UNC Linguistics

10/12/2026

Are you a linguistics major, minor, or graduate student? If you are, please check out this survey and tell us what your favorite linguistics class has been and why! You can also use this link: tinyurl.com/4hawvjc6

10/04/2026

The UNC Department of Linguistics is pleased to announce that we have a position open this year for a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the areas of Syntax/Semantics and Language Documentation. For more details and information on how to apply, please see the UNC application portal here:

The Department of Linguistics is recruiting for a tenure-track Assistant Professor specializing in Syntax/Semantics and Language Documentation. The responsibilities of this position include maintaining an active research program, teaching undergraduate and graduate courses, advising undergraduate ho...

10/03/2026

We hope to see you in linguistics classes next semester, Tar Heels! Use the QR code above or go to linguistics.unc.edu to check out the linguistics course catalog for Spring 2027!

09/28/2026

Hey Tar Heels! Are you interested in learning about language and culture while you’re at UNC? Then you should join us at our Languages Fair Information Party on Wednesday, Oct. 7th, from 10 AM to 4 PM! You’ll have the chance to explore specific majors, minors, and opportunities offered by the departments in attendance. You can also get CLE credit!

We hope to see you there!

09/24/2026

When I posted my infographic about ‘to wait’ and ‘wachten’ on Sunday, many people asked if the German word ‘warten’ with its identical meaning is etymologically related to this family as well. Nope, not in the slightest!

However, ‘warten’ isn’t lonely, because it has its own huge family: ‘aware’, ‘wary’, ‘beware’, ‘to warn’, ‘ward’, ‘warden’, ‘guard’, ‘guardian’, ‘lord’, ‘panorama’, ‘to revere’ – and that’s only English!

Zoom in on my second graphic in this two-part series for more relatives:

09/17/2026

Why does ‘Dutch’ refer to the Low Countries, but ‘Deutsch’ to Germany?
It’s because their medieval ancestor denoted any vernacular continental West Germanic language. Only later did their meanings specify, with the meaning of ‘Dutch’ evolving in a different way than that of ‘Deutsch’.
Zoom in on my new infographic to read more – and to learn how ‘Teuton’, ‘Theodoric’, ‘Terry’ and ‘Derek’ are related as well. All of these stem from a word meaning “people; tribe”.

As space was limited, let’s add here that medieval Latin ‘theodiscus’ became Italian ’tedesco’ (German) and French ’thiois’ (Franconian) and ’tudesque’ (Germanic; via Old Italian).

08/30/2026

When you say ‘famly’, ‘vulnrable’ or ‘genral’, you’re performing syncope: deleting an unstressed vowel from the interior of the word, losing an entire syllable in the process.

The Romans did this a lot too. For instance, they turned ‘viridis’ (“green”) into ‘virdis’, a variant that was initially frowned upon. Yet it’s that syncopated form that birthed ‘verde’ in languages such as Italian.

Zoom in on my new infographic to learn all about syncope in Latin.

What did Roman writers think about syncope? Two documents give us a glimpse of their opinion. I tell all about it in the article on my Patreon (750 words, tier 1). Link in bio.

08/22/2026

The word ‘sure’ has the same origin as ‘secure’: Latin ‘sēcūrus’.
‘Sure’ came through Old French, while ‘secure’ is a 16th-century borrowing from written Latin.
English even used to have a third borrowing: ‘sicker’. It evolved from a form adopted from spoken Latin more than 1500 years ago.
Click my new infographic to learn all about this word family, which includes Celtic words:

08/19/2026

08/18/2026

Here’s a fantastic illustration of Grimm’s Law at work from Starkey Comics