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Nissin Cup Nudist posted:Wasnt French the dominant international language until 1900 or so French I'm not really sure how exactly its dominance worked. There was some kind of weird intellectual angle where a lot of important thought and diplomacy was going through France, and somehow they got a reputation for high culture in a way that other nations didn't. Russia had a long history of being Frenchaboos. But all of that influence was based on aspects about France that spoiled with age and didn't leave much behind as France itself fell from prominence. Like English and Spanish, it was also spread by colonialism, but unlike the other European empires, France kept losing their overseas empire. Something like 2-4 times. France also just didn't have as much population growth, so they didn't send out very many colonists to create foreign communities to continue on the language. Many former French colonies have rejected French, with the language strongest in the more recently released colonies in Africa, so who knows how much that could last. Eiba posted:The more I learn about other languages, the happier I am with English. I feel like the way these things normally work is that the things people know best, they know best all the ways it sucks, and you have to be truly informed across the spectrum of how everything sucks to really make a good judgement about what sucks more. I think something I like most about English is the fact that since there is no centralized authority for the language, the rules for the language are more mutable, even if there are definitely people out there who don't want English to be flexible.
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Apr 19, 2024 20:07
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OddObserver posted:Most human languages are messy; IMHO English is at the easier part of the spectrum, too. From a language topology perspective, English is pretty firmly in the weirder half of languages, just in terms of doing things differently than the majority of (described) languages. A bit of that is just that English is also the most described language, but some stuff like dummy-do is straight up bizarre. Compare "don't you eat apples" to "ißt du nicht Appfeln" (I haven't actually written German in years). Or "do you not eat apples", which has a different word order than the less wanky version. Most of the super cool and complex stuff in Germanic languages, including English, is in the syntax, which you don't notice as much as inflection. Also the spelling is even more of a gently caress than Danish, and that's a gently caress. I probably speak a slight RPish British by default, but I'll usually unintentionally switch to match the person I'm speaking to as best I can (so there's still some Danish in there I'd assume). These days, I'm mostly speaking English with my Ukrainian coworker, so I'm getting a Ukrainian accent by association, at least when talking to him but probably going to slip into my general English. It's fun, but also not the best because he's much less fluent than me. I think the EU institutions have their own accent/dialect too at this point, which is a huge mix of all the European accents except the non posh British ones and maybe Dutch because swamp Germans speak flawless English.
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Apr 19, 2024 20:09
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You can always try speaking english with german word order, makes you sound like a medieval peasant.
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Apr 19, 2024 20:15
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I think my biggest complaint with English is that I can't tell how a word is pronounced at a glance.
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Apr 19, 2024 20:21
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OwlFancier posted:You can always try speaking english with german word order, makes you sound like a medieval peasant. or you can do this: 
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Apr 19, 2024 20:25
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Carthag Tuek posted:lmao I'll admit I've only been taught Spanish, Latin, Ancient Greek, and Japanese, and I have retained zero knowledge of any of those languages, so I'm no expert on the breadth of human languages, but I remember there was a lot of bullshit in Spanish, Latin and Greek. Japanese was honestly fine and straightforward in comparison, even though I had to learn way more of the vocabulary from scratch. Like English, the biggest issue was the writing system. I'm not saying English is uniquely un-hosed, but it could be a lot more needlessly complicated than it is. Torrannor posted:I think my biggest complaint with English is that I can't tell how a word is pronounced at a glance.
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Apr 19, 2024 20:25
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Torrannor posted:I think my biggest complaint with English is that I can't tell how a word is pronounced at a glance. Also I always read „infrared“ as „in fraired“ instead of „infra red“. Still have to consciously watch out for those ….
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Apr 19, 2024 20:27
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If you get enough people to pronounce it badly, you can get yours in the dictionary as an alternate. “Calliope” has fallen in most.
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Apr 19, 2024 20:30
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Eiba posted:I mean, I kind of threw that out there to see if people would say, "No actually, English has these really uniquely annoying quirks," so if you think I'm wrong on that count, I'm all ears. well. its not so much that english has quirks as it is that it is a quirk. it smells, and it looks ugly on your coffee table. i say this as a dane, sitting on a coffee table. Carthag Tuek fucked around with this message at 20:34 on Apr 19, 2024 |
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Apr 19, 2024 20:31
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I'm fine with the nucular option of changing the spelling to hyper bowl too.
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Apr 19, 2024 20:31
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Torrannor posted:I think my biggest complaint with English is that I can't tell how a word is pronounced at a glance. My current pet peeve regarding this is not being able to tell from a glance how many syllables a word has (in portuguese it's always obvious). The articles are more specific too, i always get at, on and in mixed up.
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Apr 19, 2024 20:32
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I think most of the spelling issues are directly the fault of the French somehow developing a way to use letters entirely differently from most of its fellow romance languages and certainly different from germanic languages. So when the English had to put a little french spin on their german to look good for the ruling class, they got real weird. It's interesting looking at 17th century writing when people are just trying to vibe out the spelling and randomly adding extra letters.
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Apr 19, 2024 20:33
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Guavanaut posted:I'm fine with the nucular option of changing the spelling to hyper bowl too. the publishers of the danish orthorgraphical dictionary published an alternate spelling of mayonnaise in the 90s: "majonæse" and there was a riot over it. 3 died. it is no longer allowed to spell it that way.
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Apr 19, 2024 20:36
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SlothfulCobra posted:I think most of the spelling issues are directly the fault of the French somehow developing a way to use letters entirely differently from most of its fellow romance languages and certainly different from germanic languages. So when the English had to put a little french spin on their german to look good for the ruling class, they got real weird. It's interesting looking at 17th century writing when people are just trying to vibe out the spelling and randomly adding extra letters.
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Apr 19, 2024 20:37
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Eiba posted:I'll admit I've only been taught Spanish, Latin, Ancient Greek, and Japanese, and I have retained zero knowledge of any of those languages, so I'm no expert on the breadth of human languages, but I remember there was a lot of bullshit in Spanish, Latin and Greek. Japanese was honestly fine and straightforward in comparison, even though I had to learn way more of the vocabulary from scratch. Like English, the biggest issue was the writing system. I'm not saying English is uniquely un-hosed, but it could be a lot more needlessly complicated than it is. It hits differently depending on your native language. I'm a portuguese speaker, so verb endings come naturally to me, and the way english builds some verb tenses ("be going to", "would have") sounded frankly absurd for a while until it became second nature.
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Apr 19, 2024 20:37
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Carthag Tuek posted:or you can do this: Legit I do enjoy anglish a lot, lots of really pleasant words you get when you have to construct something without using any French bits. Course I'm sure there's nice french words too, but one of the things I liked most about German (and sometimes in Old English too) is the really enjoyable ways of building to an idea. I really like the word "Wissenschaft" for example, wisdom-making. Dunno, I feel like even if you know a bit of where it comes from a lot of the romance influence in English obscures the construction of words, I always feel like with German I get a lot more of those wonderful moments when you hear a word, pause for a second, and then laugh because you can see how it was constructed and it's a little silly but yet wonderfully descriptive. I know German can mash together words more freely which probably helps.
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Apr 19, 2024 20:50
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Eiba posted:Yeah, the spelling is hosed. I'd be down for updating English spellings to be more phonetic. Eiba posted:I was under the impression that most of the spelling issues come from the fact that spelling was fixed so long ago. It was pretty phonetic at one point, but pronunciation shifted over time and spelling didn't. Thinking about it, I kinda suspect Denmark has another parallel to (British) English here, with the population rejecting the old "proper" Danish of the upper class in much the same way that RP in Britain went from soaring levels of prestige to being widely mocked within a couple of years in the '60s. Would make sense, given that the pronunciation shift is largely a postwar thing AFAIK.
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Apr 19, 2024 20:54
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OwlFancier posted:Legit I do enjoy anglish a lot, lots of really pleasant words you get when you have to construct something without using any French bits. hell yeah, its fun to take different stems and mash them together. or taking words you know and pulling them apart. its a good learning experience i think. but yeah english is p much the only germanic language that doesnt nouncombine. its just weird to go all puritan
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Apr 19, 2024 21:00
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Carthag Tuek posted:the publishers of the danish orthorgraphical dictionary published an alternate spelling of mayonnaise in the 90s: "majonæse" and there was a riot over it. 3 died. it is no longer allowed to spell it that way. Perhaps actual Danes pronounce it more like manosphere or something now, but it makes sense as a word to me. Or just go full Simple English and call it 'sandwich lotion'.
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Apr 19, 2024 21:00
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A Buttery Pastry posted:Phonetic according to whom? Balmer.
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Apr 19, 2024 21:01
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I mean it can nouncombine it's just historically it strongly encourages only doing it with latin or greek, to hide the shame from god, and then adopting the result.
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Apr 19, 2024 21:01
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SlothfulCobra posted:Balmer. Guavanaut posted:majonæse sounds like the more logical spelling to me, I could sound it out without thinking.
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Apr 19, 2024 21:06
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A Buttery Pastry posted:Thinking about it, I kinda suspect Denmark has another parallel to (British) English here, with the population rejecting the old "proper" Danish of the upper class in much the same way that RP in Britain went from soaring levels of prestige to being widely mocked within a couple of years in the '60s. Would make sense, given that the pronunciation shift is largely a postwar thing AFAIK. yeah definitely parallels: going from lots of dialects -> urbanization -> radio/tv using one dialect. the "proper" as you say, or "high copenhagen" dialect, which was actually the old native dialect. when all the weirdo freaks from the provinces started moving in, the well-to-do moved up north to the whiskey-belt, and for some decades retained the native language, becoming a sociolect. that is what you hear in movies and television up until the 1960s or so — forgive my ad hoc phonetics: arbeedde (arbejde), ah-majer (amager), sikel (cykel), etc. the "low copenhagen" or "low copenhagen" sociolect was basically a mishmash of zealandic dialects, with some german and swedish cause why not. it wasnt originally a class distinction, eg you hear Dan Turell who grew up poor in fuckin Vangede, he spoke a (partially affected) højkøbenhavnsk, but the people who used them and eventually named them had that in mind. later, højkøbenhavnsk died out entirely. victory to the proletariat! Carthag Tuek fucked around with this message at 21:17 on Apr 19, 2024 |
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Apr 19, 2024 21:09
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Apr 19, 2024 21:11
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Guavanaut posted:majonæse sounds like the more logical spelling to me, I could sound it out without thinking. its a perfectly reasonable spelling. we have a weird hangup about keeping words and spellings intact (unlike esp norway and iceland who go all in on translating or finding a good spelling fit). we used to do it (miljø/milieu), but for some reason its now important to preserve the spelling of loan words for all eternity
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Apr 19, 2024 21:13
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I wish English still used ligatures.
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Apr 19, 2024 21:16
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Carthag Tuek posted:yeah definitely parallels: going from lots of dialects -> urbanization -> radio/tv using one dialect. the "proper" as you say, or "high copenhagen" dialect, which was actually the old native dialect. when all the weirdo freaks from the provinces started moving in, the well-to-do moved up north to the whiskey-belt, and for some decades retained the native language, becoming a sociolect. that is what you hear in movies and television up until the 1960s or so — forgive my ad hoc phonetics: arbeedde (arbejde), ah-majer (amager), sikel (cykel), etc. the "low copenhagen". the "low copenhagen" sociolect, which was basically a mishmash of zealandic dialects, with some german and swedish cause why not. Not that far off, though it is probably more like how a Norwegian would say it trying to sound Danish.
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Apr 19, 2024 21:16
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A Buttery Pastry posted:Thinking on it a little more, I feel like RP and højkøbenhavnsk seem to share some traits vis-a-vis other dialects, being softer and more high-pitch, but perhaps that's just me being influenced by my perception of the culture associated with it. ive been thinking theres probably some BBC / DR cross polliation from the exile "her er danmark" broadcasts during ww2 my grandpa spoke extremely affected højkøbenhavnsk. but he was gay in the 1940s so who knows how that messed him up Carthag Tuek fucked around with this message at 21:20 on Apr 19, 2024 |
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Apr 19, 2024 21:18
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Carthag Tuek posted:but yeah english is p much the only germanic language that doesnt nouncombine. Basketball, Doorbell, Bathroom, Background, Cutthroat, Throwback, Eyelid, Website, Strawberry, Backfire, Daydream, Eyeglasses, Newspaper, Pancake, Popcorn, Shopkeeper, Woodcarver... Frionnel fucked around with this message at 21:46 on Apr 19, 2024 |
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Apr 19, 2024 21:27
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Frionnel posted:Basketball, Doorbell, Bathroom, Background, Cutthroat, Throwback, Eyelid, Website, Strawberry, Backfire, Daydream, Eyeglasses, Newspaper, Pancake, Popcorn, Shopkeeper, Woodcarver... i mean actively, continuously. more than half of those are pre-1700s when yall actually did do it fr
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Apr 19, 2024 21:59
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English has plenty of compound words but you can't create new ones very easily. There are some more modern ones that have been adopted because I think compound words are so useful you can't resist it, but my understanding is that with German and some other languages, you can just do it whenever you want to express that you would like the reader to conceptualize a discrete idea described by the conjoined meanings of the words. You can do it informally in English, the meaning of "nouncombine" is perfectly intelligible and forms a coherent concept upon reading it, but this is not accepted in formal use of the language, you would very rarely see that done in any sort of published work unless it's deliberately being cheeky with its use of language. Like I said if you want to do this for a technical reason in English you would probably do it in greek and/or latin and then describe to your reader that you're doing it lest they get confused. I think it's also generational, with the increased informalization of language over recent decades (at least I think so) I think more people would be willing to do it and do engage in it especially online, I think because it's such an enjoyable and useful way to communicate. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 22:04 on Apr 19, 2024 |
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Apr 19, 2024 22:00
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Although the internet may have shifted that dynamic with all the shitposts and podcasts.
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Apr 19, 2024 22:03
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OwlFancier posted:English has plenty of compound words but you can't create new ones very easily. There are some more modern ones that have been adopted because I think compound words are so useful you can't resist it, but my understanding is that with German and some other languages, you can just do it whenever you want to express that you would like the reader to conceptualize a discrete idea described by the conjoined meanings of the words. exactly, its the opposite in thre rest of the germanic languages. you can split the words, but it would be wrong. theyre one word made of many parts. anyway english is making inroads in this case as well so i suppose at some point we'll be fine with same idk food walker field in three words like idiots
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Apr 19, 2024 22:03
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Guavanaut posted:Although the internet may have shifted that dynamic with all the shitposts and podcasts. Yeah absolutely, I really do feel like it's a sort of... fundamental natural linguistic constant or something, people want to do it, it's weird that English is so resistant to it.
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Apr 19, 2024 22:05
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Guavanaut posted:Although the internet may have shifted that dynamic with all the shitposts and podcasts. yeah brands and slang are pushing the other way in english it would be pretty funny if danish ends up unglued and english all glued
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Apr 19, 2024 22:06
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Why the gently caress are foot and root pronounced differently
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Apr 19, 2024 22:10
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Nissin Cup Nudist posted:Why the gently caress are foot and root pronounced differently theyre not, in real languages
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Apr 19, 2024 22:13
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Nissin Cup Nudist posted:Why the gently caress are foot and root pronounced differently they don't even start with the same letter
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Apr 19, 2024 22:17
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Frionnel posted:Basketball, Doorbell, Bathroom, Background, Cutthroat, Throwback, Eyelid, Website, Strawberry, Backfire, Daydream, Eyeglasses, Newspaper, Pancake, Popcorn, Shopkeeper, Woodcarver... Desktop, Mainframe, Clockwork, Doorway, Highway, Roadside, Carpark, Bookshelf, Brakepad, Smokescreen, Haircut, Firefly, Sweatshirt, Airport, Seawall...
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Apr 19, 2024 22:18
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OwlFancier posted:"nouncombine"  mostly cuz I am unsure if this is noun-combine or no-un-combine
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