If you peruse the maps and cartographical side of social media, you might have encountered several maps showing the countries of the world coloured by whether they are masculine, feminine, or if applicable, neuter, in languages like French, German, and so on. Very often, these maps would be accompanied by laughing reactions, or some comments … Continue reading Is my chair ‘masculine’, ‘feminine’, or ‘neuter’?
grammatical rule
Little did we know about this grammatical rule
In grammar, there are generally a number of typical patterns languages use to express the relationship between the subject, the object, and the action (or verb). This includes the nominative-accusative group, and the absolutive-ergative group. Within these groups, these elements can follow certain word orders with varying degrees of flexibility. The word order we are … Continue reading Little did we know about this grammatical rule
Trying to understand the “fleeting-n” in Mongolian
For the past couple of months, I had been exploring the Mongolian language, learning about the rather interesting phonology system, the vowel harmony it sort of shares in common with some of the Turkic languages, and perhaps a bit of the writing system, Mongol bichig, which is probably one of the few writing systems today … Continue reading Trying to understand the “fleeting-n” in Mongolian
