• About Linguistic Discovery 🌍
• About Me 👨🏼
• Sources & Citations 📑
• Errata 🚫

🌍 About Linguistic Discovery

Linguistic Discovery is all about the science and diversity of the world's languages!

The scientific study of language is known as linguistics. I started Linguistic Discovery because while many people learn the basics of math or biology in school, hardly anybody is introduced to linguistics. Yet language is something that we all do! This site and my social media channels illustrate the vast diversity of the world's languages, and highlight endangered and minority languages whenever possible.

On this site you'll find:

• World of Words, newsletter showcasing the diversity of the world's languages. (Some posts for paid subscribers only.)
• the Linguistic Discovery blog, featuring posts about the latest science news in linguistics, how language works, why it changes, and the diverse ways that different languages do things.
• various resources on linguistics, including:
  • book reviews and reviews of other linguistics-related media.
  • podcasts about language & linguistics.
  • book recommendations on different topics in linguistics.
  • an encyclopedia of linguistics terms and concepts.
  • a list of the languages mentioned on this site.
  • an explanation of linguistics conventions.
• my interviews and podcast appearances.

👨🏼 About Me

Hi! I’m Danny Hieber! 👋🏼 I am a linguist. 🗣️

I work to document and revitalize endangered languages, while studying the crosslinguistic patterns we see across the world’s languages (a field known as linguistic typology). Check out my academic page here.

I work primarily with the Chitimacha Tribe of Louisiana to help them revitalize their once-dormant language. We are using archival materials to produce a modern dictionary and grammatical description of the language.

You can get in touch with me over on the Contact page.

📑 Sources & Citations

I strive to always cite sources for the claims I make in articles, and often include sources in the captions of my videos as well. If a video doesn't have sources listed, there's usually an article on this website that corresponds to it, with references.

Some caveats: First, not everything needs a citation. If a fact is common knowledge in the field or can be easily found with a 5-second web search, I won't typically include a citation for it. Second, given the breadth of topics I cover, I frequently rely on secondary or even tertiary sources rather than reading the original journal articles about a topic. This inevitably means that my writing will be less detailed and nuanced than it could be, and occasionally will be outright wrong about something. (See the note about Errata below.) While I do my best to avoid all of these imperfections, it's also unreasonable to expect that blog posts written for a general audience will meet the same bibliographic rigor as the research articles I publish in journals. The purpose of Linguistic Discovery is simply to teach the world a little more about the science and diversity of the world's languages. A high-level conceptual understanding of a topic is typically what I aim for.

📖 Further Reading

• The linguistics student's handbook (Bauer, 2021)
• Surviving linguistics: A guide for graduate students (Macaulay, 2011)
• The craft of research (Booth et al., 2024)
• A manual for writers of research papers, theses, and dissertations (Turabian, 2018)

🚫 Errata

Sometimes I get things wrong. Sometimes I unintentionally say something that offends. When this happens, I add a correction or partial retraction to the post (by adding a comment for videos, making a repost with an explanation for text posts, and by updating the article for blog posts). My general policy is not to take down content, but rather to leave it up (with corrections) as an example and lesson to others.

On the other hand, sometimes the internet gets things wrong. Wikipedia is not always correct or complete, and doesn't always provide a holistic perspective. And sometimes I disagree with other linguists about certain facts or interpretations of those facts. When someone points out sources that conflict with things I've said, I do my best to explain both perspectives.

Most commonly, however, when there's an apparent conflict between something I've said and another source, there's simply nuance to the issue. In science, things are rarely black and white, right and wrong. Often the source of conflict is that different people have different definitions of terms. These cases can be hard to explain to viewers/readers because they often require a high-level understanding of philosophy of science or the subtleties behind a claim—the kind of expertise that comes from being a practicing researcher in the field. I do my best to explain, but it's often just not worth it to get into the weeds with every issue; I could be using that time to continue educating people about other topics instead. So I generally don't engage in long back-and-forth's in comments on the internet. If you're looking for a detailed and robust defense of a claim I've made, sorry. 🤷🏼‍♂️ You can visit my own academic website and read my scholarly papers if you'd like. I also include sources in most of my articles and videos, so you can read more there.

📖 Further Reading

• Philosophy of science: A very short introduction (Okasha, 2016)
• Rationality: What it is, why it seems scarce, why it matters (Pinker, 2021)
• Thinking, fast and slow (Kahneman, 2011)
• "The use of knowledge in society" (Hayek, 1945, The American Economic Review)