Thoughts about languages
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  1. ISO #1

    Thoughts about languages

    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...
    Quote Originally Posted by The Lawyer View Post
    Besides your lamp and your refridgerators, do you find anyone else suspicious?
    Quote Originally Posted by oliverz144 View Post
    it looks like many, e.g. MM and lag, suffered under the influence of paopan. However there is a victim: frinckles. He left the path of rationality and fully dived into the parallel reality of baby shark, king shark, and soviet union pizzas.
    Spoiler : The meaning of life :

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    Re: Thoughts about languages

    Quote Originally Posted by aamirus View Post
    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.
    Quote Originally Posted by The Lawyer View Post
    Besides your lamp and your refridgerators, do you find anyone else suspicious?
    Quote Originally Posted by oliverz144 View Post
    it looks like many, e.g. MM and lag, suffered under the influence of paopan. However there is a victim: frinckles. He left the path of rationality and fully dived into the parallel reality of baby shark, king shark, and soviet union pizzas.
    Spoiler : The meaning of life :

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    Re: Thoughts about languages

    Quote Originally Posted by OzyWho View Post
    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?

  12. ISO #12

    Re: Thoughts about languages

    Quote Originally Posted by OzyWho View Post
    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.

    Quote Originally Posted by Oberon View Post
    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

  13. ISO #13

    Re: Thoughts about languages

    Quote Originally Posted by OzyWho View Post
    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).

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