In Thailand, text-based marketing channels and customer service chats often adopt a feminine language to appear friendly and safe, appealing to gender stereotypes, even when the person behind the screen is male. It’s very common in customer-facing roles, at least anecdotally from my work experience.

Do any other languages do this? I’m thinking that languages with gender based conjugations might have something like this, but I have no idea if it’s a thing.

For example, I know that in Spanish, male and female speakers use o vs a ending when using certain adjectives describing themselves. But do male speakers ever purposefully write in the feminine way in a customer service situation?

Completely anecdotally,

I’m a native Thai speaker, and I have been noticed a few times that it’s very noticeable when a non-Thai pretends to be Thai by using AI text translation (in petty Twitter fights, not important to this topic). It was so noticeable that a lot of people jumped in and made memes about it.

AI-based voice-change impersonation scams also seem less plausible. If a friend or a spouse called you, you would notice right away that the first and second person pronouns are all wrong and don’t match with normal usage, which can be unique to every pair of speakers (you can’t just default to a basic I and you). The scam still happens to elderly people who aren’t aware of AI and ignore the red flags, but that’s about it.

High-context languages that encode social dynamics into language seem to be more resistant in this regard.

In English there seems to be more wiggle room.

I would be very grateful for recommendations on textbooks and academic references on Cognitive Linguistics, particularly those that can help me build a solid understanding of the field and apply its principles to language teaching. I’m also keen to learn more about teaching methodology and instructional materials design. If you have any favourite books or resources that have been particularly valuable in your own studies or teaching, I would love to hear your suggestions. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and experience!

I've asked native English speakers but apparently they're unaware of how they pronounce things in their own language, which is understandable.

I'm not a native speaker, and I find it hard to pronounce "rot" and "rod" differently, or "cop" and "cob."

I learned that in English, you're supposed to pronounce "p" at the start of a word like as in "paper" with a bit of air so that it sounds distinctly like a "p". Otherwise, it would sound like a "b" instead.

So, is this something similar to the aspirated "p"?

Chinese and Korean names share a similar naming convention. But the Hanzi/Hanja used for either varies slightly. Do Koreans in China follow naming conventions more similar to Korea or China?

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?

Hello,

I'm a 20-year-old from the UK now in his 2nd year of university. I study English Language and Literature at a Russell Group but am going heavy into Linguistics as it's my preferred field and seems to yield a more varied range of applications to jobs. I plan to do my MA and PhD in a Linguistic field.

I've never been very good at Mathematics (I barely got a pass in Foundational Maths, I'm pretty sure I have dyscalculia of some sort), but I just swapped one of my 2nd-semester literature modules out for a data skills module, which my lecturer said is basically introductory to more humanities-inclined students who wish to learn more about STEM-oriented applications of linguistics (he specialises in corpus and computational linguistics) and said that it's probably the best option if I'm interested in getting into those fields.

Would you guys agree?

Hey! Y'know how the word knight (and other kn- English words) have a silent K because it used to be pronounced but eventually the [k] got dropped but the letter stayed in our spelling? Does anyone know of a scholarly source that states this? Of course the OED and other etymology resources have the old spellings but I can't find anything specifically on the pronunciation that is reliable enough to be cited. Thanks for your help!

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.

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"?

As the title says I did my undergrad in linguistics and am now finishing a leveling program to pursue an SLP masters degree. I feel like SLP is a pretty common/pretty advertised path for ling students as its an applied form of lingusitics, is rewarding, and has good pay/demand which is what im looking for. I was still wondering though what other paths people have gone down with a Ling degree and how much you enjoy it. I loved my Lingusitic undergrad programs and still think about doing a masters or PHD specializing in phonology/phonetics after working in SLP for a few years.

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?

There are plenty of genius child prodigies in the world who do things like winning math olympiads when they’re 12 and getting degrees when they’re 18.

If one of those genetically gifted children, by accident, becomes lost in the wild before they learn any language and gets raised by animals as happened in the cases of many feral children, what would happen?

Would they still be able to reason? Understand advanced concepts? Would they make up their own language just to be able to think?

If intelligence does depend on language, does that mean it helps you reason better if you specifically learn extra language skills for the purpose of better reasoning? Can you design a constructed language for that purpose?

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?

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?

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!

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?