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Phlegmish posted:There are a number of superficial similarities between Dutch and the Scandinavian languages that you wouldn't necessarily expect given that they belong to different branches of the Germanic language family. I think it has to do with the fact that neither of them underwent the High Germanic consonant shift. Even though Standard German is obviously closer to Dutch, I still find written Swedish to be more instinctively familiar at first glance. I know a lot of Norwegians emmigrated to the Netherlands in the 18th century and a cursory wikipedia search puts the number at ~80k. I guess that could have had some influence as well.
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Dec 27, 2013 23:45
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Carbon dioxide posted:
Is that Malta colored in the bottom there?
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Dec 28, 2013 08:17
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Cantorsdust posted:Is that Malta colored in the bottom there? English is official in Malta along with Maltese.
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Dec 28, 2013 08:20
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Mods, threadname change request: "Politically-loaded Maps: Dutch appreciation station".
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Dec 28, 2013 08:53
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Those maps always overestimate how widespread the Sami languages are today.
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Dec 28, 2013 09:46
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Carbon dioxide posted:
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Dec 28, 2013 10:02
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On the inter-intelligibility note, there's actually an artificial Slavic language that can be perfectly understood by speakers of virtually all Slavic groups without any prior training or exposure. Suck it, Germanic guys.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovianski
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Dec 28, 2013 13:50
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Hip Flask posted:Those maps always overestimate how widespread the Sami languages are today. Maps like this always over-represent minority languages or ethnic groups. It's intentional to show where a minority group is, even if they're not the majority within that range. Phlegmish posted:There are a number of superficial similarities between Dutch and the Scandinavian languages that you wouldn't necessarily expect given that they belong to different branches of the Germanic language family. I think it has to do with the fact that neither of them underwent the High Germanic consonant shift. Even though Standard German is obviously closer to Dutch, I still find written Swedish to be more instinctively familiar at first glance. When I studied Swedish, I noticed many similarities between English and Swedish that didn't exist between English and German. The consonant shift was a big part, "up" in Swedish is "upp" and in German is "auf". English and Swedish have also dropped some word endings such as with "cat" and "katt", which in German is "katze". Of course, English was influenced by Old Norse, so there is some shared vocabulary that doesn't exist with German, like "egg" and "knife". English and Swedish dropped the accusative and dative cases and retained the genitive case, adding an "s" to the end of possessive nouns. This is especially interesting considering that in German it is moving the opposite direction and the genitive case is slowly being displaced by the dative case as people use the preposition "von" to indicate possession. I believe the same is happening in Dutch. Another interesting pattern is that the Germanic languages located around the North and Baltic Sea have reduced the number of grammatical genders. Typically they combine the masculine and feminine into a "common" gender while English dispenses with gender all together. The Germanic languages outside of this region, High German, Icelandic, and Faroese, retain three genders. Also, from what I remember, Swedish doesn't move verbs to the end of the sentence, like German does sometimes, so sentence structure is more similar to English in that regard.
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Dec 28, 2013 14:57
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Hearing people talk about watching a movie for 30 minutes in Dutch before realizing it wasn't in English fascinates me. Is there a link to a Youtube video of something in just plain spoken Dutch? I don't want a video to "How to speak Dutch", but rather just a Dutch TV show or something.
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Dec 28, 2013 15:19
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Mu Cow posted:This is especially interesting considering that in German it is moving the opposite direction and the genitive case is slowly being displaced by the dative case as people use the preposition "von" to indicate possession. I believe the same is happening in Dutch. There is of course a "problem", some would say, with this, but it's certainly not a thing that is encouraged or just passively observed. Lots of books, some humorous, some in a more serious context, have been written about this phenomenon, which can be in majority, observed in some migrants- as well as in poorer communities.( without passing any judgement on these people or how they talk 'cause of their upbringing ). In a formal context, no one would just drop the genitive in favor of dativ, it's viewed as really bad form of conversation and most Germans frown upon using it that way. Also, the dativ case is "vom", "von" is accusative. 
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Dec 28, 2013 15:20
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Mu Cow posted:English and Swedish dropped the accusative and dative cases and retained the genitive case, adding an "s" to the end of possessive nouns. This is especially interesting considering that in German it is moving the opposite direction and the genitive case is slowly being displaced by the dative case as people use the preposition "von" to indicate possession. I believe the same is happening in Dutch. Yes. In Dutch the genitive is basically only still used for proper names. Eg. I could talk about "Mu Cows post", the same usage as in Enlish. A more vernacular way (which I think is only common in Belgium) would be "Mu Cow zijn post" (Mu Cow his post), which retains the structure but doesn't use a genitive. The accusative and dative forms can still be found in expressions like 'ten laatste male' (For the last time), for example, where the -e is a archaic dative form. DrSunshine posted:Hearing people talk about watching a movie for 30 minutes in Dutch before realizing it wasn't in English fascinates me. Is there a link to a Youtube video of something in just plain spoken Dutch? I don't want a video to "How to speak Dutch", but rather just a Dutch TV show or something. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=620nI07DHDw This is the best dutch-language video on the entire internet. It combines the arts of football, poetry and language philosophy. Antwan3K fucked around with this message at 15:23 on Dec 28, 2013 |
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Dec 28, 2013 15:20
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Antwan3K posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=620nI07DHDw These men seem to be having the most interesting discussion in the world, but unfortunately it doesn't sound like English to me! Though it's kind of neat -- the overall tone and rhythm of the language sounds very similar.
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Dec 28, 2013 15:55
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Well it's kinda spoiled by you already knowing its Dutch. I doubt those people were paying full attention to the movie though.
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Dec 28, 2013 17:18
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The thing that I find weird about that mao is that it differentiates between English and Scots... but seems to think that Scots isn't spoken in the highlands... Its also funny to see the Western Isles marked as non-germanic when even there Gaelic is a minority language... Just based on that (and the ulster Scots section) you can see that it exaggerates some minority languages, but is unsure about the ones where the two are very similar...
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Dec 28, 2013 17:35
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IceAgeComing posted:The thing that I find weird about that mao is that it differentiates between English and Scots... but seems to think that Scots isn't spoken in the highlands... Its also funny to see the Western Isles marked as non-germanic when even there Gaelic is a minority language... Just based on that (and the ulster Scots section) you can see that it exaggerates some minority languages, but is unsure about the ones where the two are very similar... I think what happened is the map used for Scots was the one from the Wikipedia page, which appears to specifically be a map of Lowland + Ulster Scots that leaves out Highland Scots for whatever reason. Also for what it's worth the Western Isles reported in 2011 (as in the previous several censuses) that a majority of the population continued to be able to speak Scottish Gaelic.
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Dec 28, 2013 18:04
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Wired posted a gallery of their favorite maps of the year. Cool stuff, some of them have already been discussed in this thread.
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Dec 28, 2013 18:33
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Basil Hayden posted:I think what happened is the map used for Scots was the one from the Wikipedia page, which appears to specifically be a map of Lowland + Ulster Scots that leaves out Highland Scots for whatever reason. Scots isn't spoken in the Highlands. Both Scots and modern English are evolutions from a common language, noticeably diverging in the medieval period - indeed Scots-speakers called their own language 'Inglis', and called Scottish Gaelic 'Scottis', up until the surge in nationalism in the 15th century. Inglis - later Scots - simply wasn't spoken in large parts of Scotland, where instead Gaelic was spoken. When Gaelic began to decline, in the 19th century, the official line on Scots was that it didn't really exist except as a dialect of English and so Gaels were taught standard Scottish English instead of Scots. I'm from the Western Isles and grew up speaking Gaelic and English but no Scots. No-one I know from the islands is a native speaker of Scots.
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Dec 28, 2013 19:38
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John Charity Spring posted:Scots isn't spoken in the Highlands. Both Scots and modern English are evolutions from a common language, noticeably diverging in the medieval period - indeed Scots-speakers called their own language 'Inglis', and called Scottish Gaelic 'Scottis', up until the surge in nationalism in the 15th century. Inglis - later Scots - simply wasn't spoken in large parts of Scotland, where instead Gaelic was spoken. When Gaelic began to decline, in the 19th century, the official line on Scots was that it didn't really exist except as a dialect of English and so Gaels were taught standard Scottish English instead of Scots. Okay it looks like Wikipedia calls what I called up there "Highland Scots" "Highland English" which is not Scots, maybe, except the article on Scottish English which it's a variety of also suggests it might or might not be considered the same as Scots and why is this such a mess I'm so confused. Basil Hayden fucked around with this message at 20:38 on Dec 28, 2013 |
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Dec 28, 2013 20:35
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There's the argument whether Scots is a language or a dialect of English because its not like a Scotsman and an Englishman cannot understand each other; although there are issues between some people. It gets complicated when you have written Scots that is only used for poetry and other literature and not for anything serious ([although the Scots wikipedia is pretty funny to read), but they are pretty close on a basic, day-to-day level. I'm not too good at language things (English/Scots and very basic Lithuanian is as far as I am, I've forgotten all of my school French), xo I can't really think of a parallel between other languages; but there probably is one elsewhere in the world. This is probably something better suited to the Languages sub-forum in A/T though...
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Dec 28, 2013 22:25
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Basil Hayden posted:Okay it looks like Wikipedia calls what I called up there "Highland Scots" "Highland English" which is not Scots, maybe, except the article on Scottish English which it's a variety of also suggests it might or might not be considered the same as Scots and why is this such a mess I'm so confused. There's no such thing as Highland Scots. Scots has its own distinct dialects and none of them are spoken in the Highlands with the exception of the tip of Caithness which has been a Scots-speaking area for centuries.
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Dec 29, 2013 02:06
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It's not exactly the most politically-loaded map in the world, but...
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Dec 29, 2013 04:35
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skipThings posted:Also, the dativ case is "vom", "von" is accusative. "Von" always takes the dative. "Vom" is a shortening of "von dem". For example, "Ich habe ein Geschenk von der Katze" vs. "Ich habe ein Geschenk vom Hund".
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Dec 29, 2013 05:17
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DrSunshine posted:Hearing people talk about watching a movie for 30 minutes in Dutch before realizing it wasn't in English fascinates me. Is there a link to a Youtube video of something in just plain spoken Dutch? I don't want a video to "How to speak Dutch", but rather just a Dutch TV show or something. Maybe Flemish will sound more similar to English for you, since the pronunciation differs quite a bit between the two countries. The woman going around asking instructions is Belgian. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7z8so8fV4Ao Also an interesting video for Dutchmen! Also on the subject of maps:  Flemish education really stresses the fact that we should learn proper, British English, so I was expecting this result, especially if school English mixes with Hollywood and popular media English. We're just all over the map (except Texas). Deltasquid fucked around with this message at 12:29 on Dec 29, 2013 |
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Dec 29, 2013 12:25
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Mu Cow posted:Another interesting pattern is that the Germanic languages located around the North and Baltic Sea have reduced the number of grammatical genders. Typically they combine the masculine and feminine into a "common" gender while English dispenses with gender all together. The Germanic languages outside of this region, High German, Icelandic, and Faroese, retain three genders. With the exception of one dialect and one sociolect, Norwegian still retains three genders.
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Dec 29, 2013 13:52
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ulvir posted:With the exception of one dialect and one sociolect, Norwegian still retains three genders. With Bokmål though, you can use the masculine form for all feminine forms, so you'd only have two genders: neuter and common. I took Norwegian in college and we didn't bother with remembering which nouns were feminine.
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Dec 29, 2013 16:09
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Jedi Knight Luigi posted:we didn't bother with remembering which nouns were feminine. I really don't understand why anyone bothers to remember this ever. Maybe it's my language-privilege talking but whole classes of nouns that add zero information yet require huge amounts of memorization to use properly are just ugh.
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Dec 29, 2013 16:20
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VitalSigns posted:I really don't understand why anyone bothers to remember this ever. Maybe it's my language-privilege talking but whole classes of nouns that add zero information yet require huge amounts of memorization to use properly are just ugh. It's not just you, gender is the one grammar concept that I've never seen any convincing argument in favor of. Or any argument in favor of, now that I think about it. It adds nothing but annoyance for non-native learners. It doesn't even have to be logical, like girl in German is neuter, not feminine.
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Dec 29, 2013 16:36
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Grand Fromage posted:It's not just you, gender is the one grammar concept that I've never seen any convincing argument in favor of. Or any argument in favor of, now that I think about it. It adds nothing but annoyance for non-native learners. It doesn't even have to be logical, like girl in German is neuter, not feminine. I vaguely remember reading somewhere that grammatical gender has long been a puzzle, in that despite being something you have to make rather tortured arguments in favor of, it's prevalent in several major language families.
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Dec 29, 2013 17:26
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Grand Fromage posted:It's not just you, gender is the one grammar concept that I've never seen any convincing argument in favor of. Or any argument in favor of, now that I think about it. It adds nothing but annoyance for non-native learners. It doesn't even have to be logical, like girl in German is neuter, not feminine. Question for anyone who speaks a language with grammatical gender, did you learn a foreign language with grammatical gender in school, and how did you find that? I had a hard enough time remembering der/die/das for nouns when I learned German in school, I imagine it must be even worse if you already have genders for nouns in your own language and they bear no relation whatsoever to the genders of your own language. Or is it easier, because you already understand the concept?
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Dec 29, 2013 17:33
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Reveilled posted:Question for anyone who speaks a language with grammatical gender, did you learn a foreign language with grammatical gender in school, and how did you find that? I had a hard enough time remembering der/die/das for nouns when I learned German in school, I imagine it must be even worse if you already have genders for nouns in your own language and they bear no relation whatsoever to the genders of your own language. Or is it easier, because you already understand the concept? Its not easier. In your first language you just know which noun is which gender. In the new language you have to memorize them. Like cat. In German it's always feminine, in Spanish it's masculine. It sounds weird to refer to a cat as "he".
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Dec 29, 2013 17:43
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 Minimum Wage Hours needed to work per week to afford an average 2-bedroom apartment in each state. I saw it on UpWorthy, who sourced it to the National Low Income Housing Authority, but they didn't link right to the data, so I have no idea if it's at the federal min. wage, or state, and what percentage of income they determined had to go to rent. I'd be curious to see how much New York's would change if you separated out NYC+Long Island.
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Dec 29, 2013 17:52
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DrBouvenstein posted:
 Hawai'i requires more hours per week than there actually are in a week.
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Dec 29, 2013 18:17
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Here's the 2013 version: And here's the source: http://nlihc.org/oor/2013
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Dec 29, 2013 18:19
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bronin posted:Its not easier. In your first language you just know which noun is which gender. In the new language you have to memorize them. Like cat. In German it's always feminine, in Spanish it's masculine. It sounds weird to refer to a cat as "he". Do you always refer to cats as she in German, then, even if it's an actual male cat? Or just for general use the way English speakers default to "it" if it's a cat of unknown gender?
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Dec 29, 2013 18:36
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VitalSigns posted:I really don't understand why anyone bothers to remember this ever. Maybe it's my language-privilege talking but whole classes of nouns that add zero information yet require huge amounts of memorization to use properly are just ugh. They don't require huge amounts of active memorisation for the native speaker, because statistical learning does the job for you. So as such they're not an impediment and there's not necessarily a reason for them to disappear from language. There's languages with dozens of completely arbitrary noun classes. But I'll tell you what: to people whose native language doesn't have articles, those are just about as arbitrary and daft as gender is to you. Grand Fromage posted:It's not just you, gender is the one grammar concept that I've never seen any convincing argument in favor of. Or any argument in favor of, now that I think about it. It adds nothing but annoyance for non-native learners. It doesn't even have to be logical, like girl in German is neuter, not feminine. I only know about Indo-European languages, but I think the consensus is that Proto-Indo-European's "genders" were an animacy/inanimacy noun class distinction, and over time they largely evolved or devolved into a masculine/feminine distinction. So I don't know why you would need to make an "argument in favor of" it? The noun class system has just never disappeared from e.g. the Romance languages or German, and we cannot really speculate about how it evolved in PIE because that goes so far beyond the timeframe at which the comparative method works.
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Dec 29, 2013 18:38
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Ras Het posted:So I don't know why you would need to make an "argument in favor of" it? As far as describing what purpose it serves. You just mentioned articles, for example. They are somewhat arbitrary, but at least in English they communicate whether you're talking about a specific or general noun. Something like the door = a specific door, a door = any door. I've never read an argument that gender communicates any useful information at all, it's just kind of there.
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Dec 29, 2013 18:42
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Grand Fromage posted:As far as describing what purpose it serves. You just mentioned articles, for example. They are somewhat arbitrary, but at least in English they communicate whether you're talking about a specific or general noun. Something like the door = a specific door, a door = any door. I've never read an argument that gender communicates any useful information at all, it's just kind of there. Clarification of references in, say, subordinate clauses. The same way English has gendered third person singular pronouns, he did this and she did that. Lots of languages do without genders in pronouns.
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Dec 29, 2013 18:51
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Reveilled posted:Do you always refer to cats as she in German, then, even if it's an actual male cat? Or just for general use the way English speakers default to "it" if it's a cat of unknown gender? Gendered nouns in German refer to what infinitive you put in front of it. So yes saying the cat in German is always going to die (feminine version of the) katze.
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Dec 29, 2013 18:55
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Ras Het posted:Clarification of references in, say, subordinate clauses. The same way English has gendered third person singular pronouns, he did this and she did that. Lots of languages do without genders in pronouns. Can you give some examples? The only language I've learned in any detail with genders was German, and they're totally meaningless and arbitrary there.
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Dec 29, 2013 18:58
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Raskolnikov38 posted:Gendered nouns in German refer to what infinitive you put in front of it. So yes saying the cat in German is always going to die (feminine version of the) katze. But you'd still talk about your tomcat as "he".
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Dec 29, 2013 19:00
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