Uruk, Iraq 

The sorta literal translation from the arabic is so much more beautiful

“From here rose the first written letter, (finding its way) to every point on earth”

I like this version more

if anyone needs me i'll be frothing at the mouth thinking about the origin of language and interspecies communication. happy wednesday.

how did we learn this? who taught us this? is it coincidental? is it observational? is it that something in the source of these sixteen languages stems from the same animal instinct that causes each of these species to call out to their own kind? I Am Going To Lose It.

tumblr: on languages

The thai for “5″ is pronounced roughly “Ha”, and so where english internets would generally put “lol” or something, they put “555555555″.

I was looking for this post for so long

Finally it has returned

@azaharperezoso

every language is awesome (yes including english) And I think that it should be celebrated that across the entire world there are so many diverse languages and it’s making me so happy

Tḧ commitẗ̈ has ̈liminaẗd anotḧr l̈tẗr from tḧ alphab̈t, obſol̈ẗd by tḧ maj̈ſtic umlaut

Spanish ningun and Portuguese nenhum 'no; (not) any' have the same origin as the German and Dutch negative articles kein and geen. The changes they underwent have made them quite different, but they all stem from a combination of two words that meant 'not even one'.

oh, this means the "bad" in "badmash" is probably the same "bad"

the "mash" part is from Arabic tho

Cherokee back to school vocab

Text format:

—

 ᏗᏂᏲᏟ ᎠᎾᎴᎾ ᏧᎾᏕlᏆᏍᏗᎢ

[diniyotli anlen tsundelquasdi’i]

The children - they go back to - school

—

ᏗᎾᏕᎶᏆᏍᏗ [dinadeloquasdi] school

ᏗᏕᏲᎲᏍᎩ [dideyohvsk] teacher

ᏗᏕᎶᏆᏍᏗ [didelquasdi] student

ᏗᎪᏪᎶᏗ [digohwelodi] pencil

ᎪᏪᎵ [gowheli] paper

ᏗᎵᏍᏙᏗ [dilsdodi] scissors

ᎧᎾᏬᏗᏍᎩ [kanawodisk] glue

ᏕᏍᎩᎳ [gaskila] desk

ᏕᏍᎩᎶ [gasgilo] chair

ᎠᏍᏆᏂᎪᏗᏍᎩ [asquangodisk] computer

ᎥᎪᎵᏰᏍᎬ [vgoliyesgv] read

ᎪᏪᎶᏗ [gohwelodi] write

—

Please correct me if I made a mistake

ᐃᖃᓗᑦᓯᐊᕙᒃ ‘Beautiful Fish’ (2005) by

ᕿᓐᓄᐊᔪᐊᖅ ᐋᓯᕙᒃ (Kenojuak Ashevak)

tumblr users help me

i appreciate the warm welcome to former members of the reddit nation, but i can't help but notice that all of the attention is on former 196 members. i mean, i get it, 196 and tumblr have a lot in common, but i was just never all that fond of reddit meme subs

i love linguistics.

i love learning about other languages. i love learning interesting etymologies. i love learning how English is spoken across the pond. i love learning about language revitalization efforts. i love learning the answer to linguistic questions i never knew i had.

does anyone have any blogs i should check out or things i should do or communities i should check out or anything really. i dont know how to use this hellsite im still learning

thank you tumblr. you have been so helpful and kind to me

thank you to everyone who replied, reblogged, liked, all that good stuff. thank you for all your recommendations. i feel so welcomed here

"But cheese does not abandon me, neither in summer nor in autumn, nor at the end of winter:"

--Theocritus Idyll XI.36-7

On average, the word for ‘big’ in the languages of the world is shorter than the word for ‘small’. In a survey of 600 languages, the word for ‘big’ consisted on average of 4.7 phonemes (sounds), while the word for ‘small’ consisted of 5.3 phonemes.

nya

nya :3 a-nya :3

spanish speaking cat face be like : ña :3

にゃ

Map of the official language forms of Norwegian municipalities as of 2007.

Norway, a country of 5 million people, has 2 official written spellings/dialects, Bokmål & Nynorsk. Failed attempts to merge them over time mean that a spectrum between them has formed, with many variant forms being used. Norway’s largest newspaper for example, uses a pre-1938 version of Bokmål.

Legend:

የፊደል መማሪያ / Yafidal mamāriyā, [Amharic language alphabet book for children], 1972(-1973) [NU Library Preservation, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL]

Hebrew manuscript from Kaifeng, mixing in some Chinese too in order to communicate people's names.

"Over the next four decades, in a type of early crowd-sourcing, more than 210 Warlpiri speakers from different Warlpiri communities worked on and off with Laughren and others. They found words (ultimately 11,000 plus), decided how to spell them, translated them into English, showed how they can be used in Warlpiri sentences, and provided the social, cultural and biological information that makes this a truly encyclopaedic dictionary."

Ah, yes, Rarohire Rochi Terochichimomo, great place

How to say ‘water pitcher’ in French.

by @MathieuAvanzi