For elfdalian, it may also be a case of "persistence", I think. There are several examples of "older versions" of languages that for some reason, resist change. My guess is that it has to do with a) the frequency of the territory, b) the genetics of the speakers, and more generally for other phenomena, c) some link to the information field, d) the way speakers' antennae (DNA) are configured to perceive and interact with reality, e) each group's "lesson profile", f) how symbols (phonemes and graphemes) are a 3D representation of something much more complex at 4D, and much more.
Reading Magnus’ dissertation is tremendously instructive. Had an experience of frequency of territory lately, and looking back it explains why I felt so good or bad in some places.
d) and e) are quite clear to me in Icelandic. They refuse to use words like “republic” and will use words such as “allthing” instead. The gov., académie de lettres and the people are all behind it in almost unison!
Precise perception is key. Yet I see no need to get hung up in one specific way of precisely percieving. Of course, we’d have to have quite the voyance or travel to “Elfdalia” to verify any of those, but I feel we’re def onto something!
I don't know, but in Brazil, there are also Amazonian tribes like the Piraha, who have resisted linguistic change for centuries. Sure, it's still maybe the 1%, but the 99% is not that unusual in that region. Look at Argentina, Bolivia, Chili, etc. In most of those countries, it's also a 95-99% "takeover", just that it's Spanish
Yes. There may be over 100 lggs in Brazil, and São Gabriel da Cachoeira is a small city famous for its citizens speaking originary lggs.
And Russia is also different, in that it's the only country in the world (to my knowledge) where in spite of the vast territory, the phonemic system and prosody are practically the same. There are minimal regional differences, but much less important (and not "imposed by the government") than in other places. That to me speaks of a natural national unity that we don't have in the West, for example.
China, I'd say is different still. There are MANY languages and pronunciations. They are all united by written Mandarin, but the spoken languages are different in many regions.
I didn’t know that about Russian. I’m learning Russian rn… I’m so excited about the doors it’s been opening! Finding this forum was one of them. I found it through thread about relationships between Sanskrit and Russian.
About China, I knew there was diversity, but I didn’t know how proportionally prevalent it was (for a 1.3billion ppl country, a language/dialect with “only” 30 million speakers is not all thaaat much)
I don't know enough about it, but from what I heard, the "lingua geral" was more like a pidgin. If that's the case, then pidgins are fragile, only used as vernaculars, but never a mother tongue, never fully formed, etc. In that case, with the imposition of Portuguese as the official language, I can imagine its disappearance
I’ve heard it has a simpler grammar. I’m yet to check it out. I’m learning Tupi, the superstrate language for Lingua Geral.
A small story that underscores why I’m surprised by its disappearance is that, in Tupi and Guarani, the word for dog is “Jaguá(ra)”. Which means jaguar. And the word for jaguar is “Jagua(r)-eté”, meaning true Jaguar.
This indicates that the colonists were so far removed from Europe that they called the dog a “jaguar”, instead of calling the jaguar a dog! Then to differentiate the two, the big gracious cat was labeled “eté”, the real one. This happened with many other animals. Also, toponyms in tupi/lingua geral abound to this day. The language was tremendously prevalent, not to mention Tupi itself.
It was supposed to have been spoken for about 300 hundred years. Even if there’s a 3d causation to this, I find it remarkable!
As I read and respond your comments, I realize that I’m fascinated not just by the linguistic aspect of language, but by the cultural assimilations. And how little I know about it.
When watching carnival parades once, my dad said “the pope should come and canonize this thing every year”. He was referring to the fact that samba schools have sometimes 6 thousand people parading, finish almost exactly in 70 minutes, with huge “allegorical cars”, no motors, with 99% amateurs, innbriated on all kinds of stuff! I find the fact that colonization (and linguistic assimilation) worked as well as it did, nothing short of a miracle, definetely beyond the grasp of my mind! Of course this is not just a Brazilian thing.
I think here you get into "cognitive grammar".
Will be able to respond more educadetly when I get to the book
Pretty sure Romanian has 3.
Oh, yeah. Nom-acc, da., and gen. So yes.
Well, it has a vestigial vocative as well, not sure how that fits in. I suppose it’s not as simple is my statement implies.
For instance, what if a languages has 4 cases in the article, but two affecting the nouns? (Hochdeutsch)
What if a language has no declension on nouns, but declensions on pronouns? (Castillian)
What if a language only decline some pronouns, but not others? (Br Romance)
What if declensions are inferred by specific uses, but their form is identical to other declensions with different uses? (Russian)
Maybe... or maybe it has something to do with Phonosemantics too
I need more knowledge to assess that, but I’d bet on it now!
Interesting. Can you give an example of the difference
Hah! A funny one.
Ungrammatical in Br:
O pai da Maria disse que está grávida
The father of the Mary said is pregnant
Mary’s father said she’s pregnant
In Br this is very jarring. Like “wut? Did you just say her father’s pregnant??”, because Br needs the explicit noun here, and Pt doesn’t
In Br: O pai da Maria disse que ela tá grávida
Ungrammatical in Pt:
Eu vi ela hoje
I saw she today
I saw her today
In Pt, it makes no sense to use the pronoun like that. Like in any other Romance I know.
In Pt: eu a vi hoje
I her saw today
I saw her today
In some dialects in Br, the differences are much starker.
That's not uncommon for ancient colonies, I think. Have you tried comparing Brazilian Portuguese with the portuguese of the time of the conquest? In Spanish, for example, you can see similarities between texts from the 12th century, and modern castillian in South America. It's details, but it says something about how colonies preserve the original language (perhaps because it was learnt as a second language and made official), than the colonizers themselves.
There’s much written stuff from Pt from that time. For the educated Br, it’s readable with some persistence, but it’s quite different. Their spoken lgg now is quite similar to written language then. Of course, maybe they spoke differently from they wrote then.
I sure didn’t know about the 12th cent Cast.
I’d need to take a look at more examples of colonies to see if there’s actually really anything unusual about what I’m pointing out.
What comes to mind is I can see standard US accent somehwre in Great Britain, canadian and acadian French in Normandy. In fact, there may be somewhere in Pt where people speak like in Br, maybe I’m just not aware.
Yeps. It depends on the degree of assimilation, I think
Can’t wrap my head around it! I find it just astounding! This is more a sociological phenomenon, but I’d like to have a better insight in it.
Hmm, I don't know if that's a rule or not. Isn't Hebrew more analytical? And we'd have to see about other regions too. Most often it's just the script that it's taken (like devanagari, Arabic, etc.), rather than the whole language, I think
Write… I mean, right! I wasn’t specific, I had only Europe in mind. Those counterexamples are important just the same - shows the trend could be localized, if there’s one.
Because they have the whole History wrong? I don't know
well, well, now. I’d bet on it. One explanation could be that 1) it wasn’t that long because of added time, and 2) after cataclysm people were busier surviving than writing chic. It’s ok to write as you speak if you don’t know if you’ll have a meal tomorrow!
Probably more complex than that, but for now this explanation seems to cover it.
Spanish, Italian, Basque and Greek could make up a "family" if you took only their phonemic systems, for example
Love to see this paradigm of group lggs!
I think Magnus and Abehsera get the closest to the answer. Something in the sounds reflect the concepts. And when there are exceptions, the concepts themselves are different
Very curious for Abehsera’s book!
Other languages use lots of diphtongs too, like Mandarin
Curiosity: is there a limitation in Mandarin p
to saying one of the 5 typical vowels ( /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/) plainly? Such as in English ‘amigo’ becomes ‘amigow’, etc?
The exceptions and the mixing and matching of characteristics across families are far more common
right… maybe it’s more like very few people learn lggs from other families, and even among thise, fewer notice the similarities, even fewer remark on them and even fewer are vocal about it.
I would add the "frequency of the territory" as a possibility too.
Maybe by just looking at the local lgg, you can infer what mane of those frequencies are.
Also, would be interesting to see how in groups of people who go to far-away lands but preserve their lgg, their languages change… controlled for contact with other local lggs
Such a momentous task. Often times, I think it’s easier to do a lot of sādhana/spiritual practice and just hope to get direct perception.
I don't know about that. The same is said about Hebrew, but is it true? Some people try to find a "magikal" meaning when the causes could be more mundane (like imitating Latin spelling to sound cultured
Right… well, Fulcanelli’s book was quite dense, and I read it in French which still isn’t one of my strongest lggs, so I certainly missed a lot.
Still - and I could be off track on this - but I do get the sense there’s so much more than meets the eye to French spelling. Even it it’s clever red herrings!
Well, it depends on how you define enclaves. Cypriot could be one, in the sense that the language is extremely resistant, in spite of years of occupation by everyone except for the speakers of the language they adopted (Greek). Maybe Cornish too, although I think it was "resuscitated". Dogon in Africa is also an interesting "enclave
Reading this, here’s an impression I have, to which I have very little evidence. Maybe the enclaves are a cause-and-consequence of linguistic homogeneity. Maybe it stabilizes the dominant language somehow. Don’t know.
In complex systems, homogeneity equals efficiency… and fragility. The more homogenous, the more a system is a very efficient machine waiting to be broken down by an unexpected breeze.
I don't know about Faroese, but I speak a little Danish and lived there, and it was perfectly clear. They DO have more vowels than others, the glottal stop, and very "lazy" consonants like the "d/th". But it's nothing too unusual
I see. So that was running on low-quality info from my part.
Chu, it’s so generous that you answers EVERY each of these points! I wasn’t expecting that by a long shot. Please don’t overstretch yourself.
These searches for answers like I’m in right now occur in bursts. And I seem to be in one, so I’m sure I’ll dig deeper. The books you’ve pointed out are a great place to start. I’ll keep you posted
And will seek to respond to your respondes as well.
) They have to do with our identity, and basic ways of relating to the world (that's why the gender-neutral nonsense is a bad sign of the times!)
