Top all-time · #20403
Linguistic Discovery
Personal blog · linguisticdiscovery.com/postssciencewriting
Linguistic Discovery is a personal blog at linguisticdiscovery.com about science and writing. Since 2025, 3 different Hacker News readers have linked it 3 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-31, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (2) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog for its linguistics writing, such as a post on the Inuit snow-words myth and colour terms. One commenter cites it as a balanced source on that debate.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 2 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
A newsletter about linguistics, the science and diversity of language 🗣️
What Hacker News says?
> up there with "Eskimos have a thousand words for snow". Bad example. It seems that there is still a lot of disagreement on this matter, much of it rooted in what constitutes a word. A well-balanced article on the subject here: https://linguisticdiscovery.com/posts/inuit-words-for-snow/ Edit… Also, from that article, a fascinating study: ‘Russian blues reveal effects of language on color discrimination’ https://www…
Comment linking /posts/inuit-words-for-snow/
on “What is a color space?”Submitted Pre-Greek: The lost language hidden within Ancient Greek as a story · 196 points
HN discussion> In his lecture, Sapolsky alleges that Patterson spontaneously corrects Koko’s signs: “She would ask, ‘Koko, what do you call this thing?’ and [Koko] would come up with a completely wrong sign, and Patterson would say, ‘Oh, stop kidding around!’ And then Patterson would show her the next one, and Koko would get it wrong, and Patterson would say, ‘Oh, you funny gorilla.’ ” More weirdly was this lawsuit against Patte…
Comment linking /posts/kanzi/
on “Reasoning models reason well, until they don't”