It's simply a neuter indeterminate pronoun. A construction like "The girl went shopping. It came home with a new hat."* is quite ordinary. "She came home…" would be ungrammatical in this context.
You are most probably right, and I must be fairly outdated in German grammar. I didn't know about such usages of "es". For me, "Es regnet" was the most representative usage of it. Thanks, anyway.
That's not necessarily any different from "it".
Except we have 3 genders: er, sie and es.
Der Mann ging einkaufen. Er kam mit einem neuen Hut nach Hause/nachhause.
Die Frau ging einkaufen. Sie kam mit einem neuen Hut nach Hause/nachhause.
Das Mädchen ging einkaufen. Es kam mit einem neuen Hut nach Hause/nachhause.
or more usually because of her gender
Sie kam mit einem neuen Hut nach Hause/nachhause.
But it becomes even more complicated:
The child looks hungry; give it food.
Das Kind scheint Hunger zu haben.
a, b, and c are correct answers.
a. Gib dem Kind etwas zu essen.
b. Gib ihm etwas zu essen. (if it's a boy)
c. Gib ihr etwas zu essen. (if it's a girl)
In case of an undefined subject We use "es"
Es regnet. Es schneit. Es donnert. Es blitzt. Es wird kälter. Es kann noch dicker kommen. Es mag schon sein ... Es ist vorbei.
The grammatical subject is always there, even though the presence may seem hidden. There are languages that don't (always) require a pronoun with the finite verb (I have noticed the term "pro-drop languages" on wikipedia), the grammatical subject is still expressed in the verb.
Consider, for example, "Rains." The equivalent of this qualifies as a full grammatical sentence in pro-drop languages. The position of the subject is empty, but the subject is still expressed by s in "Rains." The s expresses the third person singular. The pronoun in English "It rains." also expresses the same third person singular, so these two elements together in the sentence are actually redundant. English cannot drop this particular redundancy, because the conjugation of the finite verb is minimal in English, but languages with full personal conjugation can afford to drop the redundancy. The resultant sentence is not without a grammatical subject, just the redundancy in expressing it is dropped.
Except we have 3 genders: er, sie and es.
I'd argue that, for now, English still has those same three genders. It's just that they only show in the referent. In Dutch we have something similar: the difference between masculine and feminine is nowadays made only in the referent. In Netherlandic Dutch this has over time led to almost all "de" pronouns except abstract pronouns becoming masculine, but in Brabantic Dutch (the dominant variety of Belgian Dutch) traditionally feminine words still hold on. That might lead to a Belgian saying e.g. "the dove took her food from the gutter" and I'm like "but how do you know it's a female dove; did you also see her male partner to whom she displayed feminine dove behavior? Doves are really, really hard to tell apart and you can't do it when they're alone." I imagine a Belgian might have the same reaction if I spoke of a dove and
his food.
Long story short, German is kind of on the opposite end from the Romance languages. They don't have "it" at all, even though classical Latin did. English hasn't moved quite that far from its Germanic brethren yet. :P
But it becomes even more complicated:
The child looks hungry; give it food.
Das Kind scheint Hunger zu haben.
a, b, and c are correct answers.
a. Gib dem Kind etwas zu essen.
b. Gib ihm etwas zu essen. (if it's a boy)
c. Gib ihr etwas zu essen. (if it's a girl)
What if you don't know? :P
In any case, in Dutch it's perfectly fine like this to me: Dat kind ziet er hongerig uit. Geef het wat te eten. I think it's ungrammatical to say
hem or
haar even if you know the gender. However, the girl example is different from German the other way around: "Dat meisje ziet er hongerig uit. Geef
haar wat te eten." Still, I think that might be acceptable in spoken German?
"the dove took her food from the gutter" and I'm like "but how do you know it's a female dove;
In German: die Taube - feminine noun, independent of the dove's gender
Diese Taube ist sehr zahm. Sie frisst mir aus der Hand.
In case you know it's a cock pigeon:
der Täuberich - masculine noun
Dieser Täuberich ist sehr zahm. Er frisst mir aus der Hand.
other examples:
das Pferd - neuter noun. You don't know the gender of the horse.
Dieses Pferd ist besonders schön. Es gefällt mir. Usually, "das Pferd gefällt mir".
In case you know it is a male: der Hengst. Er gefällt mir.
In case you know it is a female: die Stute. Sie gefällt mir.
or
die Katze - feminine noun, independent of the cat's gender = sie
In case you know it is a male: der Kater = er
or
der Hund - masculine noun, independent of the dog's gender = er
In case you know it is a female: die Hündin = sie
In case you know it is a male: der Rüde = er
What if you don't know? :P
Then a. will apply. You don't say: Gib es etwas zu essen.
"Dat meisje ziet er hongerig uit. Geef haar wat te eten." Still, I think that might be acceptable in spoken German?
Not only acceptable but also correct.
Whilst "das Mädchen is a neuter noun, we refer to the gender of the person which in this case is feminine.
c. Gib ihr etwas zu essen.
Der, die, das
macht für Fremde
wenig Spaß :)
In case you know it is a male: der Hengst. Er gefällt mir.
In case you know it is a female: die Stute. Sie gefällt mir.
As if that many people in our increasingly less agricultural society still know the masculine and feminine names for all the animals. :P Okay, for horses it's hengst en merrie, stallion and… ummm… mare? In any case, I'm pretty sure horses are in some sort of animal top ten.
Wikipedia (http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benamingen_voor_dieren) has an incomplete list of some masculine and feminine animal names. It's probably to be expected that I wouldn't know those of the gerfalcon, but I've never even heard any of those names for hare (haas). And for some of those, including an
ooi (ewe), I might not be able to produce them without any thought even if I would easily understand them.
Anyway, we also have alternative, more generic constructions like
vrouwtjeshaas and
mannetjeshaas (or
hazenvrouwtje and
hazenmannetje). For me those are actually the correct words to refer to different-gendered hares.
Incidentally, Germans don't seem to care too much about the difference between a hare and a rabbit. "Ach, was für eine süße Hase," a German girl once said about my pet bunny. One wonders if that's how the easter hare turned into an easter bunny in America.
Incidentally, Germans don't seem to care too much about the difference between a hare and a rabbit. "Ach, was für eine süße Hase," a German girl once said about my pet bunny.
hare, bunny = der Hase, (diminutive) das Häschen
female hare = die Häsin
rabbit = das Kaninchen
male rabbit = der Rammler
In German there is no Osterkaninchen. It's always "der Osterhase".
The correct spelling:
Ach, was für ein süß
er Hase.
Ach, was für ein süß
es Häschen.
Ach, was für eine süß
e Häsin. (barely used)
Ach, was für ein süß
es Kaninchen.
As for children growing up in a town it's hard to make the difference between a hare and a rabbit. In cartoons they all look the same :)
I'm afraid we manage to hijack the thread or at least we are doing our best :P
Right, sorry. Cases don't come naturally to me.
Ach, was für ein süßer Hase.
She probably said "ein", but I'm not so sure she said süße
r. :P (Of course it's hard to say seeing how it was sometime between '05 and '07.)
As for children growing up in a town it's hard to make the difference between a hare and a rabbit. In cartoons they all look the same
Everything about a hare is bigger, especially its ears and legs. But even if they're too far away to see any of that clearly (which they usually are), hares jump around while rabbits run around. You can see which it is even if they're just a tiny dot at the other end of a field. That being said, they can imitate each other. There once was an escaped tame rabbit who tried to join a group of wild hares and it adopted a jumping means of movement in order to fit in. The hares simply jumped over a somewhat wide ditch and left the poor rabbit standing there, unable or too scared to make the jump.
Anyway, it's the
paashaas, not the
paaskonijn. :P
I'm afraid we manage to hijack the thread or at least we are doing our best
I am trying to compose some kind of finishing notes because that discussion was starting to take up too much of my time with a diminishing benefit.
Ach, was für ein süßer Hase.
She probably said "ein", but I'm not so sure she said süßer. :P (Of course it's hard to say seeing how it was sometime between '05 and '07.)
"ein" = (masculine) indefinite article, e.g. "ein süß
er Mann" (der Mann)
"ein" = (neuter) indefinite article, e.g. "ein süß
es Kind" (das Kind)
"eine" = (always feminine) indefinite article, e.g. "eine süß
e Frau" (die Frau)
"süß" being the basic form of the adjective
There is no such combination as "ein süß
e". This is a mismatch between genders.
I'm aware of the German case system, even if I've not internalized it to the extent where it comes without thought. Are you aware of West Low German (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niedersächsisch)? :D Another related concept is in-between language (http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tussentaal) (English (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tussentaal#Tussentaal)). That is, she may not have been speaking a pure variety of either in an informal context. Or perhaps the case system is on some kind of move closer to Dutch and English among younger Germans in general, similar how to I've been taught "ne … pas" for French negation while in practice every French person I've ever met only said pas. Okay, that's a bit out there, because I've met plenty of Germans who certainly speak with the case system in full attire. Still, young women are apparently where language evolution starts. :P
Okay, that's a bit out there, because I've met plenty of Germans who certainly speak with the case system in full attire.
Those who don't are usually immigrants of the first generation, no matter for how many decades they are living in Germany.
The case system is not something a native has to learn at school. He/she grows up with the language in his/her ears. Even an illiterate will use the case system when speaking. Only thing he/she can't is to read and write. Mismatches of cases or genders will simply hurt his/her ears :)
Local dialects are a different story but not related to mismatches of cases or genders.
Same applies for germanised words. E.g: "Ich war auf ein
er Party. Da habe ich ein
en cool
en Drink getrunken."
Local dialects are a different story but not related to mismatches of cases or genders.
Not when local "dialects"* (a language is a dialect with an army and a navy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_an_army_and_navy)) have a different case system. The German term for tussentaal seems to be Missingsch (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missingsch) (actually more detailed in English (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missingsch)). Something both Wikipedia articles kind of gloss over is that Missingsch will be an entire continuum from Low German to High German. Note, however, that in today's society this doesn't say much about the speaker's ability to speak standard German. It just means that your German and my Dutch formal and informal registers differ only lexically, while the formal and informal registers of a dialect or tussentaal/Missingsch speaker may well differ syntactically and phonetically as well.
None of this means that the German girl in question didn't use the proper case, because if nothing else it's simply been too long ago. But I can tell you that among those Germans who cross the border to go shopping (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enschede) because Enschede is closer or more pleasant than Osnabrück, it's mostly visually distinguishable immigrants who speak fully standard German in the relatively informal market context. I suspect most try to speak a form of Missingsch as close to their local dialect as they can manage in order to communicate most effectively with the Dutch speakers of Twents (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twents). There'll also be a fair bit of code-switching (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-switching) with some Dutch and German words thrown in. The younger generation on both sides of the border is increasingly less fluent in plat/Platt, but its influence is still present.
In conclusion, it's not simple at all. It's incredibly, terribly messy, no matter what your experience as a High German speaking city dweller might be. :P
* Saxon is a different language than German. Franconian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franconian_languages) is Dutch, as well as all the German "dialects" bordering the south-east of the Netherlands. Saxon (also deceptively known as Low German) is spoken in the north-east of the Netherlands as well as most of northern Germany. German, as in the language considered standard in the whole of Germany, is from the south of Germany and Austria.
The case system is not something a native has to learn at school. He/she grows up with the language in his/her ears. Even an illiterate will use the case system when speaking. Only thing he/she can't is to read and write. Mismatches of cases or genders will simply hurt his/her ears :)
I'll bet you can think of an occurring change in German that hurts your ears, yet is happening. ;)
The case system is not something a native has to learn at school. He/she grows up with the language in his/her ears. Even an illiterate will use the case system when speaking. Only thing he/she can't is to read and write.
In case of a live dialect, the native grows up with the dialect in his/her ears. My country is highly literate and small enough so that dialect differences should be non-existent, yet occasionally I meet people who are grossly attached to their dialect and whose place of origin can thus be placed. (Actually, I am also grossly attached to my home dialect myself, but this only means some slight phonetic shift; otherwise the dialect of my home area matches the standard language very closely.)
A dialect is not too different from a closely related language. All aspects of the language may differ with a different dialect, vocabulary, phonology, morphology, syntax. I'm sure this includes the German case system, which has only minimal distinctive significance anyway. The only noun inflection suffixes are -(e)s, -er, -e, -en, and -em, which are used so as to keep the grammatical genders apart rather than the cases proper. The case and gender system in Germanic languages are evidently prone to modification even when comparing as close languages as Dutch and German (note the table) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_language#Genders_and_cases I would expect to see similar dialectal variation within German itself, because it covers a huge area in several countries.
In case of a live dialect, the native grows up with the dialect in his/her ears. My country is highly literate and small enough so that dialect differences should be non-existent, yet occasionally I meet people who are grossly attached to their dialect and whose place of origin can thus be placed.
The Netherlands and Belgium are said to have "een ander dialect elke tien minuten" (another dialect every ten minutes). That's a bit of an exaggeration because of dialect continua, but it does seem as if dialects in larger countries like Germany are more spread out. Perhaps it's simply a matter of population density: especially Flanders, Brabant, and Holland have been some of the most densely populated areas of Europe for almost a millennium.
I should add a note about Belgium. The Netherlands had a proper standard language to compete with the likes of French, English, and German since the early 17th century at the latest. However, in Belgium (Spanish/Austrian Netherlands) French was the prestigious standard language while the Dutch dialects were undervalued. As such Belgian-Dutch dialects are still very much alive—much more so than the perishing Netherlandic-Dutch dialects which have been in sharp decline since the 19th century at the latest. They're not dead yet because there were never any French-style discriminatory language policies, but they're hardly thriving either.
I'm pretty sure horses are in some sort of animal top ten.
Men's best friends...
1. dogs
2. horses
3. women
My country is highly literate and small enough so that dialect differences should be non-existent, ...
Dialect differences in Germany can be extreme, to a point where a Saxon won't understand a Bavarian or vice versa :D
Speaking of dialects, best wishes from Bavaria :)
Ois Guade zuam nein Jahr!
BTW,
Frenzie could exercise his Bavarian with the online translater: http://www.respekt-empire.de/Translator/?page=translateEngine
It's not perfect but gives you an idea at least ;)
Men's best friends...
Hmm, did you really mean friends or pets ???
Dialect differences in Germany can be extreme, to a point where a Saxon won't understand a Bavarian or vice versa
Like I said, Saxon, Franconian, and German are three different languages from a linguistic standpoint.
I'm aware that the Bavarian language is extremely odd. In Nürnberg there was supposed to be a Straßenbahn to the Reichsparteitagsgelände, but it didn't seem to be among the trams. I asked some transit employee where to find Straßenbahn 9 (or whatever; that's just what I got from the current website (http://www.museen.nuernberg.de/dokuzentrum/oeffnungszeiten.html)), and he pointed to a bunch of buses while saying something like "over there, of course." How a bus can "of course" be a tram is a secret that eludes me to this day. I'm pretty sure there were no signs about any trams being broken at the tram stop…
How a bus can "of course" be a tram is a secret that eludes me to this day.
You have spoken to an idiot. That's it :)
BTW, here in the south (and in Austria) we also say (die) Tram.
Dialect differences in Germany can be extreme, to a point where a Saxon won't understand a Bavarian or vice versa
Like I said, Saxon, Franconian, and German are three different languages from a linguistic standpoint.
From the linguistic standpoint, it's well understood that dialect and language form a continuum. Linguistically, undisputed languages belong to different families. Within language families, it's mostly politics that decides, not linguistics. A professor at the university brought an example concerning Indo-European languages: Lithuanian and Russian are separated to different groups (Baltic and Slavic respectively) while Icelandic and English which have significantly more grammatical differences belong to the same group (Germanic).
The Scandinavian languages are rather clearly a political phenomenon. Their mutual intelligibility is so fluent that they could be considered dialects. Saxon, Franconian, and (High) German have a common present. Politically they have a less common past, which makes them differ. It's a political choice if you prefer the point of view of the present or of the past. Geolinguistically they have been closely related all along.
Off-topic: It's apt that this thread split off one of the religion threads where I was in the business of defining God. According to one tenet, the relationship of the universe and God is like that of a word and its meaning. Indicative, not causal.
Ersi, you're right about "continuum" but not right about the families - which are trees not clumps. Trees means that you cannot juxtapose two languages for that purpose isolately - because they are the most probably just the current-day states (slices) of themselves taken diachronically - when in time, they intersect in their certain ancestor (if one).
Apart from the "smooth evolution" (which in the exact sense does not happen - ever), there are such processes as divergence (to the trees in the upper paragraph) and convergence. The latter means that UTTERLY different languages may (and do) produce let's call them hybrids. Although the taxonomy takes into account some deemed "core" properties of them to subdivide them into groups etc. For example, while English had a huge impact by those days' French, it still counts as Germanic - as its "grammatical core" wasn't warped by that French (or wasn't significantly).
Ersi, you're right about "continuum" but not right about the families - which are trees not clumps. Trees means that you cannot juxtapose two languages for that purpose isolately - because they are the most probably just the current-day states (slices) of themselves taken diachronically - when in time, they intersect in their certain ancestor (if one).
I studied linguistics at the university and one of the professors was fairly straightforward: "We call them language/family trees but they aren't really. They are more like shrubs or bushes."
Your remarks on divergence and convergence totally apply. Also assimilation should be an instantly understandable term. Other related terms are substratum and superstratum in language contact theory.
You have spoken to an idiot. That's it :)
BTW, here in the south (and in Austria) we also say (die) Tram.
Haha, perhaps. I also had some issues asking for Sprudelwasser at this one restaurant. I wasn't then aware that the term in the south was Tafelwasser, but that hardly seems like a reason to immediately start speaking English to me.
"Ein Sprudelwasser bitte."
"Do you mean table water?"
From the linguistic standpoint, it's well understood that dialect and language form a continuum.
Whether you call it a "language" or a "group of dialects significantly more closely related than others" is fairly irrelevant to the point that you can divide the Germanic dialect continuum into three primary groups. I called e.g. Franconian a language rather than a group of languages and dialects because I was thinking more about 1500 odd years ago, but I should've made that more explicit. From around the 5th century we start to speak of Old Dutch, Old English, and Old German, so with Franconian I'm talking about the language of the Franks who settled these parts around the 3rd century.
Also, some parts of the dialect continuum might be more akin to a "taalbond," an area of linguistic convergence. A clearer example of this phenomenon can be found in south-west Flanders where Dutch has picked up many characteristics of French, and in the French dialects on the other side of the language border which were strongly influenced by Franconian and later Dutch. As such there used to be a "dialect continuum" between French and Dutch, today much less so primarily due to French language policies, yet French and Dutch are grammatically and phonetically so unrelated that this would seem like a pretty silly proposition. But if you have two somewhat related languages that happen to eventually border each other due to the Völkerwanderung, maybe a "fake" dialect continuum would be indistinguishable from the real thing.
Their mutual intelligibility is so fluent that they could be considered dialects. Saxon, Franconian, and (High) German have a common present.
That's what the Nazis said. :P
If you want to see politics truly gone crazy, consider the Germanic "Italian dialects" in the north-east of Italy.
@Josh Thanks.
Other related terms are substratum and superstratum in language contact theory.
Dutch differs primarily from the East Franconian and other Germanic varieties due to the strong Ingvaeonic substratum. I've heard it suggested that the High German consonant swift is actually a Romance language substratum.
The effects of substrata can be very strong. Dutch is Franconian with a strong Ingvaeonic substratum and English is a variety of Saxon with a strong Ingvaeonic substratum, but that probably makes them more similar to each other than to other varieties of Franconian and Saxon. (Admittedly the effect was destroyed a bit thanks to William the Conqueror, but Dutch is still the language most closely related to English by various measures.)
On a semi-related note, on a Dutch linguistic site I saw a South-African lamenting that if the Dutch hadn't disavowed Afrikaans on account of apartheid, Dutch could now be a strong medium-large international language with close to 50 million speakers instead of a medium-small language with 23-25 million speakers. Nevertheless, Dutch is an official language in the Union of South American Nations, and English is not. Suck on that, English. :P
I also had some issues asking for Sprudelwasser at this one restaurant. I wasn't then aware that the term in the south was Tafelwasser, but that hardly seems like a reason to immediately start speaking English to me.
Sprudelwasser means Sodawasser (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Syfon.szklany.woda.sodowa.jpg).
Tafelwasser means potable water enriched with some ingredients.
Mineralwasser means mineral water.
In this case I have some understanding for the waiter/waitress. Since he/she has noticed that you aren't a native he/she wonted to make sure, you get the right drink. Hope, you got it at last :D
I don't really care as long as it's water and it's free of pathogens. :P
(I suppose I care in some places. In Luxembourg and some places in Germany the tap water easily equals the best mineral water; in a Dutch expert taste test apparently Rotterdam tap water beat all other water including bottled mineral water. But on the other hand, in France, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan all the tap water tastes odd to me. I don't know what they do with it.)
I studied linguistics at the university and one of the professors was fairly straightforward: "We call them language/family trees but they aren't really. They are more like shrubs or bushes."
Did your professor study math? The tree is a topological type of a graph.
Other related terms are substratum and superstratum in language contact theory.
Yes, they are related terms but not terms expressing things on the same level.
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2F9no1k4p.png&hash=4bccd7c5e405e4719ff2b20301d90f4c" rel="cached" data-hash="4bccd7c5e405e4719ff2b20301d90f4c" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://i.imgur.com/9no1k4p.png)
Dutch is still the language most closely related to English by various measures.
What I have heard (actually read in encyclopedias), it's Frisian that is most closely related to English. But this is irrelevant in several ways. The languages in that corner of the continent are necessarily closely related. Moreover, English is a lingua franca, i.e. a global communication tool pliable hither and thither rather than a fixed symbol system, a distinctive marker of (self-)identity for a specific group/location. The latter is how I prefer to define (proper/real/true) language. Lingua franca is related to everything and everybody, nothing special about it.
These two points...
Their mutual intelligibility is so fluent that they could be considered dialects. Saxon, Franconian, and (High) German have a common present.
That's what the Nazis said. :P
I saw a South-African lamenting that if the Dutch hadn't disavowed Afrikaans on account of apartheid
...nicely illustrate how the distinction between dialect and language is political rather than linguistic. Science is politically neutral, even though it can be used politically, and often is.
By the way, my two sentences, as you quoted them, did not belong together. "Their mutual intelligibility is so fluent that they could be considered dialects" referred to the Scandinavian languages. With "Saxon, Franconian, and (High) German" I began next thought that I probably should have marked by beginning a separate paragraph.
I studied linguistics at the university and one of the professors was fairly straightforward: "We call them language/family trees but they aren't really. They are more like shrubs or bushes."
Did your professor study math? The tree is a topological type of a graph.
He studied literature, so he saw in the term "language tree" a poetic metaphor rather than a math concept.
Other related terms are substratum and superstratum in language contact theory.
Yes, they are related terms but not terms expressing things on the same level.
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2F9no1k4p.png&hash=4bccd7c5e405e4719ff2b20301d90f4c" rel="cached" data-hash="4bccd7c5e405e4719ff2b20301d90f4c" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://i.imgur.com/9no1k4p.png)
This is basic in the structuralist principle of analysis to provide a multidimensional view of what we are talking about.
Moreover, English is a lingua franca...
This franca falls into a set of francas: Franca Americana, Franca Europeana, etc.;)
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2F9no1k4p.png&hash=4bccd7c5e405e4719ff2b20301d90f4c" rel="cached" data-hash="4bccd7c5e405e4719ff2b20301d90f4c" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://i.imgur.com/9no1k4p.png)
What I have heard (actually read in encyclopedias), it's Frisian that is most closely related to English.
It's more closely related to the language of their Saxon neighbors who moved across the North Sea, but the North Sea trade took place primarily between Holland, Zeeland, and Flanders on this side and England on the other. It has even been suggested that the most famous old Dutch literary phrase (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebban_olla_vogala) is actually Old English rather than Old Flemish, which is rather unlikely for extralingual reasons, but it does illustrate how the distinction between Old Dutch and Old English can be far from obvious after several centuries of North Sea trade. At the same time, Frisian has been heavily influenced by Dutch after losing significantly in worldly power and status especially since West-Frisia was annexed by Holland in 1297. However, there are certainly dialects of English which may be significantly more similar to Frisian; I understand Northumbrian is one of them. Incidentally, I'm from West-Frisia. What's spoken there are Hollandic dialects with a Frisian substrate.
Some similarities between Frisian and English are extremely obvious, for instance:
Dutch: kaas
German: Käse
Frisian: tsjiis
English: cheese
That brings to mind the Frisian equivalent of schild en vriend (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_shibboleths#Dutch.E2.80.93French): "Bûter, brea en griene tsiis" (Butter, bread, and green cheese. See here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_shibboleths#Frisian.E2.80.93Dutch).)
Anyway, I can't seem to find the research. It was published no more than two or three years ago. I think the comparison focused on Dutch, German, and the Scandinavian languages, but I'm not completely sure.
...nicely illustrate how the distinction between dialect and language is political rather than linguistic. Science is politically neutral, even though it can be used politically, and often is.
It was also political prior to then to call it
Nederlands in spite of the fact that Afrikaans is more of a creole. However, the political decision shaped the language in the sense that it might've moved closer to standardized Dutch again if relations had remained well. I don't know if you've heard of Schneider's dynamic model (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schneider's_dynamic_model)? The point in time where they decided to call it Afrikaans instead of Dutch in many ways concludes phase 4.
Nevertheless, Dutch is an official language in the Union of South American Nations
What is this? A typo?
What is this? A typo?
Hardly (http://www.unasursg.org/inicio/documentos/unasur/tratado-constitutivo). Surinamese Dutch is one of the four major varieties of Dutch: Netherlandic Dutch, Belgian Dutch, Caribbean Dutch, and Surinamese Dutch. Although I seem to have been slightly mistaken about the status of English:
The official languages of the Union of South American Nations shall be Spanish, English, Portuguese and Dutch.
However, it might be that English is not actually an official language in any of the individual member states. I'll have to check up on that.
Interesting. I've never heard about that.
In Guiana they speak English.
In Guiana they speak English.
Good point. Guyana is probably why English is an official language too.
I would expect the German case system to be greatly simplified if not to disappear all together, like has happened to other Germanic languages.
Yes, me too.
I would expect the German case system to be greatly simplified if not to disappear all together, like has happened to other Germanic languages.
Yes, me too.
Grrrr :o
Haha, I'm sorry. It's just something that seems to be a global rule, observed in the evolution of languages all around the world. But there's no need to worry; there's a hypothesis that languages will start the whole process all over again once they reach the "end."
Agreed. I used the Perl motto to describe this in an earlier posting (http://my.opera.com/community/forums/findpost.pl?id=3061572).
I found it amusing having been involved in the Educational field for years when an English teacher in Glasgow bemoaned to me once that no matter how much time he spent on the language as soon as the pupils were out at 3.30pm they just reverted back to their working class Glaswegian lingo.
I think this one post more than any condenses the future of English (or any other language or dialect).
Languages change constantly, and it is primary the children who change it. The adults can add a nifty phrase here and there, or analyse the language to make up rules that governs it, but the dramatic or subtle language shifts that garners from one generation from the next are largely caused by the new custodians, children and young adults.
<a href="http://my.opera.com/community/forums/findpost.pl?id=2510212">I have appropriated the Perl virtues[/url], laziness, impatience, and hubris, as the drivers of natural languages as well. Laziness is a major cause of sound shifts, the new sounds are less energy consuming than the old ones, it is easier to say dis than this. Impatience efficiently shortens language, while hubris is the drive to do better, resulting in the construction of more elaborate linguistic structures. The impatience-hubris engine is powerful and social, you deemphasise what unimportant to you and the listener, and emphasise what is important. As the culture changes so does the language, as the language changes so does the culture.
The amount of creativity stirred into the language is staggering. We spend an immense effort in creating new words and phrases or reappropriating old ones, and we take joy from that. Just look at any medium-length thread on D&D and you will find this in action. It is even more satisfying when others take up on our creations, but most are one-use, or short-use that fads away.
Seen from the language more important than the constant creations is how and from whom we monkey our words. We pattern all our speech on others. Early on that would be the parents and the background chatter, later our peers, especially those we would like to emulate, the teachers, the writers, the television, the future employers and authority figures, the Internet. We are capable not only of learning one or more languages, but keep track of the status of those speaking it and how they speak it.
The Glaswegian children can speak one variant at school and another one after school. They will even adjust to an individual speaker or group and what they want to achieve. Later on in life they will discard some part of their language as childish, other parts as low-status, and other parts as too difficult for their new peer groups. What parts they have discarded or discounted by the time they become parents themselves determine how the language evolves.
When school's over for good, will they speak Glaswegian or RP or a mix? Glaswegian like Singlish or Nigerian Pidgin have traditionally been low-status with "proper" English the high-status language. This quest for status has driven British English pronunciation to exaggerate high-status features, as you can see by comparing it with high-status English a couple centuries back. On the opposing side language is also part of identify. By speaking Glaswegian you announce to the world that you come from Glasgow or aspire to come from Glasgow. Then comes television as the great leveller. Glaswegian is one of the British dialects that do best, most British languages and dialects have died out or become greatly reduced, but it, like the other survivors, is becoming more standardised and less unique.
That link in turn is relevant to the case system. The -s at the end of nouns denoting ownership is straightforward Germanic genitive, a remnant from the case system that seems to have no inclination to go away anywhere, but the English added a spurious apostrophe to it, "the father's son" or "the son's father" instead of the more sensible "the fathers son" and "the sons father". What is more that useless apostrophe seems to be spreading to other languages, including German.
Wenn jemand bei seines Vaters Bruders Weibe schläft, ...
'If someone sleeps with his father's brother's wife,...'
That reminds me of another property of English, <a href="http://my.opera.com/community/forums/findpost.pl?id=2449461">excessive use of apostrophes[/url]. Apostrophes, remember, is primarily used for contraction in English. The English cognate of Vaters (pronounced "fater" for those who don't know German) is father's and brother's is of Bruders. So where does this strange apostrophe in 's come from? It seems that a phenomenon called <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_genitive">his genitive[/url] made grammarians think that -(e)s was a contraction.
That in turn caused the endless confusion of its and it's, since by the seeming genitive rule its should be it's, but it's not. By the gods of usability the apostrophe should be among the first against the wall when English 2.0 comes. Its a difference that doesnt make a difference. Unfortunately the gods dont seem to hear my vocative.
On the contrary it seeps into other language. The Norwegian father and brother is far and bror (an archaic form is fader and broder so again the difference isn't too large), and from that the genitive fars and brors is formed. Undue influence from English makes some write far's or bror's instead, or more commonly form it with names, Vinnie's kebab style. German has its case system mostly intact, but I wouldn't be surprised if the same phenomenon happens in German.
All languages seem to follow the path of the Perl language: <a href="http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?LazinessImpatienceHubris">laziness, impatience, and hubris[/url]. Laziness and impatience simplifies the language, and hubris, or ornamentation, makes it more complex.
In The Blank Slate, Stephen Pinker, following others, posits that knowledge grows at least in part along lines of latitude because similar latitudes support important technologies, the growth of agriculture and animal husbandry being two.
In the gossip category, I heard on the radio that he just got an honorary doctorate at the <a href="http://uit.no/castl/pinker/">University of Tromsø[/url].
Does only a small amount of Translators or Traders developed a little knowledge of the other language(s), and/or was there also some influence. And if, to what degree and in what context? As it seem there are just few or little adoptions from arabic languages to western europe ones, even if there must have been much interaction before and during the middle-ages.
Traders alone don't change language. You don't even need language to trade, trade gestures have been sufficient to show intent and handle haggling. Even today you when you get to places where you are unable to speak the language, you can be sure that this little detail won't prevent people from trying to make a sale. But trade gives incentive for other cultural contact. Spain and Spanish is heavily influenced by Arabic culture and language, and to some extent it goes further up Europe. A Buddha statuette was found <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helgö">in Sweden[/url] from the 6th century, before Islam, and just a few days ago, while I was there, they found <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7330540.stm">yet another Arab hoard[/url].
What seems clear about numeration is that it comes as needed. Where it isn't needed, as with the group mentioned by Oakdale, it doesn't come at all. My early understanding about the Aborigines of Australia is that they had no conception of linear time. Is that even imaginable in the development of Western thinking?
There's nothing hardwired about 'three.' Grammar may be wired, but words? Where some words seem to possess that quality, I think other explanations suffice.
No, there is nothing hardwired about the word three, but I wonder what it meant before it was reused to refer to the pure abstraction three. What was the original threesome? In English it would be tempting to think of tree, even more so in Norwegian where the "th" sound has been simplified into "t" so there is no difference between three and tree (the word for both is tre), but this is a false cognate. Colours by comparison are pretty simple, almost all words originally denoted something having that particular color. What had threeness, fourness, fiveity?
You don't need a word to have a concept, but you need a concept to have a word. <a href="http://my.opera.com/community/forums/findpost.pl?id=2233459">My claim[/url] is that not only humans but many other animals have the concept of three, and these animals have no way of expressing it in words.
If all words have a concrete, physical, meaning that if you trace them far enough back, you can end up with a fairly minimal vocabulary. <a href="http://my.opera.com/community/forums/findpost.pl?id=2472388">Guy Deutscher[/url] speculated that a language based on little more than pointing and a few fundamentals like the body would be sufficient.
Laziness and impatience simplifies the language, and hubris, or ornamentation, makes it more complex.
Not just hubris, but also actual need of communication demands a certain minimal level of relevant distinctions. Language is for conveying a message after all. If laziness and impatience were everything, then language would be reduced to one single sound which is incapable of conveying anything. But this is not the case. Where some distinctions are levelled due to laziness or haste, other distinctions crop up elsewhere in the word/sentence to compensate, and this principle of serving a purpose is as relevant as the principle of minimal effort. The conjunction of these principles produces a tender level of efficiency that is constantly changing due to the tendency of less effort on one hand and due to inevitable need to convey relevant messages about the ever-changing world on the other.
Not just hubris, but also actual need of communication demands a certain minimal level of relevant distinctions. Language is for conveying a message after all.
I have become increasingly convinced that language was never developed as a tool for conveying precise messages. Of course language is a very versatile means of communication, but it is not something an engineer would come up with. He would make something closer to a computer language instead. Natural languages go way beyond that.
One case is the cliché, writers and readers abhor them, but from a functional communication perspective they are great. When something is working well, why not repeat it, again and again and again? You know them, the audience know them, no scope for confusion. Instead we spend considerable effort coming up with synonyms and alternative phrasing, greatly increasing the risk of error.
The answer to this is simple - everybody needs language, but hardly anyone is engineer. People come up with different terms for the same thing, and this must be allowed. A computer language may be precise according to your definition, but it would also be too limited, whereas natural languages handle with ease all the imaginable and even unimaginable complexities of real life. So, endless ways of expressing the same thing are not redundant after all, but rather necessary and inevitable.
Versatility is not the argument why language is over-engineered for the simple task of getting a message across. Language is as much concerned with style and flair, how we speak, as with telling things, what we speak about. Merely telling things is easy and and could use a much simpler system than natural languages.
For instance: I neglected to mention that I followed your link to Guy Deutscher's book's ad; and that -even if I disagreed with every "theoretical" point he makes (I've not read it, yet)- I'd recommend it to everyone, for its wit and charm and the wealth of "language experience" and, yes, oddities and freaks as well as commonplace and "regular" examples...interesting, all. He gives enough there to make one wish it were umpty-times as long; a mere 368 pages would only whet my appetite for more of the same.
Yes, I've taken a lot from The Unfolding of Language in this thread, including the thread title itself. Language is deeply fascinating, and closely related to who we are and what we think and how we share, but still most linguists manage to turn the field barren. You would have thought that people that devote their lives to the study of languages should have acquired the ability to write somewhere along the way.
Much of the book is fairly uncontroversial, he largely keeps away from the most heavily fought battles among linguists, though he builds up to some speculation on early language, but still well after it has become a language in most modern senses. There are many speculations on how language itself came to be.
I believe that language must have been quite developed before leaving safe home, as exploration requires planning, courage and confidence, which needs to be convinsingly communicated and understood.
The idea that language came to be to serve practical problem solving and communication needs is not popular these days. For that purpose language seems vastly overengineered. Other species have similar needs and have gotten away with much simpler and much cheaper systems. On the other hand having language skills has improved our problem solving skills immensely.
Another theory is that language was sexually selected, that language is our peacock's tail. Geoffrey Miller (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Miller_(evolutionary_psychologist)) is arguing this case. The earnest sweet-talker gets the child, and people get in power through language skills. It is a persuasive case, though I have a hard time believing that grammarians get laid more often than others.
Deutscher has written a defence of clichés (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/18/opinion/18deutscher.html?_r=0), and I find it interesting that they need defending. If language were purely utilitarian, clichés would be considered a good, they express ideas more parsimoniously than novel expressions.
Anyway, I'd say language is a feminine invention.
I guess you by that refer to the gossip theory, that language isn't just an entertainment device (http://www.cogsci.ecs.soton.ac.uk/cgi/psyc/newpsy?12.008), but a tool to get power and influence over your fellow man and particularly your fellow woman. The ensuing mental arms race would caused a rapid growth in language skills. This is the more popular theory, or so I have been told.
The idea that language came to be to serve practical problem solving and communication needs is not popular these days. For that purpose language seems vastly overengineered.
Clearly, this looks this way only when your thinking is overly engineerial itself. Problem-solving is not practical in the mechanistic sense. In the mechanistic sense it's only practical to let things be. As some wise dude said: Work pays off on payday, laziness pays off now.
Problem-solving, when understood correctly, is entirely sufficient prerequisite for language. The correct understanding of problem-solving does not entail just any actual problem here and now, but all possible and thinkable problems any time anywhere. When problem-solving is understood this way, and it's also understood that this is what language is supposed to cover, the nature of language also becomes clear.
Computer languages are too limited for problem-solving understood as I described. When new bigger problems arise or a new angle to computational problem-solving is discovered, hackers usually create a new language to deal with it, whereas natural languages are immediately usable or readily extensible to handle any new situation.
We can device, have deviced, much simpler languages that are more than sufficient for any form of problem-solving. However they never last long. Because they are insufficient to solve problems? No, even the simplest language can be extended as needed. They never last because they are boring.
Somehow the imperative "don't be boring" beats "let me get this point across" in the human mind. This is the hubris speaking. There is no functional reason why boring should be bad, for precision or problem solving boring is good, but language is more than mere functionality. It expresses who we are, or who we want to be.
Somehow the imperative "don't be boring" beats "let me get this point across" in the human mind. This is the hubris speaking.
Yeah, I see your point now. See how much repetition it took. And still, "don't be boring" can be seen from problem-solving point of view also: When there's nothing to solve, we conjure up problems just for fun. I personally am a broadly problem-solving person. Everything is a problem, and I don't mean it in a bad way. Solving problems is my style of entertainment.
[Language] expresses who we are, or who we want to be.
Right. I said that before.
I know I'm boring.
We can device, have deviced...
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2F9no1k4p.png&hash=4bccd7c5e405e4719ff2b20301d90f4c" rel="cached" data-hash="4bccd7c5e405e4719ff2b20301d90f4c" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://i.imgur.com/9no1k4p.png)
The verb is "to devise".
Some new words from across the world.
Words of the Year from Around the World. Can You Say
Gubbploga? (http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2014/01/23/word_of_the_year_popular_words_this_past_year_from_countries_around_the.html) [sure I can]
You've heard about selfie, science, and because. But we aren't the only ones who like to try to capture the spirit of the year in a word. Here are some Words of the Year chosen by 13 other countries.
1. SAKTE-TV, NORWAY
The Language Council in Norway chose sakte-tv (slow-TV), reflecting the popularity of shows like "National Wood Fire Night," a four-hour discussion of firewood followed by an eight-hour broadcast of a crackling fire. Some of the good competitors were rekkeviddeangst (range anxiety)—the fear that the battery of your electric car will run out before you can get to a charging station—and revelyd (fox sound) because, of course, Ylvis.
2. GUBBPLOGA, SWEDEN
The Swedish Language Council takes an egalitarian, Swedish approach to the word of the year, releasing a list of the year's new Swedish words without declaring a winner. I like the sound of gubbploga (old man plowing), which refers to criticism of snow plowing priorities that put male-dominated workplace routes over bus and bike lanes and schools. Another good one was nagelprotest (nail protest) for the practice of painting your nails in the name of a cause—for instance, getting a rainbow manicure as a statement against Russian anti-gay laws.
3. UNDSKYLD, DENMARK
A member of the Danish Language Council, along with the hosts of the "Language Laboratory" radio show, chose undskyld (sorry) as Word of the Year, making specific reference to the apology a politician had to make after his luxury travel expenses were revealed. It won out over some familiar choices like twerk, selfie, and lårhul (thigh gap), but also gastroseksuel (gastrosexual, for food lovers) and kønskrans ("gender wreath"), a proposed substitute for jomfruhinde (hymen, or "virgin barrier").
4. GROKO, GERMANY
GroKo is short for [...]
The answer to this is simple - everybody needs language, but hardly anyone is engineer. People come up with different terms for the same thing, and this must be allowed. A computer language may be precise according to your definition, but it would also be too limited, whereas natural languages handle with ease all the imaginable and even unimaginable complexities of real life. So, endless ways of expressing the same thing are not redundant after all, but rather necessary and inevitable.
Speaking of language and engineers, I am told that engineers the world over, in a hundred languages, all describe a very small distance using the same phrase. Unfortunately it is not used in polite conversation so I can't tell you what it is.
Ersi, if something is covered by a language, then it OBVIOUSLY has been IMAGINED by the natives who formed the lexicon. There CAN'T be WORDS for anything that hasn't been imagined at least once; if "a word" has no concept which caused its birth, it does not exist, nor can it exist in principle. Language - human language - does not handle, never has, anything that hadn't first come up as a thought - or perception. Generally, it is called idea.
Josh, language and mind are coexistent, coeval, and coextensive. They are perfect analogies of each other. Language is imagination, by analogy.
Language is a system.
Linked, not embedded (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bhldlJ0Aus).
Language is a system.
Language is a system on one hand, but the system covers everything perceived plus everything conceivable. Thus language is also all-pervasive continuum. Just like the mind: structured on one hand, all-pervasive and omnipresent on the other.
Linked, not embedded (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bhldlJ0Aus).
I have that cool little tool on Linux, so I can check the titles and captions of Youtube videos without having to visit the site with a webbrowser. The tool also lists available download formats, if the video turns out to be something interesting.
Nice try, Jax. Fair attempt.
Not bad. Anyway, thanks to new technology (https://dndsanctuary.eu/index.php?topic=10.msg7859#msg7859), here is to embedded, not linked.
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bhldlJ0Aus[/video]
Speaking of language and engineers, I am told that engineers the world over, in a hundred languages, all describe a very small distance using the same phrase. Unfortunately it is not used in polite conversation so I can't tell you what it is.
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Ffun.drno.de%2Fpics%2Fenglish%2Feureka.jpg&hash=2e80d72a8fc1bb24b965b126c8551663" rel="cached" data-hash="2e80d72a8fc1bb24b965b126c8551663" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://fun.drno.de/pics/english/eureka.jpg)
Found some online Latin dictionaries showing the full declension:
- sorta aggregator: http://www.lexilogos.com/english/latin_dictionary.htm
- Victionarium (http://la.wiktionary.org/wiki/Victionarium)
- http://www.dizionario-latino.com/dizionario-latino-flessione.php
in an unknown language
[abbr=It was Italian.]:)[/abbr]
For an especial consideration of
some posters here:
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.bbcimg.co.uk%2Fmedia%2Fimages%2F73223000%2Fjpg%2F_73223950_1656370_10152173895342936_1816422736_n.jpg&hash=6d6ed5aff5d0f702aafc238f538f4f4c" rel="cached" data-hash="6d6ed5aff5d0f702aafc238f538f4f4c" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/73223000/jpg/_73223950_1656370_10152173895342936_1816422736_n.jpg)Drivers going past Sonning Bridge, near Reading, have expressed annoyance at a closed road sign which uses an incorrect apostrophe.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-26351494
:)
And yet the sign would've been just fine had it read
Road closed
due to
structural instability
Yah, avoiding the difficulties is the best solution, huh?
Given the amount of wet weather in the British islands, you would have thought that they would have some grammatical emergency service to handle situations like these.
Yah, avoiding the difficulties is the best solution, huh?
On signs I think it also makes for a better transfer of information.
Englishmen! Why are your grandfathers' fathers so great? Are they?
I like this one.
(https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSCXkSgt5pHbJWr2cAjxz_QggUBaYOkHVVA4y5jRd9mpfes5R2K)
For an especial consideration of ***abbr=SmileyFaze & Belfrager in particular]some posters here[/abbr***: (https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.bbcimg.co.uk%2Fmedia%2Fimages%2F73223000%2Fjpg%2F_73223950_1656370_10152173895342936_1816422736_n.jpg&hash=6d6ed5aff5d0f702aafc238f538f4f4c" rel="cached" data-hash="6d6ed5aff5d0f702aafc238f538f4f4c" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/73223000/jpg/_73223950_1656370_10152173895342936_1816422736_n.jpg)Drivers going past Sonning Bridge, near Reading, have expressed annoyance at a closed road sign which uses an incorrect apostrophe.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-26351494
:)
O'k
Always the hypocrite. I've seen far worse from you. Regularly... And if you have something to say to Smiley and Belfrager don't be such a coward. Both are likely to respond with better grammar than anything you've posted here. (https://dndsanctuary.eu/index.php?topic=209.0) :left:
[place]Here should have been a single quote.[/place]
"here."?
In light of this post (https://dndsanctuary.eu/index.php?topic=109.msg15884#msg15884), I wish to draw attention to some helpful tools.
I already linked to phpSyntaxTree (http://ironcreek.net/phpsyntaxtree/), which allows you to easily draw diagrams using a syntax like this:
[S [NP This graphic][VP [V summarizes][NP [N data][that-clause [Subord that] [VP [V refutes] [NP a related myth[that-clause [Subord that] [NP publications now supporting the scientific consensus [that-clause [Subord that] [NP the world][VP is warming due to increased carbon dioxide]]] [VP were predicting in the 1970s [that-clause that the world would cool.]]]]]]]]]
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fpolymathicmonkey.smugmug.com%2Fphotos%2Fi-TFL2xcM%2F0%2FO%2Fi-TFL2xcM.png&hash=cec4aef876e4973bf34fbceb15e7b2c1" rel="cached" data-hash="cec4aef876e4973bf34fbceb15e7b2c1" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://polymathicmonkey.smugmug.com/photos/i-TFL2xcM/0/O/i-TFL2xcM.png) (http://polymathicmonkey.smugmug.com/photos/i-TFL2xcM/0/O/i-TFL2xcM.png)
You might be able to jump start your trees using the <a href="http://nlp.stanford.edu:8080/parser/">Stanford parser[/url] or the <a href="http://tomato.banatao.berkeley.edu:8080/parser/parser.html">Berkeley parser[/url]. However, you'll have to perform a quick conversion of parentheses to square brackets first.
I haven't looked at it in much detail, but the Stanford parser's parse of the sentence above appears to be essentially correct:
[ROOT
[S
[NP [DT This] [NN graphic]]
[VP [VBZ summarizes]
[NP
[NP [NNS data]]
[SBAR
[WHNP [WDT that]]
[S
[VP [VBZ refutes]
[NP [DT a] [JJ related] [NN myth]]
[SBAR [IN that]
[S
[NP
[NP [NNS publications]]
[VP
[ADVP [RB now]]
[VBG supporting]
[NP
[NP [DT the] [JJ scientific] [NN consensus]]
[SBAR [IN that]
[S
[NP [DT the] [NN world]]
[VP [VBZ is]
[VP [VBG warming]
[ADJP [JJ due]
[PP [TO to]
[NP [VBN increased] [NN carbon] [NN dioxide]]]]]]]]]]]
[VP [VBD were]
[VP [VBG predicting]
[PP [IN in]
[NP [DT the] [NNS 1970s]]]
[SBAR [IN that]
[S
[NP [DT the] [NN world]]
[VP [MD would]
[VP [VB cool]]]]]]]]]]]]]]
[. .]]]
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fpolymathicmonkey.smugmug.com%2Fphotos%2Fi-K3fgfX5%2F0%2FO%2Fi-K3fgfX5.png&hash=168afeb4db46017df2b8ad214ff72255" rel="cached" data-hash="168afeb4db46017df2b8ad214ff72255" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://polymathicmonkey.smugmug.com/photos/i-K3fgfX5/0/O/i-K3fgfX5.png) (http://polymathicmonkey.smugmug.com/photos/i-K3fgfX5/0/O/i-K3fgfX5.png).
Hell!
It was much easier doing on paper. And I didn't parse English sentences that way actually. Maybe I'd be more happy with block-schemes? I don't know.
When I "parse" - or worse;) - it's easier for me to do that just mentally - in my mind. I'm not sure I'd be able to show such parsing properly, though;) (Although I've been trying so far using language for the purpose. Yes, Ersi, the English language is very nice for that too!:P)
Okay, it allows you to easily draw
electronic diagrams. Ones that — by pasting the source — you can easily adapt to your own alternative parses.
Just think of this example:
[S
[NP [PRP I]]
[VP [VBD ordered]
[NP
[NP [DT a] [NN pizza]]
[PP [IN with]
[NP [NNS anchovies]]]]]
]
[S
[NP [PRP I]]
[VP [VBD ordered]
[NP
[NP [DT a] [NN pizza]]]
[PP [IN with]
[NP [NNS anchovies]]]]
]
Edit: fixed it up so it can be pasted straight into the generator.
All that looks more like programming writings -- at which I've always been not good. (Once I even attempted to invent my own easy language - with the commands simply put by a single letter, followed by the command's value.:))
There might be something out there to generate your block schemes as opposed to trees. Do you have any examples?
Here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_syntax_tree#External_links) are some more links about (generating) syntax trees and here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentence_diagram) are some alternative sentence diagramming systems.
I'm glad I checked, because now I learned about http://yohasebe.com/rsyntaxtree/ and http://www.ling.upenn.edu/advice/latex/qtree/, both of which might come in useful.
What is the verb for "penitence"? "Penis"????
Repent.
"Repent" who?
What do you mean, "who"? One would repent an action, not a person.
What do you mean, "who"?
You said "Repent.".
WHO should do?:)
Repent.
I don't have to.
I pented once and got it right the first time,
I pented once and got it right the first time,
:up:
Repent.
I don't have to.
I pented once and got it right the first time,
The man that only grets once. He never regrets.
Way to go, Australian.
The man that only grets once. He never regrets.
Repeat, please.
:rolleyes:
Belfrager only peats. Get with the program. ;)
The internet is loaded with misspellings and other gaffes. How about a radar that can spot
angels at a certain
hight?
The Wurzburg Radar: satellite dishes had a range of around 30 klm. And were extremely accurate for measuring angels for the hight of incoming aircraft.
Hush, Josh. :lol:
The internet is loaded with misspellings and other gaffes. How about a radar that can spot angels at a certain hight?
The Wurzburg Radar: satellite dishes had a range of around 30 klm. And were extremely accurate for measuring angels for the hight of incoming aircraft.
Non Angeli sunt, sed angli.
Now I get it! I suppose angels ARE measured in kilolumens.:P
https://dndsanctuary.eu/index.php?topic=245.msg17540#msg17540
What does - in the second line - "head full of zombie" mean?
I don't speak Aussie, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and suggest it refers to Mary J. :sherlock:
Well, "according" to their clip, it was "head" referring to the inners of their "fried-out combie", huh?;)
Not exactly grammatical, but then neither was the last page or two.
Shakespeare in the original pronunciation sounds a bit like a cross between a Scottish and an American accent (and not at all like RP). Of course, I've always read that American English is a lot closer to Shakespeare's English, but it's pretty cool to hear the reconstruction.
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s[/video]
So, they undug some ancient cassettes or what?:rolleyes:
We have a pretty good idea of what Middle Dutch and Middle English sounded like. But for some reason we never pay much attention to the pronunciation of Early Modern X, because the whole Modern aspect means it's close enough to today that we don't have to bother too much with the correct pronunciation.
I'd imagine something similar applies to Middle Russian?
Early Modern X
???
I'd imagine something similar applies to Middle Russian?
Yeah, we're muttering in the middle.
:D
Early Modern X
???
Early Modern Dutch, Early Modern English, Early Modern French, Early Modern High German, and so forth.
Where the emigrant is from plays a big part.
"To play a part" means "to act in a role".
The term "emigrant" refers to those who, having left their motherland (often unwillingly/reluctantly), have not broken their (often spiritual) connection to the place they've come from. Usually the term is used referring to particular exodi: Russians from Soviet Russia, German citizens from Nazi Germany, etc. Often such people do not even haste to acquire the citizenship of the host country.
"To play a part" has been metaphorically used meaning "to participate in something" for so long that it is a stretch to call its current usage metaphorical. This is not a usage that is incorrect, like how people misuse begging the question. The oldest quotation in the OED dates back to 1596: Raigne of Edward III sig. A4v, "Bearest thou a part in this conspiracy?"
Shakespeare in the original pronunciation sounds a bit like a cross between a Scottish and an American accent (and not at all like RP). Of course, I've always read that American English is a lot closer to Shakespeare's English, but it's pretty cool to hear the reconstruction.
Kind of kool. So instead of 'aving a speak like a pirate day, we should have a speak like a Shakespearian?
I'll make sure to carry my sword.
(https://dndsanctuary.eu/imagecache.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.therpf.com%2Fattachments%2Ff9%2Fromeo-juliet-guns-swords-daggers-ect-benvolio2.jpg-38724d1290044502&hash=e9b3a62d14b1f588fc616ffde7c70c29" rel="cached" data-hash="e9b3a62d14b1f588fc616ffde7c70c29" data-warn="External image, click here to view original" data-url="http://www.therpf.com/attachments/f9/romeo-juliet-guns-swords-daggers-ect-benvolio2.jpg-38724d1290044502)
(Explanation for the uninitiated (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117509/))
Came across a word, "yesteryear".
Just keep in mind that though the word was originally modelled upon yesterday, in modern English it doesn't usually mean "last year" (though it can, and this sense of the word may be growing more common), rather referring to the recent years.
I could see that from the context, thanks.:cool:
yesterday
The Dutch (
gisteren/gister) and German (
gestern) cognates are independent, without a day attached. There's also
eergister(en), something like yore-yester: the day before yesterday.
You can say things like:
gistermorgen (yesterday morning)
gistermiddag (yesterday afternoon)
gisteravond (yesterday evening/night)
but not
gisterdag or
gisterjaar (except in poetry, one imagines).
Norwegian and Czech are structurally similar to each other in having about the same concepts, but the words are each unique, there isn't much of a pattern
Norwegian / Czech / English
forgårs / předevčírem /day before yesterday
i går / včera / yesterday
i morgen / zítra / tomorrow
overimorgen / pozítří / day after tomorrow
forifjor / předloni / year before last year
i fjor / loni / last year
No particular phrase for next year (neste år, příští rok) or the year after.
No particular phrase for next year (neste år, příští rok) or the year after.
Because they've thought they were doomed.:lol:
Looks like Slavic words are similar. In Russian we have "вчера" and "завтра" for "yesterday" and "tomorrow". The former seems to derive from "вечер" ("evening/night"), the latter - from "утро" ("morning"); looks like the English "tomorrow" originated a similar way.
Good morrow to you all, good sirs.
Good terday to you too.
... No terday????
lose - /lu:z/ -- verb: not to win, or cease to have something
loose - /lu:s/ -- adjective: not tight, lax
25 Words That Are Their Own Opposites
Here’s an ambiguous sentence for you: “Because of the agency’s oversight, the corporation’s behavior was sanctioned.” Does that mean, 'Because the agency oversaw the company’s behavior, they imposed a penalty for some transgression' or does it mean, 'Because the agency was inattentive, they overlooked the misbehavior and gave it their approval by default'? We’ve stumbled into the looking-glass world of “contronyms”—words that are their own antonyms.
Merriam-Webster dictionary adds 'they' as nonbinary pronounMerriam-Webster wrote a pre-emptive clapback on its blog. “We will note that ‘they’ has been in consistent use as a singular pronoun since the late 1300s; that the development of singular ‘they’ mirrors the development of the singular ‘you’ from the plural ‘you’, yet we don’t complain that singular ‘you’ is ungrammatical; and that regardless of what detractors say, nearly everyone uses the singular ‘they’ in casual conversation and often in formal writing.”
[...]
Branstetter [a media relations manager for the National Center for Transgender Equality] offers this example for anyone who might be confused: “If you are at a restaurant and you found a stranger’s phone at a table, you wouldn’t say, I found his or her phone. You would say, ‘I found their phone.’”
Actually, when you find a completely strange phone, you are not finding his/her/their phone, but
a phone.
Actually, when you find a completely strange phone, you are not finding his/her/their phone, but a phone.
Agreed, that's at the very least an odd example, if not an outright usage error. You can only say that you found
someone's phone.
Their requires a specific referent, even if it can be as vague as: "That person whom I just saw driving off and didn't really see at all, just their car? I think I found their phone."
Incidentally (and off subject); Why isn't there an "I just found your phone" option in with the emergency call/contact feature?
Shoots you an email, drops the phone's coordinates in... Textbox for the finder to enter contact info if applicable.
Just a thought. Carry on. :)
In Portuguese, "they" has always been used as an indeterminate subject. It's OK to say "they stole my car" when I don't know who "they" are, or even how many "they" are. Actually, we use it all the time.
Though, because of verb declination, we don't really have to spell "they" - the verb does it implicitly ("Roubaram meu carro"), giving a better idea of an indeterminate subject.
In Portuguese, "they" has always been used as an indeterminate subject. It's OK to say "they stole my car" when I don't know who "they" are, or even how many "they" are. Actually, we use it all the time.
Though, because of verb declination, we don't really have to spell "they" - the verb does it implicitly ("Roubaram meu carro"), giving a better idea of an indeterminate subject.
There is a famous Czech (a Slavic language) novel that begins "And so they've killed our Ferdinand," (Švejk by Hašek (https://libcom.org/library/good-soldier-%C5%A1vejk-jaroslav-ha%C5%A1ek)) where there is no emphasis felt on "they" or "who-did-it". Rather, the next piece of dialogue is "Which Ferdinand?"
Similarly, when Russians say "They took away electricity" nobody begins inquiring "Who? Did you see them?" Rather, it is merely stating that there is a power outage.
Whereas the same sentence is unworkable in Estonian and Finnish, because it feels hyperpersonal. The same statements would be more appropriately formulated something like "Electricity vanished" and "Oh dear, Ferdinand got killed." In Estonian and Finnish there is a special impersonal verb form in addition to the common six personal verb forms. The personal verb forms have their corresponding personal (non-compulsory/pro-drop) pronouns while there is no impersonal pronoun. And it is not an issue of grammatical gender in any way. The grammatical gender does not exist in these languages. As we say, "Finnish/Estonian is not sexy."
In contrast, Russian, Lithuanian, and Latvian have a very strong presence of grammatical genders, but as far as I know, they ignore the political correctness issues that go along with it.
You can only say that you found someone's phone.
However, you could say that someone lost their phone.
Similarly, when Russians say "They took away electricity" nobody begins inquiring "Who? Did you see them?" Rather, it is merely stating that there is a power outage.
So how would a Russian say that "they" (the Illuminati/Jewish conspiracy/Soviets/capitalists/etc.) took away the electricity? Would they have to be specific about who "they" are or are there different kinds of "they"?
So how would a Russian say that "they" (the Illuminati/Jewish conspiracy/Soviets/capitalists/etc.) took away the electricity?
How to imply Illuminati etc. without saying Illuminati etc. out loud? The difference is as follows:
Электричество отключили translates formally "They turned off electricity" without any implication on
them. The personal pronoun is preferably missing while the verb form is explicitly third pers. pl.
Это они отключили электричество is like "It's them who turned off electricity." The personal pronoun они is there and strengthened with это "it (is)".
But Russians like to blame monkeys rather than the Illuminati.
Edit: I checked the beginning of Švejk by Hašek. In Russian it's "Убили, значит, Фердинанда-то нашего." I guess you could say the missing они makes some difference. In Czech it is also without the pronoun, "Tak nám zabili Ferdinanda."
Yes, Czech can be largely pronoun-free as grammar (normally) gives you all the context you need. Plus they have several ways to express passive, that something has been done, usually to someone, possibly by someone.
German has worst of both worlds. You have much of the grammar, but still need those pronouns.
Ironically (?) that Hašek sentence has a pronoun, just not who did the killing. Literally "So our killed Ferdinand" or more English "So our Ferdinand was killed".
Not grammar, but somewhat grammar-adjacent. Some in Japan are saying that the word "virus" shouldn't be pronounced roughly vee-roos like the German loanword it apparently is, but roughly vai-rus like in English.
https://www.asiasentinel.com/p/koronavairusu-or-koronauirusu-japan
The word "Virus" it's Latin and had the meaning of "poison". It was a Dutch, Martinus Beijerinck, that made revive the word because he used it for designing small creatures, smaller than bacteries, that were responsible for transmitting diseases.
So, it's "virus" = "veerus", not "vairus".
Of course it's (neo-)Latin, but assuming the article is accurate it's a German loanword in Japanese.
Given greater contact with Dutch and then English (both American and British) seems odd many German loanwords would show up much.
Given greater contact with Dutch and then English (both American and British) seems odd many German loanwords would show up much.
Quantity is not quality.
seems odd many German loanwords would show up much.
Back before WW2 it was a major language of science. I'm not sure if Japanese borrowed many scientific terms from Dutch actually, Indonesian did though.
Without investigating it any deeper, I assume German had some effect on Japanese at that time because they were war allies. But post-war the number one Western influence has been the American variety of English.
In general I think it is common sense that borrowings get modified and adapted to the system of the destination language. It would be ridiculous in English to insist on plural "viri" for "viruses" because Latin had such a plural. There are enough such ridiculous plurals in English already.
Without investigating it any deeper, I assume German had some effect on Japanese at that time because they were war allies.
A strenuous hypothesis. Back in in the second half of the 19th and first half of the 20th century German was the primary language of science until it committed suicide, which is when Japanese borrowed… well, science itself, presumably including the language for it. Directly from Germany/Prussia even, from about 1870-1890. They were the exact opposite of war allies because the Germans supported the Russians during the Russo-Japanese War.
Colonisation has had its perks, it seems. Or more accurately English as a global language, as I suspect there aren't much Dutch pronunciation in Indonesia or French in Vietnam (or German in Chinese cities like Qingdao and Dalian). As a consequence they stick to the English alphabet and English pronunciation rules, even when they are way off.
It so happens that Dutch, French, and English (not to mention Spanish, Portuguese and German) share the same alphabet. The current generation is of course much affected and afflicted by the English pronunciation (particularly via Hollywood production that everybody seems too eager to swallow), but there are still traces of the original point of contact. Vietnamese current script easily resembles French more than English and, if the first foreign language in their universities is English now, the change was rather recent.
About Japan, even though Americans like to think of themselves as the main cause (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Expedition) who bombarded the ports of Japan open for the rest of the world, the following Meiji restoration (restoration of the emperor as the main political force, not just a figurehead) took its influence more obviously from Europe. This picture does not emulate America of any age, but has easy parallels with the style of Prussia or France of the time.
(https://www.economist.com/sites/default/files/20180203_BLP513.jpg)
I suspect there aren't much Dutch pronunciation in Indonesia
They won't be pronounced quite like in Dutch if that's what you mean, but they're definitely not pronounced like in English. Some rarely used words that went Greek/Latin/French → Dutch → Indonesian might be at some minor risk of Anglicization, but I imagine thousands of Dutch words should be quite safe.
Quantity is not quality.
Quantity has a quality of its own. :P
took its influence more obviously from Europe
There was a time when Europe was the reference to the world... today it needs help from the rest of the world.
Quantity has a quality of its own. :P
ensbb3 - the philosopher, better than Confucius.
Yeah Europe needs help and glad my country if getting out!
Yoshihide Suga or Suga Yoshihide? Japan pushes media to fall in line on name orderForeign journalists working in Japan say they are coming under pressure to give in to the government's request to reverse the order of individuals' names in their news articles.
Japan adopted the Western style of writing a person's given name followed by their family name when writing in Latin script about 100 years ago, when Emperor Meiji encouraged the introduction of foreign ideas for the nation's government and society as part of what is known as the Meiji Restoration....
National broadcaster NHK was swift to adopt the new style, but the takeup elsewhere has been less successful.
By the way, George Soros was originally Schwartz György, as is normal in Hungarian. Also in Estonian, colloquially, people's names work the other way, family name first.
You have this map (some own work at r/MapPorn (https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/c14fha/naming_traditions_across_the_world/); it seems correct).
(https://i.redd.it/l0lonnzxam431.png)
Apart from not including the whole world, it doesn't include the full complexity. For instance, which name(s) do you actually use? Are nicknames common? In what context?
The dominant rule in the West is that given name is used among friends (and usually family), mostly with colleagues. Family name, possibly with an honorific, dominate in formal context, though full name (given and family in whichever order), possibly with an honorific, is common too. In Iceland your first name is your formal name, as is the case in Britain for knighted individuals, so e.g. Tim Berners-Lee would formally be Sir Tim.
Naming order in Vietnam is the same as in Hungary or China, but here the given name is the formal name. In China, unsurprisingly, the formal name is the full name (FAMILY Given). Depending on the number of syllables, that can also be the informal name. Family names in China are predominantly single syllable. Given names can be one or more syllables. If both names are monosyllabic both names would be used informally. So e.g. LIU Cixin would be Cixin among friends, while XU Yong would be XU Yong among friends.
Making and maintaining an international name list is an interesting challenge.
The family name is the same thing as the father's surname?
I believe all the light green and dark green have father's family name as default choice for family name, but that there are often some mechanism to apply for the mother's family name instead, or using both.
Dutch politie, pronounced and in Indonesian also spelled polisi, albeit politsi in more careful Dutch speech.
Indonesian syllable structure is consistently so simple that of course they should adapt the pronuciation. Some Indonesian reggae for reference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDh55czkKrA
Another great grammatical muttering:
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKzJEIUSWtc[/video]
On a semi-related note:
https://omniglot.com/writing/folkspraak.htm
https://anglish.fandom.com/wiki/What_is_Anglish%3F
https://anglish.fandom.com/wiki/Oned_Kingdom (my opinion is that it should be "foroned kingdom" but I suppose I'm too much of an Old English thinker)
(Thanks for keeping this thread going, guys!
Another great grammatical muttering:
Wonder where Old English had gone, if it had survived. Anglish is one possible outcome.
The sound shift from sc to sh is most striking to Scandinavian ears. The ilanders started to pronounce sc like /sh/ long before other Germanic speakers. The word "shift" itself was "sciftan" in OE. With other cultural exchange English got doublets (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublet_(linguistics)#English) like skirt/shirt, skipper/ship, skull/shell, scatter/shatter, score/shore.
Other Germanic languages have partially followed suit (except Icelandic, I think).
Fish in German is pronounced like English, not like Scandinavian
fisk (as in the dish lutefisk, or the journalist Robert Fisk).
Another case is
ski, taken from the Norwegian word for those foot planks. Only that in Norwegian we pronounce it like "she", while English has re-introduced the pre-OE hard k sound. I am waiting for that pronunciation to be reintroduced into Norwegian again from modern English. It is there in "
après-ski".
Wonder where Old English had gone, if it had survived. Anglish is one possible outcome.
Modern Frisian is perhaps the closest indication. Also Scots and the Newcastle-upon-Tyne dialect are iterations of English without the drowning into French that happened in southern England. The worldwide common English is the drowned-into-French variant.
Do you prefer the
sc detail to have been preserved or transformed? In Frisian it is preserved, according to this wordlist (https://1000mostcommonwords.com/1000-most-common-frisian-words/):
| Frisian | English meaning | Some cognate |
| ferskille | to differ | skilja (Norwegian) |
| wittenskip | science | vetenskap (Swedish), Wissenschaft (German) |
| wierskynlik | probable | wahrscheinlich (German) |
Clearly, modern English vocabulary is hopelessly messed up. Every other Germanic language is in a better state at least in the aspect of vocabulary.
I have dabbled in constructed languages, starting with Esperanto, since early teens, but eventually I have decided against them for communication purposes. For the purposes of communication, if you are smart enough to devise rules and vocabulary and learn them, then you are definitely smart enough to simply learn the other guy's language as it actually is. For me, constructed languages only make sense as a tool of historical analysis or experimental world-building.
My guess of witship (unattested, ken attested) in Anglish for wittenskip, worked out. More unexpected undershed for ferskille, and then likely for wierskynlik. (Swedish analogue is sannolik, Norwegian sannsynlig; sann being an alternative word for truth to wahr, a word vaguely related to English sin.)
the drowning into French
What a marvelously constructed appellation! When you mention artificial languages, do you also imply some familiarity with the (fairly) recent project, to code Chomski's UG-subgenre into a translate-to-English app? (They claimed it was a total failure; I suspect their programming languages are simply inadequate, or they -as programmers- are...
(This
mind stuff keeps coming back to haunt us!:)
...do you also imply some familiarity with the (fairly) recent project, to code Chomski's UG-subgenre into a translate-to-English app? (They claimed it was a total failure; I suspect their programming languages are simply inadequate, or they -as programmers- are...
Let's get the terminology straight first. An artificial language can be any computer language, which has only very remote resemblance to a human language, without any pretension to be usable for human communication or even general human consumption. A constructed language (conlang) is like languages in Star Trek or Tolkien, pretending to be languages usable for human communication and consumption. Some of the conlang attempts are more serious than others and more seriously meant to go into general practice, and some may enjoy a level of actual success, such as Esperanto.
The mainstream view of language is that of an arbitrary system with a fair systemic rigour. Based on the systemicity, there is an approach at machine translation projects that the algorithm of the translating machine should be the main focus. This has never yielded good results, as it has turned out that, even though language is a system, different languages are different systems, so the algorithm should be based on some kind of metasystem instead. None of the available metasystem proposals, including Chomsky's UG, has worked out for machine translation purposes. I think Chomsky's UG is a useless conjecture for most purposes. It is useful though as an illustration of syntactic structures of English, so not entirely useless, but still useless as a theoretical foundation for a machine translation tool. The programming and the programmers in the project may have been inadequate too, but also UG itself is inadequate when put to practical test. In my opinion, the main reason is that the proposed features of the UG straightforwardly reflect the perceived syntactic structures of English, i.e. its input is laughably provincial.
The more fruitful approach has been to first load up a bunch of content (actual language texts) into a language memory and only then start working out the algorithm. It is basically the Google approach: Track/store everything first, sort it out later. And the sorting is treated as an eternal work in progress, based on further incremental input. In practical use, the language memory approach under constant human revision has been the way to go in e.g. national translations of EU legislation.
The fact that the latter approach has been more fruitful indicates that the case made for the systemicity of language has been either flawed or overstated. Different human languages are the same/similar system only assuming a bunch of nulls in all the actual output representations - occasionally more nulls than data. In the surface systems (i.e. in actual languages) the nulls can usually be treated as non-functional or non-entities, as if not there at all, but in the background system ("universal grammar") one would need a careful procedure to their potential to materialise in some surface systems and not others. The subtleties of how the proposed background system would interact with surface systems have been over the head of most who have tried to wrestle with the problem. Any proposed mechanics have been unreliable. On the positive side, Chomsky's proposal was famous enough to be tested. Wittgenstein's ideas have fared considerably worse, a complete non-starter.
I mostly agree with you on this, ersi. First, that UG itself has not been presented, and is not likely to be anytime soon. So Google's approach is sensible, in that it uses what is available -big data and constant "human" correction- to accomplish the task.
About Wittgenstein: Do you refer to pre- or post-Tractatus? :) (That's a pun, son!)
For the post, I'd say he's still influietial.
About Wittgenstein: Do you refer to pre- or post-Tractatus? :) (That's a pun, son!)
Neither. I have a very low regard of everything about him.
For the post, I'd say he's still influietial.
Not in linguistics, never has been. Only non-linguists think he had some impact on linguistics.
From London Review of Books: Chronicle of a Coup Foretold Far from being a tightly held secret of seasoned conspirators, the would-be coup was advertised in plain sight, all over social media, with maps and photos, using the pseudo-military codename ‘Festa da Selma’, and the hashtag #BrazilianSpring, which Steve Bannon, together with Bolsonaro’s sons, Eduardo and Carlos, helped launch in November, though it only started trending after 5 January.
The justice minister, Flávio Dino, had vowed to prevent small groups of far-right fanatics from seizing power; his promise became an object of ridicule on Twitter on 7 January. ‘Partygoers’ were advised not to bring children or the elderly, but some came along anyway. They were also told to bring bibles, though these weren’t much in evidence. They took selfies and couldn’t help posting them, incriminating themselves; several police officers also took selfies with looters.
A marginal note on orthography: Bible is spelled in this article in all lowercase like a sane spelling convention would require, but names of months are still capitalised.
In Dutch, the Bible is the holy text of Christians and a bible is a printed specimen. Grammatically some Dutch spelling norms can be a bit weird and sometimes straight up absurd, but uppercase-wise it's mostly reasonably sane and consistent.
In Dutch, the Bible is the holy text of Christians and a bible is a printed specimen.
Really? Is there a difference? I consider the difference as imaginary (or rather unnecessary) as between Internet and internet. (As to "the", Estonian - and Finnish and Russian - don't have it and I'd rather we never did.)
An extremely not at all sane capitalisation orthography is on display in German. A very sane one (i.e. everything lowercase, unless totally unambiguously a name) happened to exist in Low German, which I assume turned into Dutch orthography with hardly any changes. The Low German style is a major contributor to Estonian spelling tradition also, certainly when it comes to capitalisation.
Really? Is there a difference? I consider the difference as imaginary (or rather unnecessary) as between Internet and internet. (As to "the", Estonian - and Finnish and Russian - don't have it and I'd rather we never did.)
Perhaps it's because we live in a Christian (Dutch: christian) nation. The distinction is somewhat imaginary when talking about bibles that contain the Bible but there are also bibles in the sense of authoritative works in general.
"The Bible, that's how it's written in the Bible, Biblestudy"
"biblepaper, a bible seller"
"an Italian food bible"
The general rule is that proper names are capitalized and type names aren't. So the Bible/Quran/New Testament is considered the same as something like the Guardian or the New York Times, albeit under a special "holy books" category. But an individual bible is a type name. The Bible is a bible and the New York Times is a newspaper. Or something like that. But yeah, it's certainly odd for the bible seller.
"... to bring bibles..."
How would you replace "bibles" by the New York Times?
Really? Is there a difference? I consider the difference as imaginary (or rather unnecessary) as between Internet and internet. (As to "the", Estonian - and Finnish and Russian - don't have it and I'd rather we never did.)
Perhaps it's because we live in a Christian (Dutch: christian) nation. The distinction is somewhat imaginary when talking about bibles that contain the Bible but there are also bibles in the sense of authoritative works in general.
"The Bible, that's how it's written in the Bible, Biblestudy"
"biblepaper, a bible seller"
"an Italian food bible"
The general rule is that proper names are capitalized and type names aren't. So the Bible/Quran/New Testament is considered the same as something like the Guardian or the New York Times, albeit under a special "holy books" category. But an individual bible is a type name. The Bible is a bible and the New York Times is a newspaper. Or something like that. But yeah, it's certainly odd for the bible seller.
There are a lot of Xerox/xerox pair where the trade mark name lost their trademarks. Bible/bible, referring to the Phoenician city of Byblos is just one example.
How would you replace "bibles" by the New York Times?
With "newspapers". ;)
The New Yorker’s recent account of ‘The End of the English Major’ in US universities reminded of a peculiar trend in the essays written by my first and second year undergraduates at Berkeley: a surprising number of them seem to think that a book and a novel are the same thing. Or, at least, they often use the two words interchangeably, and find it difficult to articulate the distinction between them. Reading their first essays each semester, I often encounter sentences that begin: ‘In Margaret Mead’s anthropology novel …’; ‘Edward Said, in his novel Orientalism …’; ‘In Marx’s novel, Capital …’ I’ve seen such sentences written by very good writers and by very poor ones; by students interested in the topics on offer and by those who couldn’t care less. Almost all of them are native speakers of English.
When I taught my first class in 2017, as a teaching assistant for a large introductory anthropology class, I saw four, perhaps five such sentences. The following semester it was five, maybe six. In my comments, I noted that a novel was a particular type of book, and that what we were reading were not novels but works of non-fiction, which could be referred to as ‘studies’, ‘works’, ‘texts’ or simply ‘books’. I chalked up the confusion to the very differing quality of humanities education available in US high schools and left it there. When I took up teaching again in spring 2021, however, it was no longer four or five students referring to the ‘novels’ of Mead or Marx or Said. A solid quarter of my students used ‘novel’ and ‘book’ interchangeably, a trend that has continued.
English, the most widespread language of the world is in danger. Can we help it along?
Can we help it along?
It is now early morning of a dreary day, still overcast and threatening rain, as I peruse a selection of sites. About my room flits a mosquito hawk, a fearsome creature (Ask my niece...) many times the size of a mosquito and much louder.. I pay it little mind: Not only does it not bite but it eats mosquitos.
ersi, do you likely mean further erode its usefulness? :) In case not: Yes, we can be less tolerant of ungrammatical construction and malaprops.
But more to the point the article's author makes: Education if being replaced by mechanical means of understanding.
Students and faculty are under increasing pressure to read as ‘poachers’ (to distort slightly Michel de Certeau’s phrase), approaching the works of their peers as hives of information to be harvested piecemeal and on demand. I’ve listened to too many faculty complain in recent years that they – or their colleagues – ‘just don’t read anymore’. And few graduate students seem to read entire books. Who has the time? You can cover a lot more ground by poaching – and publish a lot more, too.
This change in reading practice doesn’t only accelerate the drive to make the humanities and qualitative social sciences focus on the production of ‘useful’ information, rather than on the cultivation of critical thought and perception. It also makes them less fulfilling, as the (admittedly difficult) experience of reading books like Capital or Orientalism is replaced by reading them in snippets or through summaries written by others – now including, as a number of my students’ recent essays seem to suggest, by AI. Some people will always find the idea of reading such books exhausting, perhaps superfluous. But it isn’t hard to see how the experience of reading an entire book is very different from ingesting its arguments piecemeal or second-hand.
The
poachings are apt to be like mosquitos. A book is more like the mosquito hawk.
A transition from book to novel wouldn't be too unreasonable, if we ignore that most books are not very novel.
None of the books used in English are that great. Book and beech (the tree) have the same wooden roots. Most obvious in Swedish, where the word for "book" is "bok", and the word for "beech" is also "bok".
Novel comes from new(s), and that is fine, though most books are not particularly new either. In practically every other European language a novel is called a "roman", from the Roman language. That is pretty obsolete by now as well.
(Hi)story is nice, as is tale (a telling), but better yet might be to go for work, or preferably opus (or opera). Or perhaps clip (cut, but also cleave).
A transition from book to novel wouldn't be too unreasonable...
If my hunch is correct that the erosion of the distinction of book and novel also implies the erosion of the distinction of fiction and non-fiction, then Anglo-American education is in a catastrophic state.
And yes, Oakdale, I'd prefer some different lingua franca. Latin or some such.
Is the distinction being eroded? Or are primary and secondary school teachers averse to teaching beyond their credentialling institutions' preoccupations, such as DEI and social justice? Of course, the so-called critical studies all stem from relativism...
Ye olde Cultural Marxism marches on!
California is not the only state where such tedious niceties are forgone. And certainly not all students at elite institutions are so ill-educated. (My daughter is a Berkley graduate. I doubt she'd ever make such a clueless mistake.) But the trend is toward treating language as a merely utilitarian medium of political action.
Would you only suggest dead languages? :) (Chinese never really caught on: "Only the pessimists are still learning Russian. The realists are learning —" the old joke used to be.)
I'm afraid your Utopian dreams are bound to be unrealized... For the most part, the world is what it is.
I should hardly think the distinction between book and novel is something one has to be purposefully taught. You have books like encyclopedias, books about history, dinosaurs, biology and physics and then you have storybooks. At some point hopefully well over a decade before you're eighteen years old you osmotically learn that thicker storybooks are called novels, and that non-fiction books are not. It's the fancier vocabulary like fiction and non-fiction that you might have to learn because it's every so slightly more in the domain of jargon. Note that I explicitly mean the vocabulary, not the concept.
On the flip side, there are some supposed non-fiction books that might as well be novels. :)
What possible political purpose would the distinction serve? :)
Similar to the way the acronym DEI was named: An unwanted (i.e., not useful) connotation had to be precluded: The logical order of the terms should make it Diversity, Inclusion, Equity... But -unlike the days of MAD- we live in a politicized world, where even a sense of humor is only permitted within the bounds proscribed by the current ideologies.
Chinese never really caught on...
Chinese is doing fine. You'd know this if you visited Asia. Every pilipina I chatted with for a longer while claimed some Chinese heritage, thinking this raises them above average folks, and wanted to migrate to Singapore, where Chinese is official language.
I should hardly think the distinction between book and novel is something one has to be purposefully taught.
It never occurred to me either, but apparently it has not been taught and the consequences are serious.
Note that I explicitly mean the vocabulary, not the concept.
But I mean the concepts. Why else teach vocabulary than to elucidate concepts?
But I mean the concepts. Why else teach vocabulary than to elucidate concepts?
To a very large extent you learn vocabulary to be able to talk about things with other people. The concepts are something you'll generally have figured out by yourself years prior. If you're lucky there'll be some deeper analysis, but the steps in school are slow and late. It's not like they tell you about picaresque novels or something when you're six years old.
I mean the concepts. Why else teach vocabulary than to elucidate concepts?
Of course! Some think vocabulary drills are at best social plumage and at least, aids to learning spelling rules... But a conscribed vocabulary conduces to mute appreciation of the human condition.
It's not like they tell you about picaresque novels or something when you're six years old.
But, I might add, perhaps you've already read some.
The concepts are something you'll generally have figured out by yourself years prior. If you're lucky there'll be some deeper analysis, but the steps in school are slow and late. It's not like they tell you about picaresque novels or something when you're six years old.
But the teacher should not rely on students' self-learning. It's part of the teacher's job to verify that the concepts have reached the student by giving tests that are different than the introductory examples were. In my youth I learned by osmosis like you and was an eager self-learner, but teachers must help slow learners catch up too, particularly in the first years.
I remember now that the difference between novel and short story was taught to me on primary level, so that the difference of these from the concept of a book was a given. If Americans and Brits do not have it in their schools, they better start before it's too late.
Edit: Oh, and it also helps that in schools we rarely say "book" but rather there is a different fancy general word that means something like oeuvre in French, so that's what we say when we want to seem educated.
If Americans and Brits do not have it in their schools, they better start before it's too late.
It's a new-ish fad, this blatant dumbing down. (I hope!)
But the teacher should not rely on students' self-learning. It's part of the teacher's job to verify that the concepts have reached the student by giving tests that are different than the introductory examples were.
I still remember how I was one of the few who managed to add something like 97+6, whereas there were many who made up random answers or just gave up. They either didn't think a number over 100, which we'd never explicitly learned about, was allowed, or they somehow couldn't conceive of it despite knowing about 1–9 and about 10–99. I'm not sure why I particularly recall that example, but it's illustrative for pretty much every subject.
But granted, regardless if you'd already figured it out for yourself, such matters as books, novels, short stories, fiction and non-fiction, are a standard part of learning how to read and use the library, and it's not like school didn't dot some Is and cross some Ts for me. Going more in-depth about the differences between tabloids and quality newspapers did indeed elucidate, even though the differences as such were obvious. Conversely we also learned all kinds of bizarre robotic methods for "understanding" and "analyzing" non-fiction texts.
Hooray for New Math!
https://youtu.be/zWPn3esuDgU
And new, new math...
Imagine an arithematic text that attempts to substitute for rote and rules many of the tricks and shortcuts clever kids (and even most dull adults!) use.. Less than a decade ago I was faced with just such an abomination. It was prepared for 3rd and 4th graders — and I know at least one whose current distaste of mathematics likely stems from his experience with that program.
In more ways than one, teachers' college is a misbegotten idea: Fads fester in their well-fertalized soil!
Edit: Oh, and it also helps that in schools we rarely say "book" but rather there is a different fancy general word that means something like oeuvre in French, so that's what we say when we want to seem educated.
Going out on a limb and guessing "teosed", but more generally work, as in "the works of Chaucer" or some such.
(Hi)story is nice, as is tale (a telling), but better yet might be to go for work, or preferably opus (or opera).
Work, in all its form — opus, opera (you know the Opera lore I think, the "Opera" in "Multitorg Opera" comes from here), ergon… — is appropriate, though it focuses on the toil of the creator. That is also apparent in that the word for (a) work, in Swedish verk, is related to a word for "lingering pain", värk. But this word focuses on the producer, not the product.
For the generic word I like words like tale and saga, that which is told or said. But that assumes there is somebody telling. If the work is wrought by e.g. ChatGPT, it wouldn't quite be appropriate.
Appropriate it would be to end with a couple PIE reconstructions. "dough" and "fiction" may share an origin.
*dheigh- (https://www.etymonline.com/word/*dheigh-).
As may advice, story and wit, (https://www.etymonline.com/word/*weid-)*weid- (https://www.etymonline.com/word/*weid-)..
Going more in-depth about the differences between tabloids and quality newspapers did indeed elucidate, even though the differences as such were obvious.
Now, the lesson here is to think of others too, not only yourself. These differences may be obvious for you and I, but they are impossibly subtle for most people.
For example this post (https://dndsanctuary.eu/index.php?topic=2398.msg86803#msg86803) by Oakdale is a classic. He said, "Surely you know the difference between news programs and punditry" as if making an instructive point, while actually just uttering a statement he had heard some of his fav pundit make. The subtext and context clearly revealed that Oakdale had no clue about what he was saying. School as a social institution has the responsibility to help people like him catch up before it's too late. Yeah, too late for him; I mean other people like him who are still teachable.
Conversely we also learned all kinds of bizarre robotic methods for "understanding" and "analyzing" non-fiction texts.
Well, again, it may be bizarre for you, but for the average joe the dumb-looking didactic methods may be more effective. You know, in fact it is especially the dumb people whom learning benefits the most.
I assume you'd have a hard time in Japanese school, and probably me too. But their robotic methods are effective and have produced a society where the average citizen is rather intelligent.
School, according to various rankings in a form closer to their implementation in for example the Benelux, Estonia, Finland and Japan than in the United States is clearly beneficial to society. All citizens should have certain basic skills, otherwise society will be much worse to live in.
In context I was talking about how we're first taught the intricacies of these distinctions at around seven or eight years old, right alongside learning how to read and write. The very basics of reading and writing come a year prior. Then we spend another decade working with various genres of texts and enhancing our understanding. What, in other words, did these kids learn in English class? But the thing is, I've seen lesson plans for English from America that were excellent. Nothing to suggest the kids going through that system wouldn't be able to articulate the difference between a novel and a book.
For example this post (https://dndsanctuary.eu/index.php?topic=2398.msg86803#msg86803) by Oakdale is a classic. He said, "Surely you know the difference between news programs and punditry" as if making an instructive point, while actually just uttering a statement he had heard some of his fav pundit make. The subtext and context clearly revealed that Oakdale had no clue about what he was saying. School as a social institution has the responsibility to help people like him catch up before it's too late. Yeah, too late for him; I mean other people like him who are still teachable.
Your posts are alway instructive in some way. And this snippet was a useful reminder that intelligence is no armor against indoctrination: You'll remain obtuse, come what may.
However, you do occasionally slip and show yourself: Whatever did you mean when you said "for the average joe the dumb-looking didactic methods may be more effective"? Have you just opted for a word the meaning of which you don't know? :)
And this snippet was a useful reminder that intelligence is no armor against indoctrination: You'll remain obtuse, come what may.
Now, what could you possibly mean here by "indoctrination"? When you accuse someone of indoctrination, you are accusing them of a particular bias, but you are not specifying here what my bias consists in. So you must be assuming a context. The context could be the original that I was referring to and that you are quoting from, namely you take the distinction of news programs and punditry to be an indoctrination. However, in the original thread it was you who quipped to Frenzie about the distinction, trying to look smart and failing at it, and if you now think that the distinction is only maintained by indoctrinated people, then you are actually accusing yourself. I would not put this beyond you. I think there are enough elements involved here that you got mixed up exactly this way. But let's consider generously an alternative too.
Accusing someone of indoctrination without any specification can derive from a subculture of antisocial slant, such as the hippies. Anybody who passed a formal education can be counted as indoctrinated, so think the hippies. So by "indoctrination" you just mean education. Let's look at it again:
Intelligence is no armor against education.Wtf. You mean intelligent people should be deprived of education? Why specifically them? You'd forgive to less than intelligent people for having gone to school, but intelligent people have no excuse?
Anyway, your entire thrust is wrong. I am the first child of a large family. Growing up, my main duty was to keep the ever-increasing flock of siblings in line. Instead of being indoctrinated, I am well rehearsed in indoctrinat
ing.
Later in life, formal teacher's training became part of my higher education, but working as a teacher and professor has never been my first choice, even though I have been there done that too for a while. And at my current job (which is not in education) my promotions are related to being able to sell myself as a capable organiser of well-appreciated knowledge-sharing sessions to refresh and train skills that I have identified as necessary for the tasks at hand.
And new, new math...
Imagine an arithematic text that attempts to substitute for rote and rules many of the tricks and shortcuts clever kids (and even most dull adults!) use.. Less than a decade ago I was faced with just such an abomination.
Interestingly, I am right now reading Fibonacci's Liber Abaci (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liber_Abaci) and discovering that many of this age's rote and rules seem to be the previous age's clever kids' tricks and shortcuts. The subject matter of Fibonacci's book (
novel, hah!) is to introduce and popularise the decimal number system (the one we unproblematically use today), so he needs to tread carefully step by step, starting with some arguments and demonstrations as to the superiority of the Arabic numerals compared to Roman numerals and only then going deeper into arithmetic by means of Arabic numerals alone, first by longer expositions of the operations together with how to verify the results, then telling about some faster ways to get the results in some specific cases. My primary school math teacher (it was the same teacher throughout the primary school, so she had the opportunity to fully "indoctrinate" us in arithmetic according to her own programme) was thorough, but compared to Fibonacci she had dropped much repetition and opted for plenty of shortcuts.
A happy day of eggs and chocolate to you, Oakdale! (even though you will probably only be taking whisky)
Now, what could you possibly mean here by "indoctrination"?
The simple (and simplistic), pervasive and perverse anti-Americanism you evidence consistently,
ersi. I assume your bizarre insults are a juvenile defense mechanism... :)
"a capable organiser of well-appreciated knowledge-sharing sessions to refresh and train skills that I have identified as necessary for the tasks at hand"?! An employer who would tolerate let alone accept such logorrhea obviously has money to burn! It might as well go in some substantial part to the likes of you.
Now, what could you possibly mean here by "indoctrination"?
The simple (and simplistic), pervasive and perverse anti-Americanism you evidence consistently, ersi.
Okay, so your mind had wandered completely off topic again, to things not under discussion at all. No cure for that, I suppose.
An employer who would tolerate let alone accept such logorrhea obviously has money to burn!
When it is on topic and within agreed time limits, it is not logorrhea. But yes, the employer has money to burn. Lots of it. It's a bank.
Meanwhile, have you found reporting in America (as opposed to punditry)? I did :)
(On the national level, I mean, because on the local level it is quite easy to find.)