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Name a Language That... GAME | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Multilingual Lounge |  | |
| Billy Bob Diglot Groupie Colombia Joined 5074 days ago 48 posts - 57 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Turkish | Message 145 of 306 31 March 2012 at 2:06am | IP Logged | ||
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Ottoman Turkish
Name a conlang that draws vocabulary from a Native American language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4659 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 146 of 306 31 March 2012 at 2:53am | IP Logged | ||
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Poliespo
Name a language whose formal and colloquial registers are distinguished by the replacement of certain consonants. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| viedums Hexaglot Senior Member Thailand Joined 4457 days ago 327 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Latvian, English*, German, Mandarin, Thai, French Studies: Vietnamese | Message 147 of 306 31 March 2012 at 3:58am | IP Logged | ||
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Samoan (colloquial = "K style")
Name a language currently spoken whose name is identical to a Chinese word, recorded in the oracle-bone inscriptions, for an ancient barbarian tribe or state. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6373 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 148 of 306 31 March 2012 at 8:14pm | IP Logged | ||
That's like, half the languages of China, but let's pick Cantonese (粵/越 was the name for the barbarian tribes of the south). Or maybe Min (閩 - "The snake people"). Name a language with a trial (as in the grammatical number). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Billy Bob Diglot Groupie Colombia Joined 5074 days ago 48 posts - 57 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Turkish | Message 149 of 306 31 March 2012 at 10:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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Manam
Name a language that doesn't have any independent pronouns. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| viedums Hexaglot Senior Member Thailand Joined 4457 days ago 327 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Latvian, English*, German, Mandarin, Thai, French Studies: Vietnamese | Message 150 of 306 01 April 2012 at 4:34am | IP Logged | ||
That's like, half the languages of China, but let's pick Cantonese (粵/越 was the name for the barbarian tribes of the south). Or maybe Min (閩 - "The snake people"). QUOTE] I disagree. The oracle bones date from the Shang period, which is a long, long time before China expanded south. So terms like Ao or Min would not have been in use then, dialects like Cantonese or Taiwanese didn't exist yet. The territory of "China" at that time was located around the Yellow River, in what are now the provinces of Henan, Shandong and Anhui. The main term for barbarians in this period was Qiang (羌). There's also a Tibeto-Burman language of this name spoken in Western Sichuan. David Keightley's book "Ancestral Landscape" is a good intro to the study of the Shang period. There's also some stuff about Qiang identity by Wang Ming-ke available online. Edited by viedums on 01 April 2012 at 4:37am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6373 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 151 of 306 01 April 2012 at 9:02am | IP Logged | ||
From Chinese Wikipedia: "根據有關文獻的記載，早在商、 周時期，就有被稱之為「越」的古民族" "古閩族是在約從夏商時代到戰國中期這段時 內，即約公元前1000年—前2000年至公元前4世 時，生活於今天中國福建及鄰 近地區的一個原住民族，是福建最早的土著民 族" At least according to Wikipedia, the terms 越 and 閩 seems to have been used in the Shang dynasty, and both of them signified "barbarian" tribes (let's face it, in those days anyone who wasn't Chinese was a barbarian). 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| viedums Hexaglot Senior Member Thailand Joined 4457 days ago 327 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Latvian, English*, German, Mandarin, Thai, French Studies: Vietnamese | Message 152 of 306 02 April 2012 at 2:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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It’s certainly true that “barbarian” is a very slippery concept for China. As the external enemies of the Middle Kingdom changed, the terms used to designate them changed too. Still, I believe it would be an anachronism to talk about the Yue or Min as barbarian entities during the Shang period. Checking the 漢語大字典, where you can find the first attested uses of any given character, I don’t see 粵, 越 or 閩 attested in the oracle bones – the first yue was on a cauldron (孟鼎), the second yue in bronzes and on “the sword of the Yue king”(!) and min just in the Shuowen, where indeed it’s defined as 東南越 or a type of snake. But the Shuowen is a Han-era text, my point is that’s much later.
One reason why 羌 is found so often in the oracle bones is that the Shang were going into battle against them and needed predictions about the success of the venture, thus consulted the oracle. Most likely there were other groups on the Shang periphery that might have gone unmentioned because they didn’t pose an immediate threat, who knows? So you could be right. I have my doubts about the veracity of Wikipedia here. It’s quite easy to imagine anonymous Chinese with a reified conception of ethnicity and origins posting those lines. What does “guminzu” really refer to? I doubt anyone knows. And I would contest the idea that the “original inhabitants” of the southeast China coast spoke minnanhua. It’s possible there is a non-Sinitic substratum in minnanhua that would be a reflection of what was spoken there before. There is a linguist named Laurent Sagart who is worth reading in this regard. I can also recommend some papers on ethnicity and naming in China by an anthropologist named Magnus Fiskesjo (see his page on academia.edu for citations.) I recently took a course with him on Asian ethnicity, this was really my point of departure on all of this. I don't have the answer to Billybob's question, so anyone who does please feel free to post. Edited by viedums on 02 April 2012 at 2:49pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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