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Linguistic: 2 ideas worth knowing

2 ideas from Linguistic, each explained in a minute and credited to the original work. Free on Savvy.

• Whether two ways of speaking count as 'one language' often isn't about linguistics

  Danish, Swedish and Norwegian speakers can largely understand each other, yet are classified as three separate languages because they're spoken in three separate countries. Meanwhi…

  — Linguistic and sociolinguistic record, Mutual intelligibility

• In one corner of China, women invented a writing system men weren't meant to read

  Nüshu developed among women in Jiangyong County, Hunan province, likely by the 19th century, at a time when girls were routinely denied formal literacy in standard Chinese characte…

  — Linguistic and ethnographic record, Nüshu

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