Questions tagged [list-of-languages]
request for references of languages that satisfy the criteria set in the question.
263 questions
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What are some text examples of a language's phonemic contrasts? Ex: English's is The North Wind and The Sun Story
I am learning how to learn a new language and came across this passage used in phonetic demonstrations The North Wind and The Sun Wikipedia Article.
The fable [The North Wind and The Sun] is made ...
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Are there other languages having a definite/indefinite marking on adjectives?
The distinction between definite and indefinite adjective declension is well-known from many Germanic languages and from Balto-Slavic languages (cf. How is the the adjective in a definite noun phrase ...
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Languages that don't differentiate between "want" and "must"/"have to"
Is there a natural language that doesn't differentiate between (i. e. doesn't have different words/concepts for) wanting to do something and having to do something? If so, how can the differences be ...
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Is there a language in which "K" comes first in alphabet?
Our instructor of a group project I was a part of has asked us to arrange the authors' names in alphabetical order. Since he hasn't specified which alphabetical order to use, and my name happens to ...
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The first multi-syllabic positive integer
This puzzle is not about linguistics, but I do not see a better place for this question.
Suppose N(L) is the first multi-syllabic positive integer in the given language L.
So
N(Russian) = N(Hebrew) = ...
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Do any languages regularly derive their words for males from words for females?
Specifically, I am looking for languages that derive the equivalent word for males from the word for females using some sort of masculine affix. Also, to be clear, they should be words for people, not ...
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Are there languages where grammatical parallelism does not matter?
English has a strong preference for parallelism (Wikipedia link), even though sentences lacking parallelism are still considered grammatically correct:
Good:
She likes cooking, jogging, and reading.
...
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Which non-Indoeuropean languages have noun-adjective agreement?
For example, agglutinative/fusional languages where case or possessive suffixes/endings must be attached both to a noun and all adjectives that modify it. Or any other kind of noun-adjective agreement....
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Is there any modern language that is currently shifting from one stage to the next in Jespersen's cycle?
Modern French seems to be going through the next stage in Jespersen's cycle, from Neg-V-Neg to V-Neg; i.e. Ce n'est pas toi to C'est pas toi.
What else is shifting from one to the next?
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Are there languages with a third term describing the relationship between opposites?
Languages have binary opposites such as
Term
Negation
Third Term
this
that
?
black
white
?
up
down
?
left
right
?
but are there languages that have a third term describing the relationship between ...
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Are there languages without non-finite verb forms at all?
This is inspired by the comments to this answer: Are there languages without any non-finite verb forms, or almost without any non-finite verb forms?
Examples of such languages are welcome!
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Frequency of homophones in different languages
Does English have unusually many or few homophones?
Which languages tend to have the most homophones and which have the fewest?
user31190
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Are there languages where all syllables start with a consonant and end in a vowel?
This is a relaxed version of this question Are there any languages that only allow CV syllables? asking for strictly CV-languages. Here I want to know if there are languages with the phonology CC*VV*, ...
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Indo-European languages that have innovated a nominative-accusative distinction for neuter nouns
One ubiquitous and ancient feature of Indo-European languages is a lack of contrast between the nominative and accusative for neuter nouns.
I'll restrict attention to nouns here and not independent ...
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Differentiations between types of love in languages?
Are there any languages with distinctions between romantic, Platonic, familial, etc. love? The closest I know of is "te quiero" doesn't have the same connotations as "te amo" in ...
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Any languages beside English where one goes"back and forth" rather than "forth and back"?
Are there languages beside English in which one goes "back and forth" rather than, as is logical, "forth and back"? One typically goes "forth and back" or similarly in ...
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Identifying languages with useful 2-character search terms
I'm a programmer (not a linguist) working on a software product that searches through data using a search term from the user. For English, we require a minimum length of 3 characters for the search ...
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Are there any languages without Semivowels?
Semivowels seem to be pretty common around the world's languages, I wonder if there are languages which don't have them.
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Are there languages without fillers like "um" or "uh"?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsMWbVrjucg&t=34s
According to this video (0:55) almost every language has those speech disfluencies. But ALMOST. Do languages exist that have no such sounds for ...
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Is there a language which would use "narrowness" or "shortness" instead of "width" and "length"?
In English, when something is big laterally, we say it's "wide", and when it's not, we say it's "narrow". This measure is called "width", and the word for it is derived ...
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What languages together maximize the number of people you can speak with?
This is not quite a “which languages have the greatest number of native speakers” question, nor quite a “which languages have the greatest number of L2 speakers” question, both of which are easily ...
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Languages or Dialects Wherein Rain/Cloud and Tear/Cry are Cognates
Are there any languages or dialects wherein
at least one of the words for rain, (rain)drop, or (rain)cloud is a cognate of at least one the terms for tear(drop) or cry(ing) ?
or (rain)clouds are ...
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A language without consonants
I know that Rotokas language has fewer consonants than most (all?) languages. But I haven't been able to find a language that has no consonants (whether phonemic or phonetic). Does such a language ...
user30668
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Is there any program or software that translates English or any other language into Ithkuil?
Considering the absurd difficulty of this language, I was wondering if there was a program that could do this. Just for fun, nothing serious.
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Languages that have phonemic aspirated post-alveolar affricates
There are loads of languages that have voiceless post-alveolar affricate, tʃ. I am aware of languages that have phonemic voiceless plosives (e.g. Mandarin), but I am wondering if there are any ...
user30668