Language & Words
Sign languages are languages, and each one is its own
They are not gestural versions of spoken languages, they are not universal, and they have grammar of a kind that spoken languages cannot easily produce.
Topic
linguistics
Every Kohopoho article tagged linguistics — 4 pieces across 1 section.
Language & Words
Counting differently: number systems and the bodies behind them
Base ten is not inevitable. Languages have counted in twelves, twenties and sixties, and the traces of those systems are still in everyday vocabulary.
Language & Words
What language revival actually involves
Roughly half the world’s languages have few enough speakers to be at risk. The efforts to keep them are less about dictionaries than about finding somewhere the language is needed.
Language & Words
Against "untranslatable": what those word lists actually show
The internet loves a word that supposedly has no English equivalent. What is usually being demonstrated is not a gap in translation but a difference in what gets compressed into a single word.