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English Language
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Message 1.Ìý
Posted by english_learner or cheetah (U3364191) on Monday, 3rd April 2006
Where does it come from?
Or/And
How does it evolve? -
Message 2
Posted by yankee014 (U3352255) on Monday, 3rd April 2006
English is a Germanic language brought to the United Kingdom through numerous Germanic invasions. It is a combination of languages spoken in Scandinavia and Normandy. The English language has been evolving for over 1000 years since its formation.
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Message 3
Posted by marduk-slayer of tiamat (U2258525) on Monday, 3rd April 2006
english is a mix of every language west of the indus valley, but mostly germanic as the yankee014 said
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Message 4
Posted by marduk-slayer of tiamat (U2258525) on Monday, 3rd April 2006
and its pretty rigid in structure-in most languages a word can have dozens of meanings, but english needs (pretty much anyway, their are a few hundred exceptions) one word for each concept or entity
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Message 5
Posted by Stoggler (U1647829) on Tuesday, 4th April 2006
Just written a rather lengthy explanation of where English came from and then because the server was a little overworked I lost it all when I went to post it! Bleeding Â鶹ԼÅÄ!!!
Not going to type that all again, but one thing I will say is that it has been around a lot longer than 1000 years and has always been changing.
Essentially, English comes from varieties of Germanic dialects brought to these islands by groups traditionally called Angles, Saxons, and Jutes around the 4th and 5th centuries A.D. Their language had a very large inflectional system (cf. Latin) where word endings change depending on the grammatical function.
By Bede's time (7th-8th century) the "settlers" were calling their language Englisc.
Language however is constantly changing and over the centuries it has been influenced from many quarters, not least from the Danish invasions during the 8th century onwards, the Norman invasion introducing French, plus Latin which has had an influence since Christianity was taken on by the Anglo-Saxons through to the Renaissance when it was very influential along with Greek.
THat was pretty much the abridged version of what I wrote earlier...!!! -
Message 6
Posted by english_learner or cheetah (U3364191) on Tuesday, 4th April 2006
"Just written a rather lengthy explanation of where English came from and then because the server was a little overworked I lost it all when I went to post it! Bleeding Â鶹ԼÅÄ!!! "
It happened to me before, I am now using word processor and then cut and past it into the message box. Never mind. -
Message 7
Posted by english_learner or cheetah (U3364191) on Tuesday, 4th April 2006
Does that mean English is comparatively younger than Gaelic and Welsh languages?
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Message 8
Posted by english_learner or cheetah (U3364191) on Tuesday, 4th April 2006
Hi marduk_report,
I am not sure where about is the west of the indus valley. Can you give me some ideas where it is please. Thanks. english is a mix of every language west of the indus valley, but mostly germanic as the yankee014 saidÌý -
Message 9
Posted by yankee014 (U3352255) on Tuesday, 4th April 2006
The Indus Valley is in India.
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Message 10
Posted by marduk-slayer of tiamat (U2258525) on Tuesday, 4th April 2006
only part of it... like the indus river some of it is in pakistan
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Message 11
Posted by Stoggler (U1647829) on Wednesday, 5th April 2006
Does that mean English is comparatively younger than Gaelic and Welsh languages?Ìý
It is, in so much as we have written evidence of Welsh and Gaelic older than written evidence of English. It's very difficult to use terms such as older or younger with regard to languages as they exist on a temporal continuum and to use one label for one period then have a defined boundary with another label is very artificial - speakers of those labels either side of that boundary would have thought they spoke the same language. -
Message 12
Posted by Stoggler (U1647829) on Wednesday, 5th April 2006
and its pretty rigid in structure-in most languages a word can have dozens of meanings, but english needs (pretty much anyway, their are a few hundred exceptions) one word for each concept or entityÌý
Erm, not quite sure what you mean by this. All languages have homophones (i.e. words that sound the same but have very different meanings), and no language NEEDS to have one word for one concept only - the human brain has great ability to understand utterances that sound the same but have different meanings, based on the context.
And English is no more rigid in structure (what ever that means) than other languages - all languages have a grammar (I'm not talking about the books in the library or what we get drummed into us in school!), which is essentially a set of conventions that we all learn and internalise when we learn the language as children long before we even set foot into a school.
English should not be singled out for being different to any other language - ALL human languages are exceedingly complex contructs with their own set of conventions/rules with an ability to communicate any number of complex ideas. -
Message 13
Posted by english_learner or cheetah (U3364191) on Wednesday, 5th April 2006
Does the language you speak influence the way you think and do things?
Or
How sophisticate your thought is, is depend on the language (mother tongue) you speak?
Does the culture you brought up also influence the way you think?
I am bilingual and I prefer English because it gives me more freedom. -
Message 14
Posted by thegoodbadugly (U2942713) on Wednesday, 5th April 2006
in ireland we all speak english because the british government passed a law stateing that everyone was to speak english in ireland and anyone caught speaking irish was to wear a cross around their necks and if the cross had three cuts in it to show that you were caught speaking irish three times then you were exacuted,the british government had a lot of laws like that,the end result was of all these laws was to kill and subdue irish people,it never worked as you know there is a revival in ireland for speaking irish and there are places in the west of ireland where they speak nothing but irish,makes me feel proud to be irish. Where does it come from?
Or/And
How does it evolve?
Ìý -
Message 15
Posted by jllb0221 (U3587794) on Wednesday, 5th April 2006
Although I wouldn't charactorize myself as bilingual, I took Spanish in school for years, eventually getting a degree in it. I find Spanish to be much more expressive & nuanced than English.
As an aside, there was a book written at least 10 or 15 years ago that traced the development of several languages. The author found that the American accent from Brooklyn, NY was most similiar to the original "language" & accent spoken in New York City when it was settled. Now that's scary!! -
Message 16
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Wednesday, 5th April 2006
Re: Message 13.
Cheetah,
I speak four languages, but IMO they are close together because I think they have a lot of the same Latin and Greek words in all four. BTW. Grammatically English is close to Dutch and German, but at the other side half of the words are French or Latin related. So if you speak French and Dutch you can easily learn English IMO.
The English can easily learn Dutch because a lot of grammar is identical and half of the words. For German it is perhaps more difficult because IMO Hochdeutsch is further (Dutch: verder. German: weiter) from English than Dutch.
The English have for French already half of the words in their language, but less the grammar. The same difficulty for the French learning English.
Once you have learned to speak fluently in for instance Russian, Chinese, Urdu you can as easely think in that specific languages as in your own language IMO. However it is much more difficult to learn to speak them than Germanic or Romance languages, hence it will take a lot more time before you can think in these languages? I ask for this question the Greek Nikolaos, the Pole Jozef, my dera Tas about the Indian language and Henrylee about the Russian one.
I, at least (smile), have the impression, when I talk or write for instance English, that I the same time think in English. Only when I have diffulties to express myself I fall back on other languages and first of all on my mothertongue.
BTW. I heard that the Japanese speak with another half of their brain than other people, hence the difficulty to learn foreign languages?
For all this I ask for the support of Stoggler, who is that more erudite than I on questions of languages.
BTW. Stoggler, I have seen that the mods sometimes annihilate messages if they contain long sentences in a foreign langauge, even with translation immediately behind..
IMO. How sophisticate your thought is, doesn't depend on the language, (language is only a tool to communicate) but on the education you have received and your intelligence.
The "culture you brought up" is in my opinion the same as the education you received.
Warm regards to all interested in languages,
Paul. -
Message 17
Posted by Stoggler (U1647829) on Thursday, 6th April 2006
BTW. I heard that the Japanese speak with another half of their brain than other people, hence the difficulty to learn foreign languages?
Ìý
Hi Paul
I have never heard this before about the Japanese and to be honest I find it very hard to believe - studies have shown that humans (all humans) use a particular particular part of the brain when processing speech in their mother tongue(s), but when they learn foreign languages a different part of the brain is used. I do not believe that the Japanese would be any different to the rest of the human population, as that would suggest they are different to the rest of us in some biological/physiological way. -
Message 18
Posted by Stoggler (U1647829) on Thursday, 6th April 2006
Does the language you speak influence the way you think and do things?
Or
How sophisticate your thought is, is depend on the language (mother tongue) you speak?
Does the culture you brought up also influence the way you think?
I am bilingual and I prefer English because it gives me more freedom.
Ìý
There is a theory in linguisitcs called the Sapir-Whorf theory which covers this subject. It's not really my area of linguistic expertise but essentially the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis (SWH) states that there is a systematic relationship between the grammatical categories of the language a person speaks and how that person both understands the world and behaves in it.
For a better description than I can give suggest you look at Wikipedia here:
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Message 19
Posted by Stoggler (U1647829) on Thursday, 6th April 2006
in ireland we all speak english because the british government passed a law stateing that everyone was to speak english in ireland and anyone caught speaking irish was to wear a cross around their necks and if the cross had three cuts in it to show that you were caught speaking irish three times then you were exacuted,the british government had a lot of laws like that,the end result was of all these laws was to kill and subdue irish people,it never worked as you know there is a revival in ireland for speaking irish and there are places in the west of ireland where they speak nothing but irish,makes me feel proud to be irish. Where does it come from?
Or/And
How does it evolve?
Ìý Ìý
Same thing has happened in Scotland and Wales with their respective languages, and also France with their minortiy languages (Corsican, Breton, Alsatian, Langue D'Oc, Basque). The difference with Ireland though is that the Irish language was put at the forefront of the constitution when independence was obtained and despite around 80 years of bilingual education and Irish being a national language the numbers of speakers have plummetted to the point where only small communities in the west of the country use the language on a daily basis in everyday situations, and often only be the elderly. So although the English/British governments did a huge amount of damage, some of the blame (reluctant to use that word - can't think of a better one at the mo) must lie with the Irish government and Irish people.
The future of Irish does not look bright I'm afraid. -
Message 20
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Thursday, 6th April 2006
Re: Message 17.
Stoggler;
it seems to be a hoax. But it seems to be a hoax defended until recently by a Japanese: see the article in Dutch. I did research in Dutch while you have to ahve the exact terms in English to have hits in Google. (and I know that you understand Dutch (smile)).
The same hoaxes in the 19th century as now: Up to Harrington it seems to be part of the thoughts of the moment, as the rational Western left halve of the brain, where the centre of speech lays and the more oriental imaginative right halve were the centre of observation lays. Of course as many times the hoax: the men use more their left halve and the women more their right halve...(smile).
For the book of the female professor Anne Harrington: "Medicine, Mind and the double brain."
Warm regards,
Paul. -
Message 21
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Thursday, 6th April 2006
Re: Message 18.
Stoggler,
I read the article about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
I think the (leftist) Noam Chomski is also mentioned in the article. If I understand it well he is for the hypothesis of the universality of language having all the same universal methods to construct a language because it comes from one and the same kind: Homo Homo Sapiens. He did a lot of studies if I recall it well with young children starting learning to speak.
As a BTW: I was in a discussion with the American Alexander Crawford on these boards and he mentioned Chomski in a discussion about left and right concepts of society and I was seeking for Chomski on internet and learned a lot about languages but notting about leftist or rightist. I said it to Alexander and we came to the constatation that he wasn't aware of that aspect of Noam, but rather about his leftist attitudes in America. I found them afterwards when I "gezielt" (gericht) (goal-oriented?) "suchte" (zocht)(sought).
I found it a good example: about people don't finding the right word to explain their thought and have to go over to a description, paraphrasing, wording of the concept of the written or spoken word. We had many times here difficulties on these boards, because someone used a word, but others understood quite another reality reading the same word. A good example is perhaps: "race", "ethny", "nation", "nationstate" with which we had a lot of difficulties to come to a common denominator of the concepts of the words. But this subject: "people understanding the same word in different ways" is quite another subject than this thread. Perhaps we can start it as a new thread on the History Hub?
Warm regards,
Paul. -
Message 22
Posted by Stoggler (U1647829) on Friday, 7th April 2006
Hi Paul
Chomsky is first and foremost a linguist, and is probably the most important linguist in the last 50 years or so. His theories on UG (Universal Grammar), although still hotly debated within the linguistics community, does have a lot of merit to them and I agree with many aspects of his arguments. His influence on the discipline can not be underestimated. -
Message 23
Posted by english_learner or cheetah (U3364191) on Friday, 7th April 2006
Thanks paul,
That is a very informative post.
I don't known about this bit though, so I can't really help you.
"BTW. I heard that the Japanese speak with another half of their brain than other people, hence the difficulty to learn foreign languages?"
Re: Message 13.
Cheetah,
I speak four languages, but IMO they are close together because I think they have a lot of the same Latin and Greek words in all four. BTW. Grammatically English is close to Dutch and German, but at the other side half of the words are French or Latin related. So if you speak French and Dutch you can easily learn English IMO.
The English can easily learn Dutch because a lot of grammar is identical and half of the words. For German it is perhaps more difficult because IMO Hochdeutsch is further (Dutch: verder. German: weiter) from English than Dutch.
The English have for French already half of the words in their language, but less the grammar. The same difficulty for the French learning English.
Once you have learned to speak fluently in for instance Russian, Chinese, Urdu you can as easely think in that specific languages as in your own language IMO. However it is much more difficult to learn to speak them than Germanic or Romance languages, hence it will take a lot more time before you can think in these languages? I ask for this question the Greek Nikolaos, the Pole Jozef, my dera Tas about the Indian language and Henrylee about the Russian one.
I, at least (smile), have the impression, when I talk or write for instance English, that I the same time think in English. Only when I have diffulties to express myself I fall back on other languages and first of all on my mothertongue.
BTW. I heard that the Japanese speak with another half of their brain than other people, hence the difficulty to learn foreign languages?
For all this I ask for the support of Stoggler, who is that more erudite than I on questions of languages.
BTW. Stoggler, I have seen that the mods sometimes annihilate messages if they contain long sentences in a foreign langauge, even with translation immediately behind..
IMO. How sophisticate your thought is, doesn't depend on the language, (language is only a tool to communicate) but on the education you have received and your intelligence.
The "culture you brought up" is in my opinion the same as the education you received.
Warm regards to all interested in languages,
Paul.
Ìý -
Message 24
Posted by english_learner or cheetah (U3364191) on Friday, 7th April 2006
Thank you Stoggler,
My first impression is that it's a very good link. Its contains quite a few English words which I don't usually come across everyday so I need sometime to look into it.
Thanks Stoggler. Does the language you speak influence the way you think and do things?
Or
How sophisticate your thought is, is depend on the language (mother tongue) you speak?
Does the culture you brought up also influence the way you think?
I am bilingual and I prefer English because it gives me more freedom.
Ìý
There is a theory in linguisitcs called the Sapir-Whorf theory which covers this subject. It's not really my area of linguistic expertise but essentially the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis (SWH) states that there is a systematic relationship between the grammatical categories of the language a person speaks and how that person both understands the world and behaves in it.
For a better description than I can give suggest you look at Wikipedia here:
Ìý -
Message 25
Posted by english_learner or cheetah (U3364191) on Monday, 24th April 2006
Hi Stoggler,
I think I could see my old self through that (Sapir–Whorf hypothesis), but since learning to speak English and adopting English culture, I think my thought process have changed. I find it easier to question if I don’t agree with someone older than me when communicate in English than if I communicate in my own language. In the culture that I grew up in in the early years (before I came to the UK) I was generally taught not to question the elder. This may sound great, but this is where the problem lies because if no one is question (out of respect for the elder) things that are not right then these things could not be improved and is left to fester. Society as a whole is stagnating as a result. So in my case, I think Sapir–Whorf hypothesis is valid.
Does the language you speak influence the way you think and do things?
Or
How sophisticate your thought is, is depend on the language (mother tongue) you speak?
Does the culture you brought up also influence the way you think?
I am bilingual and I prefer English because it gives me more freedom.
Ìý
There is a theory in linguisitcs called the Sapir-Whorf theory which covers this subject. It's not really my area of linguistic expertise but essentially the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis (SWH) states that there is a systematic relationship between the grammatical categories of the language a person speaks and how that person both understands the world and behaves in it.
For a better description than I can give suggest you look at Wikipedia here:
Ìý -
Message 26
Posted by LIII 1940 (U3621214) on Monday, 22nd May 2006
By the way yankee014.
Or should I call you JOHN CHEESE 14
The word YANKEE is most likely from the Dutch and may have been derived from Janke, diminutive of Jan {John]; from Jan and Kees, diminutive of Cornelis [Cornelius]; or from Jankaas, a combination of Jan and kaas [cheese], thus signifying John Cheese.
LIII1940 -
Message 27
Posted by LIII 1940 (U3621214) on Monday, 22nd May 2006
yankee014
Have you ever been to Rabbit Island ?
Have you heard of Rabbit Island ?
LIII1940 -
Message 28
Posted by Alaric the Goth (U1826823) on Tuesday, 23rd May 2006
English is, as has been said, an essentially Germanic language. It shares things like using ‘-t’ or ‘-ed’ endings to mark the past tense. It used to share the feature displayed by e.g. modern German of lots of different words for ‘the’ (examples from Old English include se, þaet, etc.). (‘þ’ is NOT ‘p’ but a letter used by Anglo-Saxons and Vikings for ‘th’)
Lots of our everyday words have Old English (OE) origins; OE was the various dialects used by the Angles, Saxons, Jutes and Frisians who invaded/settled Britain after about 440AD. So it has ‘faeder’ for ‘father’, ‘hus’ for ‘house’, ‘cyning’ (hard ‘k’ sound) for ‘king’, ‘singan’ for ‘to sing’ etc. But it has ‘sweoster’ for ‘sister’, which would have led to a modern word ‘swuster’ or similar.
Very few Brittonic Celtic words found their way into English, which suggests very limited influence of the Britons on their Anglo-Saxon overlords. Though the names of most large English rivers and some smaller ones are Celtic (but River Avon’ is tautology as it is ‘River River’ modern Welsh ‘afon’)
That leads to the next stage of the story of English: the Norse invasions. The ‘Danelaw’ area of Yorkshire, East Anglia and the East Midlands was settled by Scandinavians, who had a North Germanic language, Old Norse, very similar to modern Icelandic (which has changed very little). Norse words eventually found their way into English, so we have, e.g. ‘sister’, ‘up’,’law’, ‘egg’, ‘they’, ‘them’ and ‘their’ all descended from Viking words. Although many words were the same or similar in the two languages, the word-endings used by Norse differed from OE, so to avoid confusion, these were largely lost in the centuries when speakers of the two languages mixed. Things like word-order became more important to convey meaning than they had been.
The Norman Conquest of 1066 brought us more Vikings; or rather descendants of them, as the Normans originated in Norway but had been ‘Frenchified ‘ for about a hundred years by Duke William’s time. The English language became that of the poor and (generally) powerless for a couple of hundred years after the Conquest. Norman French was the language of the nobility. When English emerged as the language of all and sundry, it took on board lots of words for high-status things/legal things/church things from (Norman) French. We have e.g. ‘wardrobe’ to thank them for, originally a word for a kind of toilet in their castles etc.! French has ‘garderobe’ owing to a later sound change of words beginning with ‘w’ to ‘g(w)’ after the Normans came here. (This also explains why we have ‘war’ (which is actually a word of Germanic origin, but was brought here by the Normans) and the French have ‘guerre’.
English also took on board words from Latin, as this was the language of medicine, science and religion. And eventually Greek words, or ones derived from them, like the various ‘-ologies’.
More recently we acquired words from all over the place: ‘vodka’ from Russian, ‘tobacco’ from a native American language, ‘koala’ form ‘Aboriginal, etc. -
Message 29
Posted by english_learner or cheetah (U3364191) on Tuesday, 23rd May 2006
How very interesting, so keep it coming everyone (if you can).
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Message 30
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Wednesday, 24th May 2006
Alaric,
thank you very much for this interesting survey of the English language.
Warm regards,
Paul. -
Message 31
Posted by Opal_kadett (U3875782) on Wednesday, 31st May 2006
I have recently herd that English is decended from a dilalect of Dutch, brought to the U.K. by the Saxons and Frisians invaders during thr 5th century.
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Message 32
Posted by Stoggler (U1647829) on Thursday, 1st June 2006
"I have recently herd that English is decended from a dilalect of Dutch, brought to the U.K. by the Saxons and Frisians invaders during thr 5th century."
Hardly, as Dutch is a modern language, just as English is! - there was no such thing as 'Dutch' 1500-2000 years ago. Both modern languages are descended from a common ancestor spoken in the areas now occupied by the Netherlands, northern Germany, and Jutland and each have slowly moved away from each other ever since. -
Message 33
Posted by pearly (U3686083) on Tuesday, 13th June 2006
"Does that mean English is comparatively younger than Gaelic and Welsh languages?"
Yes, very much younger. -
Message 34
Posted by heuvel (U1763810) on Tuesday, 13th June 2006
The number of years since the various Indo-European (IE) language groups finished developing their distinguishing characteristics is (gu)estimated to be as follow:
IE (7500-5500), Indo-Iranian (5000), Armenian (4000), Albanian (4000), Hellenic (3500), Baltic (3500), Slavic (3000), Celtic (2800), Italic (2800), Germanic (2200).
Germanic is therefore the ‘youngest’. It also contains the largest proportion of non-IE words of all IE-language groups (30% of the core words such as, e.g. ship, sword, bear, thing, king are non-IE). This is speculated to be due to the mixing of IE-speaking proto-Germanics (migrating from the South East) with a non-IE-speaking people about 3000 years ago, presumably in Scandinavia. This also resulted in many other changes in pronunciation and structure, e.g. shift from ‘p’ to ‘f’ and ‘t’ to ‘th’ as in pater-father and tres-three, and the division of verbs into strong (sing/sang/sung) and weak (love/loved/loved).
I have also read somewhere (can’t find the reference) that this is why Danes are a mixture of tall Scandinavian types and shorter darker types but I don’t know whether this is science or romance! -
Message 35
Posted by Opal_kadett (U3875782) on Tuesday, 13th June 2006
I once hered on the Descovery channel that the Inuit/Eskimo language stoped developing about 2000 years ago and the Australian Aborigonie language stoped developing 5,000 years ago! Africa's Bantu laguage is very roughly guest to have stoped it's development about 8,000 to 7,000 years ago!
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Message 36
Posted by cmedog47 (U3614178) on Wednesday, 14th June 2006
Thank you all for introducing me to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
You may be interested in "The Geography of Thought" by Richard Nesbitt which approaches essentially the same question as a cognitive psychologist--and summarizes the evidence the asians and westerners think fundamentally differently. The focus is on psychometric data obtained in laboratory settings but makes broader associations as well. There is also interesting data on psychological testing data on immigrants and other transcultural situations.
Kurt -
Message 37
Posted by english_learner or cheetah (U3364191) on Wednesday, 14th June 2006
It seems that Europe is the most advance in science and technology at the moment. I just wondering how much European language/s and culture/s playing a part in this, or it is because of competition among European nations for domination that resulted in the science and technology advancement?
Is Europe has alway been advance in science and technology?
Has there ever been a more advance civilisation than the European one at other time?
Were Europe military powerful when Genghis Khan's army arrived in Eastern Europe?
May be I'm asking too many questions at same time, if so then not to worry too much.
+++++++++++
while I remember, I would like to thank you all for the information that have made this thread a very interesting thread.
I will find out more about this "The Geography of Thought". Thank you for your suggestion KurtBronson. -
Message 38
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Wednesday, 14th June 2006
thegoodbadugly,
I was last week on visit in Dublin and saw the channel in Irish. Have some mixed ideas about it, but I come back on it in my thread on the History Hub: "Irish experiences".
Although in the early fifties it was already all passed, it remembers me of Flemish students not allowed to speak Flemish, only French in Flemish Roman-Catholic schools in Belgium. (with a penalty of wearing a red tongue in textile on a rope around their neck)
Warm regards,
Paul. -
Message 39
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Wednesday, 14th June 2006
Heuvel,
thank you for this explanation.
Warm regards,
Paul. -
Message 40
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Wednesday, 14th June 2006
Kurt,
thank you for your mentioning of the book: "The Geography of Thought" by Richard Nesbitt.
I will comment to Cheetah about the book.
Warm regards,
Paul. -
Message 41
Posted by heuvel (U1763810) on Wednesday, 14th June 2006
Hello Paul,
In case you didn't see my references to this in other threads, many thanks for bringing my attention to 'De taalgrens' (The language boundary) which I've very much enjoyed reading.
Regards
Heuvel -
Message 42
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Wednesday, 14th June 2006
Heuvel,
I am happy to have been of help to you.
Warm regards,
Paul.
PS. wanted now to start my "essay" to Cheetah, but will have to wait for some minutes by the "ticking" (tikkende) clock. Will have in the meantime a look to the other boards. -
Message 43
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Wednesday, 14th June 2006
Cheetah,
About your first paragraph:
I think that the US is the most advanced in science and technology nowadays.
About your second paragraph:
I think that Europe "was" in advance in science and technology from the Enlightenment on due to its "peninsula" easy access to the sea and as such by trade and war came in contact with the Islamic culture in Spain, and the Middle-East, which had preserved the thoughts of the ancients. In this the republic of Venice and other Italian "citystates" had an important role in their continuous contact with Byzantium and the East. All in my humble opinion of course (smile).
Then came the big shift in trade to the Atlantic harbours and their contact via the high seas with the whole world pushing via the increasing amount of wealth for an environment, where researchers could add more and more to science and technology. The trade and the several trade companies were also IMO a stimulus to do research for better technology in travel and all related areas.
Third paragraph:
I think that if you want to say most advanced in their "own" time, you have to start with the classic way of history writing: The Sumerian city states, Egypt, the Indus valley culture (but they disappeared without too much influence on worldhistory??), the Minoan-Greek culture and the Chinese, the Romans, the Islamic world and last but not least the Europeans. (always in my humble opinion. I am open for any discussion...and it is not easy to trace the big lines)
Fourth paragraph: It has been said that if it wasn't that he had to return for his father's (?) funeral, it would have been finished with Europe. But I have to say that even with the triumph of Nazism in Europe there would have been at the end some modus vivendi IMO, while even the worst regime would have to accomodate at the end with everyday life...Look at the Chinese Khanate (spelling?)
"The Geography of Thought" by Richard Nesbitt:
Read once the reviews and the customer reviews.
also under Google: Intercultures January 2005.
Kurt, it is a very interesting book as I read the comments. But as I understand it it has all to do with as in language the culture where you have been educated and grown up. With other words if a Chinese kid is grown up with European step-parents and submerged completely in the European way of life, without contact with the Chinese way of life (which would perhaps be in practice nearly impossible)it would think and act as an European child? Interesting are some comments on rather western behaviour of Chinese by a western observer. Also the comments from eastern students in the West. I think the truth lays as mostly in the middle...
Richard, seems to see at the end a blending of eastern and western way of life in the big future world conglomerate, which is of course an even optimistic worldview as "my" "positivist" world perspective (belief)(big smile).
Warm regards to both,
Paul. -
Message 44
Posted by english_learner or cheetah (U3364191) on Monday, 26th June 2006
Hi everyone,
I would like to thank you all for yours recent posts.
I will post a reply as soon as I can as I'm having a bit of a problem at the moment
Ah, I just have a quick hypothetical question if you permit.
How long would it takes to change a language and culture of a nation of many millions assuming they would all go along with it as it would improve their thought process?
As I have never met anyone who can speak two languages *perfectly*.
And
If they were, do they have a preference over the other one? -
Message 45
Posted by Stoggler (U1647829) on Monday, 26th June 2006
"I once hered on the Descovery channel that the Inuit/Eskimo language stoped developing about 2000 years ago and the Australian Aborigonie language stoped developing 5,000 years ago! Africa's Bantu laguage is very roughly guest to have stoped it's development about 8,000 to 7,000 years ago!"
No living language stops developing - a language only stops developing when there are no more native speakers. If Bantu stopped developing 7-8000 years ago how come Swahili came about?
ALL languages change over time, and the Aboriginal languages of Australia, the Inuit languages, and the Bantu languages are no exception; they have ALL changed over time down to this day and will continue to do so (why would these languages be different to any other language for that matter?). -
Message 46
Posted by Stoggler (U1647829) on Monday, 26th June 2006
"The number of years since the various Indo-European (IE) language groups finished developing their distinguishing characteristics is (gu)estimated to be as follow:
IE (7500-5500), Indo-Iranian (5000), Armenian (4000), Albanian (4000), Hellenic (3500), Baltic (3500), Slavic (3000), Celtic (2800), Italic (2800), Germanic (2200).
Germanic is therefore the ‘youngest’. It also contains the largest proportion of non-IE words of all IE-language groups (30% of the core words such as, e.g. ship, sword, bear, thing, king are non-IE). This is speculated to be due to the mixing of IE-speaking proto-Germanics (migrating from the South East) with a non-IE-speaking people about 3000 years ago, presumably in Scandinavia. This also resulted in many other changes in pronunciation and structure, e.g. shift from ‘p’ to ‘f’ and ‘t’ to ‘th’ as in pater-father and tres-three, and the division of verbs into strong (sing/sang/sung) and weak (love/loved/loved).
I have also read somewhere (can’t find the reference) that this is why Danes are a mixture of tall Scandinavian types and shorter darker types but I don’t know whether this is science or romance!"
Good post Heuvel. I guess it was at this time that Germanic also obtained the weak-strong adjective distinction too. Was this from the non-IE speakers of the area too? Does anyone know where this weak-strong adjective distinction come from? -
Message 47
Posted by english_learner or cheetah (U3364191) on Monday, 26th June 2006
Thank you Stoggler, for your replies but I have incorrectly phrase question so this the correct one as follow (I hope)
How long would it takes for nation of many millions to *adopt* new language and culture assuming they would all go along with it as it would improve their thought process?
Or is it the mindset that is need changing rather than the former? -
Message 48
Posted by english_learner or cheetah (U3364191) on Wednesday, 28th June 2006
Hi PaulRyckier,
"Kurt, it is a very interesting book as I read the comments. But as I understand it it has all to do with as in language the culture where you have been educated and grown up. With other words if a Chinese kid is grown up with European step-parents and submerged completely in the European way of life, without contact with the Chinese way of life (which would perhaps be in practice nearly impossible)it would think and act as an European child? Interesting are some comments on rather western behaviour of Chinese by a western observer. Also the comments from eastern students in the West. I think the truth lays as mostly in the middle..."
Do you mean if a chinese is brought up in a totally western environment. He/she would behave in a western way? -
Message 49
Posted by english_learner or cheetah (U3364191) on Wednesday, 28th June 2006
I think English language and culture is like a perpect "car seat", once I get into it, it supports my thighs, my bump, my lower back, my upper back, it supports my head, it's provides me enough legs room.
-
Message 50
Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Wednesday, 28th June 2006
That is one all time classic issue for me as in the past I have raised questions on the validity of Indo-european theory.
First of all lets clear something: the 'older' 'newer' language is not to be taken literally. Some said here English is newer Greek or Indo-Iranian is older, no that is wrong... all these three languages derived today from a parallel process that is equally old (unless english was introduced on earth by aliens some 500-1000 years go, who knows? That genious Shakespear was weird enough... joking!
To make it more obvious for younger participants here (that raised the questions), in the 'new language' English you have the very basic verb "I am" pronounced "aee-em" which in the 'old language' modern Greek is 'eimai' (pronounced eeme) which comes from the ancient Greek 'eimi' pronounced e-ee-mi that sounds of course only so close to the modern english (thus how can we say what is old and what is new?). Another example the very ancient word 'buk' that means bread has actually Phrygian origins introduced in greek as 'bukia' (munch) is used in English as the verb 'to bake'! Thus what is 'new' and old is pretty much relative. Thus perhaps we should better refer to languages recognised over 1000 or over 2000 years acoording to what evidence we find in written text or the pretty much more dangerous approach (used for indoeuropean theory - see below my comments) of using mathematical-like methods to trace back the antiquity of a language.
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