TIL Ancient Egyptian was cracked with help from its last surviving form. Champollion did not solve hieroglyphs from the Rosetta Stone alone though, he also knew Coptic, the final stage of Egyptian!
TIL our ABCs are older than Rome! Alphabetical order as we know it already shows up in Ugaritic over 3,000 years ago. That order was kept by Phoenician, then Greek, then Latin, which is why we still say A B C D.
TIL English speakers usually describe smells by source - 'like cinnamon', 'like smoke'.
Jahai, a language of the Malay Peninsula, has around a dozen abstract smell words used the way English uses colour words.
'Smells are hard to name' is not a human problem so much as it is an English problem!
Welcome to February's What's new with Lingonaut!
lingonaut.app/blog/the-big...
We cover:
* Build 50 and Android Build 5
* The bug
* Overhauls to Czech, German & Finnish
* Welsh, Italian and Klingon enter the ring!
* New Launchpad and new management!
* Android beta is now open for more tiers!
🇩🇪German course update 19/02/26🇩🇪
Numerous fixes
Redistributed lessons to be less tail-end-heavy
Entire course is now completable from start to finish!
Credits: @WrenMala08, @Fuchsteufel, @Adrian7 , @ElMago, @pilvi#2140
Welcome to January's What's new with Lingonaut!
Android's out!, our video did gangbusters + new courses - WNWL
lingonaut.app/blog/android...
We cover:
The Android Alpha
Our video going gangbusters
Our spreading the word last month throughout socials
German + Finnish overhauls + the Spanish course
We track issues via a bug report channel on the discord discord.gg/lingonaut
www.patreon.com/posts/androi...
The android alpha was released yesterday and invitation links were sent out throughout the night.
As a reminder, if you have or have ever had an Earth (Terrestrial) pledge or above, you get access to alphas betas three months early!
Our What is Lingonaut? video is out! Please give it a watch and a like and a subscribe perhaps 👀
www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMRk...
TIL Arabic 3-10 flip gender and take a genitive plural noun! Feminine noun becomes masculine numeral form and Masculine noun becomes feminine numeral form.
Examples: 3 books = thalathatu kutubin, 3 cars = thalathu sayyaratin.
1-2 agree with the noun and 11-19 follow different rules!
Yeah when I started thinking about it, re do kinda have a zig zaggy look to them in my head!
TIL Your brain hears shapes. Across many languages, people match a spiky shape to 'kiki' and a round one to 'bouba' - a cross-cultural effect that shows up even in toddlers. New work also finds a rolled 'r' maps to jagged lines worldwide. Sounds are not fully arbitrary!
www.patreon.com/posts/147406...
Android needs a bit more time in the oven and we're going to try and get it out by the 14th
Welcome to December's What's new with Lingonaut!
Android Alpha and New Website for the New Year! WNWL 8
lingonaut.app/blog/android...
We cover:
The new site
The new meet the crew page
The android alpha
Early sign-ups for patrons
Moving on from wordpress
Creatonaut Improvements
More!
TIL Sound systems range from tiny to huge! Rotokas has about 11 phonemes - 6 consonants and 5 vowels. Taa ǃXóõ on the other hand has dozens of click series and analyses with 80+ consonants, with some counts topping 100!
www.patreon.com/posts/new-si...
New site and Android signups for Patrons open! If you're a patron please head to lingonaut.app/patreon and enter the email you use for patreon so we'll be able to send out keys when they're ready.
If you're not already, nows the chance to pledge and secure a spot!
TIL Zulu and Xhosa use clicks because of contact, not inheritance, their Bantu ancestors had none! They borrowed clicks from Khoisan neighbours and that spread into native words too. Both languages have three basic click types: written 'c' 'q' 'x' ! Xhosa is described as having 36 click consonants.
TIL Some languages have a 'mother-in-law register', in Dyirbal you switch to a special vocabulary whenever taboo in-laws are within earshot. The grammar stays the same but almost all content words change. E.g: ring-tail possum is usually called 'midin' - but 'jibuny' near MILs.
You wanted a roadmap, we give you a roadmap!
we've un-retired the domain and now have a slick new way for you to catch up on what's what month-by month!
You can also see the timeline of the project from its inception in late 2023 all the way up to now!
roadmap.lingonaut.app
TIL Maltese is a Semitic language that developed from Arabic! It’s the only form of Arabic written in the Latin alphabet and has strong Sicilian influence. It’s also the only Semitic official language of the EU.
TIL English 'they - them - their' are Scandinavian loans. Old English used 'hie - him - heora'.
After contact in the Danelaw, Norse 'þeir - þeim - þeirra' spread and displaced the native set - likely because it avoided clashes with 'he - him - her' as those forms converged!
Lingonaut Build 36 Update is live!
More beta places are out as of right now! Sign up at lingonaut.app/beta
Welcome to November's What's new with Lingonaut!
-Translatonauts, Tablets and Thanksgiving!-
This month is a real great read and I tried shortening it for your reading pleasure, and you can find it here:
lingonaut.app/translatonau...
Negative concord is normal in many languages! It’s only standard English (+ a few others) that ban it.
Spanish - ‘no vi a nadie’ and Italian ‘non ho vista nessuno’ both mean ‘I saw nobody’. and it’s not a double negative!
Even some English dialects allow it too :D
🇩🇪German course update 27/11/25🇩🇪
Added lots of new lessons
Added images to all the skills and their notes
Revised and reformatted guides
Added text to speech for all the questions (preparing for real speech soon!)
Tons of new content!
Credits: WrenMala08, Fuchsteufel, Adrian7 , ElMago, pilvi#2140
Some languages build ‘two’ into grammar!
Slovene has dual pronouns and verb forms: ‘midva greva’ - we two vs ‘mi gremo’ - we go.
Arabic marks duality on nouns and agreement: ‘kitāb’ - book vs ‘kitābān’ - 2 books (gen/acc: kitābayn)
English used to have them too but I've ran out of space so byeee
Our Creatonaut Course creator has had a massive update!
This change adds lots and fixes lots in preparation for the next language we're adding. We're basically at the point where Creatonaut is more is less complete!
It's free and anyone can use it at creatonaut.lingonaut.app
Changelog below \|/
Many languages split ‘we’ into two, inclusive and exclusive. Inclusive ‘we’ includes the listener while exclusive ‘we’ doesn’t!
Tagalog: tayo vs kami
Tok Pisin: yumi vs mipela
Fijian: keda vs keimami
Quechua: ñuaanchik vs ñuggyku
English only has one we though! weeee
LOL
