If you pull up maps of the comprehensibility of the various Spanish varieties, you might come across some examples of a certain long and thin country being highlighted and classified as 'incomprehensible'. Initially, I thought it might be some banter amongst the Hispanosphere, since banter between language varieties and cultures is quite commonplace in online … Continue reading What makes Chilean Spanish so… strange?
Mapudungun
3 languages that I’ve wanted to learn
Sometimes, I would ask myself this question -- given the time, resources and opportunity, which languages would I have got to learning? Recent events have provided opportunities to get started on some of these languages, but for the most part, I felt that I had accumulated quite a bit of backlog on language learning. Here, … Continue reading 3 languages that I’ve wanted to learn
Language Islands — On Language Isolates
Imagine a map showing the languages of the world, not in a 'where they are spoken' sense, but more rather, based on how closely is one related to another. We would see the vast continents of Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan and Niger-Congo, some large islands like the Eskimo-Aleut and Finno-Ugric, and then we have the remotest of … Continue reading Language Islands — On Language Isolates
