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 Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery |  | |
| Viktoria Newbie United States Joined 6919 days ago 13 posts - 13 votes | Message 9 of 17 24 May 2005 at 12:03pm | IP Logged | ||
This brings up a slightly similar plight here in America. There are people in the backwoods of the Appalachians and the Ozarks whose drawls are so thick that it takes extreme concentration to understand what they are saying. There are also African-American populations in inner cities who are completely unintelligible to white suburbia, though they understand each other perfectly. Both groups would tell you they speak English if asked, but I wonder if the differences are perhaps like the Swiss German/German in the former case, and Northern Swedish/Danish in the latter. Edited by administrator on 24 May 2005 at 12:50pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lenkadv Hexaglot Newbie Czech Republic Joined 6936 days ago 21 posts - 24 votes 3 sounds Speaks: Czech*, English, German, SpanishB2, Russian, FrenchB2 Studies: Japanese | Message 10 of 17 24 May 2005 at 3:05pm | IP Logged | ||
Czechs (?) not understanding Slovak? Hard to believe. Even kids who were born after the split of Czechoslovakia (and therefore they were not exposed to Slovak on TV etc.) can get the gist of spoken Slovak. They find it "funny" and miss some words but they do understand. The same certainly cannot be said about Russian. Lenka Edited by administrator on 24 May 2005 at 3:08pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Giordano Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6961 days ago 213 posts - 218 votes  3 sounds Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Cantonese, Greek | Message 11 of 17 28 May 2005 at 5:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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Ardaschir, I answer your question with a question. Would one consider Latin to be one language with Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Romanian, Sard, Sicilian, Romansch, Catalan, Occitan, Galician, Italkian, Ladino, Istriot, Venetian, Walloon, Haitian Creole, Esperanto, or even Vulgar Latin?
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| BartoG Diglot Senior Member United States confession Joined 5234 days ago 292 posts - 818 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Spanish, Latin, Uzbek | Message 12 of 17 16 August 2010 at 8:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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Are historic variants of languages, like Old, Middle and Modern English, separate languages?
I'm late to this question, but having recently returned to Old French it piqued my interest. I imagine that if you learned Modern English because you saw the movie Beowulf and wanted to read the book it came from, you'd be rather disappointed. While Old French is a lot closer to Modern French than Old English is to Modern English, if you want to read Béroul's Tristan, there are better ways to spend your time than learning Modern French. Linguists can debate what constitutes a language, where one language shades into another, etc. But on a forum for language learners, the better question is: How many languages do I need to learn if I want to read Beowulf, the Canterbury Tales and A Farewell to Arms. If you want a good understanding of all three books, you would need to study all three languages independently. Of this, I'm fairly certain because when I look at the text for Beowulf, I can't read it at all, and when I pull out Chaucer, I spend as much time with the glosses as the text - it's like using my Spanish and Italian to read Catalan. Neither of these are my language! Therefore, they are different languages. Somebody who takes the trouble of learning them ought to credit himself or herself for doing so. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5168 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 13 of 17 16 August 2010 at 9:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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Today's future English will one day be someone's old English... What constitutes an Old or Middle version of a language is arbitrary. It's only a point of reference in time. Besides, all languages are equally old since they all come from a string of evolutionary changes, intermixing and branching off that started way back we'll never know exactly when or how.
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| tracker465 Senior Member United States Joined 5139 days ago 355 posts - 496 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 14 of 17 17 August 2010 at 9:45am | IP Logged | ||
To answer your question, I take it on a case-by-case basis. I will stick purely with the English situation, since I really have not examined older German, except for Luther's bible, and can thus not make a good conclusion. I honestly feel that any educated, native English speaker can read the later middle English, such as Chaucer, without any trouble. Some of the older works, such as Gawain and the Green Knight, are a bit more dialectal and harder to understand. With Chaucer though, it is not hard at all to understand, and with a knowledge of German and Dutch, I understand it perfectly. This coupled with the fact that middle English does not really have a strict set of grammatical rules makes me group it with modern English. Technically speaking, I might consider it to be its own language, but on a practical level it really isn't. There is a lack of convention, with spelling and grammar, so that kills the idea of ever truely "learning" it, or translating Harry Potter, for example, into the language. Therefore it may be its own language, but never will it be something that one learns, beyond the level of reading/comprehending. With Old English though, I consider it to be an entity of its own, almost like Latin is to Italian or Spanish. There are similarities with modern English, but there are also large differences. Unlike middle English, though, there is enough conformity with spelling and grammar, that one can actually learn to read and write this language, to some level of consistency. This, along with the large difference from modern English, makes it seem more like its own language to me. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ygangerg Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5105 days ago 100 posts - 140 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Arabic (Written), Mandarin, French Studies: German | Message 15 of 17 23 August 2010 at 6:19am | IP Logged | ||
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Great conversation! Let me throw in a twist:
Scots: dialect of English or sister language? (I refer to lowland Scots, the close relative of what I'm writing in, not highland Scots, the Celtic language). Here is an example of it: "The tattie wis first growen an eaten in the Andes Muntains o Sooth Americae. Whan the Europeans cam tae Sooth Americae, thay brocht the tattie back tae Europe." That was from the Scots Wikipedia entry for the "tattie," or potato. I myself would settle for a resounding "same language." Although, while the above text just looks like English with an accent, some fun differences do arise, like "kent" in place of the past participle "known." I also vote "same language" for Middle English, though I can say firsthand that it can be hard to understand at times for someone of limited Germanic philological background. Edited by Ygangerg on 23 August 2010 at 6:24am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| zerothinking Senior Member Australia Joined 6159 days ago 528 posts - 772 votes Speaks: English* | Message 16 of 17 29 September 2010 at 3:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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I definitely consider them separate languages.
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