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About Linguistics
@aboutlinguistics.bsky.social
A space dedicated to linguistics :) aboutlinguistics.com
October 11, 2025 at 9:01 AM
The International Phonetic Alphabet makes it possible to transcribe any language in the world and to compare pronunciations across languages with precision.
October 4, 2025 at 12:30 PM
The International Phonetic Alphabet is a system of symbols used to represent the sounds of any spoken language.
October 1, 2025 at 1:00 PM
I'm so excited to introduce the:

✨ Language & Thought Mindfulness Journal ✨

🌿 A guided journey into understanding how your internal dialogue influences your thoughts and quality of life.

❤️ Get yours: aboutlinguistics.com/mindfulness-...
September 15, 2025 at 5:14 PM
One of my favourite pieces of advice is to read like a writer and to write like a reader

#linguistics #reading #writing #writer
September 15, 2025 at 4:58 PM
Word of the Day: Vellichor
/ˈvɛlɪkɔːr/
‘The strange wistfulness of used bookshops.’
September 2, 2025 at 5:24 PM
Word of the Day: Eloquent
/ˈɛləkwənt/
‘Fluent or persuasive in speaking or writing.’
September 1, 2025 at 6:30 PM
Word of the Day: Aesthetic
/ɛsˈθɛtɪk/
‘Concerned with beauty or the appreciation of beauty.’
August 29, 2025 at 7:01 PM
Imagine reading text with no spaces, no punctuation, and all caps! 

That was ancient Greek scriptio continua (‘continuous script’). Words weren’t visually separated because reading was mostly aloud.

Spaces appeared by the 8th–9th century.
August 26, 2025 at 7:30 PM
The first emoji was created in Japan in 1999 by Shigetaka Kurita. 

‘Emoji’ comes from Japanese: ‘e’ (絵) meaning ‘picture’ and ‘moji’ (文字) meaning ‘character’, literally ‘picture character’.
August 25, 2025 at 4:30 PM
English spelling is so confusing because it got 'frozen' around the printing press era, when printers chose standard spellings to save time. 

Pronunciation kept changing, though, meaning today’s spellings often don’t match how words sound.
August 24, 2025 at 11:01 AM
Esperanto was made to be an easy and neutral language that anyone could learn, with no tricky grammar or unusual exceptions. 

Created to bring people together, it’s still spoken worldwide with clubs, books, and meetups keeping it alive.
August 23, 2025 at 1:30 PM
The word 'grammar' referred to Latin scholarship in medieval Europe, seen by many as arcane or mysterious.

Then in Scottish English, it evolved into 'glamour', meaning a magical illusion.

Over time, 'glamour' came to mean charm or allure.
August 20, 2025 at 3:04 PM
Basque is Europe’s only major language isolate - there are no known relatives anywhere.

It also has ergative-absolutive grammar, where 'I sleep' and 'me see' share the same form.

This is rare in Europe, but common in far-off places like the Caucasus or Australia.
August 20, 2025 at 12:26 PM
In some Polynesian languages like Hawaiian and Maori, the pronoun for “we” splits into two:

Inclusive “we” means you and I together: the listener is included.

Exclusive “we” means I and others, but not you: the listener is excluded.
August 20, 2025 at 12:23 PM
Japanese has special verbs just for giving and receiving things.
For example, あげる (ageru) means ‘to give,’ while もらう (morau) and polite いただく (itadaku) mean ‘to receive.’ This helps show respect and social roles in conversations.
August 17, 2025 at 2:31 PM