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PostPosted: Fri 02 Dec 2011, 01:32 
hieroglyphic
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Joined: Thu 17 Nov 2011, 01:03
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Africans [Sub-Saharan] had no written forms. They actually have several native written forms.


Last edited by NagaDewa on Fri 02 Dec 2011, 13:44, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: Fri 02 Dec 2011, 04:00 
mayan
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Joined: Fri 29 Apr 2011, 01:43
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Caucasian languages are a carnival of impossible-to-pronounce consonant clusters- most languages in the Caucasian families have at most something like (C)(C)V(C) structure, the Kartvelian languages are outliers. Even Georgian, which is especially known for its scary clusters, isn't any worse than most European languages.


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PostPosted: Fri 02 Dec 2011, 08:23 
light
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Speaking of Caucasian languages: The Caucasian language family doesn't exist. Several members of different families can be found in the Caucasus, various branches of Indo-European, Turkic and even Semitic Aramaic. What is often referred to as Caucasian are the three indigenous language families, South Caucasian (Kartvelian), West Caucasian (Abkhazo-Adyghean) and East Caucasian (Nakh-Daghestanian). The North Caucasian families are sometimes considered to be related, but this is disputed.


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PostPosted: Wed 07 Dec 2011, 15:30 
honored member
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"I know how to count to 10 in Indian".


[o.O]


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PostPosted: Wed 07 Dec 2011, 17:45 
roman
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Avo wrote:
Speaking of Caucasian languages: The Caucasian language family doesn't exist. Several members of different families can be found in the Caucasus, various branches of Indo-European, Turkic and even Semitic Aramaic. What is often referred to as Caucasian are the three indigenous language families, South Caucasian (Kartvelian), West Caucasian (Abkhazo-Adyghean) and East Caucasian (Nakh-Daghestanian). The North Caucasian families are sometimes considered to be related, but this is disputed.


I don't think most people even know there's languages or typological quirks special to Caucasus, or even have a sufficiently advanced idea of linguistic relationships to have mistaken notions about them. I'd bet most Europeans and Americans with a vague knowledge of world geography and some knowledge of major languages, would expect Russian, Turkish and Arabic, maybe Iranian, in that area.


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PostPosted: Wed 07 Dec 2011, 18:54 
puremetal
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MONOBA wrote:
"I know how to count to 10 in Indian".


[o.O]

What?

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PostPosted: Wed 07 Dec 2011, 18:55 
cleardarkness
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He's probably referring to people who think everybody in India speaks one language called "Indian."

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PostPosted: Wed 07 Dec 2011, 19:06 
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Micamo wrote:
He's probably referring to people who think everybody in India speaks one language called "Indian."


It was an indirect expression of my annoyance at people who believe indian/native american is one language. An incredibly uneducated assumption.


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PostPosted: Wed 07 Dec 2011, 19:09 
cleardarkness
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Wait wait wait, there are people who think all the native americans speak one language called Indian?

I don't want to live on this planet anymore.

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PostPosted: Wed 07 Dec 2011, 19:12 
air
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Micamo wrote:
Wait wait wait, there are people who think all the native americans speak one language called Indian?

I don't want to live on this planet anymore.

Well duh! It's pretty obvious Navajo is just a dialect of Sanskrit. [:P]

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Ǧ Š Ȟ Ž Č

ǧ š ŋ ȟ ž č

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PostPosted: Wed 07 Dec 2011, 19:31 
puremetal
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MONOBA wrote:
Micamo wrote:
He's probably referring to people who think everybody in India speaks one language called "Indian."


It was an indirect expression of my annoyance at people who believe indian/native american is one language. An incredibly uneducated assumption.

Oooh. Ok. You mean you can count to 10 in Native American. I can too!

1 like the buffalo
2 like the buffalo
3 like the buffalo
4 like the buffalo
5 like the buffalo
6 like the buffalo
7 like the buffalo
8 like the buffalo
9 like the buffalo
10 like the buffalo

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PostPosted: Wed 07 Dec 2011, 20:00 
air
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I can count to ten in lakota.

Waŋží
Núŋpa
Yámni
Tópa
Záptaŋ
Šákpe
Šakówiŋ
Šaglóǧaŋ
Napčíyuŋka
Wikčémna

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そうだ。死んでいる人も勃起することが出来る。
俺はその証だ。
Spoiler: show
Ǧ Š Ȟ Ž Č

ǧ š ŋ ȟ ž č

:swe: [:D] :vgtl: [:D] :eng: [:)] :ita: [:|] :lkt: [:'(]


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PostPosted: Fri 30 Dec 2011, 09:16 
wood
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Sanskrit is the oldest language in the world. This seems to be a popular religious fringe theory among Indian linguists..

and one I was taught in Russian school and saw a Russian lady talking about it on Facebook:

Sanskrit is the forerunner to all European languages, including Russian. It might be a Russia-specific myth, though...

And the greatest myth(s) ever:

[insert random language here] is obviously related to [insert random, non-related language here] based on this totally coincidental vocabulary list of terms! I have long stopped facedesking when I see theories like these. Too much blunt trauma.

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PostPosted: Fri 30 Dec 2011, 22:17 
fire
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No, it's (definitely!) not Russian-specific; not even east-of-the-Ural-mountans, east-of-the-Caucasus-mountains, east-of-the-Bosphorus-strait, east-of-the-Ural-river, east-of-the-river-Don, east-of-the-Caspian-sea, specific.

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PostPosted: Sat 31 Dec 2011, 00:43 
greek
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It was repeated in Russian For Dummies. I could say more, but I'm currently experiencing facepalm-induced amnesia.

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PostPosted: Mon 02 Jan 2012, 12:09 
roman
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Zumir wrote:
It was repeated in Russian For Dummies. I could say more, but I'm currently experiencing facepalm-induced amnesia.


It's quite commonly held by people from India. They even boast about it. I had a protracted IRL debate over it (I didn't even bring it up, I just quipped that 'uhm, that's not the linguistic consensus' and he launched into a long tirade, where I occasionally tried explaining where he was wrong. Most of the friends present probably ended up thinking he was right.) His main arguments against my counterclaim - viz. Sanskrit is a relatively early off-shoot of the language from which all Indo-European languages come were:
1) It's obvious from the name "Indo-European" that it's Sanskrit
2) If it's not Sanskrit, then tell me the name of that language!

Shit like this convinces people [o.O]


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PostPosted: Mon 02 Jan 2012, 15:07 
rupestrian
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Joined: Mon 02 Jan 2012, 06:45
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Maximillian wrote:
I've heard this myth about how certain languages are more difficult than others. For example, many people seem to believe German is more difficult than French, but then French is more difficult than Italian, and Italian is more difficult than Spanish and so-on-forever.

How do you know you're debunking a myth, here? Specifically, what evidence is there that some languages are not more difficult to learn than any others? Have there been any studies done? It's a devil of a hypothesis to actually test!

Of course, it may be that most natural languages have turned out to have roughly similar levels of difficulty overall, and I can even think of a good reason for this: because roughly similar creatures (humans) speak them. For instance, it's commonly noticed that English has a massive vocabulary but makes up for this fewer features like grammatical gender to be learned and applied.

But I strongly suspect natural languages do indeed differ in their absolute level of difficulty. At the very least, two conlangs could theoretically be designed from one language as a base, with one conlang having its vocabulary, phoneme set, number of cases and tenses, exceptions, etc. reduced, and the other increased. Would the former not be easier to learn, and the latter, harder to learn, irrespective of one's L1? That was the whole notion behind Basic English.


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PostPosted: Mon 02 Jan 2012, 16:16 
runic
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Ναθια wrote:
How do you know you're debunking a myth, here? Specifically, what evidence is there that some languages are not more difficult to learn than any others? Have there been any studies done? It's a devil of a hypothesis to actually test!

Of course, it may be that most natural languages have turned out to have roughly similar levels of difficulty overall, and I can even think of a good reason for this: because roughly similar creatures (humans) speak them. For instance, it's commonly noticed that English has a massive vocabulary but makes up for this fewer features like grammatical gender to be learned and applied.

But I strongly suspect natural languages do indeed differ in their absolute level of difficulty. At the very least, two conlangs could theoretically be designed from one language as a base, with one conlang having its vocabulary, phoneme set, number of cases and tenses, exceptions, etc. reduced, and the other increased. Would the former not be easier to learn, and the latter, harder to learn, irrespective of one's L1? That was the whole notion behind Basic English.
The obligation isn't to prove the negative, so until someone does come out with the evidence for the claim, it's still a myth.
If language (A) lacks a feature that language (B) has, then language (A) needs to compensate with something else if it is required to convey the same things, which you may or may not find easier than the method used by (B).

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PostPosted: Mon 02 Jan 2012, 17:05 
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If you understand Swedish, you can read this thread where some guy claims that Hungarian is Proto-World.

Regarding the absolute simplicity or difficulty of languages, one method to measure this could be to see how fast children acquire their respective L1s.

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PostPosted: Mon 02 Jan 2012, 17:22 
shadowlight
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Oh Flashback, you never cease to amaze with your stupidity :roll:.

There are a handful of golden eggs there, but most of them are rotten...

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