Thoughts about languages

[Marshmallow Marshall]

Any funny thoughts you've recently had about languages? I've recently had one: original English writers must have been incredibly egocentric to make capitalizing I the norm...

[SuperJack]

They all suck.

[OzyWho]

They all suck.

+‎

[Oberon]

I love Dutch. So predictable if you speak English and are somewhat knowledgeable about history and yet so foreign at the same time. Very relatable at times and at others very foreign.

[OzyWho]

Credible and Incredible are not antonyms. Wtf?

[DJarJar]

Credible and Incredible are not antonyms. Wtf?

i mean they basically are. One way to describe incredible would be that it's so good or so crazy that it's not believable.

[Marshmallow Marshall]

i mean they basically are. One way to describe incredible would be that it's so good or so crazy that it's not believable.

They are in spirit, which isn't surprising... but they aren't really antonyms when used. You can't say something is "not credible" when you're saying it's incredible.

[Oberon]

Usually when you call something incredible it’s implied that it did happen.

[Oberon]

English isn’t the only language with this situation. The word exists in Romanian too with pretty much the same meaning.

[OzyWho]

Thank God for Finnish language, the most beautiful language in the world.

Otherwise the filthy members of that "Romance Languages" language family would be all the prettiest languages.

On a different note, why are so few languages phonetically consistent?
Or is this not true?

[Oberon]

Thank God for Finnish language, the most beautiful language in the world.

Otherwise the filthy members of that "Romance Languages" language family would be all the prettiest languages.

On a different note, why are so few languages phonetically consistent?
Or is this not true?

What do you mean by phonetically consistent?

[OzyWho]

Thank God for Finnish language, the most beautiful language in the world.

But seriously though. Those vowels just make me UwU
Each year I'm on my yearly one day "Finnish songs" trip. It's like it satisfies some OCD in me or something, the language.

What do you mean by phonetically consistent?

To read each letter always the same, excluding intonations ofcourse.
English, for example, is a parody of a language when it comes to phonetical consistency.
Here it's easier to see it: https://youtu.be/A8zWWp0akUU

[Oberon]

But seriously though. Those vowels just make me UwU
Each year I'm on my yearly one day "Finnish songs" trip. It's like it satisfies some OCD in me or something, the language.

To read each letter always the same, excluding intonations ofcourse.
English, for example, is a parody of a language when it comes to phonetical consistency.
Here it's easier to see it: https://youtu.be/A8zWWp0akUU

Languages are on a continuum when it comes to that. English isn’t even that bad compared to some of the languages out there. Take Irish for instance. A combination of letters can be pronounced in a number of different ways according to some very complicated rules. For example takethe word Taoiseach. Pronounced... Tee-shuh-kh. Or the name Micael. Pronounced Mee-khol. I’m pretty good at pronouncing things generally but I cannot pronounce Irish words no matter how hard I try.

At the other end of the spectrum you have something like Italian or Romanian, both of which are very consistent (I suspect Italian is the more consistent of the two although not speaking Italian I am unable to confirm this). There’s only one word I know in Romanian that isn’t spelled the way it’s pronounced (siringa, pronounced with an ‘e’, seringa. It means syringe). On the other hand there is a sound in Romanian (similar to Estonian õ) that can be spelled either â or î depending on if its in the middle of the syllable or at the beginning/end.

As for why some languages aren’t consistent with their spelling, often this is due to fossilized spelling - the pronunciation evolved faster than the spelling. This is especially true for something like English, Irish, French and Dutch. English spelling was standardized in 1450 and hasn’t changed much since then. On the other hand the pronunciation has changed significantly. Take a look at something called ‘the Great Vowel Shift’ if you ever have the time. Basically a dramatic change happened in the way certain vowels were pronounced in English in a relatively short period of time (about a generation or two, IIRC, around the year 1500). The change is such that if you went back in time to the 1400s you would be hard pressed to recognize the English of the time as English at all, it would sound more like a cross between Italian and Dutch. But go to the 1500s and people will sound as if they speak with a strange accent (something similar to modern Irish accents).

[OzyWho]

Ok dude you seriously know way too much random shit like wtf lol.

[Oberon]

😂😂😂😂
Most of the random shit I know is about linguistics tbh. Ask me about something else and I’ll give you one or two sentences at best.