language evolution

[Burkhard]

I want to direct your attention to this article on how "Paternal genome
elimination promotes altruism in viscous populations"

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/evo.14585

not so much because of its content, interesting as it is, but the
particularly lovely abstract. Evolution (the journal) encourages the
inclusion of abstracts in other languages, and this one is in Scots.
(translation by the brilliant Ashley Douglas, who in her day job does
mainly English-German translations).

Whether Scots is a language or a dialect is contested in some circles,
and I have of course VIEWS on this (mainly that it is the wrong question
- everything actual people speak is a dialect, languages are
abstractions. So for me dialect=species, language=families (or some
other higher taxon), and of course since they evolve, there are fuzzy
boundaries that can make it difficult to decide if speciation has
happened. So the best we can hope for is consistency - if Scots isn't a
language, then neither are Danish, Norwegian and Swedish separate
languages, and Dutch is possibly just a rural German dialect. I invite
you to discuss this in Amsterdam....

[Lawyer Daggett]

Ich bin ein berlinerbol

[Martin Harran]

On Tue, 2 Aug 2022 17:06:19 +0100, Burkhard <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk>
wrote:

Not to forget Ulster-Scots!

[erik simpson]

Brilliant! Particularly appreciated the "Supporting Information".

[erik simpson]

On Tuesday, August 2, 2022 at 9:10:08 AM UTC-7, Burkhard wrote:

And further reading:
https://sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young%27s_modulus

[jillery]

Since you mention it, I have become aware of a Youtube channel that
focuses on English etymology. An example:

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKaVI-IStNE&t=328s>

Old English specified gender for most nouns, much like most European
languages do today. Modern English does so rarely. The shift
happened during the rise of Middle English. One theory is, at that
time a large part of the island was Danelaw, which spoke German-based
Old Norse. The challenge was that gender assignments in Old English
and Old Norse were different. And that challenge was complicated by
Norman French, with its own gender assignments. Rather than
continuously sort out the differences, Englishmen just gave up almost
all gender assignments.

--
You're entitled to your own opinions.
You're not entitled to your own facts.

[Glenn]

If I didn't know better, I'd say you were drunk. No, Englishmen did not give up gender assignments. "He" and "she" survives, for some reason. Just not associating apples with being male or female. Can you say ulterior motive?

[jillery]

On Tue, 2 Aug 2022 23:25:12 -0700 (PDT), Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com>

... trolled more of his mindless, baseless noise.

<Glenn's added comments start here>

>If I didn't know better, I'd say you were drunk.

If only you were able to comprehend written or spoken English, you
wouldn't have posted your mindless, baseless comment above.

> No, Englishmen did not give up gender assignments. "He" and "she" survives, for some reason. Just not associating apples with being male or female.

That's what I wrote and the cited video said.

> Can you say ulterior motive?

Can you say willfully stupid trolling?

[Zen Cycle]

That's exactly the context, you idiot. Are you willfully stupid or do you just have a complete inability to control it?

> Can you say ulterior motive?

Yes, In this case is translated as "Hello, my name is glen, and I'm a troll"

[André G. Isaak]

Obviously, you have no clear understanding of what the grammatical term
'gender' means (hint: it has nothing to do with sex). English has
distinct pronouns for male and female things, but it no longer has
anything resembling grammatical gender.

In grammar, 'gender' refers to classes into which nouns are categorized
which play a role in concord (agreement) relations. In Indo-European,
those categories are usually referred to as 'masculine', 'feminine', and
'neuter', because they *very* loosely correlate with male, female, and
other. (e.g. The German word _Mädchen_ meaning 'maiden' is grammatically
neuter. The gender of a word and the sex of its referent only
occasionally correspond).

In Pre-Indo-European, there were only two genders, called 'animate' and
'inanimate'. The animate gender subsequently split in two based on the
final vowel of the stem. The results were called 'masculine' and
'feminine' because there was a *loose* correlation between sex and final
vowel where proper nouns were concerned despite the fact that this
pattern didn't extend to common nouns.

Languages outside of Indo-European frequently have gender systems having
nothing to do with sex. In Mayan languages, for instance, there are 23
distinct genders few of which have anything to do with sex but instead
very loosely correspond to size, shape, and consistency.

André

--
To email remove 'invalid' & replace 'gm' with well known Google mail
service.

[Glenn]

Sorry to interrupt, but why is it obvious that I do not know what gender means?

[André G. Isaak]

On 2022-08-03 18:32, Glenn wrote:

> Sorry to interrupt, but why is it obvious that I do not know what gender means?

Res ipsa loquitur.

[Glenn]

On Wednesday, August 3, 2022 at 6:55:09 PM UTC-7, André G. Isaak wrote:
> On 2022-08-03 18:32, Glenn wrote:
>
> > Sorry to interrupt, but why is it obvious that I do not know what gender means?
> Res ipsa loquitur.

Got something in your nose? Sounds like a personal problem.

[jillery]

On Wed, 3 Aug 2022 15:06:42 -0600, André G. Isaak <agi...@gm.invalid>
wrote:

Glenn shows he doesn't care about facts and is proud of it. Meanwhile,
your comments above are a refreshing and relevant contribution to this
thread.

[Glenn]

One who claims he knows what a word means shows he doesn't care about facts and is proud of it.

[Zen Cycle]

lol, silly troll thinks gender pronouns are the same as grammatical gender

[Burkhard]

This reminds me of the funny video that went around Twitter some time
ago, unfortunately, I can't find it any longer:

It showed a group of German pre-schoolers learning the names of fruit,
by putting big signs on the respective samples that said:

"Die Banane", "Die grapefruit", "Die Mandarine" etc

with the voiceover of an English speaker: wow, these German kids REALLY
hate their fruit! :o) (it took me some time to get the joke, as for
obvious reasons I parsed "die" as the definite female article straight
away, the English reading second)

As for the theory presented in your video, it is a possible explanation
why English lost its grammatical gender system by the late ME period.
sure, But within linguistics rather an outsider theory, to put it
mildly. It pops up now and again in popular science accounts of
linguistics, but i don't know any mainstream researcher that endorses it
these days.

Fair warning, it's been some time that I had reasons to look into this
in any detail. When I was a student we were still using Ibrahim's
"Grammatical Gender" book, which even then was getting dated. More
recently, my erstwhile colleague in Edinburgh, Charles Jones, wrote a
lot on this in the late 1980 that I know of, which fed into a
significant readjustment in the early 21th century through work by Hans
Platzer. “No Sex, Please, We’re Anglo-Saxon?’ On Grammatical Gender in
Old English (2001) and Anne Curzan 2003 "Gender shifts in the history of
English."

That's pretty much where I stopped - there are more recent, and more
quantitative studies, e.g. by Peter Siemund (From lexical to referential
gender: An analysis of gender change in medieval English based on two
historical documents) or Rhona Alcorn's Pronoun innovation in Middle
English from 2015 - my impression is though that while they refine (and
even further complicate) the dominant view, they don't radically
challenge it - Jone's work e.g. was re-published in 2015, and is still
widely cited in the current textbooks, such as Horobin's standard work
Introduction to Middle English. But it could well be that my comments
below are in parts outdated.

Based on these, there are a couple of problems with the theory in your
video, ranging from the minor and resolvable to the more serious.

One is a problem with the data. A Jones and Platzer had shown, the
development away from natural towards grammatical gender predates the
Norman invasion, and first examples can be found in Old English, e.g.
King Alfred's Anglo Saxon translation of Orosius.

Generally, the data is much much more messy than the "smooth" older
model indicated (it had: natural gender first, extended to grammatical
gender as a result of the cognitive tendency to anthropomorphize nature,
replacement of that grammatical gender system wholesale with a new
natural gender based on in Middle English) Rather, the grammatical and
natural gender systems co-existed and pulled into different directions,
so for example "se wīfmann“: wifman, literally "female human" will
evolve into "woman", the corresponding "wǣpmann", ("wer-mann) "male
human" disappears and becomes just man - with only one reminder,
"wer-wolf" is a man-wolf. But "se" is the masculine article, so
"wifman", woman, in Old English is male. But it is sometimes used with
female or male pronouns, once these got invented in ther current form on ME

(something skimilar we also see in e.g. German, that kept overall the
grammatical gender system. "Das Mädchen" is grammatically neuter, as all
diminutives (-chen) require the neuter article "Das", but both "Das
Mädchen ist hier. ES heisst Anna" and "Das Mädchen ist hier, SIE heisst
Anna" are grammatically correct (the girl is here, SHE/IT is called
Anna" - I would use "it" myself, my office neighbor from Hannover "she")

Changes in pronomina seem to have driven the development, with a lot of
experimentation in early middle English, including e.g. the use of "his"
also for single person feminine in the accusative mode), articles did
the catching up.

The other problem is that it does not explain why this happened only
between Norman and Saxon, when at the same time, people in Wales or
Scotland would code switch between Gàidhlig and English or Welsh and
English without problems, even though the genders there also don't
align. Gàidhlig has two grammatical genders these days (lost the neuter
at around 1200), and apart from those cases where they coincide with
natural gender (human animates, mainly) they didn't match either Old
English or Norman grammatical gender assignments. So in part, the same
people who according to the video got confused that "table" is feminine
in French and masculine in OE (and modern German - der Tisch) had no
problem to remember that "am bòrd" is a "male" table.

Generally, the theory just does not fit in what we know about
multi-lingual speakers, code-switching and creole languages. We are
really good at keeping these thins separate in our brains.

So what is the dominant alternative view? First, it's messy, and there
is not a single factor. In fact, and that is sort of TO relevant, it is
a mistake to think of a single guided development towards "the" current
form. There is even a technical term for our tendency in linguistics
(and arguably elsewhere) to see totally independent, random and
disparate developments as something that looks planned and goal directed
- a "linguistic conspiracy". Roger Lass gave one popular example:
"‘Linguistic orthogenesis? Scots vowel quantity and the English length
conspiracy’". Relevant to TO because it shows to tendency to "see"
design and goal directedness where in reality it was just "shit
happening randomly and by coincidence pushing in the same direction".

One main factor that drove the loss of grammatical gender in English
then had nothing directly to do with gender, but a much wider and
general tendency to lose inflections in ME. As grammatical gender system
uses inflections to indicate a referent’s gender, that got "swept up"
with this change. Why did in turn this loss of inflections happen? One
theory is that a change in stress patterns contributed to this, with
more pronounced stress on the first syllable, which makes it more
difficult to hear subtle distinction in the last one.

OK, but that also happened to a degree in German, so why not the same
loss of grammatical gender there? That's where the Norman conquest "may"
pay a role. natural Language change tends towards the easier solutions -
if hearing a difference is acoustically difficult, it tends to get
dropped unless something prevents it. Social norms and judgements can be
such an impediment (the Eliza Doolittle effect), as can be more formal
conventions when a language is used in official documents etc. After the
Norman conquest, the language of the upper class was Norman, and that
(and Latin) was the language of official documents - which therefore
remained more change resistant. But nobody gave a monkey how the
peasants talked, so their language, i.e. the precursor to today's
English, was allowed to do what comes naturally

There were other factors as well, as I said. Lots of experimentation
with pronouns that I mentioned above let to inconsistencies elsewhere,
so an ongoing process to reconcile these. The emphasis is here on
"ongoing" English did not simple replace one system by another, they
always coexisted, which creates tensions, which are continuously
resolved and re-balanced.

[Glenn]

Silly trolls believes words can be defined anyway a person wants, and if enough persons agree, they assume their definitions reflect reality. "What fender means"..."what gender really means"..."you're and idiot, you don't know what gender means"...
I didn't even define, or agree or disagree with any specific definition of gender above, and yet you idiots still try to lay that crap on me, that I don't "know" what "gender" "means".
If I did, no one has answered the question. You certainly didn't, sparky.

[Zen Cycle]

On Friday, August 5, 2022 at 11:25:11 AM UTC-4, Glenn wrote:

> Silly trolls believes words can be defined anyway a person wants,

Yes, you do, and demonstrate that constantly. Everyone in this forum has seen you do it and you've been repeatedly called out for using some definition of a term that you seem to have pulled out of your ass. We know, your going to reply with "show me where I did that". No, I'm not going to do that dance for you sparky.

> and if enough persons agree, they assume their definitions reflect reality.

Language as an emergent phenomena works when a term is created and there is consensus on it's definition. The issue arise when trolls like you twist a definition to meet some perverted agenda.

> "What fender means"..."what gender really means"..."you're and idiot, you don't know what gender means"...

More mindless drivel from the master of mindless drivel

> I didn't even define, or agree or disagree with any specific definition of gender above, and yet you idiots still try to lay that crap on me, that I don't "know" what "gender" "means".
> If I did, no one has answered the question. You certainly didn't, sparky.

OK, here it is since you're very clearly too dense to grasp it without help. Jillery made this comment:

"Old English specified gender for most nouns, much like most European

languages do today. Modern English does so rarely...... Rather than

continuously sort out the differences, Englishmen just gave up almost
all gender assignments. "

Very clearly - and arguably explicitly - her comment was in the context of noun gender assignments.

But then you chimed in with your ignorant buffoonery "Englishmen did not give up gender assignments. "He" and "she" survives, for some reason".

If you knew what you were talking about, you would have known that gender specific pronouns 'he' and 'she' are _not_ the same thing as gender assignments for nouns. Your statement makes it clear that you don't know the difference (maybe you do now, though you're predictable going to claim you always did, and offer some mindless defense for "Englishmen did not give up gender assignments. "He" and "she" survives, for some reason",)

You'd do well to STFU once in a while instead of constantly embarrassing yourself.

[Glenn]

On Friday, August 5, 2022 at 11:00:12 AM UTC-7, funkma...@hotmail.com wrote:
> On Friday, August 5, 2022 at 11:25:11 AM UTC-4, Glenn wrote:
>
> > Silly trolls believes words can be defined anyway a person wants,

> Yes, you do, and demonstrate that constantly. Everyone in this forum has seen you do it and you've been repeatedly called out for using some definition of a term that you seem to have pulled out of your ass. We know, your going to reply with "show me where I did that". No, I'm not going to do that dance for you sparky.

Well, there you are.

[André G. Isaak]

I think the mention of Norman here was likely spurious. A wide range of
linguistic changes in English are attributed to Norman French influence,
but this influence is *highly* overstated. Almost all changes that have
been blamed on Norman French were changes which began before the Norman
conquest and which can be explained without reference to French.

Note though, that Jillery's source also mentioned Danish, and mentioned
it more prominently than Norman. This is somewhat more plausible since
Anglo-Saxon and Danish were in many cases identical *except* for the
grammatical endings (More on on this below).

<snip>

> One main factor that drove the loss of grammatical gender in English
> then had nothing directly to do with gender, but a much wider and
> general tendency to lose inflections in ME.

Yes, this is definitely key. The underlying reason for this being the
tendency for unstressed vowels such as those found in inflectional
endings to become reduced. Over time, this lead to a situation where
many inflectional endings which has at one point been pronounced
distinctly were now pronounced identically, which in turn made them even
more subject to further reduction and eventually loss since they no
longer served their original function effectively.

The claim that contact between Danish and Anglo-Saxon with their
different sets of inflections is what led English to toss the
inflections out altogether doesn't really withstand scrutiny as a full
explanation, but this may have played a role in explaining why vowel
reduction in critically important inflectional endings occured as
completely as it did: In the regions in and around the Danelaw where
both English and Danish were common, there may have been a tendency to
rely more heavily on word-order rather than inflectional endings for
conveying grammatical distinctions for the simply reason that the
inflections were a source of potential confusion. This, in turn, may
have made the inflections more vulnerable to vowel reduction for the
simply reason that their functional load was gradually decreasing.

[jillery]

On Fri, 5 Aug 2022 12:13:26 +0100, Burkhard <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk>
wrote:

That would be consistent with an initial conflict between Old English
and Old Norse. The conflict with Norman French might have been a
complication too far.

Also, keep in mind the cited video explicitly stated this was just one
theory. Don't presume the narrator is unaware of its limitations.

>Generally, the data is much much more messy than the "smooth" older
>model indicated (it had: natural gender first, extended to grammatical
>gender as a result of the cognitive tendency to anthropomorphize nature,
>replacement of that grammatical gender system wholesale with a new
>natural gender based on in Middle English) Rather, the grammatical and
>natural gender systems co-existed and pulled into different directions,

>so for example "se w?fmann“: wifman, literally "female human" will
>evolve into "woman", the corresponding "w?pmann", ("wer-mann) "male

>human" disappears and becomes just man - with only one reminder,
>"wer-wolf" is a man-wolf. But "se" is the masculine article, so
>"wifman", woman, in Old English is male. But it is sometimes used with
>female or male pronouns, once these got invented in ther current form on ME
>
>(something skimilar we also see in e.g. German, that kept overall the
>grammatical gender system. "Das Mädchen" is grammatically neuter, as all
>diminutives (-chen) require the neuter article "Das", but both "Das
>Mädchen ist hier. ES heisst Anna" and "Das Mädchen ist hier, SIE heisst
>Anna" are grammatically correct (the girl is here, SHE/IT is called
>Anna" - I would use "it" myself, my office neighbor from Hannover "she")

Since you mention it, the cited video also mentions modern German
-chen to refer to diminutives. "mädchen" is "girl", while "mänchen" or
"männchen" is a more generic "male"without regard to size or age,
while the unrelated "weiblich" is a generic "female". This suggests
"mädchen" implies female regardless of a neuter article. Would it be
proper in modern German to describe a man of small stature or gracile
form "Das mänchen"?

>Changes in pronomina seem to have driven the development, with a lot of
>experimentation in early middle English, including e.g. the use of "his"
>also for single person feminine in the accusative mode), articles did
>the catching up.
>
>The other problem is that it does not explain why this happened only
>between Norman and Saxon, when at the same time, people in Wales or
>Scotland would code switch between Gàidhlig and English or Welsh and
>English without problems, even though the genders there also don't
>align. Gàidhlig has two grammatical genders these days (lost the neuter
>at around 1200), and apart from those cases where they coincide with
>natural gender (human animates, mainly) they didn't match either Old
>English or Norman grammatical gender assignments. So in part, the same
>people who according to the video got confused that "table" is feminine
>in French and masculine in OE (and modern German - der Tisch) had no
>problem to remember that "am bòrd" is a "male" table.

Historically, Willie the Bastard controlled only Saxon England.
Control of Wales was left to Edward I in 1277, and control of Scotland
was on and off until 1706. So those languages would have been
affected less by Norman French than Saxon English.

>Generally, the theory just does not fit in what we know about
>multi-lingual speakers, code-switching and creole languages. We are
>really good at keeping these thins separate in our brains.
>
>So what is the dominant alternative view? First, it's messy, and there
>is not a single factor. In fact, and that is sort of TO relevant, it is
>a mistake to think of a single guided development towards "the" current
>form. There is even a technical term for our tendency in linguistics
>(and arguably elsewhere) to see totally independent, random and
>disparate developments as something that looks planned and goal directed
>- a "linguistic conspiracy". Roger Lass gave one popular example:
>"‘Linguistic orthogenesis? Scots vowel quantity and the English length
>conspiracy’". Relevant to TO because it shows to tendency to "see"
>design and goal directedness where in reality it was just "shit
>happening randomly and by coincidence pushing in the same direction".

Since you mention goal-directed, Robwords made a video which describes
how English Renaissance scholars explicitly added silent letters to
the spelling of some French words to latinize them:

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j07f-cKWRtk>

and another which describes how Noah Webster explicitly changed the
spelling of some English words to Americanize them:

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuUFap2E7Tg>

Yep. It's called evolution, which is not just about biology.

[daud....@gmail.com]

On Tuesday, August 2, 2022 at 12:10:08 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:

There is the human language, then there are the 8,000,000,000 dialects spoken/written/texted.

[Bob Casanova]

On Sat, 6 Aug 2022 06:21:20 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by "daud....@gmail.com"
<daud....@gmail.com>:

So Mandarin, the Inuit group, and Swahili, for three
examples, are simply dialects of the same language?

Uh, yeah; sure. <backs away slowly>
>
--

Bob C.

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
the one that heralds new discoveries, is not
'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'"

- Isaac Asimov

[erik simpson]

Swahili probably derived from a pidgin ("business language") including words from Bantu, Portuguese, Arabic and English (among others),
so probably has a better claim to "human language" than most single-source languages. Even so, backing away slowly is a good idea.

[daud....@gmail.com]

Not what I said.
Each individual develops their own unique dialect of the human language.

[Zen Cycle]

On Saturday, August 6, 2022 at 2:05:13 AM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
>
> Would it be
> proper in modern German to describe a man of small stature or gracile
> form "Das mänchen"?

I wouldn't say it would be 'proper' in terms of strict grammatical construct, but I could see it used pejoratively. Of course, then the article would be up for at that point: Die, Das, or Der?

[Burkhard]

"Das Männchen" is perfectly good German, grammatically speaking. You'll
find it a bit more in the North, in the South people tend to prefer
Männlein, with the same meaning

It is indeed pejorative when applied to humans, but it is also used as
an expression for male animals (of all sizes and degrees of ferocity) -
so in a nature program, you could hear of a lion pride "das Männchen
ruht sich aus während das Weibchen sich um die Kinder kümmert" (the male
is resting while the female looks after the kids)

The article is in this case "das", the grammatical gender neuter - but
as with the "Mädchen" case, you can use both male and neuter pronouns
with that word

[Glenn]

Neutering pronouns may be a good description of what you are pushing.

[jillery]

On Sat, 6 Aug 2022 23:57:46 +0100, Burkhard <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk>
wrote:

As a non-German speaker, I am intrigued by this apparent idiosyncrasy,
that "Mädchen" means "girl" aka small young human female, while
"Männchen" means any generic male, regardless of age or size or even
apparently species and so disregards the diminutive "-Chen".

You might find this video interesting:

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZV1BOcGiV0>

The narrator persuasively argues that Middle English roots are not
Germanic but Scandinavian. I found this argument intriguing, as I had
previously assumed Scandinavian and Germanic meant the same thing.
This is confusing to me, as Angles and Saxons and Normans are all
ancestral Vikings.

[Zen Cycle]

Your parents should have been neutered before they met.

[Burkhard]

jillery wrote:
> On Sat, 6 Aug 2022 23:57:46 +0100, Burkhard <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk>
> wrote:
>
>> Zen Cycle wrote:
>>> On Saturday, August 6, 2022 at 2:05:13 AM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Would it be
>>>> proper in modern German to describe a man of small stature or gracile
>>>> form "Das mänchen"?
>>>
>>> I wouldn't say it would be 'proper' in terms of strict grammatical construct, but I could see it used pejoratively. Of course, then the article would be up for at that point: Die, Das, or Der?
>>>
>>
>> "Das Männchen" is perfectly good German, grammatically speaking. You'll
>> find it a bit more in the North, in the South people tend to prefer
>> Männlein, with the same meaning
>>
>> It is indeed pejorative when applied to humans, but it is also used as
>> an expression for male animals (of all sizes and degrees of ferocity) -
>> so in a nature program, you could hear of a lion pride "das Männchen
>> ruht sich aus während das Weibchen sich um die Kinder kümmert" (the male
>> is resting while the female looks after the kids)
>>
>> The article is in this case "das", the grammatical gender neuter - but
>> as with the "Mädchen" case, you can use both male and neuter pronouns
>> with that word
>
>
> As a non-German speaker, I am intrigued by this apparent idiosyncrasy,
> that "Mädchen" means "girl" aka small young human female, while
> "Männchen" means any generic male, regardless of age or size or even
> apparently species and so disregards the diminutive "-Chen".

As you know, languages aren't fair - or logical for that matter. But
here the situation is slightly different.

The female counterpart for "Männchen" is "Weibchen", and the usage
patterns are identical: pejorative when applied to humans, general
"female/male of the species" when applied to non-human animals.

The male counterpart to Mädchen is Junge or, old fashioned, Jüngling.
The latter's "-ling" also has diminutive connotation, but the etymology
is a bit more complicated. Fell out of fashion partly because "Junge"
already indicates the young age.

The oddity is more that the basic form "Weib" has fallen out of favour.
It was the most common term up to the early 19th century - cf Mozart's
Magic Flute: „Mann und Weib und Weib und Mann/ Reichen an die Gottheit
an" or Luther's Bible translation "Ich aber sage euch: Wer sich von
seinem Weibe scheidet.." (Matt 5:32) - and I'd say you find it these
days largely in this sort of religious context, even more recent Bible
translations kept the word)

What then happened over time is a phenomenon that can be found across
languages, pejoration of words for females. Weib started as a
non-judgemental term for any adult woman, but then got used more and
more when swearing at said female. That's how current high German usage
would see t - as either archaic or as an expletive (Weib!!!) or in
composites such as „Weiberkram“ - "unimportant stuff". Or in slang, as
an object of sexual desire ("phoar, was ein Weib")

There are three pathways for pejoration which often overlap:

- social declassification and degradation, ultimately leading to the use
as swear words

- functionalisation, i.e. reduction to a specific social role (e.g.
being married, or a job: Fräulein, to which I'll come back below,
started life as "free and socially high ranking female" and became in
this path "unmarried woman" or "waitress"

- sexualisation,

Similar with "Dirne" which was just a young women, then became a female
servant (degradation and functionalisation) , and even later
prostitute (sexualisation)It was then replaced by "Maid" or "Magd",
which again started as a neutral term for young females, and evolved
into a term for servant girl. Mädchen is the diminutive of "Magd" or "Maid"

To go back where we started, "Weib" was largely replaced by "Frau".
"frouwa" in AHD was a female aristocrat, the mistress of a household or
estate. Over time it became to mean "married woman" of any social class
(declassificatin, again). This then let to two pairs: "Herr und Frau"
when you address them as part of a married couple - "Herr" has preserved
the meaning of "ruler" (cf Herrscher = Ruler) that "Frau" lost over
time. The English equivalent is Mr and Mrs. The general terms when not
used as an address became "Mann und Frau"

In AHD, the diminutive of frouwa was "frouwelīn", a young lady/young
leader of a household. That became "Fräulein" with the meaning of "any
young unmarried woman", the equivalent to English "Miss" Because woman
were only allowed to work before getting married, it also acquired the
meaning of "lowranking worker", especially as shop assistant, primary
school teacher or "waitress". That usage still persists in some regions,
though "Fräulein", just like Miss, has been dying out since the 1970s.
It got a new lease of life after reunification, because the term had
been used more widely in the east, but that effect is now also abating.

>
> You might find this video interesting:
>
> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZV1BOcGiV0>
>
> The narrator persuasively argues that Middle English roots are not
> Germanic but Scandinavian. I found this argument intriguing, as I had
> previously assumed Scandinavian and Germanic meant the same thing.
> This is confusing to me, as Angles and Saxons and Normans are all
> ancestral Vikings.
>

Quite nicely done. The research he refers to is here:

https://ff.upol.cz/fileadmin/userdata/FF/katedry/kaa/sborniky/vikings2014.pdf

To me it seems the question ultimately boils down to "is a stew a potato
dish or a meat dish" (good cases can be made for either, depending on
how you count, or cook)

There is a very nice quote b Anthony Warner on this topic (though his
issue was more narrow, the simplification of inflection under the
influence of Norse). I think it is of general relevance also for TO:

Let me begin with a methodological preamble. This is an area where there
cannot be any absolute demonstrations or proofs. The historian is an
interpreter and story-teller, asking: What is a plausible interpretation
of these events? What is a coherent rationale for their occurrence? What
is the comparative likelihood of this account against alternatives? A
conclusion is at best a matter of judgement, and will ordinarily contain
an element of speculation. The ‘facts’ need interpretation, as
do their interconnections; we know too little about the historical
events, about the actual languages, and about language change, and our
theoretical and typological frameworks are not robust enough for it to
be otherwise. Despite this, I hopeultimately to provide a reasonably
convincing interpretation.

[Burkhard]

Yes, that's a plausible account, and also thanks for the elaboration
further below. Acting as an "accelerant" seems plausible, and that this
happens more between already similar languages makes sense. When I
misgender nouns in Italian, it's almost always due to misapplied French,
so I'd say "la dente" instead of "il dente" because it is "la dent" in
French - and that even though it is "Der Zahn" in German.

But I'm still cautious just how much an influence that was - after all,
the very same communities also got into contact in Northern Germany, and
Danish remains a recognized minority language (one of only two) in
Germany up to this day, without anything similar happening.

[daud....@gmail.com]

Yuengling is an Anglicized version of Jüngling, its founder's surname and the German term for a "young person” or “youngster”. [ ~ "young-un" ] The family-owned brewery has traditionally changed ownership through the purchase of the company by the offspring of the previous owner.[5]

(Snipped rest.)

[Bob Casanova]

On Sat, 6 Aug 2022 14:09:23 -0700 (PDT), the following

Actually, that is *exactly* what you said; if what every
individual speaks or writes ("texts" is redundant) is a
dialect ("8,000,000,000 dialects" is an obvious reference to
the total human population), then every recognized language
is also by definition a dialect.

>
>Each individual develops their own unique dialect of the human language.
>

"Human language" is so vague as to be meaningless; one might
as well refer to "human height" or "human diet". Or "human
skin color".

[Bob Casanova]

On Sat, 6 Aug 2022 13:52:44 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by erik simpson
<eastsi...@gmail.com>:

>Swahili probably derived from a pidgin ("business language") including words from Bantu, Portuguese, Arabic and English (among others),
>so probably has a better claim to "human language" than most single-source languages.
>

I was unaware that Swahili developed as a "trade pidgin";
thanks.

Ummm, anything like "English developed from Norman
men-at-arms trying to get dates with Saxon barmaids"? :-)

>
> Even so, backing away slowly is a good idea.

[Burkhard]

That's...an interesting take to have in a NG dedicated to evolution:

https://philpapers.org/rec/LARTEO-13

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2019.0046

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=9789027251930&i=stripbooks&linkCode=qs

and quite a number more, of course

[Glenn]

I'm having trouble understanding you, although I am somewhat familiar with your dialect.
This NG is not dedicated to evolution, but to origins.

[Bob Casanova]

On Sun, 7 Aug 2022 18:36:51 +0100, the following appeared in
talk.origins, posted by Burkhard <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk>:

Is it, when it refers to an idiotic statement about
(paraphrased) "dialects of the human language"?

Well, perhaps; I admit that my examples all refer to
variation of particular human characteristics subject to
biological evolution, while there is no "human language" per
se for all existing (and, I'd assume, all extinct) languages
to be dialects of. Unless, of course, "dialect" is being
distorted out of original meaning, something which seems to
be fairly common lately.

>
>https://philpapers.org/rec/LARTEO-13
>
>https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2019.0046
>
>https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=9789027251930&i=stripbooks&linkCode=qs
>
>and quite a number more, of course
>

No one denies that languages evolve; if that weren't true
we'd be speaking proto-Indo-European, or maybe whatever
preceded it by 100ky. But to call all languages dialects of
some purported "human language" is a bit more than that.

>>>
>>>> Uh, yeah; sure. <backs away slowly>
>>>

[Glenn]

That was clearly not his intention, as he told you that isn't what he said.

But Bob, being Bob, insists once again by "definition" and "reasoning" that is "exactly" what he did say. This has gone on for years. How can there be any argument that would persuade Bill that he may not understand what people mean by what they say at times...

[Bob Casanova]

On Sun, 7 Aug 2022 16:47:40 -0700 (PDT), the following
appeared in talk.origins, posted by Glenn
<GlennS...@msn.com>:

"What you said was..."
"I didn't mean that!"

TS, I go by what is said.

>
>But Bob, being Bob, insists once again by "definition" and "reasoning" that is "exactly" what he did say. This has gone on for years. How can there be any argument that would persuade Bill that he may not understand what people mean by what they say at times...
>

Polly want a cracker?

"Bill"? Freudian slip?

[Glenn]

QED.

"There is the human language, then there are the 8,000,000,000 dialects spoken/written/texted. "

So you know exactly what "human language" *means* to everyone, by definition.

So you didn't interpret the mangled sentence at all, and the actual claim said "exactly" that
"Mandarin, the Inuit group, and Swahili are simply dialects of the same language.

Got it.

[Bob Casanova]

On Sun, 7 Aug 2022 18:55:43 -0700 (PDT), the following

If you did it would be a first. But no danger of that; your
incompetence at understanding fairly simple English stands
unchallenged.

[Glenn]

Not the first by a long shot, and the above is more than a challenge, which of course you didn't face. As usual. But I like the one about "simple English". Cute.

[daud....@gmail.com]

You are lying, or confused.

if what every
> individual speaks or writes ("texts" is redundant) is a
> dialect ("8,000,000,000 dialects" is an obvious reference to
> the total human population), then every recognized language
> is also by definition a dialect.

There is one human species, there is one human language.
There are 8,000,000,000 individual humans, there are 8,000,000,000 individual dialects.
Simple, succinct, sensible.

[Glenn]

I'd say constipated.

> if what every
> > individual speaks or writes ("texts" is redundant) is a
> > dialect ("8,000,000,000 dialects" is an obvious reference to
> > the total human population), then every recognized language
> > is also by definition a dialect.
> There is one human species, there is one human language.
> There are 8,000,000,000 individual humans, there are 8,000,000,000 individual dialects.
> Simple, succinct, sensible.

Funny that Bob insists he knows "exactly" what you said, even though he also said ""Human language" is so vague as to be meaningless"..LOL.

Your saying "the" human language indicated that you were not referring to individual languages. That should have been a no brainer for Herr Casanova.

Noam Chomsky is probably the most identified as visualizing the concept of a single
"human language".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIJ5jD1jHwo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdUbIlwHRkY

It makes sense. I've been to many places in the world where I couldn't communicate verbally with the locals, yet we all share the same feelings and material world. It doesn't take long to find ways to communicate common "language", at least in non-threatening environments.

[jillery]

On Sun, 7 Aug 2022 12:03:16 +0100, Burkhard <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk>
wrote:

>In AHD, the diminutive of frouwa was "frouwel?n", a young lady/young

For me, his most convincing argument is that Norwegian uses similar
syntax as English, which is much more resistant to change than are
spelling and grammar. I assumed all Scandinavian languages followed
German syntax. Aren't Danish and German linguistic cousins, similar to
Italian and French?

[jillery]

Perhaps Glenn was adopted from a baby mill.

[Burkhard]

But that is not required for the term "human language" to have precise
meaning, and that's what you claimed. "human language" is the system of
rules on the use of signs for communication that is specific for humans,
and therefore different e.g. from the language of bees or the language
of whales. And this "thing", human language, is of course subject to
scientific study, as my few cites show. If "human language" were so
vague to be meaningless, it would be impossible for evolutionary
biologists to study the origins of human language.

Unless, of course, "dialect" is being
> distorted out of original meaning, something which seems to
> be fairly common lately.
>>
>> https://philpapers.org/rec/LARTEO-13
>>
>> https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2019.0046
>>
>> https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=9789027251930&i=stripbooks&linkCode=qs
>>
>> and quite a number more, of course
>>
> No one denies that languages evolve; if that weren't true
> we'd be speaking proto-Indo-European, or maybe whatever
> preceded it by 100ky.

But that is not the issue. The issue is the legitimacy of the term
"human language" for the class of all these languages. As per Chomsky's
Universal Grammar for instance, they all share some abstract
characteristics that again set them aside from communication systems of
other species.

But to call all languages dialects of
> some purported "human language" is a bit more than that.

Not more really than to say in cladistic terms that because we are the
descendants of Eukaryotes. we are Eukaryotes.

This is very similar to an argument John Wilkins made for the biological
side: "species" in this view referred to an external reality, as did
possible some of the very top level distinctions, but everything in
between is more or less artificial and conventional.

For a number of reasons, I'd argue that the same holds in linguistics,
that is there is a real difference between human language and non-human
languages as the domain, and then there are dialects as the equivalent
to species. Everything else in between is conventional - helpful for
some purposes, unhelpful for others, but ultimatly arbitrary

That applies to "language families", but also "Languages" as commonly
understood by contrast, are more or less arbitrary and artificial
groupings. The modern concept of a "language" grew out of comparative
philology in Europe in the late 18th century, and was from the beginning
firmly aligned with the political project of the homogeneous nation
state, political more than scientific.

There is a famous saying in linguistics, by Max Weinreich: "A language
is a dialect with an army and navy". There are two aspects to this.
First, it shows how arbitrary some of the language divisions are. We
treat Danish, Swedish and Norwegian as different languages, even though
the degree of mutual intelligibility is extremely high, if you
understand one, then without further training you' also understand the
others. By contrast, a speaker of Basel German has no chance in hell to
understand someone who speaks the Saterland Frisian dialect, and vice
versa, yet they are commonly classed as dialects of German.

Second, what we perceive as the "standard language" typically is a
regional dialect that doubles as "roofing language" (in the terminology
of Heinz Kloss) So while you find lots of German who claim that they
don't speak a dialect but "High German" (Hochdeutsch), that simply means
they speak a dialect that evolved from the the dialect and register of
civil servants and academics in 19th century lower Saxony. There is
nothing inherently "better" or "more correct" in the lower Saxonian
dialect of German, it just happened to become the way in which speakers
of mutually unintelligible (or near unintelligible) German dialects
would communicate. Some got this so to speak "for free" because it was
already their regional dialect, others learned it as second language and
code switch depending whom they are talking to.

Same happened in French, Spanish, English etc. The promotion of a
uniform standard again became part of the political agenda of 19th
century Europe - In France, it starts with the revolution, and the
report by Abbé Grégoire "Rapport sur la Nécessité et les Moyens
d'anéantir les Patois et d'universaliser l'Usage de la Langue française"
that advocated the annihilation of the numerous French
dialects/languages in favour of the dialect of Paris, a policy that was
massively accelerated with the school reforms by Jules Ferry - a
centralized curriculum, state-run schools, teacher-training standardized
and from that point on children from a very young age would get beaten
when using at school the language they spoke at home. I Scotland, you'd
get belted right into the 1980s for speaking Scots etc etc. Point is
these are political decisions, not intrinsic linguistic factors.

[Burkhard]

That's an argument one can make, and some strict methodological
individualists might like it, but I think it misses something crucial
about language.

Every since de Saussure, we distinguish langue and parole. Parole is
what individuals actually speak - that's your 8bn. Langue is the more
abstract system of rules etc that is needed for Parole to do its job,
that is to work as a medium of communication. This relates to
Wittgenstein's private language argument - a language that only every
had one speaker is impossible to conceive.

So yes, idiolects have "physical reality" in the way any of the larger
groupings does not, and in this sense also dialects are an abstraction
or artifact. But to understand the communicative function of language
these abstractions are necessary, and not all of them are born equal.

So biologically, while each member of a species is unique, they share a
"communicative ability" - i.e. in this case to have offspring. But of
course not all members can - some will be too old, too ill, just not
interested etc ad still be part of the same species. So species too are
an abstraction, and the "ability in principle" as a communal property
defines what a species is. Dialects seem to me to be the closest match
that preserves this notion.

[jillery]

On Mon, 8 Aug 2022 12:10:55 +0100, Burkhard <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk>
wrote:

Your analogy of biological species and language dialects is apt. For
eukaryotes, the evolution of different populations eventually makes
them no longer cross-fertile and/or their hybrids unable to reproduce.
Similarly, the evolution of different dialects eventually makes them
no longer comprehensible to each other. I recall staring in
bewilderment the first time I confronted Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales",
and poems by Robert Burns.

[Burkhard]

Kissing cousins :o) They are all Germanic languages, something that also
your source (or rather the underlying research) acknowledges: "Danish,
Dutch, English, German, and Norwegian are indisputably Germanic."

But that does not mean they don't have differences also in syntax -
Even within German, to get back to the issue of dialects, there is
variation on the syntactic level. So in Bavarian, I'd respond to "wann
kummst z’uns" (when are you coming to us?) with "kumm i glei", which in
one-to-one translation would mean Come-I-soon, with the verb in the
first position, as opposed to "standard" (i.e. lower Saxonian) German
"Ich komme gleich", "I come soon". Or I'd say "I håb miassn aufstehn" -
I had to get up - as opposed to "ich habe aufstehen muessen" or "ich
musste aufstehen".

It's definitely true that similar syntactic constructions are a much
stronger indicator that two languages are related than vocabulary or
spelling. And they do make a good case overall. (as an aside, I'm not
quite sure what you mean with grammar though when you contrast it with
syntax - syntax is typically seen as proper part of grammar, together
with semantics, phonology and morphology. So I was wondering if this was
a typo, or if you had a specific aspect of grammar in mind).

The issue though is that just as with classification in paleontology, it
is important to look at all features together and look for patterns
rather than isolated features (cf John H on dinosaur digits :o) ). So as
example, take the following constructions in Scots:

"Through the great glen o’ the warld the day" (from "Freedom Come All
Ye"): English: "through the great valley of the world today"
and
"A canny come oot the noo" English: "I can't come out now"

In both cases, Scots is using he definite article with the temporal
qualifier: "the day" vs "today" and "the noo" vs "now"

The likely reason is that this change originates in Gaelic: "Chan eil mi
a' tighinn a-mach a-nis", I don't come out now, and "Chan eil mi a'
tighinn a-mach an-diugh", I don't come out today" a-nis and an-diugh
both have the definite article a(n).

So here we have a syntactic feature that we don't have in Early Middle
English (the last common ancestor of modern English and Scots), but in
Gaelic. But of course nobody would claim that Scots is a dialect of
Gaelic with some English modifications, rather than the other way round.

Now the authors behind your source argue that modern English is
“Anglicized Norse" rather than "norsified Anglo", but inevitably, this
is ultimately a balancing/weighting judgement of which part of a mix is
more prominent - hence my stew analogy. They make a very strong case
that the influence of Norse has been underestimated and is much stronger
than often assumed. I totally agree with this, and their focus on syntax
rather than vocabulary is as you say very convincing. Now, I don't know
enough about Norse grammar to know how often the opposite also happens -
syntactic features that modern English shares with OE that the Norse
languages don't have, and both would be necessary for a overall
assessment. They say there aren't, and proving a negative is of course
tough, but it means taking quite a bit on trust

[daud....@gmail.com]

The Human Language is NOT definable as "a system of rules".
It IS the accumulation and evolution of words developed by humans.

Without words, NO human language.

Rules are local/regional arbitrary conventions, of most significance in anonymous societies where individuals talk with unrelated strangers.

[daud....@gmail.com]

Amazed that you think that WORDS are irrelevant in defining human language!

[Bob Casanova]

On Mon, 8 Aug 2022 20:11:51 -0700 (PDT), the following

I rest my case.

[jillery]

On Mon, 8 Aug 2022 16:09:28 +0100, Burkhard <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk>

No, just careless writing on my part. I meant vocabulary aka word
meaning. Sorry for the confusion.

Imagine, all of the above might have been avoided had Varus been just
a wee bit more skeptical of Arminius. I hope you enjoy writing about
etymology as much as I do reading your posts about it.

[jillery]

Language at its base is about the transmission of information. Words
are but one method of transmitting information. Bees, whales, and
other species transmit information without using words. Even humans
have non-word methods, ex. sign language, Morse code, semaphore,
pictographs, even body language.

The fact there are so many different human languages shows that the
specific words are not basic but culturally derived.

[daud....@gmail.com]

Thanks.

[daud....@gmail.com]

Yes, and words are the units of human language.

Words
> are but one method of transmitting information.

Yes. One can replace words with oranges, flags, dots, smirks in special case situations, but in general words always take precedence in human social communication.

Bees, whales, and
> other species transmit information without using words.

Yes, humans use words.

Even humans
> have non-word methods, ex. sign language, Morse code, semaphore,
> pictographs, even body language.

Yes, special case. While diving, hand signals are more effective than vocalizing. I was referring to general case life.

> The fact there are so many different human languages shows that the
> specific words are not basic but culturally derived.

There really is only one human language, comprised of words, which are localized / temporalized.
Human language is of course cumulative culture derived, just like technology, these are basic to humanity, used before fire domestication but after shelter construction began (from arboreal ape bowl nests).

[jillery]

On Tue, 9 Aug 2022 01:30:36 -0700 (PDT), "daud....@gmail.com"

You referred to language, which isn't unique to humans, and human
language isn't limted to words. To say there is only one language is
to ignore the reality in front of you.

[daud....@gmail.com]

I have referred to the human language, and the units of it (words). I have also referred to special cases where other items substitute for written/spoken/texted words.

To say there is only one language is
> to ignore the reality in front of you.

I have identified the human language as species-specific, and dialect as individual-specific. I haven't mentioned geopolitical variants, since they come and go, being perpetually in flux.

[Mark Isaak]

Um, Burkhard never said they were irrelevant. In fact, he pretty much
said just the opposite. "Signs" includes words.

Don't forget about the existence -- indeed, widespread use -- of sign
languages such as American Sign Language.

--
Mark Isaak
"Wisdom begins when you discover the difference between 'That
doesn't make sense' and 'I don't understand.'" - Mary Doria Russell

[daud....@gmail.com]

If words are not included in the definition of human language, that definition is incomplete. Words are the core. Whales & honeybees are NOT.

In fact, he pretty much
> said just the opposite.

Nope.

"Signs" includes words.

Signs include lots and lots of things which have nothing to do with human language.
'Words' is vastly more accurate than 'signs' in defining Human Language.

>
> Don't forget about the existence -- indeed, widespread use -- of sign
> languages such as American Sign Language.

Physical gestures are special case usage, like Morse code and in diving.
Human language is general case amongst the human species, as is fire domestication and sheltering.

[Mark Isaak]

And if signs are included, then it follows that words are included.

> Whales & honeybees are NOT.

Well, whale and honeybee language are not part of human language, so of
course they are not included in human language. But they are language,
so they need to be included in a broader definition of language.

> In fact, he pretty much
>> said just the opposite.
>
> Nope.
>
>> "Signs" includes words.
>
> Signs include lots and lots of things which have nothing to do with human language.
> 'Words' is vastly more accurate than 'signs' in defining Human Language.
>>
>> Don't forget about the existence -- indeed, widespread use -- of sign
>> languages such as American Sign Language.
>
> Physical gestures are special case usage, like Morse code and in diving.
> Human language is general case amongst the human species, as is fire domestication and sheltering.

American Sign Language is a fully developed language, complete with
regional accents and dialects.

[Öö Tiib]

Some languages (like Old Chinese, Vietnamese and Burmese) consist of syllables.
The syllables have some meaning but in context of phrase that meaning often
changes and it can take quite figurative thinking to understand what the
resulting phrase means.

[daud....@gmail.com]

And if asteroids are included...
Maybe you prefer vagueness in definitions. I do not.

> > Whales & honeybees are NOT.
> Well, whale and honeybee language are not part of human language, so of
> course they are not included in human language.

Exactly.

But they are language,
> so they need to be included in a broader definition of language.

So what? My critique was specific to defining Human !anguage without even mentioning words.

> > In fact, he pretty much
> >> said just the opposite.
> >
> > Nope.
> >
> >> "Signs" includes words.
> >
> > Signs include lots and lots of things which have nothing to do with human language.
> > 'Words' is vastly more accurate than 'signs' in defining Human Language.
> >>
> >> Don't forget about the existence -- indeed, widespread use -- of sign
> >> languages such as American Sign Language.
> >
> > Physical gestures are special case usage, like Morse code and in diving.
> > Human language is general case amongst the human species, as is fire domestication and sheltering.
> American Sign Language is a fully developed language, complete with
> regional accents and dialects.

Again, physical gestures are special case, as is Klingon.

[daud....@gmail.com]

All words in the human language consists of syllables. So? Did you mean characters?

> The syllables have some meaning

A syllable has no inherent meaning.

but in context of phrase that meaning often
> changes and it can take quite figurative thinking to understand what the
> resulting phrase means.

I think you mean character.

[Zen Cycle]

You keep digging yourself deeper, you might want to consider stopping.

[Öö Tiib]

No. Characters are totally orthogonal. Vietnamese is written using close
to Latin characters. So for example "đem" means bring, "lại" means again,
"tin" means believe, "tức" means that's, "trung" central and "thực" real. Put
together "đem lại tin tức trung thực" that means something like "giving
honest news".

> > The syllables have some meaning
> A syllable has no inherent meaning.

Are you thinking I'm lying to you?

[Burkhard]

Syllable definitely the wrong term here - Do you mean logograms or
pictograms?

[Öö Tiib]

No writing is totally orthogonal, I am talking about spoken language. Majority
of human population on this planet was incapable to write few generations
ago. The ingeniously varying ways how to denote it down what people speak
makes it even too complicated to think from where to start.

[Glenn]

Yu has needed of bitter translationalists. Orthoganally, I suggest Elmer Fudd.

[André G. Isaak]

I think the term you are looking for is 'isolating language'.

All spoken languages are composed of syllables, but in isolating
language individual words consist of a single morpheme which is
frequently (though not always) one syllable long.

André

--
To email remove 'invalid' & replace 'gm' with well known Google mail
service.

[daud....@gmail.com]

I do not understand.
Orthogonal: perpendicular, at right angle to

Vietnamese is written using close
> to Latin characters.

Yes, developed by French Catholic priests in Vietnam, iirc.

So for example "đem" means bring, "lại" means again,
> "tin" means believe, "tức" means that's, "trung" central and "thực" real. Put
> together "đem lại tin tức trung thực" that means something like "giving
> honest news".

Yes. Do you speak some Vietnamese?

> > > The syllables have some meaning
> > A syllable has no inherent meaning.
> Are you thinking I'm lying to you?

I think syllable isn't the best fit to what you mean. Perhaps 'monosyllabic words' might be closer. Generally tongues based on monosyllabic words are tonal, due to the high occurrence of homonyms, the different tones help distinguish words which sound about the same but have different meanings.

[daud....@gmail.com]

Not so much.

[Öö Tiib]

In sense that symbols, pictograms, characters, logograms are in domain of written
language. Vowel and consonant sounds and syllables are domain of spoken
language. There may be some relation between pronunciation and writing
domains and there may be none. Therefore those two are orthogonal aspects of
language (if we consider both at same time when saying "language").

> Vietnamese is written using close
> > to Latin characters.
> Yes, developed by French Catholic priests in Vietnam, iirc.

That does not mean Vietnamese was developed by those priests, they just tried
to write it how they were used to. Result is written language that has mild
correlation with spoken language as is French. But I can't speak here, so
have to write.

> So for example "đem" means bring, "lại" means again,
> > "tin" means believe, "tức" means that's, "trung" central and "thực" real. Put
> > together "đem lại tin tức trung thực" that means something like "giving
> > honest news".
> Yes. Do you speak some Vietnamese?

Not much. My daughters have hobby to learn Asian languages. I am
more savvy in programming languages (that typically lack need of
pronunciation).

> > > > The syllables have some meaning
> > > A syllable has no inherent meaning.
> > Are you thinking I'm lying to you?
> I think syllable isn't the best fit to what you mean. Perhaps 'monosyllabic words' might be closer. Generally tongues based on monosyllabic words are tonal, due to the high occurrence of homonyms, the different tones help distinguish words which sound about the same but have different meanings.

That feels like Latin origin confusion applied to languages of region with
somewhat older civilization. How can things that are are pronounced
differently called homonyms? It contradicts the whole meaning of word
"homonym" that means pronunciation should be same. "Sound about
same" to uneducated ear, local has no problem whatsoever to make
difference.

[daud....@gmail.com]

Ok, I get it.

Vowel and consonant sounds and syllables are domain of spoken
> language.

Also tones, pitch, click consonants, glottal stops, pauses, etc. some of which are denoted in writing, some not.

There may be some relation between pronunciation and writing
> domains and there may be none. Therefore those two are orthogonal aspects of
> language (if we consider both at same time when saying "language").

Ok.

> > Vietnamese is written using close
> > > to Latin characters.
> > Yes, developed by French Catholic priests in Vietnam, iirc.
> That does not mean Vietnamese was developed by those priests,

Of course not, they enscripted it into their familiar Latin script, adding tones.

they just tried
> to write it how they were used to. Result is written language that has mild
> correlation with spoken language as is French. But I can't speak here, so
> have to write.
> > So for example "đem" means bring, "lại" means again,
> > > "tin" means believe, "tức" means that's, "trung" central and "thực" real. Put
> > > together "đem lại tin tức trung thực" that means something like "giving
> > > honest news".
> > Yes. Do you speak some Vietnamese?
> Not much. My daughters have hobby to learn Asian languages.

Cool, I speak Malay & some Indonesian. Vietnamese sounds a bit similar, but the vocabulary is all different, except some Hindi terms.

I am
> more savvy in programming languages (that typically lack need of
> pronunciation).

I learned BASIC, LOGO, Pascal & Fortran, then quit.

> > > > > The syllables have some meaning
> > > > A syllable has no inherent meaning.
> > > Are you thinking I'm lying to you?
> > I think syllable isn't the best fit to what you mean. Perhaps 'monosyllabic words' might be closer. Generally tongues based on monosyllabic words are tonal, due to the high occurrence of homonyms, the different tones help distinguish words which sound about the same but have different meanings.
> That feels like Latin origin confusion applied to languages of region with
> somewhat older civilization. How can things that are are pronounced
> differently called homonyms? It contradicts the whole meaning of word
> "homonym" that means pronunciation should be same.

Because Latin, Greek, Phoenician & Proto-Indo European were not tonal (they did have pitch accents, eg. Secret vs seCrete) Cow, cōw, còw, côw, ców might distinguish meanings or might not, but in Chinese they did, tones being very significant.

[broger...@gmail.com]

The accents in Greek originally indicated variations in pitch, e.g. rising, or falling, just as in Chinese.

[daud....@gmail.com]

Ancient Greek had pitch accents.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek_accent

[Burkhard]

This may be an urban myth - I remember it from secondary school, and a
fair amount of what we were told then does not really pass muster - but
allegedly this was one of the reasons why we got opera as an art form.
Italian renaissance composers like Peri misunderstood the way the
classical Greek pitch accent worked - and also the idea of the chorus in
Greek theater - and thought these had been musical performances, which
they then merely 'revived".

[peter2...@gmail.com]

Taking time off from intensive interactions on s.b.p. to try
and run a hypothesis (at this early point, "guess" would be a better word)
by you about how others treat you, Glenn.


On Friday, August 5, 2022 at 11:25:11 AM UTC-4, Glenn wrote:
> On Friday, August 5, 2022 at 2:20:11 AM UTC-7, funkma...@hotmail.com wrote:
> > On Wednesday, August 3, 2022 at 8:35:09 PM UTC-4, Glenn wrote:
> > > On Wednesday, August 3, 2022 at 2:10:09 PM UTC-7, André G. Isaak wrote:
> > > > On 2022-08-03 00:25, Glenn wrote:
> > > > > On Tuesday, August 2, 2022 at 10:30:08 PM UTC-7, jillery wrote:
> > > > >> On Tue, 2 Aug 2022 13:01:26 -0700 (PDT), erik simpson
> > > > >> <eastsi...@gmail.com> wrote:

> > > > >>
> > > > >>> On Tuesday, August 2, 2022 at 9:10:08 AM UTC-7, Burkhard wrote:
> > > > >>>> I want to direct your attention to this article on how "Paternal genome
> > > > >>>> elimination promotes altruism in viscous populations"
> > > > >>>>
> > > > >>>> https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/evo.14585
> > > > >>>>
> > > > >>>> not so much because of its content, interesting as it is, but the
> > > > >>>> particularly lovely abstract. Evolution (the journal) encourages the
> > > > >>>> inclusion of abstracts in other languages, and this one is in Scots.
> > > > >>>> (translation by the brilliant Ashley Douglas, who in her day job does
> > > > >>>> mainly English-German translations).
> > > > >>>>
> > > > >>>> Whether Scots is a language or a dialect is contested in some circles,

A little interlude before getting down to the business at hand:
I always thought Gaelic was a language, while Scots Gaelic and Irish Gaelic
were dialects of Gaelic.

I also thought "dialect" was a pretty useless word without the qualifier,
"of _________________" [insert name of language here] being at least implicit.

> > > > >>>> and I have of course VIEWS on this (mainly that it is the wrong question
> > > > >>>> - everything actual people speak is a dialect, languages are
> > > > >>>> abstractions. So for me dialect=species, language=families (or some
> > > > >>>> other higher taxon), and of course since they evolve, there are fuzzy
> > > > >>>> boundaries that can make it difficult to decide if speciation has
> > > > >>>> happened. So the best we can hope for is consistency - if Scots isn't a
> > > > >>>> language, then neither are Danish, Norwegian and Swedish separate
> > > > >>>> languages, and Dutch is possibly just a rural German dialect. I invite
> > > > >>>> you to discuss this in Amsterdam....
> > > > >>>

> > > > >>> And further reading:
> > > > >>> https://sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young%27s_modulus
> > > > >> Since you mention it, I have become aware of a Youtube channel that
> > > > >> focuses on English etymology. An example:
> > > > >>
> > > > >> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKaVI-IStNE&t=328s>
> > > > >>
> > > > >> Old English specified gender for most nouns, much like most European
> > > > >> languages do today. Modern English does so rarely. The shift
> > > > >> happened during the rise of Middle English. One theory is, at that
> > > > >> time a large part of the island was Danelaw, which spoke German-based
> > > > >> Old Norse. The challenge was that gender assignments in Old English
> > > > >> and Old Norse were different. And that challenge was complicated by
> > > > >> Norman French, with its own gender assignments. Rather than
> > > > >> continuously sort out the differences, Englishmen just gave up almost
> > > > >> all gender assignments.
> > > > >>
>
> > > > > If I didn't know better, I'd say you were drunk. No, Englishmen did not give up gender assignments. "He" and "she" survives, for some reason. Just not associating apples with being male or female. Can you say ulterior motive?

You misunderstood the use of the word "gender" in this particular context, Glenn.
It refers exclusively to nouns, not verbs.

It used to be that "hurricane" was treated as a feminine [1] noun,
but that treatment is over.

[1] As one old wisecrack put it, "You never heard of a himacane, have you?"
>
> > > > Obviously, you have no clear understanding of what the grammatical term
> > > > 'gender' means (hint: it has nothing to do with sex). English has
> > > > distinct pronouns for male and female things, but it no longer has
> > > > anything resembling grammatical gender.
> > > >
> > > > In grammar, 'gender' refers to classes into which nouns are categorized
> > > > which play a role in concord (agreement) relations. In Indo-European,
> > > > those categories are usually referred to as 'masculine', 'feminine', and
> > > > 'neuter', because they *very* loosely correlate with male, female, and
> > > > other. (e.g. The German word _Mädchen_ meaning 'maiden' is grammatically
> > > > neuter. The gender of a word and the sex of its referent only
> > > > occasionally correspond).
> > > >
> > > > In Pre-Indo-European, there were only two genders, called 'animate' and
> > > > 'inanimate'. The animate gender subsequently split in two based on the
> > > > final vowel of the stem. The results were called 'masculine' and
> > > > 'feminine' because there was a *loose* correlation between sex and final
> > > > vowel where proper nouns were concerned despite the fact that this
> > > > pattern didn't extend to common nouns.
> > > >
> > > > Languages outside of Indo-European frequently have gender systems having
> > > > nothing to do with sex. In Mayan languages, for instance, there are 23
> > > > distinct genders few of which have anything to do with sex but instead
> > > > very loosely correspond to size, shape, and consistency.

Hence the word "gender" is inappropriate for those languages.

> > > >
> > > Sorry to interrupt, but why is it obvious that I do not know what gender means?

Like so many people in talk.origins, you didn't pay attention to the long response
to your first statement. But André bears a tiny bit of responsibility for his non-concise response.

However, what 90% of the regulars can get away with does not apply to you, so you
need to be 200% better than they are to avoid responses like the following
from jerks like zencycle:

> > lol, silly troll thinks gender pronouns are the same as grammatical gender


Now the hypothesis/guess: you get only one chance to get explanations right,
otherwise you get dumped on. And no matter how unjust or protracted the dumping,
everyone else is either afraid to tell the dumper to lay off, or
is in a mutual "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" relationship with the dumper.

OTOH 90% of the regulars get all the chances they need,
with only 10% likely to call them on being dense.
Politely, or they get the same treatment.


> Silly trolls believes words can be defined anyway a person wants, and if enough persons agree, they assume their definitions reflect reality. "What fender means"..."what gender really means"..."you're and idiot, you don't know what gender means"...

If you never had a decent foreign language course in one of the
languages that arbitrarily assigns a gender to a noun, you cannot be expected
to already know or even guess what kind of gender the others are talking about.
But don't expect more than 10% of the regulars to give you the benefit of the doubt
like I've done just now.


Can you guess what gender (masculine, feminine, neuter) the three German words below have?
They mean, respectively,
knife, spoon, fork.

Messer, Loeffel, Gabel

The answers may surprise you.


> I didn't even define, or agree or disagree with any specific definition of gender above, and yet you idiots still try to lay that crap on me, that I don't "know" what "gender" "means".
> If I did, no one has answered the question. You certainly didn't, sparky.

That last comment was spot on. But zencycle really went all out in dumping on you in response,
and got off scot-free.


Peter Nyikos

[Glenn]

I speak Spanish, Peter.

[daud....@gmail.com]

On Tuesday, August 2, 2022 at 12:10:08 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
> I want to direct your attention to this article on how "Paternal genome
> elimination promotes altruism in viscous populations"
>
> https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/evo.14585
>
> not so much because of its content, interesting as it is, but the
> particularly lovely abstract. Evolution (the journal) encourages the
> inclusion of abstracts in other languages, and this one is in Scots.
> (translation by the brilliant Ashley Douglas, who in her day job does
> mainly English-German translations).
>
> Whether Scots is a language or a dialect is contested in some circles,

> and I have of course VIEWS on this (mainly that it is the wrong question
> - everything actual people speak is a dialect, languages are
> abstractions. So for me dialect=species, language=families (or some
> other higher taxon), and of course since they evolve, there are fuzzy
> boundaries that can make it difficult to decide if speciation has
> happened. So the best we can hope for is consistency - if Scots isn't a
> language, then neither are Danish, Norwegian and Swedish separate
> languages, and Dutch is possibly just a rural German dialect. I invite
> you to discuss this in Amsterdam....

-

Not sure if I agree with either of these claims, neither mention social sheltering selection, which was critical to human language, charades/physical gestures/grooming being diurnal while speech is also nocturnal-domeshield darkened & cave-darkened; breathyness does not prevent conversation.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25333792-600-how-language-evolved-a-new-idea-suggests-its-all-just-a-game/
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2333278-losing-parts-of-our-voice-box-may-have-helped-humans-evolve-to-speak/

[Martin Harran]

On Fri, 5 Aug 2022 08:20:26 -0700 (PDT), Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com>
wrote:

[snip for focus]

>
>Silly trolls believes words can be defined anyway a person wants,

Like someone who defines 'atheist' as anyone who accepts Evolution?

>and if enough persons agree, they assume their definitions reflect reality. "What fender means"..."what gender really means"..."you're and idiot, you don't know what gender means"...

[Burkhard]

As I indicated elsewhere in the thread, the dialect/language distinction
is to a degree arbitrary/meaningless, and often more reflecting
historical or political facts than linguistic ones (a language is a
dialect with an army and a navy)

Scots Gaelic and Irish Gaelic started to separate in the 13th century
"on the ground", though poets, writers and government officials would
continue to use a shared high register version of Irish until the 16th
century or so. Since Scottish Gaelic was the language in the "colony"
(i.e. came with Old Irish-speaking Celts from Ireland) it is more
conservative than modern Irish. A typical phenomenon - Hunsrik German
sounds for a speaker of modern German like something out of a history
book, apart from the more recent influences of Portugese of course)

Are they mutually intelligible, one of the popular tests to decide if
"speciation has occurred", to use the biological analogy? It depends
what you mean with that. Essentially, to stick with the analogy, it's a
ring species. Speakers of the north-eastern dialect of Scots Gaelic will
have serious difficulties with someone who speaks one of the three
variants of Munster Irish, but a Scots Gaelic speaker from the
southwest will have little problems with someone speaking Ulster or
Donegal Irish (the latter two virtually identical), and in turn
understand with relatively little difficulties a speaker from the North.
There was a "bridge dialect, Galwegian Gaelic, which is now extinct but
was supposed to be very close to Ulster Irish on the other side of the
Irish sea. Manx too is in some ways a link between Scottish Gaelic and
Irish.

The more recent attempts to systematize Irish and give it a standard
form in the Republic let in the 1950s to An Caighdeán Oifigiúil, the
official Irish Standard as used by the government and almost all schools
,updated in 2017, and similar recent standardization efforts in Scotland
have arguable widened the gap between the languages.

There is a nice resource here:
https://omniglot.com/udhr/celtic.htm

It has the first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in
all Celtic languages, both written and the bigger ones read out by a
native speaker. You can listen to the Irish and Scots version yourself
and decide how close they are.

Personally, I'd say a similar distance as between German and Dutch, with
the additional difference that they have slightly orthographic
conventions. For instance, in Scots Gaelic we use these days only the
grave accent, Irish uses the acute accent.

[jillery]

On Thu, 11 Aug 2022 17:40:00 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"
<peter2...@gmail.com> wrote:

>Taking time off from intensive interactions on s.b.p. to try
>and run a hypothesis (at this early point, "guess" would be a better word)
>by you about how others treat you, Glenn.
>
>
>On Friday, August 5, 2022 at 11:25:11 AM UTC-4, Glenn wrote:
>> On Friday, August 5, 2022 at 2:20:11 AM UTC-7, funkma...@hotmail.com wrote:
>> > On Wednesday, August 3, 2022 at 8:35:09 PM UTC-4, Glenn wrote:
>> > > On Wednesday, August 3, 2022 at 2:10:09 PM UTC-7, André G. Isaak wrote:
>> > > > On 2022-08-03 00:25, Glenn wrote:
>> > > > > On Tuesday, August 2, 2022 at 10:30:08 PM UTC-7, jillery wrote:
>> > > > >> On Tue, 2 Aug 2022 13:01:26 -0700 (PDT), erik simpson
>> > > > >> <eastsi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > > > >>
>> > > > >>> On Tuesday, August 2, 2022 at 9:10:08 AM UTC-7, Burkhard wrote:
>> > > > >>>> I want to direct your attention to this article on how "Paternal genome
>> > > > >>>> elimination promotes altruism in viscous populations"
>> > > > >>>>
>> > > > >>>> https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/evo.14585
>> > > > >>>>
>> > > > >>>> not so much because of its content, interesting as it is, but the
>> > > > >>>> particularly lovely abstract. Evolution (the journal) encourages the
>> > > > >>>> inclusion of abstracts in other languages, and this one is in Scots.
>> > > > >>>> (translation by the brilliant Ashley Douglas, who in her day job does
>> > > > >>>> mainly English-German translations).
>> > > > >>>>
>> > > > >>>> Whether Scots is a language or a dialect is contested in some circles,
>
>A little interlude before getting down to the business at hand:

<snip obfuscating interlude>

>>Silly trolls believes words can be defined anyway a person wants, and if enough persons agree, they assume their definitions reflect reality. "What fender means"..."what gender really means"..."you're and idiot, you don't know what gender means"...

??? Fender ???


There's a difference between using one of many recognized definitions,
and identifying distinctive definitions, and defining words anyway a
person wants. Glenn and the peter habitually fail to recognize these
differences.

>>I didn't even define, or agree or disagree with any specific definition of gender above, and yet you idiots still try to lay that crap on me, that I don't "know" what "gender" "means".
>>If I did, no one has answered the question. You certainly didn't, sparky.

No one said Glenn agreed or disagreed...
Glenn avoids answering questions even after they asked multiple times.
Perhaps Glenn thinks others should do as he says not as he does.

>That last comment was spot on. But zencycle really went all out in dumping on you in response,
>and got off scot-free.
>
>
>Peter Nyikos

Glenn and the peter prove the old adage: Better to remain silent and
let others think you a fool, than to speak up and prove it.

[israel socratus]

language evolution and regression
The evolution of language has helped people communicate better.
But today physicists speak the language of abstractions.
For example: we do not have a clear understanding of the word "spin".
The term "spin" can be understood, but cannot be applied to reality.
The term "spacetime" also has no real physical image.
We lose the correlation between reality and abstraction.
Using a language outside of its essence/meaning leads to regression.

[Burkhard]

daud....@gmail.com wrote:
> On Tuesday, August 2, 2022 at 12:10:08 PM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:
>> I want to direct your attention to this article on how "Paternal genome
>> elimination promotes altruism in viscous populations"
>>
>> https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/evo.14585
>>
>> not so much because of its content, interesting as it is, but the
>> particularly lovely abstract. Evolution (the journal) encourages the
>> inclusion of abstracts in other languages, and this one is in Scots.
>> (translation by the brilliant Ashley Douglas, who in her day job does
>> mainly English-German translations).
>>
>> Whether Scots is a language or a dialect is contested in some circles,
>> and I have of course VIEWS on this (mainly that it is the wrong question
>> - everything actual people speak is a dialect, languages are
>> abstractions. So for me dialect=species, language=families (or some
>> other higher taxon), and of course since they evolve, there are fuzzy
>> boundaries that can make it difficult to decide if speciation has
>> happened. So the best we can hope for is consistency - if Scots isn't a
>> language, then neither are Danish, Norwegian and Swedish separate
>> languages, and Dutch is possibly just a rural German dialect. I invite
>> you to discuss this in Amsterdam....
> -
>
> Not sure if I agree with either of these claims, neither mention social sheltering selection, which was critical to human language, charades/physical gestures/grooming being diurnal while speech is also nocturnal-domeshield darkened & cave-darkened; breathyness does not prevent conversation.
>

say what? Dutch split as a language with a clear identity of its own
when the Second Germanic consonant shift combined with a merger of Old
Franconian with northern Germanic dialects - so in the 8th or 9th
century. Scots and English parted ways even later, in the 15th century.
People were not living in caves then, and even in the evenings had
well-lit dwellings.

> https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25333792-600-how-language-evolved-a-new-idea-suggests-its-all-just-a-game/
> https://www.newscientist.com/article/2333278-losing-parts-of-our-voice-box-may-have-helped-humans-evolve-to-speak/
>

[Burkhard]

sorry, just realized that I had misread your post a bit. You are talking
about a different language altogether from the one in the post you
relied to.

The abstract that I linked to is written in Scots, not Scottish
Gaelic, the two are not even the same language family. Scots evolved
from Middle English and is just like modern English a West Germanic
language, with some influence of Gaelic and Norse. Or, if one follows
the opinion of the linguists in the video jillery linked to, a Norse
language with strong influence of Middle English - but in either case a
close relative of modern English (so close that some consider it a
dialect of modern English)

Scots Gaelic and Irish Gaelic by contrast are Celtic languages, and
there specifically Goidelic Celtic (in contrast to Brittonic Celtic
languages such as Welsh).

[Glenn]

On Thursday, August 11, 2022 at 11:15:19 PM UTC-7, martin...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Fri, 5 Aug 2022 08:20:26 -0700 (PDT), Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com>
> wrote:
>
> [snip for focus]
> >
> >Silly trolls believes words can be defined anyway a person wants,

> Like someone who defines 'atheist' as anyone who accepts Evolution?

That's a good example. I have never defined "atheist" in that manner, nor have I ever made such a claim. What you could do is deny that you were specifically referring to me. It is a common practice here amongst those who lack integrity. You could also claim that I am observed to hold that opinion and based on my arguments it is fair to assume that is what I "believe". That is also a common practice here. Surely you could think up more.
You've made similar claims and arguments before. I've tested you to see if you would come clean, and you haven't, ever.

So Martin, how do I define "atheist"? Be more specific than "anyone who accepts evolution".

[Burkhard]

Are you sure about this? Very very originally, "Hurican" was male, the
Mayan deity for storms and winds, and one of the creator deities. And it
is still male in Spanish, as far as I can see. When it was adopted from
the Spanish into English and got anglicized it lost that gender, so as
far as I know English "hurricane" is and always was neuter

Now, a different thing are naming conventions for individual hurricanes.
In the UK, storms were initially names after the Saint on whose day
they occurred, and I think that was initially also US practice. So
they'd have both male and female names, and once an object has a human
name, grammatically natural gender tends to apply. So they'd be "he" and
"she" (and "they" for storms on the 21.10?) Then came a time where
they were named exclusively female, and these days male and female names
are alternated.

I'm not sure how that has impacted their grammatical gender - my
impression is that people still tend to use male pronouns for storms
like Isaac and female for storms like Irene, though there may be a
tendency to replace this with "it"

[Glenn]

Provide one example that supports your impression, present or past.

I have never heard anyone say for example, referring to Isaac, that "he ran over my house and completely destroyed it", or that "he is expected to make landfall tomorrow morning".

I considered that you couldn't have made such a claim and that I misunderstood what you were saying. But what else could you have meant?

[jillery]

It would be more accurate to say non-physicists don't have a clear
understanding of what physicists mean when they speak of subatomic
"spin". Any living physicist worthy of that label knows exactly what
he means by "spin". Ditto "spacetime" and all the other words which
physicists use that have meanings different from everyday language.

[Glenn]

Are you a physicist? Are the physicists that consider "spin" differently from you, not worthy of that label? If you are not a physicist, how is it even possible that you could know that?

[peter2...@gmail.com]

You are lucky. With Spanish, you can almost always guess the gender of a noun by the way it ends (el dinero, la cabeza)
and if you learned it at a very young age, and never had to take a course where grammar was stressed,
you may not have even thought in terms of gender very much.

German, on the other hand, is a real pain to master because it doesn't give any clues
from the structure of the noun as to what article or adjective to use. And so
the concept of "gender of nouns" dominates the thinking of someone learning the language
in high school or college. That's why some of the people here are so amused by your
not seeing right away that this is the concept of gender that is being talked about.

So, how about giving my little "quiz" up there a try? I'll even give a big hint: all three genders
(masculine, feminine, neuter) are represented by one of (knife, spoon, fork). Don't worry
about how many you get right. In fact, the arbitrariness of gender is more impressed on you
if you miss two or all three.


Peter Nyikos

[peter2...@gmail.com]

Would it make you happier than you are now if I were to pick a fight over what you wrote about me here?


Peter Nyikos

[peter2...@gmail.com]

On Friday, August 12, 2022 at 5:35:19 AM UTC-4, Burkhard wrote:

> As I indicated elsewhere in the thread, the dialect/language distinction
> is to a degree arbitrary/meaningless, and often more reflecting
> historical or political facts than linguistic ones (a language is a
> dialect with an army and a navy)

Yes, the distinction is impossible to quantify. Some things called languages are
much closer than some things called dialects. One of my math professors
told a German at a party at a math conference that German was the first
foreign language he learned.

When she asked him what his native language was, he replied,
"Dütsch. Schwyzerdütsch." ["Swiss German"].

Back when I was more fluent in German than I am now, I could hardly even guess
at what any of the words meant when he spoke to his wife in their "dialect".

On the other hand, some Slavic languages lend themselves to
sittions like the following: a Slovak speaks to a Pole
in Slovak, while the Pole responds in Polish, and the two have
a decent conversation if they use everyday words. Ditto a Czech
and a Slovak. But it isn't transitive: a Pole and a Czech would have a hard time of it.

It isn't symmetric either: a Portuguese could understand a Castilian Spanish speaker
under such circumstances, but not vice versa. A Portuguese speaker explained
it this way: Portuguese has a lot of infrequently used Spanish words that are
synonyms for the usual Portuguese words, but not vice versa.

Thank you. In return, here is a 12:43 video showing how different
standard German and Swiss German are:

https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-adk-adk_sbnt&ei=UTF-8&hsimp=yhs-adk_sbnt&hspart=adk&param1=20220411&param2=47e51182-807f-42ac-ac37-e6e286d882f9&param3=quicksearchtool_1.2%7EUS%7Eappfocus1%7E&param4=d-ccc4-lp0-cp_15441362544-tst0--dklp%7EChrome%7Eswiss+german%7E793779BE1573AC51CB9D801723277294%7EWin10&p=swiss+german&type=A1-win-%7E2022-16%7E#id=1&vid=c6c30b219ad1389756078f26230dbc8f&action=click

> It has the first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in
> all Celtic languages, both written and the bigger ones read out by a
> native speaker.

I wish there were a Declaration of the Rights of Celtic Languages.
I am saddened when I think of how Celtic languages once dominated so much
of Europe, and extinction has been the fate of almost all of them. In particular,
I am appalled over how cruelly the British tried to suppress Gaelic, and how close they
came to succeeding.


It's ironic how the official name of Switzerland is Confederation Helvetica,
while no one speaks the (Celtic) Helvetic language. Traces of it remain in
Ladin and Rhaeto-Romansh, but the language itself is long extinct;
I don't even know whether there is a dictionary of it.


Peter Nyikos

[israel socratus]

=========
Physicists use the everyday terms “spin, space, time” that ordinary people understand,
but in quantum theory they treat these terms differently than all the others.

[jillery]

On Fri, 12 Aug 2022 13:46:08 -0700 (PDT), Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com>
wrote:

Since you asked, no; irrelevant; your "that" is ambiguous. You're
welcome.

[jillery]

On Fri, 12 Aug 2022 15:39:58 -0700 (PDT), "peter2...@gmail.com"

Would it make any difference what I post? It never did before.