Language
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Words, grammar and how people make meaning.
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Why a sentence can nest forever on paper but not in your head: centre-embedding
The rat the cat the dog chased killed ate the malt. It is perfectly grammatical, and almost nobody can read it. English lets you tuck one clause inside another…
Why English plurals say s, z or iz: the wug test
Say 'cats' and 'dogs' out loud and listen to the last sound. One is a hiss, the other a buzz, and 'buses' adds a whole extra syllable. English spells all three…
Why English spelling doesn't match how words sound
Around 1400, English spelling roughly matched speech. Bite sounded close to "beet", meet roughly like "mate", and house like "hoose". Then, over about three…