Finnegan
I like a bit of a cavort
And let’s not even get started on the linguistic enigma that is Basque.
"Indeed"
- Thread starter kasperhauser
- Start date
Yank
Bulbous Also Tapered
Yank
Bulbous Also Tapered
Serbs and Croats speak what is essentially the same language, but one uses the Roman alphabet and the other writes in Cyrillic. I can't remember which is which.
Finnegan
I like a bit of a cavort
It’s a common motif. Estonian and Finnish, Czech and Slovakian, Dutch and Afrikaans. Greater or lesser degrees of cognate words and mutual intelligibility but each considered a politically distinct language.
Serbs use Cyrillic; Croats use the Latin alphabet.
@Finnegan Estonian is very different from Finnish according to my Finnish friend, but as almost nothing is like Finnish, I suppose it counts as "close". Dutch and Afrikaans only split apart in the 17th century and so are still very close today; closer than the Canadian and French versions of French. Czech and Slovak were kept very close during the existence of Czechoslovakia: the nightly TV news used to alternate between a story in Czech and one in Slovak. Since separation, however, both sides have eagerly drifted apart, and neither side is exposed to the other language anymore, so today's Czech teenagers have trouble understanding their Slovak peers, even though their parents can still converse easily.
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gez
pfm Member
I thought that was "innit bruv"
Finnegan
I like a bit of a cavort
Agreed, I wasn’t suggesting Finnish and Estonian were so similar that they possessed significant mutual intelligibility, merely that they were related and featured cognates.
We can take, for example ‘beer.’ Apart from the Spanish Cerveza and Portuguese Cerveja, the word for beer is fairly consistent amongst Western European languages. This is not to suggest mutual intelligibility between German and English and Italian, only that they all originate from a common branch of Indo-European.
I‘m not a linguist so happy to be corrected, but my understanding is Basque and Albanian are unique amongst Western European languages inasmuch as neither are understood to relate to any other European language.
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gez
pfm Member
Mike Reed
pfm Member
Well, Afrikaans was Dutch in the C18th and early C19th and to be considered a different language in such a short time is unusual (Great Trek 1833????). Oh, I see this has been addressed.
Isn't Finnish loosely allied to Hungarian and maybe another European 'odd' language?
Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian are the (only, I think) three Ungaro-Finnish languages as someone discussed above.
I didn't know about Albanian but Basque is a famous outlier with no similar or related European languages.
The word from the beginning, in old Scandinavian was something like 'Vind Ue', meaning 'eye to the wind'. It was the hole in the roof where smoke sipped out. No glass at that time.
Well, every airport also has signs in a particular Swedish accent called 'Östgötska' (East Gothian), the word 'Gate' means street. Doesn't mean you can speak Swedish all around the world
Well, George. I, as a Swede, has problems with that. I can see that it's not Swedish and therefore must be either Danish or Norwegian, but which one?
A much younger me once tried to play the early, text based computer game 'Adventure' in Norwegian. Honestly, I failed.
I think Sami is considered Ungaro-Finnish too, at least according to Wikipeia.
Mike Reed
pfm Member
I was joking, but the hole in the roof, as used in many cultures in huts, was hardly a window.
Yes, that's the one, yet it's been noted above that there's little or no understanding between Finnish and Estonian. All these linguistic distributions follow ancient nomadic trends, and I'm not sure historians have completely nailed down all migratory trends in pre-history. Fascinating nonetheless.
Quite a number of streets in York are names 'gates', Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma-Gate probably being the most ridiculously named. Jorvik heritage with a solid drinking culture responsible for that one i guess!Well, every airport also has signs in a particular Swedish accent called 'Östgötska' (East Gothian), the word 'Gate' means street. Doesn't mean you can speak Swedish all around the world
And gates in the city wall are referred to as 'bars'
Finnegan
I like a bit of a cavort
Very much so. Another fascinating little nugget is that in the wake of the 1746 Jacobite defeat at the battle of Culloden, many Scottish Jacobites fled Scotland and the fierce reprisals enacted against them. Many defeated and hunted Jacobins took refuge in the Caribbean and formed a core cohort of the slave owning Plantocracy. Even Robert Burns (he of “Man to man the world o’er shall brothers be”) did, at one time, seriously consider emigration to the West Indies to become a plantation overseer.
Many African slaves in the Caribbean learnt Scots Gaelic as a second language in lieu of English. They would have heard and absorbed, as part of the traditional mechanism of folk transmission, old Scottish ballads, laments and the unique precentor led Gaelic hymns of the Western Isles Presbyterian church, that would have fused with indigenous African musical traditions to produce the hybrid musical styles we recognise and listen to today.
Finnegan
I like a bit of a cavort
Interesting, I wasn’t aware of that. I used to work with (older) Czech and Slovak colleagues who told me the differences were often just in pronunciation, emphasis etc. But, as you say, if the dissolution of Czechoslovakia has resulted in much less intermingling then the languages will inevitably change and evolve, and mutual intelligibility will lessen over the generations.
Sue Pertwee-Tyr
Accuphase all the way down
Yes, quite a few Yorkshire towns have 'gate' instead of street. My wife grew up on one in Pickering, where there are several still.