by translations.co.uk | Grammar, Language, Linguistics
No matter how fluent the translator, some concepts or words are always going to be difficult or even almost impossible to translate directly between languages. Because of the way languages develop, some concepts can only be clearly expressed by either an awkward...
by translations.co.uk | English, Grammar, Interesting, Language, Linguistics
A genderless language is one with no grammatical gender distinctions, and therefore doesn’t apply categories like male and female to nouns, articles, adjectives or verbs. Many organic and constructed languages are genderless or partially genderless, and a variety are...
by translations.co.uk | French, Grammar, Interesting, Language
French as we know it is one of the European Romance Languages, meaning that the modern-day dialect is derived from Latin. Before the Roman conquest began in 58BC, France was mainly inhabited by speakers of Celtic languages like the Gauls and the Belgae, and older...
by translations.co.uk | Grammar, Interesting, Language, Linguistics, Universal Grammar
Linguistics in the news The debate about language is never far away from the news, and the publication this year of The Kingdom of Speech by Tom Wolfe reignited the debate. The author examines the theories of the linguist Daniel Everett and philosopher Noam Chomsky,...
by translations.co.uk | Grammar, Interesting, Language, Linguistics, Universal Grammar
Universal Grammar (UG) is the controversial idea that language is a universal, evolved and specific capacity for learning and arranging grammatical constructions, hard-wired into our brains. Under UG the ability for human beings to learn language is specific, in that...
by translations.co.uk | English, Grammar, Interesting, Language, Linguistics
As children many of us are taught that speaking ‘correct English’ is something to aspire to. Sometimes this means pronouncing words with clear diction (health and safety rather than ‘elf n’safety), as well as using grammatical constructions considered ‘correct’. I am...
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