Language
Where words and writing systems came from. 2 reviewed articles here, each naming the sources behind it.
What language covers here
Where words and writing systems came from. These are the questions a general reference work tends not to answer well — comparisons, causes, and the distinctions people routinely conflate.
Every one of these was read by a person
An article appears in this list only once somebody has checked it against its sources. Drafts and short articles are readable but are kept out of search and out of this list.
- Why is the QWERTY keyboard arranged that way? — QWERTY was arranged for the mechanics of the 1870s typewriter and the habits of its earliest users — most like…
- What is the difference between a language and a dialect? — There is no purely linguistic answer: mutual intelligibility is the usual criterion but it fails in both direc…
Questions
Why is the QWERTY keyboard arranged that way?
QWERTY was arranged for the mechanics of the 1870s typewriter and the habits of its earliest users — most likely to separate common letter pairs so the typebars jammed less, with telegraph-operator conventions influencing parts of it — and it survived because retraining typists always cost more than the layout saved.
What is the difference between a language and a dialect?
There is no purely linguistic answer: mutual intelligibility is the usual criterion but it fails in both directions, and in practice the distinction is political — the often-quoted line is that a language is a dialect with an army and a navy.