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-- Will English kill off all other languages eventually?
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quote:

Originally posted by Lira That's like saying Deutsch is a refinement of íslenska.

I still don't fully understand why the word 'corruption' in place of 'refinement' isn't correct. Aren't all languages just some corrupted form of other languages? Corrupted in the linguistic sense, of course... Can you explain further?

Icelandic (Islenska) is extremely similar to Old Norse, one of the ancestral Germanic languages. However, unlike the other Germanic languages, Icelandic retained all the complexity of the ancient Germanic declension systems, and also tended to borrow far less vocabulary from non-Germanic languages. So in a way you could call it more "pure," or maybe a living fossil.

Esperanto is the new hotness.

quote:

Originally posted by Blake We native English speakers really are full of ourselves, aren't we ^ This... I've read that because so many more non-native English speakers speak English than native speakers , the language itself will become corrupted, and eventually become some broken form which incorporates words, sounds, intonations, and phrases from other world languages a-la Blade Runner. Oh, also Mandarin, after China wins the next big war...

Or something like Firefly, where people speak both, but use one more than the other.....or just use the other language for swearing (which I do all the time, since not many people around where I live speak Japanese or Mandarin).

quote:

Originally posted by Blake I still don't fully understand why the word 'corruption' in place of 'refinement' isn't correct. Aren't all languages just some corrupted form of other languages? Corrupted in the linguistic sense, of course... Can you explain further?

quote:

Originally posted by Vector A Icelandic (Islenska) is extremely similar to Old Norse, one of the ancestral Germanic languages. However, unlike the other Germanic languages, Icelandic retained all the complexity of the ancient Germanic declension systems, and also tended to borrow far less vocabulary from non-Germanic languages. So in a way you could call it more "pure," or maybe a living fossil.

Both words would be incorrect, actually.

German, Icelandic, and English aren't corruptions or refinements of one another: they're by-products of an old Germanic language, which in turn evolved from an earlier language that gave rise to nearly all languages spoken in Europe (with the notable exception of Basque, Hungarian, Estonian, and what Finns would have us believe is the "language" they speak - you heard me right, you sadistic kitten hating bastards, I know you're just throwing cats at your computers!). It would right to say they all evolved from a common ancestor (evolution having no judgement value related to improvement) and that Icelandic is the most conservative language of the stock, with English exhibiting most novelties (as far as I'm aware).

I said that because I tried to point out the comparison didn't really make much sense

There's a fair bit of job security available for you in Colorado, Marcus:

http://www.npr.org/2011/01/20/13265...d-prairiedogese

bro, coudn't you just PM Lira about this shit. TAs official linguistics Phd major commander general.

quote:

Originally posted by knowhope bro, coudn't you just PM Lira about this shit. TAs official linguistics Phd major commander general.

I'm sure other people can contribute as well

quote:

Originally posted by Halcyon+On+On There's a fair bit of job security available for you in Colorado, Marcus: http://www.npr.org/2011/01/20/13265...d-prairiedogese

That's awesome! I'd love to see more research on this

If you lived in Quebec, you can hear about the french complaining about the English language.

I love them Quebequer red necks. Caliss...

English is a crazy mash-up language anyway, a melting pot of different tongues from countries and cultures that colonised us or that we've colonised and imported back here. The difference between separate languages and mere dialects and variations of one language is largely arbitrary. I can easily imagine a time when some form of English is spoken by everyone in the world, but I don't think it will simply kill off all other languages entirely.

I'm actually ashamed to say that untill some time ago, I had no idea Wales had its own language. On Orbital's "In Sides", there is a track entitled "Dŵr Budr" which supposedly means "dirty water". I always lived under the impression that the UK had English as the main language with various dialects, but not full bloomed other languages.

Even the words "Dŵr Budr" don't seem to be remotely related to English anyway (someone feel free to correct me on this one)

quote:

Originally posted by Halcyon+On+On There's a fair bit of job security available for you in Colorado, Marcus: http://www.npr.org/2011/01/20/13265...d-prairiedogese

This is exactly the type of useful, productive and fulfilling work I always knew linguists were doing.

quote:

Originally posted by Chimney I'm actually ashamed to say that untill some time ago, I had no idea Wales had its own language. On Orbital's "In Sides", there is a track entitled "Dŵr Budr" which supposedly means "dirty water". I always lived under the impression that the UK had English as the main language with various dialects, but not full bloomed other languages. Even the words "Dŵr Budr" don't seem to be remotely related to English anyway (someone feel free to correct me on this one)

"Dŵr Budr" is Welsh. So, related to English in a pretty distant way (certainly less than German or even French). They are on separate branches of the Indo-European tree of languages.

One of Aphex Twin's albums had a bunch of the song titles in Cornish, which is closely related to Welsh.

quote:

Originally posted by Meat187 This is exactly the type of useful, productive and fulfilling work I always knew linguists were doing.

Welsh and Cornish are varieties of Celtic. All the Celtic languages are only spoken by minorities now, and generally only as a show of political separatism from the United Kingdom.

There's about 2 million people in Ireland who can speak at least some Gaelic. That's almost 50% of the population.

Almost 50% is still a minority, and the percentage of people who can actually speak it fluently is a lot lower than that.

quote:

Originally posted by Blake I still don't fully understand why the word 'corruption' in place of 'refinement' isn't correct. Aren't all languages just some corrupted form of other languages? Corrupted in the linguistic sense, of course... Can you explain further?

Corruption implies that it's a negative.

quote:

Originally posted by SYSTEM-J Almost 50% is still a minority, and the percentage of people who can actually speak it fluently is a lot lower than that.

Sea, t� go maith go d�reach cos�il le do thuairim fear,

quote:

Originally posted by srussell0018 Sea, t� go maith go d�reach cos�il le do thuairim fear,

Google Translate tells me: "Yeah, well that just like your opinion man"

Are you actually fluent in Irish?

No not at all. I know a fair amount of Irish Gaelic words, but I can't speak the language. While you do learn it a little bit in school, it's mostly just words that you see everywhere. While a lot of people "speak" it, I would say very few are actually fluent, and the only places that you'll find a lot of fluent speakers are way out in the country.

The only words in that sentence I knew were "Sea" and "fear", and only because you see "Fir" on men's room doors pretty often.

Ahh. I think it's cool that people are keeping it alive, though.

quote:

Originally posted by Chimney I'm actually ashamed to say that untill some time ago, I had no idea Wales had its own language. On Orbital's "In Sides", there is a track entitled "Dŵr Budr" which supposedly means "dirty water". I always lived under the impression that the UK had English as the main language with various dialects, but not full bloomed other languages. Even the words "Dŵr Budr" don't seem to be remotely related to English anyway (someone feel free to correct me on this one)

Don't be. I didn't know it either well until I was in my early twenties, and I love languages

quote:

Originally posted by Meat187 This is exactly the type of useful, productive and fulfilling work I always knew linguists were doing.

I'm going explain it to you in Samuel L. Jacksonese so you can understand why that's actually kind of cool:

It motherfuckingly shows other motherfucking animals in the motherfucking Animal Motherfucker Kingdom can motherfucking speak, and we're not so ******fucking special in this mother!

It tells loads about our mind as well.

quote:

Originally posted by Lira I'm going explain it to you in Samuel L. Jacksonese so you can understand why that's actually kind of cool: It motherfuckingly shows other motherfucking animals in the motherfucking Animal Motherfucker Kingdom can motherfucking speak, and we're not so ******fucking special in this mother! It tells loads about our mind as well.

I've had blisters that were more useful than that research.

Admit it, Lira. The humanities as a whole are a pyramid scheme. People study something lame, often pay their PhD themselves, and in the end the one thing they can do with it is stay in university and teach the very same thing to younger students.

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