The History of English Orthography

Dec 14, 2011 by

 BY VAISHNAV ARADHYULA (“Languages of the World”) It was the first day of seventh grade Spanish class, and the word “ghoti” was written on the blackboard. “Ghoti,” Señor Robles explained, spells fish. In English. “The...

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Comparing Verb Conjugations in the Romance Languages

Dec 14, 2011 by

BY DEREK CZAJKA (“Languages of the World”) Readers of this blog are doubtless aware of the notion of language families. Many of the world’s languages belong to a family of related languages. When languages are said...

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On the Southeast Asian Sprachbund

Dec 12, 2011 by

BY MIGUEL SAN PEDRO (“Languages of the World”) Over the past few decades, the fields of contact linguistics and historical linguistics have been enriched thanks to linguistic areas, regions where languages share common...

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Dangling Participle: Grammatical Error Or Bad Writing Style?

Dec 12, 2011 by

BY KATERYNA SHILOVA (Stanford Continuing Studies Program, “The Glamour of Grammar”)  The idea to research the subject of a dangling participle came to me after an unsuccessful attempt to amuse my English-speaking husband...

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Malagasy and the Austronesian Language Family

Dec 12, 2011 by

BY STEVEN BURNETT (“Languages of the World”) Located 250 miles off the coast of East Africa, the island of Madagascar is home to over 20 million people and comprises an area roughly the size of France. However, many might...

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