Linguistics Stack Exchange
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Is there a relationship between Arabic ka'b and Greek kybos?

This is a complete layman's question. Online etymology dictionary says about kaaba: 1734, Caaba, cube-shaped building in the Great Mosque of Mecca, containing the Black Stone, the most sacred site of Islam, from Arabic ka'bah "square house," from…
layman
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Can I learn a new language just by listening or watching videos?

The question is a bit more specific than title would suggest, but I was not creative enough to put it so specifically into compact form. Let me explain. When I was a kid I was learning English in elementary school, but I've also watched lot of…
enedene
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Can all languages be "whispered" equally well?

Watching a movie recently I found I couldn't make out the dialogue because it was all whispered. I turned the volume up, and had no problems hearing everything. It seems to me that all words are articulated normally when whispering - the only…
FumbleFingers
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How stable are grammatical genders?

In languages which have gender-like classifications for nouns, like French and Russian, how often do nouns change gender over time? Have any studies been done to get statistics on how many words have changed gender in various languages over the…
Jack M
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Is there an easy way to type IPA?

I'm currently using the virtual IPA keyboard on TypeIt, but it takes forever. Is there an easy way to type IPA? I've found this list of Unicode keyboards on SIL.org but I'm not too sure how to evaluate their efficacy. I'm running off Windows if that…
RECURSIVE FARTS
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Are there any rankings of languages' rates of change?

This question involves the commonest languages still used in 2015. Prof. John McWhorter and this answer argue different rates of language change, e.g. the language change from Old Norse to Icelandic2015 < the language change from Old English to…
user5306
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Are American English and British English growing closer together or drifting further apart?

I'm mostly wondering about vocabulary (e.g. truck vs. lorry; apartment vs. flat) but I suppose I'd be interested to learn about pronunciation too. Intuitively I feel like this could go either way. On the one hand, all languages drift and given…
Matt Korostoff
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What explains the Icelandic language conservatism?

The Icelandic language is often used as an example of a very conservative language, compared to other Indo-European languages, in general, and to other North-Germanic languages, in particular, all of which have changed a lot over the past few…
Otavio Macedo
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Is there any link between the word 'eight' and the word 'night'?

When writing a text message with my phone, I often write "good n8" to say good night. Yet, I notice that this could also work in many other languages, or if not, it's pretty close. For instance : Language - translation of eight - translation of…
user9165
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What's this loanword phenomenon called?

I've noticed that loanwords often take on more specific meanings in the target language than in the source language. To give two very common examples, sake just means alcohol in Japanese and salsa just means sauce in Spanish, but those words refer…
alcas
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Which languages have words containing the same letter three times in a row?

I was just reading a french text with the word créées (created). Are there any other languages where triple letters, especially vowels, can be found occasionally?
Faraz Masroor
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Are there documented languages that evolved from tonal to nontonal?

There is a theory about tonogenesis for the Chinese language, thus Chinese had once a more complex syllable-structure and no tones. In the course of time, the syllable structure became less complex and tones emerged to compensate this loss. I am not…
meireikei
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What are some recommended online dictionaries for linguistic terms?

For one to find out about the definitions of "generative grammar", "sandhi phenomenon", "agglutinative morphology", etc.
Louis Rhys
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What languages use numbers to name the week days and months?

I know in Chinese, the days in a week from Monday to Sunday are called 星期一, 星期二, ..., 星期六, 星期日, which are verbatim translated as weekday one (or 1st weekday), weekday two (or 2nd weekday), ..., weekday six (or 6th weekday), however, not weekday…
Isaac
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Has any language ever borrowed an interrogative or relative pronoun?

One of the lexical similarities between reconstructed Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Uralic is in the interrogative and relative pronouns. For the former, in PIE there's a family of interrogatives beginning *kw-, e.g. Latin quis 'who?', quo…
TKR
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