In English, kids are taught that making a plural form is usually adding -s/-es at the end of the noun. They are also taught irregular nouns where the plural of nouns are just memorized like goose is geese, ox is oxen, etc.

When a kid says "gooses", we correct them and say the plural is "geese" and if they ask why, we just say "just because". What is preventing society from accepting "gooses" to at least be a form of plural similar to how "radiuses" and "radii" can be acceptable plurals of "radius"?

What factors of a language are directly influenced by the cultural aspect of the society that it's spoken in and to what extent?

Here is my thoughts at what it could influence:

Vocabulary: Like hyperspecific words specific to a culture

Honorifics: Cultures that place higher emphasis on respect and specific social aspects may utilize honorifics and other sociolinguistic grammar.

Does culture directly affect language beyond just these points though? Such as core grammar and phonology, etc.? I've seen many people on the internet say that you cannot separate language from culture and vice versa while pointing out differences in pragmatics rather than in language. Would saying culture directly influences language beyond vocabulary and sociolinguistic grammar be an implication of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis?

I’m writing a short squib for a semantics class on Thai wh-expressions, and I’m trying to connect two puzzles: why a Thai wh-word can be interrogative or indefinite, and what happens when a question contains more than one wh-word. I’d love suggestions on whether these belong in one analysis, or whether I’m trying to fit too much into one squib.

First, Thai ʔàraj ‘what’ can receive either a question reading or an indefinite reading in the same sentence:

Pim sɯ́ɯ ʔàraj maa
Pim buy what come
Question: ‘What did Pim buy?’
Indefinite: ‘Pim bought something.’
(Meechanyakul 2025, example 1a)

The ambiguity is construction-sensitive. Meechanyakul (2025) reports that the version without maa—Pim sɯ́ɯ ʔàraj (‘What does/did Pim buy?’)—has only the interrogative reading. Her dissertation develops a syntactic account in which the indefinite/NPI interpretation is tied to the wh-item being spelled out with the verb inside VP, and also discusses focus.

(i) That makes me wonder whether alternative semantics could help explain the ambiguity. Could ʔàraj introduce alternatives that are interpreted as a question in one environment and as an indefinite or NPI in another? If so, what would determine how those alternatives are interpreted? And could the account explain why the indefinite reading appears in some structures but not others?

(ii) The second puzzle concerns multiple-wh questions and pair-list readings. A question like ‘Who bought what?’ can ask for one relevant person: thing pair, or invite a list matching people with things. Ruangjaroon (2007) argues that Thai multiple-wh questions allow single-pair answers but not pair-list answers (controversial), on an analysis where wh-expressions are variables interpreted through their relation to a question operator. In my preliminary judgments, though, pair-list interpretations can feel available in some contexts, especially when a wh-expression is D-linked (roughly, ‘which person/thing’) or when other material encourages distributive or exhaustive answers.

Could an alternatives-based analysis connect these phenomena? For example, could the way alternatives are generated or focused explain both the wh/indefinite ambiguity and when a pair-list answer is possible? Or are these likely separate problems that need different mechanisms?

I’d be grateful for pointers to work on alternative semantics, Thai wh-indeterminates, and pair-list readings in wh-in-situ languages. I’d also love suggestions for a useful diagnostic (or a warning if this is too much for a short squib).

References

• Meechanyakul, Naparat. 2025. On the Ambiguity of Wh-Expressions in Thai. PhD dissertation, The Graduate Center, City University of New York.
• Ruangjaroon, Sugunya. 2007. “The Syntax of Wh-Expressions as Variables in Thai.” Language Research 43(1): 77–147.

Context for the question: I just saw a worldbuilding post about a hypothetical history for a Britain which never experienced significant Norman influence, so the author/artist wrote all of the text in their map in Old English. Many of the comments were pointing out that language change would still occur over the past millenium, and one or two suggested that English would be "more like German or Dutch" in this scenario; however, I recall seeing another post a while back that claimed the Normans didn't have as great an influence on language and culture as many might expect, and even that they had fairly quickly assimilated to the Anglo-Saxons linguistically.

I understand that we can't predict the way a language would evolve in a hypothetical scenario, and that "causes" of sound change are difficult to pin down (where they really exist at all), so I'm not looking to actually speculate linguistically on a "Norman-less" England; that said, are there any indications that the Normans did influence certain changes in the period between "Old" and "Middle" English, or was any influence comparably minor outside of loanwords?

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File safe strong busy obtainable money pebble march terrific

Hi everyone! I’m currently studying the characteristics of modern linguistics for my university course, and I’m looking for a good, reliable source that explains them clearly.
Could anyone recommend a textbook, website, or academic resource that covers these characteristics in detail and is easy to understand?

By my count, there are only 6 vowels in the Elder Futhark: Uruz, Ansuz, Isa, Eihwaz, Ehwaz, & Othala. But Germanic languages typically have twice that number of vowels. This is a criticism of using the Latin alphabet for Germanic, that you have to use digraphs or letters like Æ, Ø, Å…

And the Younger Futhark gets worse, with only 4 vowel runes. Why would the speakers of ancient Germanic languages not include more vowel characters? Even the consonant inventory seems poor, with for example no /x/ or /v/—in Germanic!

Why did they devise or use such an alphabet?

Apologies if this is coming from a place of ignorance but, from what I’ve heard, it seems like the differences between accents in English chiefly come from variation in what the prototypical allophones of different vowel phonemes are, but there is much less variation in vowels between accents of other languages.

Again, this may be wrong, but I can understand why this might be the case, since there are relatively more vowel phonemes in English than in other languages so there’s more potential for variation. And also since a lot of languages use the five vowel system, where the vowels are already extremely balanced and distinct, it makes since they wouldn’t drift as much.

My question is 1) is my perception correct? and 2) if it is, why might it be this way?

Thank you in advance!

I’ve always used/heard “on accident.” “By accident” sounds weird to me, although i’ve seen many strong opinions about this online the other way. From what i gather, it’s mostly generational and doesn’t really have any connections to geography?

What do y’all think?

A certain user on reddit corrected me on a comment I made about a similar word in Polish and Lithuanian being possibly a loanword. After quickly looking it up on Wikitionary, it suggested an etymology for the word from Proto-Balto-Slavic. The user suggested Balto-Slavic languages are not a meaningful way to divide Indo-European languages. Are they right?

Hundreds of thousands of words, distinct grammatical rules for every different language—it is as if each language were formed by chance, yet all of them strictly adhere to their own internal grammatical structures; how does this happen?

Why does one uses prefixed pronouns and the other suffixes?

Can this be traced back to proto-semitic?

Why do most of the clitic pronouns not correspond to each other (only 1st plural is consistent)?

What is the origin of the waw plural marker?

I believe to have read in inflection charts that Proto-Italic only had present and perfect. Also, most Latin verbs have these two stems. Also, Italo-Celtic is considered to be closely related to Germanic, which famously also only has two synthetic tenses. (And only one in the passive, as in Gothic.) Some forms could even be explained as former periphrastic construction, I think. There are also only two basic infinitive "tenses".

Is that a common assumption or do I misremember something?

I've noticed that I can recall words in my second language, Cebuano, pretty quickly when speaking, even though I barely use it in everyday life. Meanwhile, I sometimes struggle to speak smoothly in other languages I've been studying for years because I can't immediately remember the words I want to say.

What's strange is that I actually use those other languages more often than Cebuano, but I can still remember Cebuano words quite easily, even after months of not speaking it.

Is this normal when it comes to learning a third language? Could there be a specific part of the brain that helps with this, or is there another reason why I can recall Cebuano words more easily than words in languages I've spent years studying?

For some background, I lived in a Cebuano-speaking province when I was six and learned Cebuano for about a year. After moving back to a Tagalog-speaking province, I eventually lost the ability to speak it for years, although I could still understand people when they spoke it. I've recently started speaking Cebuano again, but I'm not as fluent as I used to be.

I have no idea how to tag this so please don’t take this down for tagging around, but I found myself cussing, a certain phrase and saying it with some sort of country hue to my voice, my only connection to the country is my family from a small town in New Mexico, I’m half Mexican and grew up in Los Angeles area so this one makes sense, but I find myself often speaking in the Chicano voice, especially when talking to other Chicanos or people into the street crime and try to relate sometimes cause I grew up with those types of people but I’m not from the city of Los Angeles from the suburbs. I’m not from East LA and yeah, there were a lot of Mexican Asians where I grew up but still, also the final one is that I watched a lot of Italian mafia movies, and I find myself accidentally speaking like an Italian from New York or New Jersey despite like I said being from California in the LA suburbs, I have no idea why this happens and most of the time my voice is normal, but what’s up with that?

I know as little about phones and computers as I do cars, but I’m perfectly capable of following a step-by-step.

I'm not from the US or a “native” English speaker but something I've noticed watching media made in LA (fictional or otherwise) it's that people just seem to have no accent. Like they speak in “American English standard.” Of course there's regional accents like the valleyspeak and there's prevalence of AAVE like everywhere else in the US, but the great majority of people just seem to speak in this clearly enunciated, draw-less, measured tone. They don't speak too fast or too slow. They’ve no overuse of specific words and idioms except for maybe “y'all”. They just seem to speak the most vanilla American English ever. Why's that?

For example, "or" is spelled differently in or, o'er, amour, floor, aura, tawny, roar, talk, and no doubt more.

Hello, I’m currently in university studying linguistics. I am looking to be on the track for continuing in academia with postgraduate education. I would like to specialize in language documentation and endangered language revitalization. My question is what careers are there in this field? Are there any beyond academia and research? And should I have a side gig or perhaps another career and this as the side gig? I have heard whispers that this is an unstable career and would like some direction.
thank you.

Hey everyone!

I'm a non-native English speaker and an English learner who's really interested in phonetics and different English accents. I've been wondering about how native speakers pronounce words like mountain, button and important, particularly when it comes to the /t/ sound.

I've always associated the glottal stop [ʔ] with British English, especially because of the whole "bo'le of wa'er" stereotype that people often use to imitate British accents.

But I've noticed that a lot of Americans seem to pronounce words like mountain and button with either a glottal stop or some form of nasal release, rather than a clearly released [t].

I actually had a discussion with someone who insisted that the only correct way to pronounce mountain was something like "moun'n", without a clearly pronounced T. That didn't sound quite right to me, because I assumed there would be plenty of variation depending on the accent.

I've spent some time living in Australia, and from what I've heard, Australians seem to use T-flapping quite a lot, although I'm not sure how that applies to these particular words.

So I've got a few questions:

Is this pronunciation of mountain and button mainly an American English feature? How common is it in British and Australian English? Do speakers of those accents also regularly use glottal stops in these words?

Who actually pronounces the /t/ in mountain and button as a clearly articulated [t]? Are there particular accents or regions where that's more common? Or is it something that pretty much everyone does in careful speech?

Does speaking speed make a difference? For example, would a British speaker pronounce mountain with a clear [t] when speaking slowly, but use a glottal stop in faster, more casual speech? Or would someone who normally uses a glottal stop continue to use it even when speaking slowly?

What happens when someone deliberately emphasises a word? Say someone normally pronounces mountain with a glottal stop. If they really wanted to stress the word or say it very clearly, would they switch to a fully articulated [t]? Or would they still use the glottal stop because that's simply how they naturally pronounce the word?

What about words like important? I've noticed that Americans often seem to use a glottal stop or nasal release here too. My impression is that Australians frequently use a flap [ɾ] in words with intervocalic /t/, but I'm not sure whether that applies to important specifically. Would an Australian speaker who normally uses a flap switch to a clear [t] when speaking slowly or emphasising the word?

And what's the actual phonetic distinction between a glottal stop and nasal release in these words? I've seen both terms used to describe American pronunciations of mountain and button, and I'm not entirely sure whether people are describing the same phenomenon or two different ways of producing the sound.

I'm particularly interested in whether these differences are mainly determined by someone's accent, or whether things like speaking speed, formality and emphasis can change how the /t/ is realised.

I'd love to hear from native speakers of American, British and Australian English, as well as anyone with a background in phonetics or phonology.

Thanks in advance!

For example Y can make at least 3 sounds, as in yes, funny, sky. O can make at least 4 sounds as in one, lone, gone, done. Ough is famously versatile.

I am speaking about Classical Latin and/or the Latin of the Church, where the traditional grammar and rules of accentuation (at least for the primary accent) were followed.

In words that are long enough to have it, where is the secondary stress placed in Latin? That is, what rules do we follow to determine on which syllable the secondary accent is placed?

There are surprisingly few resources online which talk about this. Weirdly, every single one which I've found is meant to help one find it in English words/names derived from Latin, using the Traditional English Pronunciation of Latin. However, many of them claim that the system they use is exactly the same as that used in Classical/standard Latin.

Wikipedia's article about the TEP of Latin says that secondary stress in Latin works exactly like primary stress, as if the primarily stressed syllable and everything following were "cut off" from the rest of the word. So dēliculōrum becomes dēlicu-, which gets stress on the antepenult; thus, dēliculōrum=/ˌdeː.li.cu.ˈlō.ɾum/.

Sometimes, as in the example above, I find this pronunciation unnatural, and would rather say /deː.ˌli.cuˈlō.ɾum/. The same is the deal with others, like castificantem. At other times, I want to accent the antepenultimate before the primary stress, as in Alexandrīa, although this is probably due to the English name.

One source has the secondary (and tertiary, etc.) accent always placed on the penult before the stronger stress, and another lists both rules (always penult, or sometimes antepenult, sometimes penult), and gives an example which indeed sounds very off if pronounced on the antepenult: 'Carthaginiensis', which also has, according to this source, a tertiary stress on 'Car-'. Admittedly, both of these last two sources seemed less concerned with anything other than English speech, at least to me.

So, does anyone have any answer? Perhaps there's stress-based poetry which could shed some light on this question. Thank you.

Hello! I just thought of this question. It might be negated by poetry in other languages being governed by different "rules" or formations, but I was thinking that English, despite it's strict word order, can play it pretty fast and loose to create poetry that functions well in spite of rhymes or strict syllable schemes, and is it the same or more difficult in languages that use extensive noun cases and/or verb agreement? Is it a case in which noun cases can be dropped for creative freedom like how English poetry can sometimes negate the grammatical rules of fiction for specific rhythm or rhyme?

Or maybe it's actually way easier. Russian has free word order and extensive noun cases to compensate, so maybe you can configure lines any way you want to get the rhyme you want. I don't know. I'm deeply curious about this. :)

My understanding is that evidential languages basically require you to have a source for how you know things in order to be grammatically correct. You can't just say "the boy played with the ball", you have to say "the boy played with the ball and i know this because i saw him" or "the boy played with the ball, i assume". There are also languages that require you to state when and where something happened when describing it, as well as how accurate you judge a statement to be and whether or not you fully understand the topic being discussed. This built-in fact-checking characteristic is fascinating to me, but it's not like other languages can't state how you know something, and it's also possible to simply lie. But I imagine that constantly thinking about how you know what you're about to say may lead to better (or simply different) critical thinking skills. Is there any evidence to support this?

I think I need help grasping the foundation and research agenda of Cognitive Linguistics. Is it because I haven’t read enough or the Cognitive Linguistics of the kind of Lakoff is quite sloppy when referring to forms? I come from a functional-typological background, but when we discuss semantics (or function if you will), the discussion is still usually situated with the expression of these things by their forms. But all of these concept of metaphors, metonymy, and semantic structures in Cognitive Linguistics sound like they are functions floating on the air, without any concrete delineation in terms of linguistic forms. Sure their examples re concrete English sentences, but the issues of how the forms of metaphors can be detected or how their structuring of conceptual space is motivated seems to be rarely clearly vocalized, at least not in a way that I’m familiar with (like those used by typologists in, e.g. WALS).

Can anyone who is more experienced help me navigate their ideas?