Most Popular
1500 questions
11
votes
3 answers
Efficient linguistic algorithms for detecting language of a website?
Some browser addons and web-services for website/dictionary translation sometimes offer a "automatic-language-detection" feature. This works more or less in my experience.
There is probably a variety of different possible algorithms, like indexing…
Hauser
- 612
- 4
- 16
11
votes
2 answers
No etymology for "dad"?
It seems that the word "mom" derives from "mamm-", Latin for breast. I have actually heard it told that the Latin root "mamm-" derives from the baby's first natural sounds, though I cannot attribute this.
Interestingly, the etymology for "dad"…
dotancohen
- 1,296
- 2
- 13
- 25
11
votes
3 answers
About how much does language typology correlate with genetic relationships among languages?
About how much does language typology correlate with genetic relationships among languages? For example, should we expect most Sino-Tibetan languages to be isolating, or most Indo-European languages to have a lot of fusional affixes, and so on…
James Grossmann
- 8,730
- 8
- 41
- 83
11
votes
1 answer
Why do some German words have 'th' instead of 't' in their older spelling?
My guess is that it was used to distinguish aspiration (as opposed to 't' in words of Latin/ Old French origin, which was not aspirated?). I'm pretty sure German lost its dental fricative to d pretty early on, so I know that's probably not…
user3482545
- 641
- 6
- 11
11
votes
5 answers
How usual is it for languages to have both prepositions and postpositions?
It has seemed to me (though I might be wrong) that languages usually take either prepositions (English, German, Spanish) or postpositions (Japanese, Hungarian, Turkish). (Yes I know sometimes a different term is used as for Chinese but those come…
hippietrail
- 14,687
- 7
- 61
- 146
11
votes
2 answers
How can I distinguish modern Scandinavian languages at a glance?
I don't know Danish, Nynorsk, or Bokmål, but will sometimes, on coming across a writing sample of one of them, wish to know which it is. How do I distinguish them in their written forms?
(I'd include Swedish in the question also, but I think I can…
msh210
- 1,013
- 9
- 20
11
votes
3 answers
The origin of the term 'verb'
References tell me that the term 'verb' originally means 'word'. This is easily understood by usages such as 'verbal abuse', 'verbal agreement', 'he's very verbal', etc.
That said, of all the various parts of speech, the term 'verb' is reserved only…
JK2
- 782
- 1
- 8
- 22
11
votes
3 answers
Are there practical reasons why languages developed left to right or right to left writing sytems
Some writing systems go right to left, such as Arabic:
Others left to right, for example modern romance languages:
Languages like Japanese traditionally used vertical writing systems where the columns proceed from right to left:
Are there known…
Araucaria - him
- 4,002
- 1
- 15
- 39
11
votes
2 answers
Why don't minimal pairs like "быть" and "бить" prove that /ɨ/ and /i/ are separate phonemes in Russian?
In analyses of Russian, there's a dispute about whether the vowels /ɨ/ and /i/ (typically represented in the orthography as "ы" and "и", respectively) are separate phonemes, or if [ɨ] is an allophone of /i/.
Quoting Wikipedia,:
The five-vowel…
Peter Olson
- 1,412
- 1
- 13
- 23
11
votes
9 answers
Are there languages with a totally regular conjugation for "to be" outside Quechua?
I recently noticed that most languages have an irregular conjugation for the verb To be. I say almost because I don't know all languages, but the ones I've seen all have some irregularity sooner or later.
Here is a simple table providing some…
Alenanno
- 9,388
- 5
- 48
- 80
11
votes
1 answer
Did Western European languages change faster during the Renaissance?
I am looking for data that either confirm or refute the following statement:
During the Renaissance (let's say, 14th to 16th centuries), Western European languages changed very rapidly. The pace of language change was much greater than before or…
Otavio Macedo
- 8,208
- 5
- 45
- 110
11
votes
2 answers
Difference between "Leiden school" and "mainstream" Indo-Europeanists?
Recently, I've been asked what the difference between the "Leiden school" and "mainstream" Indo-Europeanists is. The asker is planning to study in Leiden and has been concerned with the many vague criticisms he has encountered in connection with the…
Pavel Jetušek
- 982
- 7
- 14
11
votes
2 answers
How can I check whether 'question' in English, and 'xahesh' in Persian are cognates?
It seems plausible to me, and I would like to know how to verify it.
Why I think xahesh might be cognate with question:
xahesh (IPA: /xɑːheʃ/) in Modern Persian is a noun meaning "request, plea". The root xah- is from the verb xastan /xɑːstæn/…
A-K
- 417
- 2
- 9
11
votes
1 answer
Is there an equivalent to the Flesch Kincaid test for measuring quality and understandability of speech?
I want to measure the quality of speech: is it higher level/lower level (vocabulary grammar etc.) and also the understandability of the speech, i.e. is the teacher using language above a student's head?)
The Flesch Kincaid readability test is a…
Tyler Rinker
- 586
- 2
- 4
- 17
11
votes
3 answers
How can adjective-noun order in French be explained by parameter theory?
I just finished reading The Atoms of Language. The gist is that languages have parameters, one of which will tell you which side of a phrase to add a new word.
But in some languages, like French and Spanish, adjectives sometimes precede and…
MatthewMartin
- 2,914
- 19
- 33