...

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