New CBB

It's just that I've noticed that some Czech speakers have much more open vowels than I'd have expected, and I was wondering if this was an example. I hadn't noticed that with this particular vowel before though, so it's interesting. Surely I don't have to justify my interest in the minutiae of sound changes to a board full of conlangers, do I? ;)

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death to vowels
/ / / /

I think the -u in Baltic comes from an earlier -o:*, so its cognate with the -o with the same purpose in, say, Spanish. Slavic added a nasal element to the ending, hence the nasal vowel with ultimately gave rise to -u as well in most of the Slavic languages.

*Lithuanian also has -u as the marker for the instrumental singular in nouns in -as, which should go back to a PIE long o too.

As for g > ɦ, g > ɣ and ɣ > ɦ are both very plausible sound changes (and the first has definitely happened outside of Slavic), so I don't really see what's particularly strange about it.

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Languages!
Native: Proficient: Decent: Have dabbled in:

Syntheticism is a recesive gene, eventually all languages will be analytic. Synthetic languages can only survive in the long run in small closed groups.

Complete and utter bullshit. Learn something before mouthing off.

Dont you there is a reason that practically all polysynthetic languages occur in close knit societies in the americas and the caucasus? And that languages which have been used in civilized socities for a long time get more analytic, such as english, or chinese which used to be wery synthetic and now due to china being a wery old civilization is now almost completely analytic?

Seriously?

Colonialism called, it wants its ethnocentrism back.

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任何事物的发展都是物极必反，否极泰来。

(1) There are plenty of analytic languages spoken in isolated, closely-knit societies (Khoisan, Polynesian).
(2) In some areas - like Australia - there is a variety of language type - with anything from highly polysynthetic to moderately synthetic or rather analytic, but there is no corresponding "advancement of civilisation" (whatever that would mean) as one moves to the more analytical languages groups.
(3) There are polysynthetic languages, or at least highly synthetic ones, spoken if far more areas than the Americas and Caucasus.
(4) It may be argued that the introduction of modern civilisation could even lead to an increased amount of polysynthesis, since languages may utilise their derivational and other morphological capacities more extensively to form words for new concepts.
(5) The reason why analytical languages have spread over the world could be explained by the fact that large part of the word have been colonised by a few western European nations - Western Europe happens to be a hotspot of rather analytical languages. It's unlikely that Europe's success in colonising should have anything to do with any superiority of the languages.
(6) In the Americas and other parts of the world, many the more synthetic languages groups were at least as advanced politically/economically/technologically as the less synthetic linguistic communities.

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constructedlanguages.net

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Sadanjatås = I wished we had survived, too bad we didn't


Talar svenska flytande (eller ja, typ skånska)
Speaking english, but dammit it's hard to spell!
Mi komencas paroli esperanton
Wo bu xihuan shou hanyu
Deutsche? Danke, aber nein

Last time I checked, the Caucasus peoples were "civilized" well before the IndoEuropeans spoke more than one language. In fact, this has nothing to do with civilization (how far after the neolithic/bronze age you are).

Another fun fact, most IndoEuropean groups were made up of those closeknit tribal societies, and many still are. Guess what, their languages never were attested as polysynthetic.

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Know phrases in more languages than can fit in this signature.
Speaks English and Spanish.
Reads Sumerian.
There is more.

Except for French, and that's borderline.

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"Wait for the starvation of glaciers, chicken hamburger Noel Weber Arthur."

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1. I have not said that analytic language cannot appear in a close knit society, only that the vast majority of the time polysinthetic and highly synthetic languages occur only in close knit societies, and that languages used in civilized socities have a strong tendency to be or become more analytic.
2. See above.
3. Besides the americas and the caucasus, polysynthetic languages only occur in a language family in extreme northwestern siberia, oceania (australia, new zealand, polynesia etc) and one language family in northeastern india (the Munda languages). All of these, including that part of india are close knit, village/band based socities.
4. This has simply not been the case, however. Besides, i'm talking in a grammatical sense, not really the length of the words themselves or the amount of compound words.
5. I have never used the word "superior".
6. Relatively they were advanced and large socities, but they were still close knit in the sense that most people only lived in one village their entire lives.

Stop that.

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任何事物的发展都是物极必反，否极泰来。

I present for your consideration... FRENCH!*


no u


I present for your consideration... meh, this is getting boring. Also, when was the jump from synthetic to polysynthetic justified in your posts? If we include just synthetic languages in our count, we get languages like Russian, Finnish, Turkish, Hungarian, Polish, Japanese, ... included in our count.


Yeah, I agree this point was kind of weak, but I think once you 1) present a decent metric for synthesis, and 2) present a decent statistical model, you'll find that global amount of synthesis probably is rather independent from degree of civilization.


Russia. Hungary. Finland. France.

* sure, French is written as though it is just a bit synthetic, on less of an order really than Russian. However, if French were not a written language today, and field linguists came in and started taking notes, they'd agree it's polysynthetic, and they'd make up an orthography that reflects this. Keep this in mind as well - there's no 100% clear way of determining whether a language is polysynthetic or isolating, and oftentimes, all what we go by is the tradition entrenched in the orthography.

Stop it, arilando. You're about to make a lot of enemies (if you haven't already). What you're saying here is almost as stupid as saying that there's a connection between sexism and the use of gender in personal pronouns.

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Proto-Hyảlim | Bjarmish

Ón gráti sem jett barn kvéner jag syggji jett lag um deiðan...
[oʊ̯n ˈgɾaːtɪ sɛmː jɛtː baɾn ˈkʰʋɛːnɛɾ jaː ˈsʏd͡ʑːɪ jɛtː laː ʊmː ˈdɛɪ̯an]

There probably is. As in, in languages that uses gendered pronouns people are more likely to be sexist. Not as in, in languages which have a lot of speakers who are sexist are more likely to have gendered pronouns.

Really?

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UNUS•ET•UNICUS

Arilando, the Caucasus had civilized socities in times of the Roman Empire and the Ancient Greeks already, with states, urban centres and even writing. And there were numerous civilizations in the Americas too, what proofs your theory as untenable.

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任何事物的发展都是物极必反，否极泰来。

Yeah, just said that people speaking certain languages are more "civilized" than others. Same thing.


Why the hell did you have to bring that up? I'm starting to think we need a rule that forbids mentioning this topic ever again...

For those who haven't seen this discussion before, we've had it about a zillion times on both this board and the ZBB. So far, no-one has ever produced any evidence in favor of the claim, apart from "it's obvious, innit?". And it tends to devolve into a flamewar. So let's just not go there.

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So, you're saying Finland and Turkey are less sexist than Sweden? England is more sexist than Indonesia? I find it very unlikely that you'll end up finding any correlation whatsoever! However, if you provide a statistical model that would show you right, be my guest! (HINT: it can't be done without abuse of statistics involved, such as a very biased sample or a very strange way of measuring sexism)