Jabal al-Lughat

In Greek-based scripts (like Latin or Cyrillic), unless a consonantal letter is followed by a vowel letter, it is assumed not to be followed...

Just found an interview with Taieb Baccouche, preparing a Linguistic Atlas of Tunisia - the interview isn't actually that interesting, ...

Several members of the British Parliament took a few minutes out from worrying about issues like Iraq, the housing shortage, and global warm...

I recently heard a rather good folk tale from my father about the adventures of (a completely mythologised) Hārūn ar-Rashīd during his foreo...

One reader of my last post asked how late Latin (or some descendant thereof ) continued to be spoken in North Africa. The answer is, pretty...

Anyone interested in North African languages who doesn't speak Dutch should immediately check out Bulbul's posting on Latino-Punic ....

Just came across an interesting quote from a law professor in the free software movement on Europe's shift away from diglossia: [W]ith ...

Omotic, a small group of non-Cushitic, non-Semitic languages spoken in the highlands of Ethiopia, has always been the odd one out in Afroasi...

Last weekend I got a chance to indulge my longstanding passion for ancient Semitic languages at the Louvre. The Ugaritic collection was, a...

Reading a Language Log post I just noticed a rather laughable argument apparently being used in the Jose Padilla trial (according to AP ): ...

I've been reading some of Karl Popper 's work lately, and found it quite interesting (and clearly written, which one doesn't alw...

Just a quick note for London readers: I'm going to be giving a talk on Wednesday in room B111 at SOAS, on "The typology of number b...

I recently realised that a lot of popular misconceptions about language evolution derive from uncritical use of the "family" metap...

Songhay is a close-knit family of languages in West Africa, spread by the medieval Songhay Empire, that happens to be rather relevant to my ...

A major interest of mine lately is the way in which lexical borrowings can affect syntax, dragging bits of the source language's word or...

Came across a great new site, the Oneida Language Revitalisation Program , consisting mainly of an extensive audio phrasebook of Oneida , th...

Horrifying news from Palestine - a Hamas Mickey Mouse is telling Palestinian kids to "annihilate Jews"! Or not. In fact - after...

I'm a bit busy getting my core chapter ready to hand in, so just a quick post on an English word I spotted lately: agflation . The term...

Geoffrey Pullum is annoyed to hear a reporter state that "Arabic famously has over 40 terms for different types of camel" - not s...

I'm writing my core chapter at the moment on Kwarandzie (Korandje) , the Northern Songhay language of Tabelbala. (Ethnologue and basic ...