Babel, page 34
Sinhalese 55, 65–6, 191
Sino-Tibetan language family 122,
238, 252, 300
size, vowels associated with 46
slavery 222, 223–4, 226, 228
Slavic language group 21, 153, 204, 208–10
social cohesion and common
languages 189
software limitations 27, 243, 249, 338–9
sound symbolism 39, 45–7, 48–9, 50–1
spaces between words 24, 236, 313, 319, 321
Spanish 285–98
ser and estar 290–5
spread by colonialism 10
‘subjunctive jungle’ 287, 296
weirdness index score 162
spelling
Bengali 242
English 332, 337–8
Proto-Indo-European 209
reform, French 178
and tone in Punjabi 122–3
Sri Lanka 53–5, 65–6, 190, 196, 224
status (individuals)
Javanese krama register 83–94
pronouns reflecting 20–2, 30
scribes 247
script preferences 277
status (languages) see prestige
stress and music lyrics 125
‘subjunctive jungle’ 287, 296
suffixes 84, 86, 128
Arabic 258, 261
Japanese 128, 135–6
Javanese 84, 86
Korean 36
Russian 209, 214
Tamil 54
Turkish 68, 80–1
Suriname 83, 156, 199, 220, 226–7, 228, 271
Swahili 139–56
as a second language 139, 143
as a trade language 10
verb ‘to be’ 294
Swedish 54, 119, 122
Switzerland 157, 171, 196, 285
syllabaries 239, 323n
T
Tajik 95–6
Tamil 53–66, 161, 191, 193, 243, 244, 244, 274, 334
possession indicators 297
verb ‘to be’ 294
Tamil Nadu 53, 63–4
Tamil Renaissance / Revival 58–9
Tamil Tigers 55, 66
Tanzania 107, 146, 153–4, 201
and Swahili 139, 143, 145–7, 191, 196, 265
TDK (Turkish Language Society) 75, 78, 81
Tibet 192, 251
Times of India 238, 252
tonal languages
African 154
Mandarin 117, 124, 300
origins 117n, 122–3
Punjabi 114, 117–26
Swedish 119
Vietnamese 19–20, 116–17
top stroke, Indian writing systems 237
top to bottom writing 302, 324
trade languages 10, 107, 195, 198
Turkish 67–82
familiar words in 25
spread by the Ottomans 10
weirdness index score 162
Twain, Mark 159, 163
typographical conventions 12
U
Ukraine 98, 191–2, 196, 203
United States and spread of English 328–9
Urdu 277–82
see also Hindi-Urdu
Uyghur language 78, 192, 196
V
Vaugelas, Claude Favre de 176–7, 177
verbs
auxiliary verbs 288, 294
phrasal 331–2
‘subjunctive jungle’ 287, 296
tenses in English 331, 336–7
verb conjugation 86, 214, 216, 234, 286
Iberian languages 218, 295
Semitic languages 258
verb ‘to be’
English and Spanish compared 287–90
gendered in Japanese 132, 294
in Latin 293
in Russian 294
in Swahili, Tamil and Vietnamese 294
verb ‘to have’ 295–8
Vietnamese 15–34
spread by colonialism 10
verbs ‘to be’ and ‘to have’ 294, 296
weirdness index score 162
VILs (Very Important Languages) 144–7, 151–3, 191, 228
vocabulary
cognates 206, 208–10, 213, 213–14, 263
English 331
as random 37
VILs in Africa 151
voiceless consonants / stops 121, 124, 323
vowels
Arabic 258
association with size 46
bright and dark 44–5
English 332
Japanese long vowels 323n
origins 246
scripts lacking 239
‘vowel killer’ 240–1, 243
vowel signs 239–41, 246
W
WALS (World Atlas of Linguistic
Structures) 160, 163–5
websites
on Chinese 301n
Korean pronunciation 42
language weirdness 162
language weirdness blog 162
languagewriter.com 12
tonal language examples 117–18, 121n
weirdness index 160–6, 162
whispering 124
Wodehouse, PG 340
‘women’s language’ 130–4, 133–4, 137–8
word boundaries see spaces
word order
as case system alternative 104
Chinese languages 311, 315
claimed uniqueness of French 179
and difficulty of German 165–6, 168–9
English 206, 208, 332
example sentence 206, 208
interrogative 164
‘labyrinthine sentences’ 21–2
loanwords in Vietnamese 31
see also position of modifiers
writing systems
direction of 302–3, 324
Indian 54, 235–7, 238, 247–8
Japanese 316–24
Mandarin 301, 302–15
Old Turkic 71
Persian choice of Aramaic 99–100
shortcomings compared with
speech 115–16
simplification from spoken forms 106
VILs as written languages 147
see also scripts
X
Xhosa 152
Y
yin and yang 44, 46, 300
Z
Zanzibar 107, 139, 147, 153–4
Gaston Dorren, Babel
