June 2020
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La Joie de Joret
A Quick Guide to the Joret Line What is the Joret line? And why should I care about it? So, to begin, a definition: isogloss noun /ˈaɪsəɡlɒs/ /ˈaɪsəɡlɑːs/ (linguistics)a line on a map that separates places where a particular feature of a language is different The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary Named after the French historian and linguist… Continue reading
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Rhotacism, and How It Can Help Your Latin
A tricky piece of grammar If you have studied a little Latin, you may have come across an important, yet rather annoying group of nouns. They belong to the third declension, are neuter in gender, and end in -us in the nominative singular. They include words like tempus ‘time’, corpus ‘body’ and pectus ‘chest’. At… Continue reading
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The Economic Sandwiches of York
The Adventures of Proto-Indo-European *weiḱ- What links sandwiches to Vikings, and York to Czech villages? Why, etymology of course! One reconstructed Proto-Indo-European word has enjoyed enormous success in its subsequent, post-PIE life, in part thanks to its useful meaning, in part to the prestige of the languages that inherited it. This word is *weiḱ– and… Continue reading
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The Neuter Gender – A Very Useful Rule!
A Bit of Background The Indo-European family is a big group of languages that are spoken all over the world. There’s a good chance that, if you are learning a foreign language at the moment, it belongs to this family. Indo-European languages are united in their descent from a single, prehistoric language, which we call… Continue reading
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Introduction
Hello! That’s it. That’s the introduction. Okay, so, no, I would like to use this first post to set some things out. This is my blog; it’s personal, but I want for it to be, first and foremost, about linguistics and language learning, and for providing interesting and practical information about the languages I enjoy.… Continue reading