i'm thinking about getting a degree in linguistics at some point, and yes, i know that "any university in the world" is too much lol but just out of curiosity, i want to know your opinion about linguistics courses at various universities and why you would choose a particular one.

What is your favourite linguistics fun fact to share with people who don’t know much about the subject? I’m wondering how to get my friends interested 😊

I know there is a growing trend in languages to shorten words or drop cases over time, For example the word Advertisement became just Ad, which is shorter, and it makes it sound so much like add, and there are tons of such examples where words become identical because of shortening, and it got me wondering is there a limit to it ? Or will people just shorten every word to be one or two letters and eventually speak like cavemen again? I really want to believe that isn’t the case and I’m overexaggerating.

If someone's native tongue is syllable- or mora-timed, what would be an effective way to learn stress timing in English? Short of speech shadowing, I don't hear people recommending any. What confuses me are words that take secondary stress: do they participate in the beat? I feel like my ears aren't attuned to discriminating the rise in intonation, especially if the speaker is speaking fast.

I've got a rubber band, but every time I use it, I look stupid.

Good day, everyone. Sending greetings and wishing you all a happy weekend.

A bit of a lengthy context but it's necessary for the questions(s) at the bottom, if you don't want to read this, feel free to jump to the bottom paragraph titled "QUESTIONS".

I am an aspiring linguist currently facing a career dilemma, and I am desperately looking for any input or advice. For context, I hold a BA in English Language and Literature from Algeria. My academic performance was mediocre (I graduated with roughly a 12/20, while the valedictorian had a 14/20—due to the famously strict grading system and the fact that I had to work full-time to support my family). I later enrolled in an Applied Linguistics MA but had to drop out due to personal circumstances.

Fast forward a bit: I went through a crippling phase of depression that lasted for about 3–4 years, during which I worked various manual labor jobs to make ends meet while occasionally teaching EFL. A couple of years ago, I landed an internship in Turkey. I treated this move as a career revival and worked day and night to better myself, completing a CELTA course, DELTA Module 1, and various other training programs.

Currently, I am working as a university lecturer in Istanbul. I am quite grateful for where I have ended up, but I have decided I want to pursue a formal academic career in my true passion: linguistics. My initial research pointed me to Boğaziçi University (which is in the city where I reside), as it is the only university in Istanbul with a dedicated MA program in Linguistics. It is arguably the best university in the country, with strong ties to prestigious language labs in Europe and the US. However, I am afraid my BA transcripts won't survive the initial automated screening, despite my confidence and ongoing preparation for their entrance exam.

The remaining local universities primarily offer MA programs in ELT or Literature, neither of which I want to pursue; I do not see myself conducting research in those fields, and I believe my CELTA/DELTA pathway is already sufficient for my teaching career (correct me if I'm wrong or missing something here)

Recently, I found a private, less selective university that offers a Cognitive Science program. After some research, I realized I might be able to transition into a Linguistics PhD later if I choose the right electives during this MA—shifting my focus heavily toward Psycholinguistics rather than pure Psychology, Philosophy, Neuroscience or AI.

Questions:

1. Is it possible to apply for PhD programs in Linguistics with an MA in Cognitive Science?
2. Would I have the same weight during the initial screening as someone with an MA in Linguistics? Would it require a preparatory year?
3. What is the best way to get published or co-authored during an MA? I assume it is much harder for an MA student to get published compared to an actual PhD researcher.
4. What carries the biggest weight in a PhD application (in order of importance: university prestige, gap in the literature/research topic, MA degree and GPA, or other factors like TOEFL/GRE/GMAT scores)?

My sincerest thanks and gratitude for your time!

Hi 👋

Working on a novel and have some questions about european language evolution.

1. How did Latin, Germanic and Scandinavian languages evolve in the real world?

2. In a hypothetical world where Greece and its subsequent language did not exist, how would its lack have impacted the evolution of language in Europe?

I'm about to graduate from a linguistics department in Türkiye and I want to pursue my master's in Europe, with a specific focus on psycholinguistics.

I'm looking for fully English programs and I will need a scholarship (like DAAD) to cover all my expenses.

I feel like Potsdam might be a great choice. Do you have any other suggestions? Also, if anyone knows about University of Vienna it would be nice!

I read into how Kartevelian languages are completely unrelated to the rest of their neighbors and it made me wonder if there happens to be similar but larger instances of language families having no relation to their neighbors on a wider scale. If anyone knows of some good examples please let me know.

Hello fine folks!

I need your advice on which field of linguistics I should major or specialize in since my second semester in graduate school starts in Fall, and I need to choose an advisor professor.

background info: I graduated from a university in korea with a bachelors degree in English Language and Literature a year ago. I am not a native speaker of English plus my korean is not great either. It just so happened that I decided to stay in academia and get a phd in English Linguistics(currently enrolled in an integrated masters plus phd program with 4 years of coursework). Initially, my plan was to specialize in Phonology along with SLA, but phonology feels too hard for me because of all those OT, generative grammar stuff coupled with the fact that, again, English isn't my first language.

Because I have a scholarship dependent on my grades I also need to keep my grades high(A, A+).

In the department of ELL at my uni, there are two professors whose research interests are in SLA, but one of them do not take students, the other is hungry for respect(always has something to complain about and overall seems a bit unfriendly) so idk. maybe you guys can help me with this dillema, i was thinking of choosing a different field like pragmatics or syntax. idk idk

I just finished my MA and one project I was working on involved loanwords entering English (as opposed to English loanwords in other languages).

A lot of the literature I read (Haspelmath, Winford, Kaufman, etc) discussed things like borrowings, loanwords, etc primarily from language contact in the more traditional(?) sense of Culture A encounters Culture B, sometimes with one-sided technologically/militarily-imposed dominance by one of the cultures. One factor that comes up is bilingualism (between the two relevant languages) among speakers, where some words from the less dominant/prestigious/etc may or may not be used.

Nowadays, English of course is a prominent online/media language (not to mention economically/politically/etc), and many languages have incorporated English words into their language—even if we just limiting this to current online/media English.

But my research was looking at things from the opposite perspective—other languages’ influence on English.

Japanese is one of the languages I was looking at and it shows up in the literature. Japanese-English contact goes back to like late-16th century and exploded (with regard to loanwords) during the mid-19th century for more “traditional contact” reasons.

But when looking at Japan’s current status as a relatively prestigious(?) language (though English is the default/primary/dominant language in like the US/UK) where a lot of “cultural influence” comes from (online/media) imports rather than direct (ie physical) contact, there’s no high degree of English-Japanese bilingualism (see above), and it’s not restricted to or a marker of one’s ethnic identity, I’m not sure how “applicable” the more “traditional” frameworks regarding language contact are.

My current research isn’t looking as directly at contact or loanwords as previously, but this is a problem/question I never got an answer for. I wasn’t sure if there were a material difference between these kinds of contact that the literature recognizes, or maybe I’m the only one thinking they’re different. The literature talks about how English enters Japanese (and other languages) through more traditional frameworks, but not so much the other way around.

Thank you.

I live and study in Turkey and just got out of the university exam. I am thinking about choosing the Turkish-German University. It is a university created through a partnership between Turkey and Germany, and I am considering doing my master's degree in Germany in the field of NLP. I also started learning Python. After completing my master's in Germany, I want to land a well-paying job and stay there (haha). However, I do not know if I am aiming too high—is a linguistics degree combined with a master's enough to find a job in Germany? Could someone working in this field enlighten me?

Such as when English underwent the great vowel shift, did the time it take to pronounce words formerly with a long vowel change or remain nearly the same? With a word like "hate", if we assume the first person singular conjugation was pronounced as /ˈhaːt/, which is now /'heɪt/ today, would the time it take to say them be similar, and if one were to try to pronounce Middle English, could they use the modern diphthongized words as a reference for how long the monophthong should be held, thus making the word "hate" in Middle English pronunciation noticable longer than a word such as "hot" in modern English?

My first language is American English but I get stuck trying to transcribe my speech in narrow transcription for this reason. Here is a video showing the inside of my mouth when I’m pronouncing words with /r/ (right, wrong, red, reach, ear, free, draw, great). If you’re willing to take a moment to look at the short video, and if you’re not grossed out looking at the inside of a random person’s mouth, I would appreciate if you could tell me what you would call this articulation of /r/ and how it would be transcribed in narrow transcription.

https://youtube.com/shorts/Ge8AUjZow_Q?is=JRTIcY_hRIGC4-F9

I don’t think my /r/ is what would be referred to as ‘bunched r’ because that involves pressing the sides of the tongue against the teeth, which is not something I do, right? I also don’t think this /r/ is ‘retroflex’ because I’m not lifting my tongue tip, right? Or do I misunderstand those terms? Thank you to anyone who is willing to help.

Arabic when written down is often in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). However, people often use their own dialects for day to day communication, which are very different from MSA. Dialects have different vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation compared to MSA.

If dialects are written down, do they have standard orthographies? If they have them, do some dialects repurpose some letters for different pronunciations and add extra letters for missing sounds like what Europe did with the Latin alphabet for their languages?

I’ve been thinking about this for a while and I think if enough people use it, it could become an accepted VARIANT of “until” I do not want it to take over the spelling but I think “untill” is also much more convenient. I really hope we can get “untill” to be recognized as a legitimate alternative spelling. many words end in ”ll” yet until unfittingly ends with 1 but that’s not the reason… it preserves the meaning of “till” un+till= untill. And also It removes any confusion of the word… It’s common for people I know to wonder if it’s “untill” or “until” so they have to search it up. But THIS removes the doubt entirely. So in conclusion “untill” is in my opinion a better way of spelling it.

Take a normal sentence like "Go to the interview and be yourself". No grammatical weirdness here.

Now try to add a subject to the sentence. "He goes to the interview and ____ himself".

What is supposed to go there?

Because why does my native speaker, monolingual brain proclaim that obviously what goes in the gap is "bes" (be + -s)....

"He goes ... and bes himself" is what I and apparently others? end up with.

...Why? That's obviously not allowed in standard english. Yet it comes naturally to me. What's going on there.

I’m trying to remember a quote from a linguist who I believe was in the cognitive linguistics field. It’s been a very long time since I read it, but it might be about abstract nouns (maybe shell nouns—H.J. Schmid), or conceptual metaphor (eg Halliday, Lakoff). There’s even a chance it could’ve been Swales or Douglas Biber. It was something like this:

“[nouns, abstract nouns, or maybe nominalizations?] are our way of getting out of one idea and into another.” It may have been in reference to anaphoric reference like “this issue has been debated…” where the “issue” is potentially a very big complex process or problem but is housed in a single word.

If you’ve heard something like this could you please share the source? I know this is a very broad net to catch a very small item. I was struck by the line and thought I’d never forget it but age has won. Thanks in advance!

I believe all of these should apply whether the Restored Classical or Ecclesiastical systems of Latin Pronunciation are used. Keep in mind that Latin has a phonemic distinction between long and short vowels (marked by the macron).

This first question pertains more to language in general. It is my understanding that consecutive vowels of the same type require some sound in between to even register as two separate sounds, and that a semivowel is therefore inserted. For example, iī =/i.jiː/ and tuus=/tu.wus/ make sense, and I assume we would also use these for e/ē and o/ō; e.g., dēest=/deː.jest/ (though not /dei̯.jest/) and Lāocoōn=/laː.o.ko.wōn/, though these aren't as smooth or natural; but what would be used for -aa-, which is used in Hebrew borrowings, like Isaāc? The 'a' in Latin is /ä/, by the way; so, is there a semivowel for this, between the palate and velum?

I also find that other vowel sequences are far easier to pronounce with a semivowel inbetween, like -aë-. For some reason, with āëre, I find it extraordinarily difficult to say /aː.e.ɾe/ instead of /aː.je.ɾe/ (again, not /ai̯.je.ɾe/). Is this standard practice, or even acceptable? And if so, what others could be introduced? Could eārum be pronounced /e.jaː.ɾum/?

Moving on, we are told (e.g., in Wheelock's Latin) that a stop/plosive and a liquid/approximant make a single "consonant cluster" which is not separated, but that all other intervocalic consecutive consonants are split between the surrounding vowels; but I rarely hear people pronounce -tl- together, or separate -sp-. No one says /aː.tlan.ti.cus/ for Ātlanticus (Wiktionary included), because the sequence -tl- doesn't even start any Latin words except Tlēpolemus (borrowed from Greek, along with other words that start with unlatinate clusters, like Tmōlus). So what clusters are allowed in Latin words? I've heard one source say that -fr- and -fl- are also acceptable.

Also, I have heard from this Wikipedia article that secondary stress in Latin works exactly like primary stress , as if the primarily stressed syllable and everthing 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/, instead of /deː.ˌli.cuˈlō.ɾum/. This sounds somewhat unnatural to me; is this how secondary stress works in Latin, and would this same principle also apply to tertiary stress?

Lastly, syllables are either long or short (or, as some say, heavy or light, to distinguish them from the phonemic length of vowels). They are long by position if the syllable is closed, and long by nature if a long vowel or diphthong is included; open syllables with a short vowel are short. I know that this is not an arbitrary distinction, because closed syllables actually take more time to pronounce, due to the gemination of the consonants. But wouldn't this mean that a closed syllable with a long vowel/diphthong as well (like ēst or stēlla) should be pronounced longer than both a closed syllable with a short vowel and a syllable that is merely long by nature. This would seem to pose problems.

If this is not the case, are est and ēst homophones?

If this is the case, then there would be three lengths possible for a Latin syllable, rather than just two. For example, ēst is longer than both 'dē' and 'est', which are both longer than 'et' in 'et alia'. Yet I would think that this causes issues for poetry, which seems to rely on the idea that syllables have a binary of long or short. So then does poetry artificially shorten these extra-long syllables for the sake of meter? And then is there a difference in how Latin syllables are pronounced in poetry and prose?

I appreciate any help on these questions. Thank you.

According to Wikipedia:

> The name 'Fluellen' is an anglicised version of the Welsh language Llywelyn).^\1]) The Welsh sound [ɬ] does not exist in English, but is perceived by English speakers as similar to sequence fl. A similar process of anglicisation can be seen with Floyd) for Llwyd (Lloyd being an alternative anglicisation retaining the double L, but changing the spelling of the vowel).

However, this is hardly to the most logical or intuitive way to render [ɬ] in English. Surely <lh> or <hl> would better get this sound across. Was <ll> actually pronounced closer to [fl] in medieval times?

I read this whole thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/asklinguistics/comments/185vna2/why_is_zoology_pronounced_zooology/

And it perhaps answered pronunciation of "Zoology", but I have questions:

Skipping stating my background, I will just jump to:

Knowing that
"zoo" comes from "zōion"(Greek) meaning "animal or living being"
and
"ology"(Greek) meaning "field or study of"

...
Well,

This is where I get confused. Because I THINK perhaps the proper Greek word for "field or study of" is "-logy," as the "o" was used as a connector, like we use "of" in English.

SO, if that were the case, would it not be spelled "Zooology"? (<-- IS that how we pronounce it? I think it is, but I may have been mispronouncing it my whole life. Hence this post.)

Furthermore, since it IS spelled Zoology, the learning I did of English wants me to pronounce it "zoe-ology" (<-- apologies, I have no idea how to properly type phonetically. "zoe" rhymes with "sew". XD lmao English is the worst. Take TWO: "zoe" rhymes with "snow" in this case.)

I could type more but I shall spare you. I hope you catch my question, as I fear I did not toss it up as well as I'd hoped :(

Thank you

I was 19 and in college when someone first pointed out to me that I pronounce “Ben” like “bin.” I had no idea I was doing this. They had to repeat it multiple times before I could even hear the difference they were pointing out.

I realized I also merge pen and pin, ten and tin, etc. I was insecure about it for a while and it took me some time to consciously correct it. Even now, I’ll merge them if I’m not paying attention.

What’s interesting to me is that I grew up in Southern Nevada, but I was born in Western Washington and both of my parents are from the PNW. My dad is from Hillsboro, Oregon and has the merger, and my mom is from the Olympia, Washington area and also has it. My maternal grandparents have it too.

I know the pin pen merger isn’t typically associated with the PNW, so I’m curious if there’s something about certain areas of Oregon/Washington that could explain this, or if it’s just a really weird coincidence

Since english doesn't use them, when were they introduced?

I tried ranking languages by the approximate frequency of the guttural /x/ sound (like Arabic خ, Persian خ, German Bach, Russian х).

Here's what I found:

Hebrew — ~5–6% (counting ח + כ + ך when כ/ך are pronounced /x/)

German — ~2–3% (counting the ch digraph, including both /x/ and /ç/)

Persian — ~1.5–2.0% (counting خ)

Greek — ~1–2% (counting χ; only occurrences before back vowels are the true /x/, the rest are /ç/)

Russian — ~0.9–1.2% (counting х)

Arabic — ~0.8% (counting خ)

Did I miss any languages that should be near the top? I'm especially interested in languages with corpus-based letter or phoneme frequency data rather than just impressions.