Writing wasn’t invented until about 5500 years ago, appearing more or less simultaneously in Egypt and Mesopotamia around that time, though it’s plausible there may have been proto-writing systems for a couple of thousand years before that. However, there’s nothing which dates back to 10,000 years ago. And technically, those weren’t alphabets. They were logographic systems or syllabaries. That is, characters represented entire words or syllables, respectively. Alphabets, where characters represent single vowel or consonant sounds, didn’t appear until somewhat later.Anyway, people of the Americas did independently invent writing. The earliest writing in the Americas is associated with the Olmec in eastern Mexico. The Olmec create a combined logographic and syllabic writing system, not dissimilar to many Old World writing systems. Peruvians also developed ways of recording information, but they did so very differently. The Inca used carefully prepared sets of knotted strings called qipu. They appear to have been primarily used as accounting devices, but they have been used to record information we’d regard as texts. Unfortunately, given their perishable nature, we don’t know how far back they were used, and our only surviving examples are only a few centuries old, predating contact with Europeans, but just barely.https://www.quora.com/In-Europe-and-Asia-we-invented-the-writing-and-the-alphabet-around-10-000-years-ago-When-did-the-ancient-people-of-the-Americas-invent-the-alphabet
http://www.economist.com/news/international/21620221-translating-technological-terms-throws-up-some-peculiar-challenges-cookies-caches-and-cows
https://open-data.europa.eu/en/data/dataset/dgt-translation-memory DGT-TM is a translation memory (sentences and their manually produced translations) in 24 languages. It contains segments from the Acquis Communautaire, the body of European legislation, comprising all the treaties, regulations and directives adopted by the European Union (EU). Since each new country joining the EU is required to accept the whole Acquis Communautaire, this body of legislation has been translated into 24 official languages. For the 23rd official EU language, Irish, the Acquis is not translated on a regular basis; which is why DGT-TM includes only a small amount of data in Irish. The 2014 release of DGT-TM brought the translations for the 24th official language Croatian.
Relevance Theory
- www.cambridge.org/billyclark
- addressees begin by assuming that the communicator has an interpretation in mind which justifies the expenditure of effort involved in arriving at it
- there is always a significant gap between what is linguistically encoded and what speakers actually intend by their utterances. Recognition of this gap has been termed the underdeterminacy thesis.
- two principles of relevance
- cognitive principle of relevance - human cognition tends to be geared to the maximation of relevance; notion of relevance defined in terms of a balance between cognitive effects and processing effort (more cognitive effects, more relevant; the more mental effort involved in processing a stimulus the less relevant). To maximise relevance is to produce the greatest amount of cognitive effects for least amount of processing effort.
- communicative principle of relevance
- cognitive effect
- contextual implication
- strengthening an existing assumption
- constradicting an existing assumption
- relevance of an input to an individual
- first or cognitive principle of relevance
- maximising relevance
- second or communicative principle of relevance
- presumption of optimal relevance
- ostensive inferential communication
- relevance guided comprehension heuristic
- mutual parallel adjustment process
- origin
- paul grice
- post-Gricean
- neo-Gricean - Horn and Levinson
- irony
- irony as echoic
- grice's traditional approach - says opposite of he/she means
- irony as pretence
- corpora
In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of breath that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. In English, aspirated consonants are allophones in complementary distribution with their unaspirated counterparts, but in some other languages, notably most Indian and East Asian languages, the difference is contrastive.
- eg
European thesaurus
- http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/
- http://ice-corpora.net/ice/index.htm
- http://www.webcorp.org.uk/live/
- http://www.ucl.ac.uk/pals, http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/publications/WPL/04papers/wilson.pdf, http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/lexprag07/projectdes.html, http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/robyn/pdf/Wilson-Carston-Unitary-Approach-2007.pdf, http://www.ucl.ac.uk/pals/research/linguistics/publications/wpl/12papers/Kolaiti-and-Wilson
- http://www.titania.bham.ac.uk/
- http://wordnet.princeton.edu/
The hypothesis of linguistic relativity, part of relativism, also known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis /səˌpɪər ˈhwɔːrf/, the Whorf hypothesis, or Whorfianism is a principle claiming that the structure of a language affects its speakers' world view or cognition, and thus people's perceptions are relative to their spoken language. The idea was however not created by Edward Sapir or Benjamin Lee Whorf, but imported from German humanistic thinking by various American authors. Being related to the concept of the spirit or Geist, it is a core tenet of Völkerpsychologie and other versions of post-Hegelian philosophy and German romanticism.
- economist 17oct2020
In linguistics, a calque /kælk/ or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal, word-for-word or root-for-root translation. Used as a verb, "to calque" means to borrow a word or phrase from another language while translating its components, so as to create a new lexeme in the target language. "Calque" itself is a loanword from the French noun calque ("tracing; imitation; close copy"); the verb calquer means "to trace; to copy, to imitate closely"; papier calque is "tracing paper". The word "loanword" is itself a calque of the German word Lehnwort, just as "loan translation" is a calque of Lehnübersetzung. Proving that a word is a calque sometimes requires more documentation than does an untranslated loanword because, in some cases, a similar phrase might have arisen in both languages independently. This is less likely to be the case when the grammar of the proposed calque is quite different from that of the borrowing language, or when the calque contains less obvious imagery. Calquing is distinct from phono-semantic matching. While calquing includes semantic translation, it does not consist of phonetic matching (i.e. retaining the approximate sound of the borrowed word through matching it with a similar-sounding pre-existing word or morpheme in the target language).
phonology
-音系規則（Phonological rules）http://pdf.wenweipo.com/2020/12/08/a17-1208.pdf
In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of breath that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. In English, aspirated consonants are allophones in complementary distribution with their unaspirated counterparts, but in some other languages, notably most Indian and East Asian languages, the difference is contrastive.
- eg
- The h in Buddha is not silent. It marks the so called voiced aspirations, which means phonation between the release the consonant and the following vowel. This means the the dh part is pronounced [dʱ]. It’s like how a stressed /t/ is pronounced in English before a vowel [tʰ] but with voicing during the whole thing.https://www.quora.com/Why-is-there-a-silent-h-in-the-spelling-of-Buddha-while-the-term-is-just-a-translation
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-least-phonetic-language-on-Earth
gutteral sounds
- https://www.quora.com/Can-an-English-speaker-really-learn-to-speak-accurately-those-languages-that-seem-to-use-lots-of-guttural-sounds
A homophone is a word that is pronounced the same as another (a "sound-alike" or an aural/oral echo) but which differs in spelling and meaning, such as cite, sight, and site. A homograph on the other hand is a word that is spelled the same as another (a "look-alike" or visual echo) but which differs in sound and meaning, such as tear (to separte or pull apart) and tear (a secretion from the eye) [homophones and homographs an american dictionary by james b hobbs]
European thesaurus
- http://eurovoc/drupal/
name of language
- https://www.quora.com/Where-do-languages-get-their-names-from
name of country/place
- "-ia"
- https://www.quora.com/Which-animal-ends-with-the-letters-in
father
- https://www.quora.com/Ancient-Greeks-had-three-words-for-father-pat%C3%A9r-father-t%C3%A1ta-daddy-and-p%C3%A1ppa-daddy-Why-do-modern-Greeks-use-the-Turkish-word-Baba-for-father-instead-of-the-aforementioned-Greek-words
mother
vo (“egg” from ovus), hueso (“bone” from osus), hierba (“grass” from herba)… Spanish tends to turn Latin long vowels into dypthongues, but a dypthongue cannot be alone in a syllable according to spelling rules, so we add an H which is a consonant but silent to keep the rule! Sometimes it comes from a different place, for example “ice” gelu→ ielo→hielo. It is a lose dypthongue the same so we add an H. The H here takes both roles, both as in the lost F and the lose dypthongue, because many derivates of hieloDO carry a G (i.e. gélido), so the H here also indicates derivates have a consonant sound that dropped there as in the F.name of language
- https://www.quora.com/Where-do-languages-get-their-names-from
name of country/place
- "-ia"
- https://www.quora.com/The-Spanish-name-for-the-West-Bank-is-Cisjordania-what-does-this-mean-in-English-literally
- https://www.quora.com/Which-animal-ends-with-the-letters-in
father
- https://www.quora.com/Ancient-Greeks-had-three-words-for-father-pat%C3%A9r-father-t%C3%A1ta-daddy-and-p%C3%A1ppa-daddy-Why-do-modern-Greeks-use-the-Turkish-word-Baba-for-father-instead-of-the-aforementioned-Greek-words
mother
- https://www.quora.com/Why-does-the-word-mot%C3%ABr-mean-sister-in-Albanian-and-not-mother-like-in-other-Indo-European-languages
daughter
- https://www.quora.com/Does-the-English-word-daughter-derive-from-the-Greek-word-thugater-%CE%B8%CF%85%CE%B3%CE%AC%CF%84%CE%B5%CF%81
night
- it is a coincidence that the word for night looks like a combination of n+eight.https://www.quora.com/Is-it-a-coincidence-that-in-many-European-languages-the-word-for-night-is-the-combination-of-the-letter-n-and-some-form-resembling-the-number-eight-As-in-night-nacht-nuit-notte-noche
greeting
- https://www.quora.com/In-the-Romance-languages-how-did-the-word-for-hello-develop-It-isnt-that-similar-to-the-Latin-equivalent
thank you
daughter
- https://www.quora.com/Does-the-English-word-daughter-derive-from-the-Greek-word-thugater-%CE%B8%CF%85%CE%B3%CE%AC%CF%84%CE%B5%CF%81
night
- it is a coincidence that the word for night looks like a combination of n+eight.https://www.quora.com/Is-it-a-coincidence-that-in-many-European-languages-the-word-for-night-is-the-combination-of-the-letter-n-and-some-form-resembling-the-number-eight-As-in-night-nacht-nuit-notte-noche
greeting
- https://www.quora.com/In-the-Romance-languages-how-did-the-word-for-hello-develop-It-isnt-that-similar-to-the-Latin-equivalent
thank you
- https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-word-for-thank-you-so-different-between-most-Romance-languages-In-French-it-s-Merci-in-Portuguese-it-s-Obrigado-in-Spanish-it-s-Gracias-in-Romanian-it-s-Multumesc
to have
- https://www.quora.com/Why-is-there-no-Latvian-word-for-to-have
language/tongue
- https://www.quora.com/Is-there-a-Germanic-alternative-for-the-word-language-in-English-Like-spr%C3%A6c-from-Old-English-perhaps
numbers
- https://www.quora.com/Are-there-any-theories-regarding-the-etymology-of-number-names-1-10-in-Indo-European-languages
articles
- Most languages in Europe to the East of the Oder River lack articles.
informal/formal (eg tu/vous) distinction
- https://www.quora.com/Why-didnt-the-Greek-language-lose-the-distinction-from-singular-to-plural-for-formality-while-the-English-language-abolished-the-familiar-thou-thy-thine-and-kept-only-you-your-and-yours-Greek The tu/vous distinction seems to have entered Greek in the early 19th century, and one can only assume it came from the West—though it also seems to predate Greek Independence. In the rest of Europe, the tu/vous started to retreat after the social upheavals of 1968. (I used to say to myself “shut up already” when Esperanto intellectual Giorgio Silfer would go on and on in his writings about 1968, but that was an Anglosphere reaction: it really was that big a deal in Europe.) In Sweden, I gather, it’s more dead than anywhere else.My impression is that in Greece, it’s not universal, and Greeks are eager to drop it as soon as humanly possible, because of how unfriendly it is. (Not like the Germans, with their whole drinking ceremony about reaching the stage when they’re allowed to Duzen.) But it’s not dead like it is in Sweden.
to have
- https://www.quora.com/Why-is-there-no-Latvian-word-for-to-have
language/tongue
- https://www.quora.com/Is-there-a-Germanic-alternative-for-the-word-language-in-English-Like-spr%C3%A6c-from-Old-English-perhaps
numbers
- https://www.quora.com/Are-there-any-theories-regarding-the-etymology-of-number-names-1-10-in-Indo-European-languages
articles
- Most languages in Europe to the East of the Oder River lack articles.
The exceptions I can think of off the top of my head are Yiddish (and a smattering of other Germanic languages like Wymysorys) Hungarian, Bulgarian, Romanian, and Greek. The languages that are West of the Oder form an area called Standard Average European, and among other tendencies, they tend to have articles that diachronically evolved from demonstrative pronouns.https://www.quora.com/Why-have-virtually-all-European-languages-developed-articles
informal/formal (eg tu/vous) distinction
- https://www.quora.com/Why-didnt-the-Greek-language-lose-the-distinction-from-singular-to-plural-for-formality-while-the-English-language-abolished-the-familiar-thou-thy-thine-and-kept-only-you-your-and-yours-Greek The tu/vous distinction seems to have entered Greek in the early 19th century, and one can only assume it came from the West—though it also seems to predate Greek Independence. In the rest of Europe, the tu/vous started to retreat after the social upheavals of 1968. (I used to say to myself “shut up already” when Esperanto intellectual Giorgio Silfer would go on and on in his writings about 1968, but that was an Anglosphere reaction: it really was that big a deal in Europe.) In Sweden, I gather, it’s more dead than anywhere else.My impression is that in Greece, it’s not universal, and Greeks are eager to drop it as soon as humanly possible, because of how unfriendly it is. (Not like the Germans, with their whole drinking ceremony about reaching the stage when they’re allowed to Duzen.) But it’s not dead like it is in Sweden.
language families
- https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-two-largest-language-families
-******** https://www.quora.com/How-did-people-find-out-Indo-European-languages-were-actually-one-family-of-languages For the next 1,000 years, a few philosophers tried “deriving” words in modern European languages from Hebrew (usually mixing in total changes in meaning) and vague surfacey-similarities.This was the dominant point of view until the 1600s.An early argument against this approach was made in the 1500s, when Joseph Justus Scaliger began arguing that Hebrew was not in the same group as other languages, and he instead grouped Germanic languages with Romance and Slavic languages, by comparing words.The Dutch Philosopher Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn formalised these groupings in 1647, also recognising similarities between Germanic, Romance, Slavic, Celtic, Baltic, Greek AND Persian, but not Hebrew or Arabic. He called the ancestor language to these languages “Scythian.”A French Jesuit Missionary, Gaston-Laurent Coeurdoux, took van Boxhorn’s (1647) claims and demonstrated that Sanskrit was “Indo-Scythian” by comparing the “to be” verbs in Sanskrit and Latin.From there, a wide amount of scholarship exploded relying heavily on Sanskrit to input the comparisons. For a time, Sanskrit was thought to be the ancestor of all off these languages, but now it is known basically known to be the most conservative Indo-European language, and Sanskrit itself lost many features known to have existed in Hittite language.By the 1800s, the German Linguist August Schleicher published Schleicher's fable—a story written in Schleicher’s reconstruction of the Indo-European language. This reconstruction is actually a constructed language when it is used in this way, much like Klingon or Esperanto. It may very well be identical to how people talked in the Eurasian steppe 5,000 years ago (it’s probably that precise; see the updates to it), but it is also constructed by a human being rather than something that evolved in a speech community.
- romance language
- romance language
- https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-origin-of-the-Romance-languages
- https://www.quora.com/Is-the-h-in-Spanish-completely-silent-What-is-its-purpose The H is silent in ALL Romance languages just like the K is not used or the W. Because these letters are not Latin, and Romances just like Latin imported them from Greek (H and K) and Germanic languages (W). The H was silent in Latin, and it is silent in Italian and French just the same as Spanish. The H comes from Greek heta and it is used as the other comment pointed out for combinations such as CH. Also in Spanish the first F sound of many words was dropped from Latin, but less common derivates of those words do keep the F sound, so we keep writing an H to indicate that derivates of that word carry the F (i.e. hierro→ ferroviario). A third case is in Spanish syllables are often consonant + vowel, vowel alone or consonant + dypthongue; but there is an exception, dypthongues of starting vowels: ue
- proto language
- proto indo european
- https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-animal-names-in-Proto-Indo-European
- https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-modern-names-that-have-a-discernable-etymology-preferably-with-examples-in-proto-Indo-European
- a sound-change pattern that can be seen repeatedly in said language group, it’s fairly easy to see that they’re related. This group has a name now: it’s called the Germanic languages, and it includes German (of course), English, Dutch, Frisian, Low Saxon, Yiddish, Afrikaans, Scots, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Elfdarian, Faroese, and Icelandic. We can also see that the sound changes all relate to words in other languages, so we can say with a good degree of certainty that the Germanic languages are related to most other European languages. Due to other sound change patterns found in Sanskrit (eg. Latin pater, Sanskrit pitar), we found out that most of the major languages in India are related to most of the major language in Europe, and we call the language family Indo-European. It includes the Germanic, Italic (languages related to Latin), Slavic (eg. Russian, Czech, Polish), Baltic (Lithuanian, Latvian), Celtic (eg. Irish, Welsh), Indic (eg. Hindi, Marathi), Iranian (eg. Pashto, Persian), Hellenic (Greek), Albanian, and Armenian sub-families.
Long story short, we know that languages are related because the words and sounds are related. Tracing the sound change patterns, we can reconstruct proto-languages with rough levels of certainty, which is why we know (very roughly) what Proto-Indo-European https://www.quora.com/How-scientific-are-the-studies-concerning-language-families-How-much-of-it-is-backed-up-by-anthropological-findings-More-in-details
- Proto-Afroasiatic
- https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-oldest-Proto-language-which-we-know-something-about
- https://www.quora.com/Linguistically-Ancient-Egyptian-and-proto-Semitic-were-quite-closely-related-languages-Would-the-Ancient-Hebrews-have-been-able-to-communicate-more-or-less-easily-with-the-Egyptians
- Languages of the Indo-European family are classified as either centum languages or satem languages according to how the dorsal consonants (sounds of "K" and "G" type) of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) developed. An example of the different developments is provided by the words for "hundred" found in the early attested Indo-European languages. In centum languages, they typically began with a /k/ sound (Latin centum was pronounced with initial /k/), but in satem languages, they often began with /s/ (the example satem comes from the Avestan language of Zoroastrian scripture).The canonical centum languages of the Indo-European family are the "western" branches: Hellenic, Celtic, Italic and Germanic. They merged Proto-Indo-European palatovelars and plain velars, yielding plain velars only ("centumisation") but retained the labiovelars as a distinct set.The Anatolian branch probably falls outside the centum–satem dichotomy; for instance, Luwian indicates that all three dorsal consonant rows survived separately in Proto-Anatolian. The centumisation observed in Hittite is therefore assumed to have occurred only after the breakup of Proto-Anatolian. However, Craig Melchert proposes that proto-Anatolian is indeed a centum language.颚-咝音同言线（Centum-Satem isogloss）在后继语言中的表现形式。噝音類語言中，唇軟顎音和純軟顎音之間的區別消失，同時將顎化軟顎音噝音化。顎音類語言相反，硬顎化軟顎音和純軟顎音之間的區別消失。這個過程在語言學又稱作噝音化(Satemization)過程。大致來講，“東部”語言是噝音類，包括印度-伊朗语族、波罗的语族、斯拉夫語族等，顎音都退化成為/s/、/ś/或/h/音；“西部”語言是顎音類，包括日耳曼語族、義大利语族、凯尔特语族等。顎音類-噝音類的等語綫處在希臘語和亞美尼亞語之間，同時希臘語也有一些噝音類的特徵。有一些語言可能兩類都不屬於，比如安那托利亞語族、吐火罗语族，可能還有阿爾巴尼亞語。總之，這種兩分法是屬於“並系”（或近源，paraphyletic）的，也就是說並沒有存在過“原始噝音語”或“原始顎音語”，但是發音變化是在很久之前（大約在公元前第三個千年内）現在已經絕跡的後原始印歐語言中隨地域逐漸傳播的。欧洲语言中称将这一同言线划分出的两大分支称为 centum 与 satem，它源于拉丁语与阿維斯陀語中对“百”的称呼。这两个词是同源的，首音均源于原始印欧语的颚音 *ḱ，不过在属颚音语的拉丁语中，c 仍代表软颚音，而在属咝音语的阿維斯陀語中，该音已演变为咝音 s。
- https://www.quora.com/Is-Polish-the-only-satem-language-that-uses-W-in-native-words This is a very weird question, but for what it’s worth, no, it isn’t: for one thing, there are the closely related Kashubian, Upper Sorbian and Lower Sorbian; for another, there is the more remotely related Kurdish.
Runes are the letters in a set of related alphabets known as runic alphabets, which were used to write various Germanic languagesbefore the adoption of the Latin alphabet and for specialised purposes thereafter. The Scandinavian variants are also known as futhark or fuþark (derived from their first six letters of the alphabet: F, U, Þ, A, R, and K); the Anglo-Saxon variant is futhorc or fuþorc (due to sound changes undergone in Old English by the names of those six letters).The earliest runic inscriptions date from around 150 AD. The characters were generally replaced by the Latin alphabet as the cultures that had used runes underwent Christianisation, by approximately 700 AD in central Europe and 1100 AD in northern Europe. However, the use of runes persisted for specialized purposes in northern Europe. Until the early 20th century, runes were used in rural Sweden for decorative purposes in Dalarna and on Runic calendars. The three best-known runic alphabets are the Elder Futhark (around 150–800 AD), the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc (400–1100 AD), and the Younger Futhark (800–1100 AD). The Younger Futhark is divided further into the long-branch runes (also called Danish, although they were also used in Norway, Sweden and Frisia); short-branch or Rök runes (also called Swedish-Norwegian, although they were also used in Denmark); and the stavlösa or Hälsinge runes (staveless runes). The Younger Futhark developed further into the Medieval runes (1100–1500 AD), and the Dalecarlian runes (c. 1500–1800 AD). Historically, the runic alphabet is a derivation of the Old Italic scripts of antiquity, with the addition of some innovations. Which variant of the Old Italic family in particular gave rise to the runes is uncertain. Suggestions include Raetic, Venetic, Etruscan, or Old Latin as candidates. At the time, all of these scripts had the same angular letter shapes suited for epigraphy, which would become characteristic of the runes.
- 中世紀北歐一帶常用的盧恩字母（Runes）現已失傳，日本一名十六歲高中生日前卻忽發奇想，以盧恩字母交作文功課，未料老師不惜花上三個半小時解碼。這場「師生鬥法」上周四上傳社交網Twitter後，一眾網友紛紛嘩然。https://orientaldaily.on.cc/cnt/china_world/20200622/00180_030.html
Creole
- A creole language is a stable natural language developed from a mixture of different languages. Unlike a pidgin, a simplified form that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups, a creole language is a complete language, used in a community and acquired by children as their native language. Creole languages therefore have a fully developed vocabulary and system of grammar.The precise number of creole languages is not known, particularly as many are poorly attested or documented, but the list of creole languages shows that creoles exist around the world. About one hundred creole languages have arisen since 1500. These are predominantly based on European languages, due to the Age of Discovery and the Atlantic slave trade that arose at that time. With the improvements in ship-building and navigation, traders had to learn to communicate with people around the world, and the quickest way to do this was to develop a pidgin, or simplified language suited to the purpose; in turn, full creole languages developed from these pidgins. In addition to creoles that have European languages as their base, there are, for example, creoles based on Arabic, Chinese, and Malay. The creole with the largest number of speakers is Haitian Creole, with about ten million native speakers.
koinesationCreole
- A creole language is a stable natural language developed from a mixture of different languages. Unlike a pidgin, a simplified form that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups, a creole language is a complete language, used in a community and acquired by children as their native language. Creole languages therefore have a fully developed vocabulary and system of grammar.The precise number of creole languages is not known, particularly as many are poorly attested or documented, but the list of creole languages shows that creoles exist around the world. About one hundred creole languages have arisen since 1500. These are predominantly based on European languages, due to the Age of Discovery and the Atlantic slave trade that arose at that time. With the improvements in ship-building and navigation, traders had to learn to communicate with people around the world, and the quickest way to do this was to develop a pidgin, or simplified language suited to the purpose; in turn, full creole languages developed from these pidgins. In addition to creoles that have European languages as their base, there are, for example, creoles based on Arabic, Chinese, and Malay. The creole with the largest number of speakers is Haitian Creole, with about ten million native speakers.
- https://www.quora.com/When-Rome-imposed-Latin-language-in-new-territories-did-the-languages-there-become-creoles-pidgins-to-form-modern-day-Spanish-French-etc No, modern day Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian and many more are not considered creoles by any linguist.
- https://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21736117-they-evolved-slavery-how-painful-origins-many-creole-languages note the four flags shown in the article: portugal, france, usa and jamaica Sierra Leone’s Creoles, who created the language named after them, came to the country in three main waves. Former slaves in America arrived via Nova Scotia, free Jamaican “Maroons” were descended from slaves, and west Africans were freed on the high seas after Britain banned the international slave trade in 1807. The proto-Krio mix thus combined early African-American English, Jamaican Patois and west African languages such as Yoruba. Other languages contributed, too. Pikin, meaning “child”, comes from the Portuguese pequenino for “very small”, and goes back to the Portuguese role in the early slave trade. Creoles are the world’s newest languages. Instead of evolving over many centuries, most emerged in a relative heartbeat. On slave plantations, speakers of different languages came together in the harshest possible conditions. In the traditional account of this process, a creole most often arose from a pidgin: a simple, improvised argot drawing most of its words from the (usually European) languages of the masters. As children learned the pidgin as a native language, it became a creole—stabler and more grammatically elaborate than the pidgin.
- Spanish-based creoles did develop in some places like Colombia and the Philippines.The French- and English-based creoles emerged in a context of plantation slavery where African slaves formed the vast majority of the population and were denied an education, so that their children developed a mixed language containing vocabulary mostly from the European language but grammatical elements of the African language (or innovated entirely). These creoles were spoken by 90–95 % of the population; only a small minority spoke the dominant European language. The creolophone population always remained large, even if it also learned to speak French/English later on. For example, in Martinique and Guadeloupe, which are overseas departments of France, everyone can speak French now, but it’s still common for people to speak Créole among their friends and family. In the case of Haiti, where the educational system is severely limited in resources, many people have not been able to complete their education and are fluent only in Créole. Slavery also existed in the Spanish colonies, but often it consisted of enslaving the native population (who continued to speak its native language) or if it did involve African slaves, they were imported in smaller numbers so that they did not form the overwhelming majority of the population, as in the French/British Caribbean. As Spanish gradually spread through education/suppression of native languages, the creoles that they had developed tended to decline.https://www.quora.com/Why-didnt-Spanish-colonies-develop-a-different-language-creole-like-it-happened-in-English-and-French-colonies-like-Haiti-Jamaica-and-the-French-English-Antilles
- vs cajun
- https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-Cajun-and-Creole-1
- https://www.quora.com/Will-Latin-American-countries-eventually-evolve-their-own-language-diverge-from-Spanish
*******A pidgin /ˈpɪdʒɪn/, or pidgin language, is a grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often drawn from several languages. It is most commonly employed in situations such as trade, or where both groups speak languages different from the language of the country in which they reside (but where there is no common language between the groups). Fundamentally, a pidgin is a simplified means of linguistic communication, as it is constructed impromptu, or by convention, between individuals or groups of people. A pidgin is not the native language of any speech community, but is instead learned as a second language. A pidgin may be built from words, sounds, or body language from a multitude of languages as well as onomatopoeia. As the lexicon of any pidgin will be limited to core vocabulary, words with only a specific meaning in lexifier language may acquire a completely new (or additional) meaning in the pidgin. Pidgins have historically been considered a form of patois, unsophisticated simplified versions of their lexifiers, and as such usually have low prestige with respect to other languages. However, not all simplified or "unsophisticated" forms of a language are pidgins. Each pidgin has its own norms of usage which must be learned for proficiency in the pidgin. A pidgin differs from a creole, which is the first language of a speech community of native speakers that at one point arose from a pidgin. Unlike pidgins, creoles have fully developed vocabulary and patterned grammar. Most linguists believe that a creole develops through a process of nativization of a pidgin when children of acquired pidgin-speakers learn and use it as their native language.
- Pidgin derives from a Chinese pronunciation of the English word business, and all attestations from the first half of the nineteenth century given in the third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary mean 'business; an action, occupation, or affair' (the earliest being from 1807). The term pidgin English ("business English"), first attested in 1855, shows the term in transition to referring to language, and by the 1860s the term pidgin alone could refer to Pidgin English. The term was coming to be used in the more general linguistic sense represented by this article by the 1870s. A popular folk-etymology for pidgin is English pigeon, a bird sometimes used for carrying brief written messages, especially in times prior to modern telecommunications.
- cases
- **************https://www.quora.com/Was-South-Africas-replacement-of-Dutch-with-Afrikaans-more-linguistic-or-political-Is-the-difference-between-Dutch-and-Afrikaans-qualitatively-greater-than-that-between-e-g-Brazilian-and-Peninsular-Portuguese Afrikaans is a creole which grew out of the “pidgin Dutch” taught to the coloured (sic) servants of the White settlers. The babysitters of white children taught these children their “broken Dutch” which then became the mother tongue of the Afrikaners.The decision to recognise Afrikaans as its own language was acknowledging a linguistic fact- Afrikaners kids were struggling to write correct Dutch, a language they never heard or ysed in their daily lives. Imagine, by way of example, being forced to write in correct Elizabethan English while speaking everyday modern English- very difficult.But it was also a political decision as the Afrikaners were declaring themselves “African” and no longer politically or culturally tied to Europe.To a modern Dutch speaker, Afrikaans sounds like “baby talk”.
A cant, cryptolect, argot, anti-language or secret language is the jargon or language of a group, often employed to exclude or mislead people outside the group. Each term differs slightly in meaning, and their use is inconsistent.There are two main schools of thought on the origin of the word cant:
- In Celtic linguistics, the derivation is normally seen to be from the Scottish Gaelic cainnt or Irish word caint (older spelling cainnt) "speech, talk". In this sense it is seen to have derived amongst the itinerant groups of people in Scotland and Ireland, hailing from both Irish/Scottish Gaelic and English-speaking backgrounds, ultimately developing as various creole languages.[2] However, the various types of cant (Scottish/Irish) are mutually unintelligible to each other. The Irish creole variant is simply termed "the Cant". Its speakers from the Irish Traveller community know it as Gammon, and the linguistic community identifies it as Shelta.
- Outside Goidelic circles, the derivation is normally seen to be from Latin cantāre "to sing" via Norman French canter.[1][3] Within this derivation, the history of the word is seen to originally have referred to the chanting of friars, used in a disparaging way some time between the 12th and 15th centuries.[1] Gradually, the term was applied to the singsong of beggars and eventually a criminal jargon.
An argot (English: /ˈɑːrɡoʊ/; from French argot [aʁˈɡo] 'slang') is a secret language used by various groups to prevent outsiders from understanding their conversations. The term argot is also used to refer to the informal specialized vocabulary from a particular field of study, occupation, or hobby, in which sense it overlaps with jargon.
Polysynthetic languages are typically ones that capture entire sentences with a single word, which is usually the only obligatory element in that sentence. In a language like Ubykh, once spoken along the shores of the Black Sea near Georgia, verbs can inflect for subject, direct object, indirect object, tense, aspect, mood, voice and many other properties of whole clauses https://www.quora.com/Is-French-moving-towards-polysynthesis
Polysynthetic languages are typically ones that capture entire sentences with a single word, which is usually the only obligatory element in that sentence. In a language like Ubykh, once spoken along the shores of the Black Sea near Georgia, verbs can inflect for subject, direct object, indirect object, tense, aspect, mood, voice and many other properties of whole clauses https://www.quora.com/Is-French-moving-towards-polysynthesis
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin alphabet. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation of the sounds of spoken language. The IPA is used by lexicographers, foreign language students and teachers, linguists, speech-language pathologists, singers, actors, constructed language creators and translators.
- economist 10apr2021 "tough stuff" even when spelling seems to make little sense, it is almost impossible to reform
- https://www.quora.com/Why-dont-we-all-use-the-IPA
international auxiliary language
- Volapük (/ˈvɒləpʊk/ in English; [volaˈpyk] in Volapük) is a constructed language, created in 1879 and 1880 by Johann Martin Schleyer, a Roman Catholic priest in Baden, Germany. Schleyer felt that God had told him in a dream to create an international language. Volapük conventions took place in 1884 (Friedrichshafen), 1887 (Munich) and 1889 (Paris). The first two conventions used German, and the last conference used only Volapük. In 1889, there were an estimated 283 clubs, 25 periodicals in or about Volapük, and 316 textbooks in 25 languages;[3] at that time the language claimed nearly a million adherents. Volapük was largely displaced in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Esperanto.
- Esperanto (/ˌɛspəˈrɑːntoʊ/ or /-ˈræn-/; Esperanto [espeˈranto]) is a constructed international auxiliary language. L. L. Zamenhof, a Polish-Jewish ophthalmologist, created Esperanto in the late 19th century and published the first book detailing it, Unua Libro, in 1887 under the pseudonym Dr. Esperanto, Esperanto translating as "one who hopes". His original title for the language was simply the international language (lingvo internacia), but early speakers grew fond of the name Esperanto and began to use it as a name for the language in 1889, which quickly gained prominence and has been used as an official name ever since.In 1905, Zamenhof organized the first World Esperanto Congress, an ongoing annual conference, in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France. The first congress ratified the Declaration of Boulogne, which established several foundational premises for the Esperanto movement. One of its pronouncements is that the Esperanto movement is exclusively a linguistic movement and that no further meaning can ever be ascribed to it. Another is that Fundamento de Esperanto, a 1905 book by Zamenhof, is the only obligatory authority over the language. Zamenhof also proposed to the first congress that an independent body of language scholars should steward the future evolution of Esperanto, foreshadowing the Akademio de Esperanto, in part modeled after the Académie française. In 1908, a group of young Esperanto speakers led by Hector Hodler established the Universal Esperanto Association in order to provide a central organization for the global Esperanto community. Esperanto grew throughout the 20th century, both as a language and as a linguistic community. Despite speakers facing persecution in regimes such as Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, Esperanto speakers continued to establish organizations and publish periodicalstailored to specific regions and interests. In 1954, the United Nations granted official support to Esperanto as an international auxiliary language in the Montevideo Resolution.
constructed fictional language
- https://www.quora.com/Why-dont-we-all-use-the-IPA
international auxiliary language
- Volapük (/ˈvɒləpʊk/ in English; [volaˈpyk] in Volapük) is a constructed language, created in 1879 and 1880 by Johann Martin Schleyer, a Roman Catholic priest in Baden, Germany. Schleyer felt that God had told him in a dream to create an international language. Volapük conventions took place in 1884 (Friedrichshafen), 1887 (Munich) and 1889 (Paris). The first two conventions used German, and the last conference used only Volapük. In 1889, there were an estimated 283 clubs, 25 periodicals in or about Volapük, and 316 textbooks in 25 languages;[3] at that time the language claimed nearly a million adherents. Volapük was largely displaced in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Esperanto.
- Esperanto (/ˌɛspəˈrɑːntoʊ/ or /-ˈræn-/; Esperanto [espeˈranto]) is a constructed international auxiliary language. L. L. Zamenhof, a Polish-Jewish ophthalmologist, created Esperanto in the late 19th century and published the first book detailing it, Unua Libro, in 1887 under the pseudonym Dr. Esperanto, Esperanto translating as "one who hopes". His original title for the language was simply the international language (lingvo internacia), but early speakers grew fond of the name Esperanto and began to use it as a name for the language in 1889, which quickly gained prominence and has been used as an official name ever since.In 1905, Zamenhof organized the first World Esperanto Congress, an ongoing annual conference, in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France. The first congress ratified the Declaration of Boulogne, which established several foundational premises for the Esperanto movement. One of its pronouncements is that the Esperanto movement is exclusively a linguistic movement and that no further meaning can ever be ascribed to it. Another is that Fundamento de Esperanto, a 1905 book by Zamenhof, is the only obligatory authority over the language. Zamenhof also proposed to the first congress that an independent body of language scholars should steward the future evolution of Esperanto, foreshadowing the Akademio de Esperanto, in part modeled after the Académie française. In 1908, a group of young Esperanto speakers led by Hector Hodler established the Universal Esperanto Association in order to provide a central organization for the global Esperanto community. Esperanto grew throughout the 20th century, both as a language and as a linguistic community. Despite speakers facing persecution in regimes such as Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, Esperanto speakers continued to establish organizations and publish periodicalstailored to specific regions and interests. In 1954, the United Nations granted official support to Esperanto as an international auxiliary language in the Montevideo Resolution.
constructed fictional language
- The Klingon language (tlhIngan Hol, pronounced [ˈt͡ɬɪ.ŋɑn xol], in pIqaD ) is the constructed language spoken by the fictional Klingons in the Star Trek universe.Described in the 1985 book The Klingon Dictionary by Marc Okrand and deliberately designed to sound "alien", it has a number of typologically uncommon features. The language's basic sound, along with a few words, was first devised by actor James Doohan ("Scotty") and producer Jon Povill for Star Trek: The Motion Picture. That film marked the first time the language had been heard on screen. In all previous appearances, Klingons spoke in English, even to each other. Klingon was subsequently developed by Okrand into a full-fledged language.
- The Dothraki language is a constructed fictional language in George R. R. Martin's fantasy novel series A Song of Ice and Fire and its television adaptation Game of Thrones. It is spoken by the Dothraki, a nomadic people in the series's fictional world. The language was developed for the TV series by the linguist David J. Peterson, working off the Dothraki words and phrases in Martin's novels.
romanisation system
- Wade–Giles (/ˌweɪd
pitch accent languages
- norwegian, swedish, serbo-croat and panjabi
tone languages
- chinese, vietnamese, thai, igbo
consonant
- The bilabial nasal is a type of consonantal sound used in almost all spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨m⟩, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is
- The voiced bilabial fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨β⟩ (or more properly ⟨ꞵ⟩), and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is
- https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-pronounce-African-names-that-start-with-the-letter-M-and-followed-by-a-non-vowel-for-example-Mbuti
- there are two languages without nasal phonemes. Nasal phonemes are sounds articulated by lowering the velum, so that air flows through the nose instead. These languages happen to be Makah and Quileute. Makah and Quileute are neighbor languages. Makah is a language that comes from the Wakashan language family, While Quileute comes from the Chimakuan language family.https://www.quora.com/Is-there-a-language-that-doesnt-have-the-sound-n
A diacritic – also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or an accent – is a glyphadded to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek διακριτικός(diakritikós, "distinguishing"), from διακρίνω (diakrī́nō, "to distinguish"). Diacritic is primarily an adjective, though sometimes used as a noun, whereas diacritical is only ever an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute ( ´ ) and grave ( ` ), are often called accents. Diacritical marks may appear above or below a letter, or in some other position such as within the letter or between two letters.
- https://www.quora.com/Is-English-the-only-Latin-script-alphabet-without-diacritics-If-so-why-If-not-which-others-do
digraph
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latin-script_digraphs
- https://www.quora.com/Are-there-any-letters-like-%E2%80%98w%E2%80%99-historically-consisting-of-a-double-letter-and-then-merged-to-become-a-distinct-letter-to-be-found-in-other-alphabets
A diphthong (/ˈdɪfθɒŋ/ DIF-thong or /ˈdɪpθɒŋ/ DIP-thong; from Greek: δίφθογγος, diphthongos, literally "two sounds" or "two tones"), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech apparatus) moves during the pronunciation of the vowel. In many dialects of English, the phrase no highway cowboys /ˌnoʊ ˈhaɪweɪ ˈkaʊbɔɪz/ has five distinct diphthongs, one in every syllable. Diphthongs contrast with monophthongs, where the tongue or other speech organs do not move and the syllable contains only a single vowel sound. For instance, in English, the word ah is spoken as a monophthong (/ɑː/), while the word ow is spoken as a diphthong in most dialects (/aʊ/). Where two adjacent vowel sounds occur in different syllables—for example, in the English word re-elect—the result is described as hiatus, not as a diphthong. Diphthongs often form when separate vowels are run together in rapid speech during a conversation. However, there are also unitary diphthongs, as in the English examples above, which are heard by listeners as single-vowel sounds (phonemes).Diphthongs use two vowel sounds in one syllable to make a speech sound.
- https://www.quora.com/How-were-%E2%80%98diphthongs%E2%80%99-pronounced-in-classical-Latin/answer/Peter-Hansen-21
trema or diaeresis
- It used to be common in English to place two dots (called trema or diaeresis) over a vowel to indicate that it is to be pronounced if it would usually be silent, or that it is to be pronounced separately if it’s otherwise likely to be interpreted as part of a diphthong. Thus, you get spellings like coöperate (co-operate, not cooper-ate), naïve (na-eev, not nave) or, in your example, reörganize (re-organize, not reor-ganize). It also shows up in names like Brontë, which is pronounced brontee, not bront. https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-origin-of-re%C3%B5rganize-Is-it-an-archaic-spelling
arabic and persian
- the naskh (original arabic) and nastaleeq (persian) scripts are simply two different styles of writing. The latter style is also described as the cascading style of writing. If one can read naskh, one can also read nastaleeq and vice versa.
language history- The Dothraki language is a constructed fictional language in George R. R. Martin's fantasy novel series A Song of Ice and Fire and its television adaptation Game of Thrones. It is spoken by the Dothraki, a nomadic people in the series's fictional world. The language was developed for the TV series by the linguist David J. Peterson, working off the Dothraki words and phrases in Martin's novels.
romanisation system
- Wade–Giles (/ˌweɪd
pitch accent languages
- norwegian, swedish, serbo-croat and panjabi
tone languages
- chinese, vietnamese, thai, igbo
consonant
- The bilabial nasal is a type of consonantal sound used in almost all spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨m⟩, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is
m. The bilabial nasal occurs in English, and it is the sound represented by "m" in map and rum. It occurs nearly universally, and few languages (e.g. Mohawk) are known to lack this sound.- The voiced bilabial fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨β⟩ (or more properly ⟨ꞵ⟩), and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is
B. The symbol ⟨β⟩ is the Greek letter beta. This symbol is also sometimes used to represent the bilabial approximant, though that is more clearly written with the lowering diacritic, that is ⟨β̞⟩. Theoretically, it could also be transcribed as an advanced labiodental approximant ⟨ʋ̟⟩, but this symbol is hardly ever, if at all, used so.- https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-pronounce-African-names-that-start-with-the-letter-M-and-followed-by-a-non-vowel-for-example-Mbuti
- there are two languages without nasal phonemes. Nasal phonemes are sounds articulated by lowering the velum, so that air flows through the nose instead. These languages happen to be Makah and Quileute. Makah and Quileute are neighbor languages. Makah is a language that comes from the Wakashan language family, While Quileute comes from the Chimakuan language family.https://www.quora.com/Is-there-a-language-that-doesnt-have-the-sound-n
A diacritic – also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or an accent – is a glyphadded to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek διακριτικός(diakritikós, "distinguishing"), from διακρίνω (diakrī́nō, "to distinguish"). Diacritic is primarily an adjective, though sometimes used as a noun, whereas diacritical is only ever an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute ( ´ ) and grave ( ` ), are often called accents. Diacritical marks may appear above or below a letter, or in some other position such as within the letter or between two letters.
- https://www.quora.com/Is-English-the-only-Latin-script-alphabet-without-diacritics-If-so-why-If-not-which-others-do
digraph
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latin-script_digraphs
- https://www.quora.com/Are-there-any-letters-like-%E2%80%98w%E2%80%99-historically-consisting-of-a-double-letter-and-then-merged-to-become-a-distinct-letter-to-be-found-in-other-alphabets
A diphthong (/ˈdɪfθɒŋ/ DIF-thong or /ˈdɪpθɒŋ/ DIP-thong; from Greek: δίφθογγος, diphthongos, literally "two sounds" or "two tones"), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech apparatus) moves during the pronunciation of the vowel. In many dialects of English, the phrase no highway cowboys /ˌnoʊ ˈhaɪweɪ ˈkaʊbɔɪz/ has five distinct diphthongs, one in every syllable. Diphthongs contrast with monophthongs, where the tongue or other speech organs do not move and the syllable contains only a single vowel sound. For instance, in English, the word ah is spoken as a monophthong (/ɑː/), while the word ow is spoken as a diphthong in most dialects (/aʊ/). Where two adjacent vowel sounds occur in different syllables—for example, in the English word re-elect—the result is described as hiatus, not as a diphthong. Diphthongs often form when separate vowels are run together in rapid speech during a conversation. However, there are also unitary diphthongs, as in the English examples above, which are heard by listeners as single-vowel sounds (phonemes).Diphthongs use two vowel sounds in one syllable to make a speech sound.
- https://www.quora.com/How-were-%E2%80%98diphthongs%E2%80%99-pronounced-in-classical-Latin/answer/Peter-Hansen-21
- ão
- https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-the-diphthong-%C3%A3o-%C9%90%CC%83w%CC%83-only-exists-in-the-Portuguese-language-and-is-not-found-in-the-phonology-of-any-other-language-If-not-in-what-other-language-can-we-hear-this-same-nasal this nasalized au-sound is not unique to Portuguese, but it occurs in only slightly distinct forms in several other languages in the world.
trema or diaeresis
- It used to be common in English to place two dots (called trema or diaeresis) over a vowel to indicate that it is to be pronounced if it would usually be silent, or that it is to be pronounced separately if it’s otherwise likely to be interpreted as part of a diphthong. Thus, you get spellings like coöperate (co-operate, not cooper-ate), naïve (na-eev, not nave) or, in your example, reörganize (re-organize, not reor-ganize). It also shows up in names like Brontë, which is pronounced brontee, not bront. https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-origin-of-re%C3%B5rganize-Is-it-an-archaic-spelling
arabic and persian
- the naskh (original arabic) and nastaleeq (persian) scripts are simply two different styles of writing. The latter style is also described as the cascading style of writing. If one can read naskh, one can also read nastaleeq and vice versa.
- https://www.todaytranslations.com/language-history
language comparison
- language tree
- https://www.quora.com/Apart-from-Greek-are-there-any-other-languages-that-use-the-Greek-script
- https://www.quora.com/Which-is-the-closest-European-language-to-Greek
- Not all European languages are Indo-European. The exceptions are: Basque, unrelated to any other extant language; Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, and Saami, which are Finno-Ugric languages; Turkish, which is a Turkic language; Georgian, which is a Kartvelian language, and Maltese, an Afro-Asiatic language.https://www.quora.com/Why-are-the-languages-spoken-in-Europe-called-Indo-European-and-not-just-European-Is-there-an-Indian-influence-or-something-like
- Syriac is a direct descendant of Aramaic. Assyrian is a directed descendant of Akkadian.They are not contemporary to each other.Syriac developed between 100 and 400 CE, while Assyrian developed between 1200 and 800 BCE, and went extinct circa 150 BCE.They are all different languages. Syriac is not mutually intelligeable with its older form, Aramaic, while Assyrian is not mutually intelligeable with Akkadian, its parent language.If we are to look at Aramaic-Syriac and Akkadian-Assyrian, then it is apparent that these languages are all Semitic, but they come from different branches of Semitic. North-Western Semitic for Aramaic-Syriac, and East Semitic for Akkadian-Assyrian. These two branches are very different, their common ancestor only existed sometime around 3000 BCE - 2700 BCE.https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-Syriac-Aramaic-and-Assyrian/answer/Eli-Malinsky-1
- https://www.quora.com/Which-basic-sound-cannot-be-represented-by-any-of-the-English-alphabets for example, German ö, German ü, French eau, Spanish rr, Greenlandic rl, etc.
- https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-Spanish-and-Portuguese-I-started-a-Spanish-course-and-it-sounds-so-similar-to-me
- https://www.quora.com/Why-do-the-first-3-numbers-in-most-Austronesian-languages-look-and-sound-similar-to-ones-in-European-languages
- https://www.quora.com/How-can-Palestine-be-an-Arab-country-when-there-is-no-sound-that-equates-to-the-letter-P-in-any-Arab-language-dialect
- https://www.quora.com/Does-Turkish-sound-like-Arabic-to-non-Turkish-speakers
- There are 38 languages that have masculine and feminine nouns, including French, Spanish, and Italian. 37 have 3 grammatical genders, including German, Dutch, Latin, Russian, Norwegian and even Old English, and 12 languages have more than 3 - the most being Shona (spoken in Zimbabwe) with 20.https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-German-language-so-complex
- https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Sanskrit-so-similar-to-Slavic-and-Baltic-languages There are several remarkable similarities not only between Sanskrit and Baltic languages, but between Vedic gods and ancient Baltic deities.
links between languages
- the most astonishing relation between two languages is the one of Malagasy (which is spoken on the island of Madagascar) and Hawaii. Both belong to the Austronesian family and while you shouldn’t expect much in terms of mutual intelligibility, all these islands were settled by cousins: Madagascar is estimated to have received its first humans in the period between 200 B.C. and 500 A.D., whereas the exact timing is even harder to pinpoint in the case of Hawaii: it could have been as early as the first century A.D. or as late as the thriteenth (!). Nevertheless, that is why, until the rise of the Spanish colonialism, the Austronesian language family remained the most expansionist in its scopehttps://www.quora.com/What-are-some-of-the-languages-you-wouldnt-believe-are-related/answer/Jaros%C5%82aw-Bogalecki
language evolvement
- The letters of the modern English alphabet developed from the Latin alphabet, which came from the Etruscan alphabet, which was stolen from the Greek alphabet, which was borrowed from the Phoenician alphabet, which evolved from an ancient Semitihttps://www.quora.com/What-does-each-letter-of-the-alphabet-representc alphabet, which in turn was made from symbols borrowed from Egyptian hieroglyphs.
- There is a tendency in the Indo European languages to become simplified over time. Old Persian seems to have lost some of the variety of sounds and inflections as compared to Avestan, and Middle Persian even more compared to Old Persian. A similar phenomenon can be observed in the transformation from Sanskrit to North Indian Prakrits, and closer to home, between Old English and Middle English, or indeed between Latin and Italian. The cohabitation of many languages (Persian, Elamite, Akkadian); foreign invasion and imposition of a foreign language (Alexander the Great, Hellenism); sound changes— the fact that even in Old Persian the different cases are not as distinctive in sound as in Avestan or Sanskrit, meant that they could be elided in rapid speech and therefore disappear without a loss of meaning. One is left wondering why did some IE remain so rich in morphology: Russian, Polish and the Baltic languages. It is the slowness of change, not the big changes, that require explanation.Less than 1,000 years ago the Russians and Bulgarians shared a common literary language, which we call Old Church Slavonic. It has extensive morphological inflection in many parts of speech. About half of that survives in Russian (loss of dual, loss of simple past, reduction of one noun case). But in Bulgarian almost all is lost. Bulgarian is almost as uninflected as English. Why did that happen? The impact of the Turks? The coexistence of many languages (Greek, Albanian, Aromanic)? Changes in phonology which led to collapsed enunciation? Whatever the reason two closely related languages in historical times wound up having quite different grammars, one rich and the other poor in inflections.https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Old-Persian-become-simplified-to-the-Middle-Persian
links between languages
- the most astonishing relation between two languages is the one of Malagasy (which is spoken on the island of Madagascar) and Hawaii. Both belong to the Austronesian family and while you shouldn’t expect much in terms of mutual intelligibility, all these islands were settled by cousins: Madagascar is estimated to have received its first humans in the period between 200 B.C. and 500 A.D., whereas the exact timing is even harder to pinpoint in the case of Hawaii: it could have been as early as the first century A.D. or as late as the thriteenth (!). Nevertheless, that is why, until the rise of the Spanish colonialism, the Austronesian language family remained the most expansionist in its scopehttps://www.quora.com/What-are-some-of-the-languages-you-wouldnt-believe-are-related/answer/Jaros%C5%82aw-Bogalecki
language evolvement
- The letters of the modern English alphabet developed from the Latin alphabet, which came from the Etruscan alphabet, which was stolen from the Greek alphabet, which was borrowed from the Phoenician alphabet, which evolved from an ancient Semitihttps://www.quora.com/What-does-each-letter-of-the-alphabet-representc alphabet, which in turn was made from symbols borrowed from Egyptian hieroglyphs.
- There is a tendency in the Indo European languages to become simplified over time. Old Persian seems to have lost some of the variety of sounds and inflections as compared to Avestan, and Middle Persian even more compared to Old Persian. A similar phenomenon can be observed in the transformation from Sanskrit to North Indian Prakrits, and closer to home, between Old English and Middle English, or indeed between Latin and Italian. The cohabitation of many languages (Persian, Elamite, Akkadian); foreign invasion and imposition of a foreign language (Alexander the Great, Hellenism); sound changes— the fact that even in Old Persian the different cases are not as distinctive in sound as in Avestan or Sanskrit, meant that they could be elided in rapid speech and therefore disappear without a loss of meaning. One is left wondering why did some IE remain so rich in morphology: Russian, Polish and the Baltic languages. It is the slowness of change, not the big changes, that require explanation.Less than 1,000 years ago the Russians and Bulgarians shared a common literary language, which we call Old Church Slavonic. It has extensive morphological inflection in many parts of speech. About half of that survives in Russian (loss of dual, loss of simple past, reduction of one noun case). But in Bulgarian almost all is lost. Bulgarian is almost as uninflected as English. Why did that happen? The impact of the Turks? The coexistence of many languages (Greek, Albanian, Aromanic)? Changes in phonology which led to collapsed enunciation? Whatever the reason two closely related languages in historical times wound up having quite different grammars, one rich and the other poor in inflections.https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Old-Persian-become-simplified-to-the-Middle-Persian
- https://www.quora.com/When-did-the-Indo-European-linguistic-groups-separate-from-each-other
- https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-strangest-sound-change-you-have-encountered-in-Indo-European
The strange sound changes in the histories of Armenian and Albanian listed by Gopalakrishnan Ramamurthy and Rich Alderson are hard to beat, but I’d still like to mention the strange fate of Proto-Indo-European *pr- and *bʰr- in a few northern Indo-Aryan languages.
- https://www.quora.com/Why-didn-t-the-Romans-read-silently The Phoenicians who adapted only 22 out of thousands of Egyptian hieroglyphs intended for the alphabet to be entirely phonetic. So they taught the Greeks, who then taught the Etruscans who then taught the Romans that one letter corresponds to one sound. (Although the Phoenician alphabet is consonantal, it was the Greeks that invented vowels). So when a Roman saw a letter. He/she enunciated each & every letter. It was very unusual to read silently. An acolyte of St. Jerome was astonished to see him read silently.Germans, Italians, Spanish have maintained this principle of one letter per sound. But not the French, English, & especially the Danish. In fact their spelling almost becoming hieroglyphic like Chinese or ancient Egyptian.
- https://www.quora.com/Latin-used-declensions-to-distinguish-its-grammar-but-modern-Romance-languages-largely-use-word-order-Is-this-a-typical-process-for-how-languages-change-Do-languages-ever-gain-declensions when communities are relatively isolated and simple, people tend to develop more and more complex languages. When they come into heavy contact with other cultures, particularly as there is a mixing of cultures, there is a tendency for the grammars to simplify in order to make it easier for outsiders to learn the language. So up until a few thousands years ago, there was a steady trend of languages becoming more complex, but then with the explosion of empires, the trend gradually reversed (though not uniformly across all cultures).
- https://www.quora.com/What-do-linguists-think-are-the-main-causes-of-language-evolution
- https://www.quora.com/Why-didn-t-the-Romans-read-silently The Phoenicians who adapted only 22 out of thousands of Egyptian hieroglyphs intended for the alphabet to be entirely phonetic. So they taught the Greeks, who then taught the Etruscans who then taught the Romans that one letter corresponds to one sound. (Although the Phoenician alphabet is consonantal, it was the Greeks that invented vowels). So when a Roman saw a letter. He/she enunciated each & every letter. It was very unusual to read silently. An acolyte of St. Jerome was astonished to see him read silently.Germans, Italians, Spanish have maintained this principle of one letter per sound. But not the French, English, & especially the Danish. In fact their spelling almost becoming hieroglyphic like Chinese or ancient Egyptian.
- https://www.quora.com/Latin-used-declensions-to-distinguish-its-grammar-but-modern-Romance-languages-largely-use-word-order-Is-this-a-typical-process-for-how-languages-change-Do-languages-ever-gain-declensions when communities are relatively isolated and simple, people tend to develop more and more complex languages. When they come into heavy contact with other cultures, particularly as there is a mixing of cultures, there is a tendency for the grammars to simplify in order to make it easier for outsiders to learn the language. So up until a few thousands years ago, there was a steady trend of languages becoming more complex, but then with the explosion of empires, the trend gradually reversed (though not uniformly across all cultures).
- https://www.quora.com/What-do-linguists-think-are-the-main-causes-of-language-evolution
- https://www.quora.com/What-language-that-is-still-largely-spoken-has-been-the-least-modified-over-time Hungarian, Finnish and Icelandic. These are all languages with complex grammar where old (as in 1000 years old) are still intelligible to modern day speakers.
- https://www.quora.com/Why-do-some-languages-develop-very-complex-grammar-the-gradually-lose-it-If-they-can-simplify-the-grammar-without-losing-intelligibility-what-was-the-point-of-complexity
merging of languages
- https://www.quora.com/Are-there-any-historical-examples-of-two-languages-merging-to-form-a-new-language
script style
- left to right
- right to left
- vertical
words beginning in "kn"- https://www.quora.com/Why-does-%E2%80%9Cknife%E2%80%9D-start-with-a-%E2%80%9Ck%E2%80%9D-Its-silent-Why-not-just-spell-it-%E2%80%9Cnife%E2%80%9D Because the word evolved from ancient German and Dutch words in which the K sound was actually spoken. Other related words are knight and knave. England once had a king named Cnut, but it was pronounced Canute, and sometimes is spelled that way. In Anglo-Saxon times knife was written cnif and probably pronounced as ca-niff.For example, in Catalan, we borrowed this word from a Germanic language and we say ganivet, so we added a vowel between the first two consonants to ease pronunciation. All Scandinavian languages keep the “k” sound too.
roman letter c
- https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-most-versatile-letter-in-the-Roman-alphabet-which-has-been-used-to-represent-the-most-sounds
hard c
- Sardinian retains the hard C before E and I https://www.quora.com/Is-Italian-the-closest-variation-to-Latin-compared-to-other-Romance-languages
c and k
- https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-word-Korea-written-with-the-letter-K-not-C-like-Corea
k
- https://www.quora.com/Why-does-the-letter-K-exist
ch consonant
- common in albanian and romanian
kh
- https://www.quora.com/Is-the-kh-in-Khan-pronounced-as-x-as-in-Scottish-English-loch
- https://www.quora.com/Why-is-X-read-as-H-by-both-Spanish-and-Russian-people
d
- silent d
f consonant
merging of languages
- https://www.quora.com/Are-there-any-historical-examples-of-two-languages-merging-to-form-a-new-language
script style
- left to right
- The switch from right to left to left to right was first instigated by the Greeks, sometime in the seventh or sixth century BC—possibly to mark its independence from its Canaanite heritage. https://www.quora.com/Why-do-some-languages-like-Hebrew-are-written-in-reverse-from-left-to-right-not-like-Latin-from-right-to-left
- right to left
- https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-Arabic-script-the-only-one-in-the-world-to-be-written-from-right-to-left
- originally, Greek was written from right to left, but very soon it switched from left to right. You can find many ancient Greek vases where both directions are used.https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Arabic-written-from-right-to-left
- vertical
- https://www.quora.com/How-many-languages-still-use-vertical-scripts-in-their-written-form
words beginning in "kn"- https://www.quora.com/Why-does-%E2%80%9Cknife%E2%80%9D-start-with-a-%E2%80%9Ck%E2%80%9D-Its-silent-Why-not-just-spell-it-%E2%80%9Cnife%E2%80%9D Because the word evolved from ancient German and Dutch words in which the K sound was actually spoken. Other related words are knight and knave. England once had a king named Cnut, but it was pronounced Canute, and sometimes is spelled that way. In Anglo-Saxon times knife was written cnif and probably pronounced as ca-niff.For example, in Catalan, we borrowed this word from a Germanic language and we say ganivet, so we added a vowel between the first two consonants to ease pronunciation. All Scandinavian languages keep the “k” sound too.
roman letter c
- https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-most-versatile-letter-in-the-Roman-alphabet-which-has-been-used-to-represent-the-most-sounds
hard c
- Sardinian retains the hard C before E and I https://www.quora.com/Is-Italian-the-closest-variation-to-Latin-compared-to-other-Romance-languages
c and k
- https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-word-Korea-written-with-the-letter-K-not-C-like-Corea
k
- https://www.quora.com/Why-does-the-letter-K-exist
Kaf (also spelled kaph) is the eleventh letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Kāp 𐤊 
, Hebrew Kāf כ, Aramaic Kāp 𐡊 
, Syriac Kāp̄ ܟܟ, and Arabic Kāf ک/ك (in Abjadi order). The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek kappa (Κ), Latin K, and Cyrillic К.
, Hebrew Kāf כ, Aramaic Kāp 𐡊 
, Syriac Kāp̄ ܟܟ, and Arabic Kāf ک/ك (in Abjadi order). The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek kappa (Κ), Latin K, and Cyrillic К.ch consonant
- common in albanian and romanian
kh
- https://www.quora.com/Is-the-kh-in-Khan-pronounced-as-x-as-in-Scottish-English-loch
- https://www.quora.com/Why-is-X-read-as-H-by-both-Spanish-and-Russian-people
d
- silent d
- djibouti
- djemma al fna, morocco
- jakarta is djakarta in french https://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/fr/dossiers-pays/indonesie/evenements/article/quai-d-orsay-declaration-de-jean-yves-le-drian-situation-de-mathias-echene-12
- Jamu (old spelling Djamu) - traditional medicine from Indonesia.
- pyramid of djoser, egypt- to be determined
- 德蘭許博（Dlangubo）https://orientaldaily.on.cc/cnt/china_world/20190420/00180_013.html
- Dhollandia is een Belgische fabrikant en distributeur van hydraulische laadkleppen en -liften voor het laden en lossen van vracht- en bestelwagens, opleggers en aanhangwagens.
- dwayne eg dwayne johnson
f consonant
- note that "ve" can produce f sound
- uk
- In English, PH is an F. https://www.quora.com/Why-are-Irish-names-spelled-so-crazily
- botswana
- 梅富根（Mahikeng，2010年2月以前為Mafikeng），舊稱马弗京（Mafeking）Mahikeng (in south africa) is the headquarters of the Barolong Boo Ratshidi[4] people.
- korea
- f becomes b,p
- myanmar
- eg Bonghwa County (Bonghwa-gun) 奉化郡 , 봉산군／鳳山郡 Pongsan gun ,
- Aw Boon Haw（胡文虎）
- thailand
- 夜丰颂府/湄宏順府Mae Hong Son Province
g
- pronounced as h in case of cartagena
- [tbc] g in vietnamese is h and vice versa
- w in french, italian and spain
- william is Guillaume, Guglielmo and Guillermo
- wales is galles (f & i) and gales
- silent g
h
- The H is usually pronounced in the US but, not always. When sounded it goes in thuh list, like thuh house. https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-sometimes-pronounced-as-thuh-and-sometimes-pronounced-as-thee-and-is-there-any-reason-as-to-which-is-used
- h pronunced as f
- h pronounced as g
- Bohol is ultimately derived from bo-ol, a kind of tree that flourished on the island. Similar to Nahuatl, the h in the middle was used to transcribe a glottal stop which is a common phoneme in the languages of the Philippines.
"j" sound
- https://www.quora.com/Is-the-Portuguese-J-pronounced-more-like-the-English-J-or-the-French-J
- https://www.quora.com/How-is-the-letter-J-pronounced-in-languages-around-the-world
- https://www.quora.com/Which-languages-pronounce-J-like-an-English-H
- pronunced as c/k
- tbc - gdansk (danzig in german)
h
- The H is usually pronounced in the US but, not always. When sounded it goes in thuh list, like thuh house. https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-sometimes-pronounced-as-thuh-and-sometimes-pronounced-as-thee-and-is-there-any-reason-as-to-which-is-used
- https://www.quora.com/Why-dont-some-Americans-pronounce-the-h-for-many-words-that-begin-with-an-h-Is-it-due-to-a-Spanish-language-influence Many dialects of Dutch also feature h-dropping, particularly the southwestern variants.
- h pronunced as f
- fujian dialect
- japan
- Han (Japanese: 藩, "domain") is a Japanese historical term for the estate of a daimyo in the Edo period (1603–1868) and early Meiji period (1868–1912).
- 方広寺Hōkō-ji
- コーヒー kōhī, ("coffee")
- korea
- 徐薰（韓語：서훈 Suh-Hoon，1954年12月6日－），是大韓民國第13任國家情報院長。
- 律敦治在深井附近別墅HomiVilla（霍米園）
- Huma County (呼瑪縣), heilongjiang
- h pronounced as g
- homyel, belarus
- horki, belarus
- [tbc] g in vietnamese is h and vice versa
- h pronounced as s
- 辛巴族The Himba (singular: OmuHimba, plural: OvaHimba)
"j" sound
- https://www.quora.com/Is-the-Portuguese-J-pronounced-more-like-the-English-J-or-the-French-J
- https://www.quora.com/How-is-the-letter-J-pronounced-in-languages-around-the-world
- https://www.quora.com/Which-languages-pronounce-J-like-an-English-H
- pronunced as c/k
- jasper national park, jasper hawkes
- https://www.quora.com/If-the-letter-J-is-really-less-than-400-years-old-how-did-the-Romans-had-the-names-Julius-Julia-and-how-about-the-Julian-calendar
- 卢布尔雅那 Ljubljana
- origin from the Slavic ljub- "to love, like"
- 斯洛維尼亞語：Ljubljana[ljuˈbljàːna] ；普雷克穆列斯洛維尼亞語：Lüblana[lybˈlaːna]
- ****** The name Ljubljana is indeed pronounced Ljubljana if you’re speaking proper Slovene.
However the letter “j” in English stands for the sound /dʒ/, whereas in Slovene it stands for the sound /j/. The sound /j/ in English is encoded by the letter “y”. https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-city-name-Ljubljana-spelt-nothing-like-it-is-pronounced-as-there-is-no-j-sound-in-it-Why-is-it-not-spelt-something-like-Loobleeyanuh-or-Lublianu-to-match-the-pronunciation - [comments section]
- I once met a fellow from Ljubljana, and he always pronounced it ‘lublana’. Being young and naïve, I asked him why, and he said “don’t seek a reason for everything!” Much later, I came across a Slovenian grammar, and it explicitly mentioned the pronunciation of lj as l as a specific trait of Ljubljana pronunciation.
- This voice “lj" is heavy to pronounce to non-slavic people. It's like you set your tongue to say “L" but you say “Y". And kinda soft.Funny thing is that Japanese have very similar sound, transliteration to japanese will be “Lju" = “Ryu"! And sounds almost same.
- My assumption would be that Ljubljana used to be spelled and pronounced Lublana in old days, say until mid 19th century, so by its inhabitants as by the people of the neighbourhood. To be frank, it is still pronounced this way in their spontaneous speech. However, some kind of linguistic wannabe correctness and a wish to bring slovene grammar closer to other slavic languages brought in this L, softened with a J, in spite of the fact that Slovene L is not as hard as the Croatian or Russian L. Being so, those two need a softer L in the form of LJ, while Slovene could very well get along with only one, that is L. However, it is as it is now, and we have Ljubljana and lots of words ending on lj, such as Kranj and konj (horse); only česen (garlic) - perhaps some more - stayed the old way, with no harm.
- Most of European languages (e.g. German, Dutch, Swedish, Finnish, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, etc.) read “j" as “ y” in English “yet". Reading “j" as “dzh" is used only in “English" and “Portuguese” and seems to be a bit strange for other nations.
- https://www.quora.com/Was-there-ever-a-dialect-of-Latin-or-Greek-where-the-Q-or-K-for-Greek-was-like-Arabic-Q Accounts of Cappadocian Greek say that it has a very back /k/, which Dawkins in his 1916 Modern Greek in Asia Minor (p. 73) actually transcribes with a <q>. That’s meant to be under Turkish influence, and it’s a back allophone not of /k/, but of /ɣ/.As for the Ancient use of koppa in Qorinth… who knows? Vox Graeca notes that koppa comes from Phoenician /q/, and that it used to be used as a back allophone of /k/; we have no way to tell whether it was [q] or [k̠], but the conservative guess would surely be the latter.
m
- kiv silent m eg
- in Mbok Jamu, the traditional kainkebaya-wearing young to middle-aged Javanese woman carrying bamboo basket
- 普馬蘭加省 Mpumalanga, south africa
- Mbodiène, Sénégal ? check pronunciation
n
- kiv silent n eg in "joshua nkomo", "stephen mnuchin"
o
- https://www.quora.com/Where-did-the-use-of-o-between-words-come-from-like-in-Jack-O-Lantern-or-Jelly-O-Fish
p consonant
- not exist in arabic
q
- https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-k-sound-in-many-Semitic-languages-transcribed-with-a-q-instead-of-k-e-g-Iraq
- https://www.quora.com/What-English-words-end-in-the-letter-q The second type of words ending in 'q' are those borrowed from languages with orthographies or romanisations where q is not necessarily followed by a u. One common source is Arabic, where the letter Qāf ق is sometimes transliterated as q, due to their shared derivation from the Phoenician letter Qoph. Another source is Greenlandic and Inuktitut, which use q to represent the same sound as in Arabic, though previously they used the letter kra ĸ.
R
- This sound is found in about 800/2000 languages. In other words, about two-fifths (40%) of the world’s languages have this sound, or around 2400+ total (of the world’s 6,000+ languages). https://www.quora.com/Which-languages-use-the-rolling-R, http://phoible.org/parameters/5D1D7FB69E1A3C0C60001FBC0C19ED87#1/34/140
sh consonant
- not exist in english
- common in albanian and romanian
sch
- There is a lot of variation in the way that the sequence <sch> is pronounced in English. The reason for this is that it is not a spelling that exists in ‘native’ or inherited Germanic words.https://www.quora.com/In-English-why-is-the-sch-pronounced-sk-and-not-sh
t
- before words
- eg song dynasty --> tsung (goddard)
- [tbc] t, th in vietnamese pronounced as s
th consonant
- https://www.quora.com/How-come-there-are-only-a-few-languages-that-have-the-th-sound
- https://www.quora.com/Why-was-the-letter-%C3%9E-removed-from-the-English-alphabet
- https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-English-th-sound-so-rare-in-other-languages
- s sound
- 加拿大安大略省小鎮索恩達爾（Thorndale）今年共有94名中小學生畢業。為了讓他們在疫情下亦能有個難忘的畢業回憶，當地的社區組織籌備精心裝飾街道及房屋的活動，創造出濃厚的慶典氣氛。https://orientaldaily.on.cc/cnt/china_world/20210626/00180_064.html
c, k, q
- https://www.quora.com/Are-there-European-languages-that-have-different-pronunciations-for-C-K-or-Q
c, k, q, x, z- https://www.quora.com/How-would-you-feel-if-C-Q-and-X-were-now-excluded-from-the-Latin-alphabet/answer/Philip-Newton
silent "w"
- https://www.quora.com/Why-does-the-word-answer-have-a-silent-w
interchangeable b, v
- In Hebrew: לב lev In Hebrew, my heart is leeBEE. https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-say-heart-in-Hebrew-or-Arabic
- Other Semitic languages also have Lib/ liv as the word for heart. For instance in Aramaic and its Syriac dialects “lib” means “heart.” It is also the case in Akkadian, “libbu.” https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-say-heart-in-Hebrew-or-Arabic [comments section]
- “heart” is ܠܒܐ (Lebā) and “my heart” is written as ܠܶܒܝ (Leb) — in Syriac system the final Yudh is silent.
- ancient greece places
- 維奧蒂亞州Boeotia
- In Irish, BH is a V.https://www.quora.com/Why-are-Irish-names-spelled-so-crazily
- eg siobhan
- translation into chinese
y
- **************appledaily 8nov2020 fung hei kin article y's ultimate origin is shem tribe's alphabet waw, in pheonician alphabet it is like capital letter Y. It is pronunced as w (in hebrew it can be u or o sound). Modern english y originates from latin which descended from ancient greek upsilon (three straight lines, small letter is not y but v, pronunciation like u in french). Romans took upsilon as V (u and w sound) and introduced Y(called I graeca, I in greece) in 1th bce, as romans do not have greek's u sound, therefore adopted Y as i sound and called it greek I.
- as g, k sound
- Tuyuhun ( LHC: *tʰɑʔ-jok-guənʔ;[1] Wade-Giles: T'u-yühun) 吐
谷 浑（中古漢語擬音：tʰuoX jɨok ɦuən） - ******
- If you look at a detailed linguistic map of the Jutland peninsula you will observe that along the west coast there is an area where people speak a dialect which is closer to the Frisian spoken in northern Netherlands, the area still called Friesland, than it is to either the North Germanic language Danish, or to the Plattdeutsch spoken in northern Germany. This is significant because Old English and these continental Frisian dialects share a common sound change that distinguishes them from all other Germanic dialects: the palatalization of velar stops. Velar stops include k and g that are made by the back of the tongue pressing against the soft flap at the back of the roof of the mouth. Palatalization means the articulation moves forward to the hard palate. For example in English and in Frisian one says “day” where all other Germanic languages say “dag” or “tag”. Note that in Old English the scribes continued to write the letter g, but it was pronounced close to “y” in all words.Remember that the borders on a modern map are an administrative invention and the product of over a thousand years of conflict and negotiation. 1500 years ago there was no Denmark, or Germany, or Netherlands, simply a continuum of communities. Also the very shape of the land was different from what you see today. In particular 2000 years ago where today you see a line of offshore islands along the North Sea coast from the West Frisian islands of Netherlands to the North Frisian islands of Jutland and Schleswig they formed an almost continuous natural dyke behind which were brackish marshes. This barrier was breached by severe storms in the early 13th century. The people in this area built their villages on artificial mounds called terpen and had lives which depended almost entirely on the sea, different from their relatives on higher ground who depended on herding and agriculture. This lifestyle is described in detail by Pliny in Naturalis historia, book 16. They built large row boats for fishing. For centuries they had been hired as mercenaries any time the Romans needed a force with skill at assaulting over water barriers such as rivers and marshes. It was only these coastal tribes that exploited the collapse of the Roman military in Britain and they brought their distinctive dialect with them. One of the reasons for their migration was that they were no longer being paid to not raid the Empure. [comments section] from https://www.quora.com/If-the-Anglo-Saxons-largely-came-from-what-is-now-Denmark-why-weren-t-the-Danes-who-invaded-England-a-few-centuries-later-the-same-people-as-them-Did-the-Danes-only-move-to-Denmark-after-the-Anglo-Saxons-left-or
z, th
- https://www.quora.com/How-come-in-continental-Spanish-the-z-sound-became-th-sound-whilst-the-classical-Arabic-th-sound-became-z-sound-in-Egyptian-dialect-I-thought-sound-changes-usually-progress-in-similar-directions-for-most-languages
z
- Zee is the pronounciation in the US, and some parts of Canada.
Zed is the pronounciation in the UK, Australia, New Zealand (most of) Canada, South Africa and other Anglophone countries.https://www.quora.com/Is-it-correct-to-pronounce-the-last-letter-of-the-alphabet-as-zed-or-zee
- pronunciation of "z"
silent letters
- https://www.quora.com/Who-invented-silent-letters-in-the-alphabet
- pronunciation of "z"
- https://www.quora.com/Why-do-the-British-say-zed-instead-of-zeeterms
- In linguistics, a copula (plural: copulas or copulae; abbreviated cop) is a word used to link the subject of a sentence with a predicate (a subject complement), such as the word is in the sentence "The sky is blue." The word copula derives from the Latin noun for a "link" or "tie" that connects two different things. A copula is often a verb or a verb-like word, though this is not universally the case. A verb that is a copula is sometimes called a copulative or copular verb. In English primary education grammar courses, a copula is often called a linking verb. In other languages, copulas show more resemblances to pronouns, as in Classical Chinese and Guarani, or may take the form of suffixes attached to a noun, as in Beja, Ket, and Inuit languages. Most languages have one main copula, although some (such as Spanish, Portuguese and Thai) have more than one, and some have none. In the case of English, this is the verb to be. While the term copula is generally used to refer to such principal forms, it may also be used to refer to some other verbs with similar functions, like become, get, feel and seem in English (these may also be called "semi-copulas" or "pseudo-copulas").
silent letters
- https://www.quora.com/Who-invented-silent-letters-in-the-alphabet
https://www.quora.com/What-languages-have-more-than-3-voiceless-sibilant-phonemes
capitalisation
- At the beginning, and in all European languages using the Latin alphabet, capitals only appeared at the beginning of paragraphs, to emphasize the beginning. Then they spread to the beginnings of stanzas and verses.Only afterwards, capitals appeared at the beginning of generic sentences.But German of the Middle Ages went further. They needed to emphasize “important” words such as Jüdisch, Keiserlich, Ewer (today: Euer). From these ethnic, Imperial, and essentially polite “big” words, the capitals spread to the titles (Bapst, Keiser, Churfürst), the collective nouns (Apostel, Münch, Mensch, Welt), and religious terms (Christ, Geist, Evangelium, Sacrament).Only when the inflation of the capitals was sufficient and out of control, Germans switched to the thinking “how can we remember all the words where it’s OK to capitalize” and they started to capitalize all nouns. “Equality” in which everyone and everything – not just nobility and religious entities – was treated with dignity was the main rationalization. It made sense. Other nations stopped this process of inflation of capitals earlier so they never got to this stage in which the capitalization of all the nouns seemed like a good solution to the mess with the excessively widespread and inflated capitals. So both English and Slavic languages, among others, tend to capitalize God and some other words but the list is a manageable list of exceptions. (Names of people are capitalized everywhere.)This process was completed sometime in the early 16th century and the nouns were capitalized like today. However, the German language actually went further and later in the 16th century, lots of capitals also appeared in the middle of words, e.g. HErr, vAter uNser, a tradition that was later reversed but that some people tried to revive recently.
The transition in which the generic nouns switched from lowercase to uppercase is best illustrated by the most important German reformer of the church, Martin Luther, in the 16th century. His original manuscripts were written with nouns in lowercase letters. However, when those texts were printed en masse, he was personally supervising the printing and making sure that nouns were capitalized.Only in the 18th century, Johann Gottsched declared the capitalization of the nouns to be an official rule!There were various attempts to reverse this special feature of the German grammar. They have failed so far. But there is a simple reason why the capitalized nouns are more sensible in German than e.g. English: German has a much more free ordering of the words than English (and than other languages), almost on par with many Slavic languages (where the ordering is almost completely free in the simplest cases). This is why we may guess which word is a noun in an English sentence but it’s harder to locate the noun in a German sentence. That’s where the capitalization of nouns helps – we may see where the subjects and objects of the sentence are. Like those at the beginning of sentences, the capitals in the nouns tell us about the important points of the sentence. Verbs and other word types are just a “glue” that connects the true nuclei of each sentence, the subjects and objects, and that’s why they may be kept in the lowercase letters.Danish which has almost the same reasons to capitalize or not to capitalize nouns as German was doing so up to 1945 but then the capitalization was cancelled to “denazify” the country. Of course Danish could survive with lowercase nouns as well.https://www.quora.com/When-are-nouns-capitalized-in-German
- https://www.quora.com/Why-do-capital-letters-exist-Do-other-languages-have-equivalents-to-them “Lower case” or “minuscule” was introduced about 1,200 years ago, largely due to the influence of Emperor Charlemagne, who loved having stuff written down. The use of smaller letters made writing easier and required less paper, which was a fairly expensive commodity back then.Clerics had been using such scripts for centuries, but they didn’t have widespread use until the late 8th century.
alphabet
- An alphabet is a writing system where the consonants and vowels are represented by separate letters. An abjad is a writing system where it’s primarily the consonants that are represented. The vowels are either implied or indicated with diacritics. An abugida is a writing system where the primary consonant glyphs combine with the secondary vowel glyphs.Their names are taken from the first few letters of Phoenician-derived alphabets. In Greek, it goes “Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta”. In Hebrew, it goes “Aleph, Beth, Gimel, Daleth”. In ancient Arabic, it went “Alif, Bá, Jim, Dál.” So we have AlphaBet, ABJaD, and ABuGiDa. https://www.quora.com/Why-do-many-alphabets-start-with-A/answer/Raenna-Foeller
- https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-letter-W-pronounced-as-such/answer/Oscar-Tay-1
- https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-origins-of-the-English-alphabet/answer/Oscar-Tay-1
- https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-origin-of-the-shape-of-letters/answer/Jonathan-Orr-Stav
- https://www.quora.com/Why-hasn%E2%80%99t-a-single-new-letter-been-added-to-the-English-alphabet-in-the-last-2000-years In Classical Latin, the letter V made either the /w/ or /u/ sound. But over the course of the next centuries, as Latin split into the Romance languages, the sound changed from /w/ to /β/ (the Spanish “b” sound) and finally to /v/. So now there was a letter that could make either the /v/ sound or the /u/ sound. Still, V was used for both.
- https://www.quora.com/What-does-each-letter-of-the-alphabet-represent
- genealogy of letters from phoenician https://www.quora.com/How-did-early-people-who-spoke-different-languages-translate-each-others-so-that-they-could-communicate
- https://kottke.org/19/02/more-on-ancient-scripts-and-the-history-of-writing
- https://www.quora.com/Why-do-Euro-language-alphabets-have-upper-and-lower-case-versions
qwerty
- Turkish has a F keyboard, not standard QWERTY https://www.quora.com/?__pmsg__=+cWEySm9LMTEyeG9aZVgwT3d4LWE6YS5hcHAudmlldy5wbXNnLkxvZ2dlZEluRnJvbUxpbms6W1s1OTY1MjY4Ml0sIHt9XQ**&digest_story=53987911
Ayin (also ayn, ain; transliterated ⟨ʿ⟩) is the sixteenth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician ʿayin
, Hebrew ʿayin ע, Aramaic ʿē 
, Syriac ʿē ܥ, and Arabic ʿayn ع (where it is eighteenth in abjadi order only).The letter name is derived from Proto-Semitic *ʿayn- "eye", and the Phoenician letter had the shape of a circle or oval, clearly representing an eye, perhaps ultimately (via Proto-Sinaitic) derived from the ı͗r hieroglyph 𓁹 (Gardiner D4). The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek Ο, Latin O, and Cyrillic О, all representing vowels. The sound represented by ayin is common to much of the Afroasiatic language family, such as in the Egyptian language, the Cushitic languages and the Semitic languages.In Semitic philology, there is a long-standing tradition of rendering Semitic ayin with Greek rough breathing the mark 〈̔〉 (e.g. ̔arab عَرَب). Depending on typography, this could look similar to either an articulate single opening quotation mark 〈‘〉 (e.g. ‘arab عَرَب). or as a raised semi-circle open to the right 〈ʿ〉 (e.g. ʿarab عَرَب).- Hamza (Arabic: همزة, hamzah) (ء) is a letter in the Arabic alphabet, representing the glottal stop [ʔ]. Hamza is not one of the 28 "full" letters and owes its existence to historical inconsistencies in the standard writing system. It is derived from the Arabic letter ‘ayn. In the Phoenician and Aramaic alphabets, from which the Arabic alphabet is descended, the glottal stop was expressed by aleph (
), continued by alif ( 
) in the Arabic alphabet. However, alif was used to express both a glottal stop and a long vowel /aː/. To indicate that a glottal stop, and not a mere vowel, was intended, hamza was added diacritically to alif.prefix
- nationality prefix
- https://www.quora.com/Whats-it-called-when-we-use-Sino-Greco-or-Franco-instead-of-Chinese-Greek-or-French Wiktionary calls them nationality prefixes. They usually come from Latin, which is why they are not always etymologically related to the nationality adjectives: eg Sino- (Chinese), Hiberno- (Irish) and Luso- (Portuguese).
- https://www.quora.com/Which-Indo-European-languages-lack-genders-besides-English
alternative chinese translation of places, names
- 克羅埃西亞 - croatia
- 奧/俄 克拉荷馬州 - oklahoma
- 北京的三寶樂，是上世紀八十年 代北京最早的自選式麵包房之一，是 有名的美食地標。當時能在此買一次 麵包蛋糕，是足夠炫耀一陣的。在附 近住了十多年，吃了許多次三寶樂， 對這個名字習以為常，並未追究來 歷。反正肯定與東南亞那些紀念鄭和 的 「三寶顏」 「三寶壟」 無關，也與 佛家的 「三寶殿」 不相干，但總之很 吉利就是。 最近無意中才得知， 「三寶樂」 竟是札幌（Sapporo）的音譯，是札 幌啤酒廠在八十年代與北京當地飯店 合資興建的。筆者對酒無所偏好，也 就少了觸類旁通的機會。商家這一翻 譯，甚有巧思。如果直譯為 「札幌麵 包房」 ，可能對麵包愛好者吸引力就 會打折扣了。當然，或許有 「日料 粉」 誤會前來打卡。 由此又想到，清末迄近代，出於 對歐風美雨的仰慕，不少地名翻譯突 破了基礎的音譯，而額外賦予了新的 美感，比如佛羅倫斯譯為 「翡冷 翠」 ，悉尼譯為 「雪梨」 ，墨爾本譯 為 「美利濱」 。有的沿用至今，有的 已歸於歷史塵煙。而在清初以前，對 西方地名的翻譯，則多是些古怪生僻 字眼，如 「惹怒襪」 （熱那亞）、 「勿耨察」 （威尼斯），望之幾如茹 毛飲血的野蠻部落。這是當時天朝上 國心理優越感的真實寫照。 人名也是如此。唐代古籍中有 云： 「末艷懷孕，後產一男，名為移 鼠。」 今人讀之，莫名其妙。其實， 「末艷」 「移鼠」 就是聖母瑪利亞和 耶穌的另外音譯。福煦、霞飛都是一 戰時的法軍名將，上海還有一條紀念 後者的霞飛路，充滿了旭日高照、紅 雲漫天的好彩頭。若按現在的音譯規 則，當譯為 「弗什」 「若夫赫」 ，頓 時了無趣味。http://paper.takungpao.com/resfile/PDF/20210415/PDF/b9_screen.pdf
pronunciation (across languages)
- https://www.quora.com/What-city-names-in-the-world-are-most-often-mispronounced
- https://www.quora.com/How-do-lexicographers-know-how-very-rare-words-are-pronounced
word order
pronunciation (across languages)
- https://www.quora.com/What-city-names-in-the-world-are-most-often-mispronounced
- https://www.quora.com/How-do-lexicographers-know-how-very-rare-words-are-pronounced
word order
- https://www.quora.com/Word-order-is-SOV-or-SVO-in-most-languages-Is-there-a-neuroscience-based-explanation
Linguists
- Abraham Wheelock (1593 in Whitchurch, Shropshire – 1653) was an English linguist. He was the first Adams Professor of Arabic at the University of Cambridge, from around 1632. According to Robert Irwin he regarded it as part of his academic duty to discourage students from taking up the subject. Wheelock was appointed librarian of the "Public Library" (i.e. Cambridge University Library) in 1629, and was also Reader in Anglo-Saxon. In 1632 he oversaw the transferral of Thomas van Erpe's collection of oriental books and manuscripts to Cambridge University Library after its purchase by George Villiers, which brought with it the first book in Chinese to be added to the Library's collections. He produced the editio princeps of the Old English version of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (1643–4). In the same work he published an important edition—and the first in England—of Bede's Ecclesiastical History in its original Latin text opposite the Old English version, along with Anglo-Saxon laws. Many of the notes in this edition consist of the Old English homilies of Aelfric of Eynsham, which Wheelocke translated himself into Latin.
- Juha Janhunen (born 12 February 1952 in Pori) is a Finnish linguist whose wide interests include Uralic and Mongoliclanguages. Since 1994 he has been Professor in East Asian Studies at the University of Helsinki. He has done fieldwork on Samoyedic languages and on Khamnigan Mongol. More recently he has collaborated with Chinese scholar Wu Yingzhe to produce a critical edition of two newly discovered Liao Dynasty epitaphs written in the Khitan small script. He is a critic of the Altaic hypothesis.
translators
- 說到林紓，人們首先 想到的，大約是他的翻譯 家身份。經他之手，問世 了一百七十多種文學翻譯 作品，其影響之深遠，可能是近代翻譯史 上無人可及；但這也是他遭當時和後人詬 病或質疑的原因所在─他不懂外語，居 然被稱為翻譯家，似乎名不正言不順。林 紓的翻譯家名號，說起來確實令人難以信 服，其別具一格之處在於，他的所謂翻譯 ，是由懂外語的他人口述，林紓負責筆錄 ，而後修改潤色─譯文實際是兩人合作 的結果。正由於此，一般人甚至翻譯界都 有些不以為然，這算是什麼翻譯？哪能稱 作翻譯家？確實，在翻譯史上，除林紓外 ，似乎沒有第二位掛翻譯或翻譯家頭銜 卻對外語一竅不通者─估計自此以後 ，再也不會有第二個類似林紓這樣的翻譯 家了。http://paper.takungpao.com/resfile/PDF/20191113/PDF/b6_screen.pdf
china
Linguists
- Abraham Wheelock (1593 in Whitchurch, Shropshire – 1653) was an English linguist. He was the first Adams Professor of Arabic at the University of Cambridge, from around 1632. According to Robert Irwin he regarded it as part of his academic duty to discourage students from taking up the subject. Wheelock was appointed librarian of the "Public Library" (i.e. Cambridge University Library) in 1629, and was also Reader in Anglo-Saxon. In 1632 he oversaw the transferral of Thomas van Erpe's collection of oriental books and manuscripts to Cambridge University Library after its purchase by George Villiers, which brought with it the first book in Chinese to be added to the Library's collections. He produced the editio princeps of the Old English version of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (1643–4). In the same work he published an important edition—and the first in England—of Bede's Ecclesiastical History in its original Latin text opposite the Old English version, along with Anglo-Saxon laws. Many of the notes in this edition consist of the Old English homilies of Aelfric of Eynsham, which Wheelocke translated himself into Latin.
- Juha Janhunen (born 12 February 1952 in Pori) is a Finnish linguist whose wide interests include Uralic and Mongoliclanguages. Since 1994 he has been Professor in East Asian Studies at the University of Helsinki. He has done fieldwork on Samoyedic languages and on Khamnigan Mongol. More recently he has collaborated with Chinese scholar Wu Yingzhe to produce a critical edition of two newly discovered Liao Dynasty epitaphs written in the Khitan small script. He is a critic of the Altaic hypothesis.
translators
- 說到林紓，人們首先 想到的，大約是他的翻譯 家身份。經他之手，問世 了一百七十多種文學翻譯 作品，其影響之深遠，可能是近代翻譯史 上無人可及；但這也是他遭當時和後人詬 病或質疑的原因所在─他不懂外語，居 然被稱為翻譯家，似乎名不正言不順。林 紓的翻譯家名號，說起來確實令人難以信 服，其別具一格之處在於，他的所謂翻譯 ，是由懂外語的他人口述，林紓負責筆錄 ，而後修改潤色─譯文實際是兩人合作 的結果。正由於此，一般人甚至翻譯界都 有些不以為然，這算是什麼翻譯？哪能稱 作翻譯家？確實，在翻譯史上，除林紓外 ，似乎沒有第二位掛翻譯或翻譯家頭銜 卻對外語一竅不通者─估計自此以後 ，再也不會有第二個類似林紓這樣的翻譯 家了。http://paper.takungpao.com/resfile/PDF/20191113/PDF/b6_screen.pdf
china
- 2017年浙江大學成立了中華譯學 館，由許鈞任館長，諾貝 爾文學獎得主莫言、勒克 萊齊奧與國際翻譯家聯 盟「北極光」翻譯獎得 主許淵沖任顧問，同時 聘請多位境內外著名翻 譯家、作家、人文學者 與重要文化機構負責人 擔任中華譯學館學術委 員會委員。http://pdf.wenweipo.com/2021/03/08/a28-0308.pdf
- 1996年 1月 3至 6日，香港中文大學舉辦 了一個「近代文學翻譯與創作國際研討 會」，邀請了來自中國內地、美國、韓國、 日本以及香港幾所大專院校共 22位學者參 加，真可稱得上群賢畢至，中大校園，生色 不少。 會 後 ， 王 宏 志 編 了 一 冊 《 翻 譯 與 創 作——中國近代翻譯小說論》（北京大學出 版社，2000年 3月），所收的是研討會的中 文論文，英文部分則收入卜立德教授所編的 文集。 這裏且說說王宏志的中文論集。內中所收 文章，全是擲地有聲的專論，各作者在十多 載後，都成了更具名聲之士，如王曉明、熊 月之、郭延禮、孔慧怡、卜立德、樽本照 雄、袁進、范伯群、夏曉虹、陳平原、王德 威；至於編者王宏志更不用說了，在譯界 中，有誰不知他！ 近代文學的分期，是指晚清至五四這個時 期。這是個建設的時代，也是個敗壞的時 代，這是個英雄輩出的時代，也是個狗熊的 時代。一言蔽之，是個混亂的時代，是好是 壞，反映在文學方面，更見「烏煙瘴氣」， 更見「雜花生樹」；這在譯界方面，顯得更 特別。 王德威在〈翻譯「現代性」〉中說： 「明清文人對於何謂翻譯工作，並沒有一 個嚴謹定義。當時的翻譯其實包含了改過、 重寫、縮譯、轉譯和重整文字風格等做 法。」 到了清末，情況更烈，「晚清的譯者通過 其譯作所欲達到的目標，不論是在感情或意 識形態方面，都不是原著作者所能想像得到 的。」這些譯者，多是明知故犯，明知誤 譯。http://pdf.wenweipo.com/2021/03/02/a24-0302.pdf
- 1996年 1月 3至 6日，香港中文大學舉辦 了一個「近代文學翻譯與創作國際研討 會」，邀請了來自中國內地、美國、韓國、 日本以及香港幾所大專院校共 22位學者參 加，真可稱得上群賢畢至，中大校園，生色 不少。 會 後 ， 王 宏 志 編 了 一 冊 《 翻 譯 與 創 作——中國近代翻譯小說論》（北京大學出 版社，2000年 3月），所收的是研討會的中 文論文，英文部分則收入卜立德教授所編的 文集。 這裏且說說王宏志的中文論集。內中所收 文章，全是擲地有聲的專論，各作者在十多 載後，都成了更具名聲之士，如王曉明、熊 月之、郭延禮、孔慧怡、卜立德、樽本照 雄、袁進、范伯群、夏曉虹、陳平原、王德 威；至於編者王宏志更不用說了，在譯界 中，有誰不知他！ 近代文學的分期，是指晚清至五四這個時 期。這是個建設的時代，也是個敗壞的時 代，這是個英雄輩出的時代，也是個狗熊的 時代。一言蔽之，是個混亂的時代，是好是 壞，反映在文學方面，更見「烏煙瘴氣」， 更見「雜花生樹」；這在譯界方面，顯得更 特別。 王德威在〈翻譯「現代性」〉中說： 「明清文人對於何謂翻譯工作，並沒有一 個嚴謹定義。當時的翻譯其實包含了改過、 重寫、縮譯、轉譯和重整文字風格等做 法。」 到了清末，情況更烈，「晚清的譯者通過 其譯作所欲達到的目標，不論是在感情或意 識形態方面，都不是原著作者所能想像得到 的。」這些譯者，多是明知故犯，明知誤 譯。http://pdf.wenweipo.com/2021/03/02/a24-0302.pdf
translation of chinese to european languages
- De l'un au multiple: Traductions du chinois vers les langues européennes Translations from Chinese into European Languages ("From one into many: Translations from the Chinese to the European languages") is an academic book in French and English with essays about translations of Chinese into European languages. It was published in 1999 by the Éditions de la MSH, Fondation Maison des sciences de l'homme, and edited by Viviane Alleton and Michael Lackner. The introduction states that the purpose of this work is to examine specific issues in translation from Chinese to European languages and from the Chinese culture to Western cultures, instead of promoting a new theory regarding translation.
Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters (thus trans- + liter-) in predictable ways, such as Greek ⟨α⟩ → ⟨a⟩, Cyrillic ⟨д⟩ → ⟨d⟩, Greek ⟨χ⟩ → the digraph ⟨ch⟩, Armenian ⟨ն⟩ → ⟨n⟩ or Latin ⟨æ⟩ → ⟨ae⟩.For instance, for the Modern Greek term "Ελληνική Δημοκρατία", which is usually translated as "Hellenic Republic", the usual transliteration to Latin script is ⟨Ellēnikḗ Dēmokratía⟩, and the name for Russia in Cyrillic script, "Россия", is usually transliterated as ⟨Rossija⟩.Transliteration is not primarily concerned with representing the sounds of the original but rather with representing the characters, ideally accurately and unambiguously. Thus, in the Greek above example, ⟨λλ⟩ is transliterated ⟨ll⟩ though it is pronounced [l], ⟨Δ⟩ is transliterated ⟨D⟩ though pronounced [ð], and ⟨η⟩ is transliterated ⟨ē⟩, though it is pronounced [i] (exactly like ⟨ι⟩) and is not long.Conversely, transcription notes the sounds rather than the orthography of a text. So "Ελληνική Δημοκρατία" could be transcribed as [elinikí ðimokratía], which does not specify which of the [i] sounds are written with the Greek letter ⟨η⟩ and which with ⟨ι⟩.Angle brackets may be used to set off transliteration, as opposed to slashes and square brackets for phonetic transcription. Angle brackets may also be used to set of characters in the original script. Conventions and author preferences vary.
- In transliterated foreign words, an apostrophe may be used to separate letters or syllables that otherwise would likely be interpreted incorrectly. For example:
- in the Arabic word mus'haf, a transliteration of مصحف, the syllables are as in mus·haf, not mu·shaf
- in the Japanese name Shin'ichi, the apostrophe shows that the pronunciation is shi·n·i·chi (hiragana しんいち), where the letters n (ん) and i (い) are separate morae, rather than shi·ni·chi (しにち).
- in the Chinese Pinyin romanization, the apostrophe (', 隔音符號, géyīn fúhào, 'syllable-dividing mark') is used before a syllable starting with a vowel (a, o, or e) in a multiple-syllable word when the syllable does not start the word (which is most commonly realized as [ɰ]), unless the syllable immediately follows a hyphen or other dash.[74] This is done to remove ambiguity that could arise, as in Xi'an, which consists of the two syllables xi ("西") an ("安"), compared to such words as xian ("先"). (This ambiguity does not occur when tone marks are used: The two tone marks in Xīān unambiguously show that the word consists of two syllables. However, even with tone marks, the city is usually spelled with an apostrophe as Xī'ān.)
Furthermore, an apostrophe may be used to indicate a glottal stop in transliterations. For example:
- in the Arabic word Qur'an, a common transliteration of (part of) القرآن al-qur'ān, the apostrophe corresponds to the diacritic Maddah over the 'alif, one of the letters in the Arabic alphabet
Rather than ʿ (modifier letter left half ring), the apostrophe is sometimes used to indicate a voiced pharyngeal fricative as it sounds and looks like the glottal stop to most English speakers. For example:
- in the Arabic word Ka'aba for الكعبة al-kaʿbah, the apostrophe corresponds to the Arabic letter ʿayn.
Finally, in "scientific" transliteration of Cyrillic script, the apostrophe usually represents the soft sign ь, though in "ordinary" transliteration it is usually omitted. For example,
- "The Ob River (Russian: Обь), also Ob', is a major river in western Siberia,...".
- hallowe'en [folklore from cornwall - jack the giant killer]
sign language
- https://www.quora.com/Does-Spanish-and-English-have-the-same-sign-language Many people are surprised to learn that the signed language that is used in a country has no relationship to the spoken language that is used in a country.
Some English-speaking countries include Australia, England, and the United States.
- Australian Sign Language (Auslan) is used in Australia.
- British Sign Language (BSL) is used in England.
- American Sign Language (ASL) is used in the United States.
These are three totally different languages. Auslan and BSL are related; they belong to the same language family. ASL belongs to a totally different language family; it isn’t related to the other two languages at all.
Some Spanish-speaking countries include Mexico, Nicaragua, and Spain.
- Mexican Sign Language is used in Mexico.
- Nicaraguan Sign Language is used in Nicaragua.
- Spanish Sign Language is used in Spain.
These are three totally different languages. And they’re completely unrelated. They belong to three different language families.
- american- https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-c1487718515aea2995386c93fc6eaaa8
- Official standard released for sign languages. China Daily - 2018-05-24
history as a discipline
- europe
- in 1816, german ideologist franz bopp discovered relatedness of indo-european languages in europe and beyond.
- in 1942 europe was conceptualised for the first time as a sui generis language area
- between 1942 to 1975, ernst lewy, henrik becker, gyula decsy and vladimir skalicka attempted to correlate certain linguistic features with worldview, culture and society
- 1976-1989 - revolution and founding of a rigorous areal linguistics. Harald Haarmann laid the methodological foundations for the discipline and linguistics terminology.
- 1990-2010 - international projects such as EUROTYP-project
number of vocabularies in a language
- https://www.quora.com/Why-do-the-Chinese-invent-extremely-specific-words-for-everything-instead-of-transliterating-them-like-the-rest-of-the-world-e-g-Mitochondria-%E7%BA%BF%E7%B2%92%E4%BD%93 a few languages ever in existence managed to accumulate a large enough body of technical/political (not liturgical!!) literature over the centuries/millenia and had enough cultural influence to affect wide geographical regions:
- Latin
- Greek
- Arabic
- Sanskrit
- Russian
- English
- Chinese
- The earliest dictionaries go right back to the very beginning: Sumerian-Akkadian bilingual glossaries. The very oldest one is specifically this one dating to the 24th century BC called 𒄯𒊏 𒄷𒇧𒈝 or ‘Urra=hubullu’ https://www.quora.com/In-what-language-was-the-first-dictionary-written-in-Latin-Greek-Persian-Arabic-or-another-language-When-and-where-were-the-first-bilingual-dictionaries-written
websites
- The World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) http://wals.info/ is a database of structural (phonological, grammatical, lexical) properties of languages gathered from descriptive materials. It was first published by Oxford University Press as a book with CD-ROM in 2005, and was released as the second edition on the Internet in April 2008. It is maintained by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and by the Max Planck Digital Library. The editors are Martin Haspelmath, Matthew S. Dryer, David Gil and Bernard Comrie. The atlas provides information on the location, linguistic affiliation and basic typological features of a great number of the world's languages. It interacts with Google Maps. The information of the atlas is published under a Creative Commons license.
- http://terms.naer.edu.tw/
- http://mymodernmet.com/second-languages-of-the-world-infographic/
- https://airtable.com/universe/exph5qycoKpX7tPwO/every-language-in-the-world
- gender of words changes meaning
- https://www.quora.com/Are-there-words-in-other-languages-with-completely-different-meanings-depending-if-they-are-masculine-or-feminine-e-g-vagabundo-and-vagabunda-in-Portuguese
events
- The International Linguistics Olympiad (IOL) is the fourth newest of a group of twelve International Science Olympiads. Its abbreviation IOL is deliberately chosen not to correspond to the name of the organization in any particular language, and member organizations are free to choose for themselves how to designate the competition in their own language. This olympiad furthers the fields of mathematical, theoretical, and descriptive linguistics.The setup differs from most of the other Science Olympiads, in that the olympiad contains both individual and team contests. The individual contest consists of 5 problems, covering the main fields of theoretical, mathematical and applied linguistics – phonetics, morphology, semantics, syntax, sociolinguistics, etc. – which must be solved in six hours. The team contest has consisted of one extremely difficult and time-consuming problem since the 2nd IOL. Teams, which generally consist of four students, are given three to four hours to solve this problem.
- The first linguistic olympiad for secondary school students was organised in 1965 in Moscow, Russia, on the initiative of Alfred Zhurinsky (1938–1991), eventually a prominent philologist but then only a fifth-year student of linguistics, in an organizing committee chaired by the mathematician Vladimir Andreevich Uspensky and with the participation of the linguists Alexander Kibrik, Anna Polivanova and Andrey Zaliznyak. It was held regularly until 1982 and resumed again in 1988. Similar olympiads were founded in Bulgaria (1984), Oregon, USA (1988)[4] and Saint Petersburg, Russia (1995). After the foundation of the Bulgarian olympiad, teams of winners of the Moscow Linguistic Olympiad successfully competed in Bulgaria and vice versa, demonstrating good potential for international cooperation in the field.
- The first edition of IOL then was realized from September 6 to 12, 2003, in the mountain resort Borovetz, Bulgaria, chaired by Alexander Kibrik from Moscow State University (MSU) and with the participation of six countries: Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Netherlands and Russia. The first International Jury was composed of Ivan Derzhanski (president) (Institute for Mathematics and Informatics of Bulgarian Academy of Sciences), Alexander Berdichevsky (MSU), Boris Iomdin (Russian Language Institute) and Elena Muravenko (Department for Russian Language, Russian State University for the Humanities). The five problems at the individual contest concerned Jacob Linzbach's "Transcendental algebra" writing system, Egyptian Arabic (Afroasiatic), Basque (Isolate), Adyghe (Northwest Caucasian), and French (Indo-European). The team contest consisted of three problems, on Tocharian (Indo-European), the use of subscripts as indices, and on performative verbs.
- hk
change of name - change of fate?
- 香港理工大學今年主辦首屆「香港語言學奧林匹克競賽」，希望可在全港中學生中選 拔約 10人，代表香港參加國際賽。以往獲獎選手有機會被史丹福大學、麻省理工學院等世界知名 學府錄取。http://pdf.wenweipo.com/2019/03/20/a21-0320.pdf
- 英媒上周五報道，由中國企業持有、被指運載伊朗原油的油輪「太平洋布拉沃號」（Pacific Bravo）於六月突然音信全無後，上月改以新名「拉丁冒險號」（Latin Venture）現身。外界猜測，船主試圖將油輪偽裝成另一艘油輪，藉此逃避美國制裁。https://orientaldaily.on.cc/cnt/china_world/20190818/00180_002.html
trivial
- https://www.quora.com/What-modern-language-is-so-unchanged-that-it-would-still-be-mostly-understood-if-a-person-went-back-500-years-1000-years-2000-years
- it isn’t possible that any writing systems existed before 4000-5000 BC at the earliest, because writing (and thus the entirety of literature, and so forth) was invented by accountants. In order to have writing, you need accountants; to have accountants, you need cities; to have cities, you need civilization; to have civilization, you need agriculture.https://www.quora.com/What-evidence-is-there-that-we-have-not-lost-all-records-of-written-languages-that-developed-say-25-000-to-100-000-years-ago
- https://www.quora.com/When-will-there-be-another-major-language-barrier-within-a-language-ex-Medieval-to-Modern-English We’re already beginning to see that with the development of Indian English and Singapore English. As English becomes more common as a lingua franca in many countries, eventually it will most likely become unintelligible with the major varieties of English in the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.The issue is, of course, that India, with its over 100 different languages and dozen major language groups will lean more heavily on English going forward as a “common” language. In a few hundred years, it may even start to displace native languages, and some Indians may grow up knowing no other language than “English”. However, Indian English already has features that differentiate it from other forms of English, such as the use of counting numbers (lakh) and trying to make English phonology fit in with phonemes commonly used in India.
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