Language Evolution, it's Fantastic, it's Incredible

[LaurV]

Originally Posted by chalsall

sometimes dropping the "F' word"

This I got recently from the little LaurV which is studying abroad, part of her last quiz/test, and I couldn't stop laughing. I would like to have a professor like that. Our teachers use to hit us on the head with the ruler, etc...

[Mark Rose]

Originally Posted by LaurV

Correct. Contrarily we could say, English is (arguably) the most Germanic language spoken today. That is because the Germans adopted this "Greek" grammar style somewhere two centuries ago, and from that point onward, they started drifting away from the "Germanic" part. Nowadays, German grammar is much (and I mean MUCH) closer to Romanian, for example, than to English. It has the same grammar constructions, it keeps 4 of the grammar cases (Nominative, Accusative, Genitive, Dative) from old Greek/Latin (Romanian has 5, including Vocative, but there is no distinction between declension of the nouns on Nom/Acc or Gen/Dat, so we can say we actually have 3 cases, some other languages have 6 or 7 cases).

I'm going to have to disagree. I would argue that of the Germanic languages, English is the least Germanic. Most of its vocabulary comes via French, it rarely uses compound nouns, rarely follows V2 word order, nouns have no gender, frequently uses auxiliary verbs, etc.

Instead, I would consider Icelandic. It keeps the same four grammar cases; has masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns; has compound nouns; sticks to Germanic word order, etc.

[Mark Rose]

Originally Posted by Dubslow

Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Italian nouns do not change form except for singular/plural, which is the same as English, and different, apparently, from Romanian.

Acteur, actrice? Cómico, cómica? The nouns also change for gender.

(Unlike the Romance languages, English is losing inflections even in its verbs, instead in the process of moving to an analytic structure with auxiliary/modal verbs to express complex tenses, aspects, and moods. This process is of course incomplete still, with most notably the past tense and present third person singular retaining inflections.)

This is further along in Swedish, where verbs don't inflect at all based on the subject. (It almost makes up for the damned ɧ phoneme haha.)

[Dubslow]

Originally Posted by Mark Rose

Acteur, actrice? Cómico, cómica? The nouns also change for gender.

Do not confuse gender as an immutable, inherent characteristic of a noun with gender as a mutable quality which must match other nouns in the sentence.

As far as I know, neither Proto Indo European nor any of its descendants include gender in the latter category (though in the former category it had three genders, commonly reduced to two or zero in modern descendants). Nouns are not declined for gender; for example in Spanish, "table" is "la mesa", and if you say "he goes to the table", you say "él va a la mesa". In particular, "mesa" does not inflect to "meso" to match the subject "él". "El meso" doesn't exist. There is no gender declension in Spanish (nor in any other PIE language). Grammatically speaking, "acteur" and "actrice" are two different nouns, with independent meaning (although morphologically they are clearly related) (and same with cómico and cómica). Also be sure to not confuse article and adjective agreement with their anchor noun with one noun declining relative to another independent noun in the sentence.

[Mark Rose]

Originally Posted by Dubslow

Do not confuse gender as an immutable, inherent characteristic of a noun with gender as a mutable quality which must match other nouns in the sentence.

As far as I know, neither Proto Indo European nor any of its descendants include gender in the latter category (though in the former category it had three genders, commonly reduced to two or zero in modern descendants). Nouns are not declined for gender; for example in Spanish, "table" is "la mesa", and if you say "he goes to the table", you say "él va a la mesa". In particular, "mesa" does not inflect to "meso" to match the subject "él". "El meso" doesn't exist. There is no gender declension in Spanish (nor in any other PIE language). Grammatically speaking, "acteur" and "actrice" are two different nouns, with independent meaning (although morphologically they are clearly related) (and same with cómico and cómica). Also be sure to not confuse article and adjective agreement with their anchor noun with one noun declining relative to another independent noun in the sentence.

Thank you for the enlightenment.

[a1call]

On the Russian-Persian similarities:

https://youtu.be/7IexL5q1W5I

[a1call]

Here is an interesting observation on how AI might affect the evolution of language.
* I can pronounce th (being a Persian it comes unnatural to me)
* I normally pronounce it as t
* I often lie awake at night thinking about prime related subjects
* I check ideas I come up with by doing numerical calculations which I ask my Google Home, answers for
* My Google assistant has no problem recognizing my pronunciation of th in context
* My Google Home does not recognise my pronunciation of 3, 13, or 30 in context of calculation requests
* I have adapted to this by pronouncing th as th in this context only
* The other day I was speaking to a colleague and unconsciously pronounced the 30 minutes on hold as th.

[Nick]

Nice!
In English, some words spelt with th are pronounced voiced instead of voiceless.
For example, the th sound in "the" is not quite the same as the th sound in "thing".

[rogue]

For those of you who love language, check out History of English podcast.

[a1call]

Originally Posted by Nick

Nice!
In English, some words spelt with th are pronounced voiced instead of voiceless.
For example, the th sound in "the" is not quite the same as the th sound in "thing".

Great, I was having enough problem when I thought there was only one variety.
Now I have to listen in for the difference.
I live in Quebec which as time goes by becomes less and less populated by Anglophones and most of the ones which are left are likely immigrants who speak English as a second language.
I was thinking that it might be that people like myself (say Persians) might not have the auditory recognition to decipher the differences in sounds of t-th.
Personally for me the difference is hard to judge by sound alone even though the tongue is obviously pressed at different positions.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by a1call

Great, I was having enough problem when I thought there was only one variety.
Now I have to listen in for the difference.
I live in Quebec which as time goes by becomes less and less populated by Anglophones and most of the ones which are left are likely immigrants who speak English as a second language.
I was thinking that it might be that people like myself (say Persians) might not have the auditory recognition to decipher the differences in sounds of t-th.
Personally for me the difference is hard to judge by sound alone even though the tongue is obviously pressed at different positions.

Try listening, carefully, how native English speakers pronounce this and these.

It's rather similar to the difference between feel and veal.