Month: April 2026

Recording regional and hyper-local swear words before they disappear

Linguists at the University of Sheffield have launched a project to create the UK’s first national repository of regional swear words. UK’s first-ever national swear word census to capture real use of English language | News | The University of Sheffield The researchers say they aim to preserve a record of regional and dialect words…… Continue reading Recording regional and hyper-local swear words before they disappear

Suppletive aspectual pairs in Russian

Most Russian verbs are a pair of linked verbs marking one of 2 ‘aspects’: ‘perfective’ or ‘imperfective’. Different aspects are different ways of depicting the event or state described by the verb. Speaking very roughly, the perfective aspect depicts an event or state as a single undivided whole, whereas the imperfective looks inside the event…… Continue reading Suppletive aspectual pairs in Russian

Possessives in Maori

The Maori language (te reo Māori) of New Zealand (Aotearoa) has 2 entire series of possessive particles. In this post, I: summarise the form of the 2 series of possessive particles summarise when each series is used; and point out that other Central Pacific languages also have more than one series of possessive particles, giving…… Continue reading Possessives in Maori

Language in Project Hail Mary

Last week, I saw the new Ryan Gosling film Project Hail Mary. It highlights some interesting questions about how a human can learn to communicate with an extraterrestrial. The film is based on a 2021 sci-fi novel of the same name by Andy Weir.   Ryan Gosling’s character Ryland Grace is a scientist on a…… Continue reading Language in Project Hail Mary

Odds and ends: English

This post deals with some small aspects of English, grouped under the following headings: Spelling pronunciation meanings mass noun or count noun? word or phrase word histories 1.    Spelling 1a. Bookkeeper Bookkeeper (and related bookkeeping) is one of the few English words with 3 double letters in a row: oo-kk-ee. https://whenyouwrite.com/ points out: an English…… Continue reading Odds and ends: English

Bad book binding

Book binders sometimes get it wrong. Here is the cover of a book I bought a few years ago: The Guide to the Galaxy, by Nigel Henbest and Heather Cooper. And here is the inside flysheet showing what is actually inside the covers: the German translation Die Milchstraße (literally ‘the Milky Way’) Finally, here is…… Continue reading Bad book binding

Cognate, etymon, reflex

An important concept in historical linguistics is cognacy. Words are said to be cognates if they descend directly from the same word in an earlier stage of the same language or in an ancestral language. For example, the German word Feuer (‘fire’) and English fire are cognates. They both derive from the corresponding word *fōr in the Proto-Germanic language.…… Continue reading Cognate, etymon, reflex

A wide tree rising out of just one branch from a small acorn

The Austronesian language family is found through South-East Asia and the Pacific. There are 5 groups of its Polynesian branch: Tahitic (including Tahitian and Māori); Marquesan (Hawaian and Marquesan); Samoic (Samoan and Tokelauan); Tongic Nieuan (Tongan and Nieuan) and Rapanui (Rapa Nui: Easter Island). https://teara.govt.nz/en/map/41061/austronesian-languages Important non-Polynesian members of the family include: Malay and its…… Continue reading A wide tree rising out of just one branch from a small acorn