Reading time: 10 – 15 minutes Introduction: Nouns, Verbs and Variable Vowels In present-day English, the plural of mouse is usually mice, and one man plus another equals two men. While most English nouns are made plural simply by adding -s, making one cat into multiple cats, there is a sizeable minority that become pluralContinue reading “Of Mouses and Mans? — The Origins of English’s Vowel-Swapping Nouns and Verbs”
Category Archives: Indo-European
From English to Greek in Two Rules
Reading time: 10 minutes (Note: as usual, letters between /slashes/ refer to sounds, following the IPA, while an *asterisk denotes a reconstructed, prehistoric word.) English and Ancient Greek are distantly related languages that descend from a common ancestor – consequently, if you’re trying to learn one and already know the other, you can use theseContinue reading “From English to Greek in Two Rules”
The Un-mouthing of Sounds
This post is a brief introduction to the process of debuccalization, a sound change with the power to dispel confusion in various languages of Europe and beyond. With the help of some concrete examples taken from three languages, this is a concept that I believe might come in rather handy for language learners. As isContinue reading “The Un-mouthing of Sounds”
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 callContinue reading “The Neuter Gender – A Very Useful Rule!”
Danny L. Bate 