Questions tagged [list-of-languages]
request for references of languages that satisfy the criteria set in the question.
262 questions
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What languages have third-person imperative verb forms?
What languages have third-person imperative verb forms? I know Greek does, and I believe Latin does as well; are there any others?
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Are there other languages having a definite/indefinite marking on adjectives?
The distinction between definite and indefinite adjective declension is well-known from many Germanic languages and from Balto-Slavic languages (cf. How is the the adjective in a definite noun phrase ...
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Is this language real?
Don't take me as a corny and naive person or something else but I've found an interesting comment on a video about toki pona conlang (context: it was in reply section under an another comment talking ...
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Languages that don't differentiate between "want" and "must"/"have to"
Is there a natural language that doesn't differentiate between (i. e. doesn't have different words/concepts for) wanting to do something and having to do something? If so, how can the differences be ...
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Are there any languages without adpositions?
Inspired by Did Proto-Indo-European use prepositions, postpositions, or both? I want know:
Are there any living or well-documented dead languages (no reconstructions nor conlangs) that go without any ...
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Is there a language in which "K" comes first in alphabet?
Our instructor of a group project I was a part of has asked us to arrange the authors' names in alphabetical order. Since he hasn't specified which alphabetical order to use, and my name happens to ...
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Languages with distinct pronouns for concrete and abstract things
I was wondering which languages (spoken or otherwise) have distinct separate pronouns (more specific than the words "this" and "that") for referring to concrete and abstract things,...
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The first multi-syllabic positive integer
This puzzle is not about linguistics, but I do not see a better place for this question.
Suppose N(L) is the first multi-syllabic positive integer in the given language L.
So
N(Russian) = N(Hebrew) = ...
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When two people talk, and they have different native languages, what is the chance that they speak in English?
My attempted answer: 77%
How I got there:
start by taking the "L2 speakers" column from wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers
assume that ...
user43398
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2
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Do any languages regularly derive their words for males from words for females?
Specifically, I am looking for languages that derive the equivalent word for males from the word for females using some sort of masculine affix. Also, to be clear, they should be words for people, not ...
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Is there any modern Indo-European languages with synthetic passive form
Which modern IE language(s) have synthetical passive form(s)? Latin did have, but it is not a modern one.
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Are there languages where grammatical parallelism does not matter?
English has a strong preference for parallelism (Wikipedia link), even though sentences lacking parallelism are still considered grammatically correct:
Good:
She likes cooking, jogging, and reading.
...
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3
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Possessive reflexive pronouns (himself's, herself's, myself's, etc.)
"He looked out the window and saw his car."
Does "his" mean the same person initially called "he", or someone else? In English, it could be either one.
If the English ...
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Which non-Indoeuropean languages have noun-adjective agreement?
For example, agglutinative/fusional languages where case or possessive suffixes/endings must be attached both to a noun and all adjectives that modify it. Or any other kind of noun-adjective agreement....
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Are there any languages with second-person pronouns marked for a proximal/distal distinction?
I am curious if there are any natural languages where the personal pronoun used to refer to the addressee varies in some way depending on their distance to the speaker. For instance, one form might be ...
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