The Difficulty of Ancient Languages Compared to Modern Ones

Here’s an interesting discussion about this on the r/askscience subreddit on Reddit. I personally like the theory supported by John McWorther: as languages are left to their own devises (mainly lack of interaction with speakers of different languages or dialects), they tend to outgrow quite a bit in complexity. That is mainly because children have… Continue reading The Difficulty of Ancient Languages Compared to Modern Ones

Common European Languages Framework (CEFR) and Vocabulary Size

The Common European Languages Framework does not provide a clear vocabulary size for any of its levels, so we do not know how many knows words are expected at each level. Milton and Alexiou have attempted to do that in 2009. Here’s their table for English and French, with the addition of Greek from them… Continue reading Common European Languages Framework (CEFR) and Vocabulary Size

InterLinear Translations now available at InterlinearBooks.com!

I would like to let all of you know of the newly launched site InterlinearBooks.com that serves Interlinear book translations for language learners. Interlinear translation is a great and yet undiscovered method to learn languages, and I wish you all to find out about it. So what exactly is Interlinear translation? Interlinear is a translation method… Continue reading InterLinear Translations now available at InterlinearBooks.com!

The Language Behind Months

Here are somethings that you might not have known about the months of the year and how language knowledge can help you decipher their origin.

My Idea For a Trick to Make Absolutely Sure You Learn The Language While In The Country

I have just come back from my stay in Greece where I tried to learn Greek (more on the results of that in my next post) and that experience got me thinking about: those of you who go to foreign countries and try to learn the local language will know that learning it will not come by itself: you actually have to put a lot of work in; and even then sometimes it’s very hard. In this day and age of English as the international language, speaking opportunities are scarce and even then conversations end prematurely due to your low level of the language or you just don’t seem to be able to discuss difficult topics. At the end of the day, you end up staying in the country and not learning much if any of the local language. That’s where I got an idea.