Directory of Linguistics

Answers on language are indexed according to different perspectives for viewing language.

Chapter 1 Language and Thinking

1.1 Linguistic Relativity: Does language constrain thought?

1.2 How does one’s language affect their personality?

Chapter 2 Language and Culture

2.1 Would it be better if we all spoke the same language?

Chapter 3 Language and Technology

3.1 Will the Internet cause languages to evolve more quickly or more slowly?

3.2 Can the language spoken in a country affect its technological development?

Chapter 4 Language and Diversity

4.1 What is the fastest language in the world?

4.2 Are the differences between Chinese languages analogous to the differences between Romance languages?

4.3 If you speak multiple languages, what language do you think in?

4.4 Why do we tend to dream in our native language?

4.5 Sound frequencies of language

Chapter 5 Language and Information Theory

5.1 Why do Asian languages have counters for different things?

5.2 What are the advantages and disadvantages of having feminine and masculine definite articles in a language?

5.3 The entropy of language

Chapter 6 Language and Intelligence

6.1 To what extent does thinking in a language with a restricted vocabulary affect intellectual ability?

6.2 Is it true that the more complex the language gets, the smarter the native speakers become? Like in Chinese with their memorization of symbols and sounds, and Hungarian with their amount of conjugations to remember.

Chapter 7 Language and Economics

7.1 At what point do you consider yourself “done” in learning 1 language and begin to learn another?

7.2 Does the law of diminishing returns apply to learning languages?

Chapter 8 Language and Communication

8.1 Why is non-linguistic communication more powerful than the linguistic one?

8.2 What are the differences in the language used in mathematics and the humanities?

8.3 What are the differences and similarities between language and arts?

Chapter 9 Language and History

9.1 Are our brains somehow preprogrammed with knowledge we don’t normally have access to, such as ancient languages?

9.2 How useful is categorizing languages into families?