Comments on Amazing Posts: Language Facts

Languages evolve and die, it's all cyclical.

2009-07-30T11:33:05.931+05:30

Languages evolve and die, it's all cyclical.

Liesl,We do not have to agree on the definition of...

2009-03-31T21:58:00.000+05:30

Liesl,

We do not have to agree on the definition of language, as that argument will outlive either of us.

If one looks at the Scandinavian trio of Norwegian, Danish and Swedish, the same thing is evident, that cosmetic and regional accents set aside, these are essentially the same language, but their differences are what matter to the speakers, not their similarities, and it is upon these differences that national identity, in part, is based. Spanish and Portuguese - though their pronunciation is wildly different, are essentially the same language (and some time during the last thousand years were the same).

How you have inferred that I "have some deep-seated resentment towards Afrikaners" from my point bewilders me. My quarrel is with the politicization of language and philology in general, not with specific governments, who (as governments go) at any rate are notoriously insensitive to understanding that language defines us more than we can define language (i.e., legislate it - c.f. France's xenophobic language policy or China's butchering of their writing system during the hopefully entitled Cultural Revolution. Here in the USA we are launching a foolhardy attempt to curb Spanish - in preference of 'English only' - but it will crash). And finally, my experience with Afrikaners during my ten days in Zuid Afrika was nothing but pleasant and I maintain friendships there still. I am not desperately seeking other friendships but it was not my intention to offend you or any Afrikaner.

Afrikaans is a Low Franconian language. It is a m...

2009-03-31T15:58:00.000+05:30

Afrikaans is a Low Franconian language. It is a member of the West Germanic group of the Germanic subfamily of the Indo-European languages. Though derived from Dutch, Afrikaans is considered an independent language; it is neither a Dutch dialect nor variant.
http://www.alsintl.com/resources/languages/Afrikaans/

One of South Africa's two official languages - the other is English. It developed from the Dutch of the settlers of the region in the 17th century and is now seen as an independent language thanks only to the separate development of the two languages over the centuries.
http://www.webcertain.com/afrikaans-language.html

Saying that Afrikaans is a dialect of Dutch is like saying that English is a dialect of Latin. In fact, the closest language to Afrikaans is actually Flemish. I suggest you do a bit of research before making flippant and dismissive comments.

And, by the way:Afrikaans, member of the West Germ...

2009-03-31T15:50:00.000+05:30

And, by the way:

Afrikaans, member of the West Germanic group of the Germanic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages (see Germanic languages ). Although its classification is still disputed, it is generally considered an independent language rather than a dialect or variant of Dutch (see Dutch language ).

http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Afrikaans.aspx#1E1-Afrikaan

Galliwampus. Well, that was unnecessarily offensi...

2009-03-31T15:46:00.000+05:30

Galliwampus. Well, that was unnecessarily offensive. No political gesture intended. You seem to have some deep-seated resentment towards Afrikaners. I'm sorry you feel that way.

Afrikaans a young language? Classifying Afrikaans ...

2009-03-31T01:28:00.000+05:30

Afrikaans a young language? Classifying Afrikaans as a separate language is a political gesture, not a linguistic one, for it is a Dutch dialect. As with most colonial languages, it has largely frozen in terms of morphological change and has absorbed vocabulary from languages it touches, but calling it a separate language is far-fetched at best.

Tok Pisin has only begun nativization since the 19...

2009-03-30T10:18:00.000+05:30

Tok Pisin has only begun nativization since the 1950s. That's newer than any cut off for Afrikaans.

Interesting, but there does seem to be a few error...

2009-03-04T15:28:00.000+05:30

Interesting, but there does seem to be a few errors.The difficult part will be to keep these languages from dying out.

Just another random fact - Afrikaans (from South A...

2009-02-05T12:12:00.000+05:30

Just another random fact - Afrikaans (from South Africa - formed out of Dutch) is the youngest fully developed language in the world - only around 100 years old.

Full of errors.for starters, berber was written bo...

2009-01-27T09:16:00.000+05:30

Full of errors.

for starters, berber was written both in Arabic and in Latin characters... and if that's not enough, it even has an exclusive writing system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tifinagh

the rest of the list doesn't really say anything about languages, other than useless facts

'Fact' is used thrice rather loosely here and I wo...

2008-08-17T10:51:00.000+05:30

'Fact' is used thrice rather loosely here and I would like, graciously, to comment further.

5. "The most difficult language to speak is Basque. It is not related to any language in the world. It is spoken in north-western Spain and south-western France." In addition to Basque's absolute difficulty being an unempirical claim, it is also a relative one - it may be difficult for one language group's speakers but less so for another. As for where it's spoken and its being unrelated to other languages, these are defensible claims.

25. "There are 33 letters in the Cyrillic alphabet." You must mean in the modern Cyrillic alphabet as used in Russian; early Cyrillic had many more characters and the modern Cyrillic alphabet has been expanded for adaptation to other languages, Slavic as well as non-Slavic.

34. "Mandarin Chinese is a tonal language. It uses 4 different tones to convey different meanings: flat, rising, falling then rising, or falling." While this is true, it is also misleading and redundant. All Chinese languages are tonal. Mandarin is distinguished by having four tones plus a so-called neutral tone. Cantonese and Hakka have almost double the number of tones Mandarin has. Shanghainese has three to five, depending on who's counting.

Well I read the whole thing.I thought it was good....

2008-08-17T10:29:00.000+05:30

Well I read the whole thing.
I thought it was good.

Citations? As a linguist, I've noted a couple mist...

2008-08-17T08:36:00.000+05:30

Citations? As a linguist, I've noted a couple mistakes (though noting the first couple, I admit, I have not read the list in its entirety), and citations would be a huge boon, if only to follow the trail to see how a summary here missed a vital fact from a primary source.

There are so many errors in this it's not funny. F...

2008-08-17T05:24:00.000+05:30

There are so many errors in this it's not funny. For starters, Basque is not the only language isolate in the world. Various Berber languages have had their own script, used latin and arabic characters, etc. Not every single person in Somalia speaks Somali. Where on earth did you come up with that? I'm sure there are more errors but I stopped readingthere.