Languages

[wishmaster]

Have any of you seen that many of the European languages are quite similar? Of course, that's not strange, but it is quite funny

like:
Norwegian: Du
English: You
German: Du

Norwegian: Kniv, Egg, Ski
English: Knife, Egg, Ski

N: Kompakt, vin
E: Compact, whine

E: Beer
G: Bier

BUT if you are norwegian, do NOT ask for a glass of ÖL/ØL (beer) in germany!

[Graff]

Serves us right for invading each other over the past millenia! French is still confusing though.

Graff.

[Vernon]

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that both English and German are derived from Latin.

[wishmaster]

oh, BTW: any italian people here? I need a little translation:

Energie di cosmi estinti gridano sangue
dalle terre dell'ignoto senza pieta

I don't know if it's right written, but it is a Rhapsody Lyric.

[Graff]

And Greek. Add a little from the Norsemen, the Angles and the Saxons...etc, English isn't really a unique language, but an amalgamation of many different languages from different invaders.

What did the Celts speak? Gaelic?

Graff.

[The_Writing_Wraith]

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that both English and German are derived from Latin.

No, they are Germanic languages. The Latin based languages are the Romance languages. These, along with all languages in Europe except for Basque are part of the Indo-European Language Family, descendant languages of something spoken in the Caucus region long, long ago. From Indo-European also includes some of the languages of the Iranian region and several of the languages of India.

Many of these languages are amazingly close considering the distances in both time and space that seperate them. As an example the Spanish word for give "da" is identical to the Hittite word for give, despite the Hittites having disappeared over 2,000 years ago and being exclusively found in central Turkey and parts of Syria.

English is mostly a combination of Latin (I'm going to include Greek loan words in this catagory) brought by the Romans, an older dialect of German brought by the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, and French brought by the Normans. There is little to no remanent of British Celtic language in English.

Graff:
Celts were never a unified people and spoke several languages. The Gauls had their own language (no idea what it was called), the Irish/Scots/Manxmans speak/spoke either P- or Q-Gaelic while the Welsh/Cornish/Britons speak/spoke the other form of Gaelic.

[Vernon]

Well I stand corrected. I really did think there was a lot of German derived from Latin. Are there many Latin loan words in German?

[Hermit]

Actually, there are even wider ties. All European languages, with the exception of Finnish, Hungarian, Basque and Turkish are derived from Sanskrit, language of a nomadic tribe called the Aryans. this includes all Slavic languages. That way, European languages have similarities with what is spoken in so far-off parts of the world as Malaysia, Indonesia and India. Coptic, whcih is the language of the Christian minority in Syria and Egypt, also s European-bsed; hence the loan words in these countries' primarily Hebrew-Arabic language.

Celtic and Romainc languages are closely related, they just had a shift from q to p and from u to y. In fact, the Latinians were pretty much a celtic tribe.

And one more thing: The english language is kind fo an oddity because it ahs reduced away a lot of things that make European languages characteristic. Cases, for one. Gramatical sexes. Articles, for the most part. And the division between a polite and a colloquial form of address in 2nd person. In fact, the latter is a recent development, that happened after the 17th century. Shakespeare and the King James Bible still make that division (Thou equals the Du/tu; You, whcih is indeed derived from the Germanic "du/tu" too, equals the Sie/ti).Interestingly enough, Sweden has done that too. By a plebescite sometime in the 70s.

@Vegor: Oh yes, a whole damn lot. After all, it was the Romans who taught the Germans the basics of civilisation back in Cesar's time.

[The_Writing_Wraith]

Actually, there are even wider ties. All European languages, with the exception of Finnish, Hungarian, Basque and Turkish are derived from Sanskrit, language of a nomadic tribe called the Aryans. this includes all Slavic languages. That way, European languages have similarities with what is spoken in so far-off parts of the world as Malaysia, Indonesia and India. Coptic, whcih is the language of the Christian minority in Syria and Egypt, also s European-bsed; hence the loan words in these countries' primarily Hebrew-Arabic language.

Celtic and Romainc languages are closely related, they just had a shift from q to p and from u to y. In fact, the Latinians were pretty much a celtic tribe.

They are NOT derived from Sanskrit! Sanskrit is derived from an ancestral language just like every other language in the Indo-European Language Family. Celtic languages are not closely related to the Romance languages the q-, p- shift and u-, y- shift occurs between the two branches of Celtic that survive in and around the British Isles. We don't really know what the Guals language looked like, and the Latins were not a Celtic group, their origins are very obscur.

[andreas of austevoll]

It was th vikings who was the founders of the germanic languages( norwegian,scandinavic,english,germnaysk,dutch)
When they invaded europe they shared their language with the others but only the norwegians. If it not were for the norwegian vikings whole europe would have speaken french,spainish,italy

[Arthmodeus]

English is derived from Germanic and a little bit of Latin. The modern English that we use today is the result of conquering and wars that took place in Europe.

[andreas of austevoll]

aND All thanks to the norwegians who helped the brits fighting off the romans

[wishmaster]

It's true that, BUT "vikingish" is what they talk on Iceland, or more like. we call it "old norwegian"

[Anonymous]

You are all wrong: Because I am from Mars, I can tell you on good authority that all human languages derive from the language of our alien creators and ancestors, taught to us when we were apes in special flying "word-ships", by way of - as far as I can decipher - magical "grammar-wands". Indeed, neither the Sanskrit nor the Jews nor the Romans were even invented then. And so, beacause you have no evidence to strengthen your claims, I have to say that your argumnet is full of holes, like some kind of rubbish cheese

[wishmaster]

Ring, Ring, Ring, Ring, Banana phone!

[Sload]

Ich spreche kein deutsch.

I just realized I forgot the little Scottish I knew...that makes me cry.

[Anonymous]

ah, the Scottish only ever say "och" and "aye". And sometimes "noo". Honestly, I saw it in a programme once, on the telly. Just like Geordies only ever say "why aye, man"

[Graff]

ah, the Scottish only ever say "och" and "aye". And sometimes "noo". Honestly, I saw it in a programme once, on the telly. Just like Geordies only ever say "why aye, man"

Hehe. Then what are us Yorkshire stereotyped as saying?

Arrr...

Graff.

[vivec]

[quote="Graff The Nord"]And Greek. Add a little from the Norsemen, the Angles and the Saxons...etc, English isn't really a unique language, but an amalgamation of many different languages from different invaders.

What did the Celts speak? Gaelic?

Graff.[/quote]

i think it was the scots who spoke gaelic and the celts spoke old english

[Graff]

Actually, Scotland, Wales and Ireland did have their own Gaelic languages/dialects as well English, which suggests that before England had control of these seperate nations, they all spoke Gaelic.

Perhaps an english form of gaelic did exist, but Old English killed it off.

Graff.

[Darnoc]

Interesting that someone brought that up. Luckily, I have written an essay once about the origins of European languages.

Almost all europeans languages and some asian languages are indo-european languages. The following languages are included in this group of languages; I order them in the correct sub-groups:



Germanic:

West-Germanic: German, English, Dutch, Frisian, Flemish

North-Germanic: Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Islandish

Annotation: English is not a pure Germanic language. Half of it's vocabulary originates from French, therefore English is rather a Germanic-Romanic language. But most of its grammatical structures are Germanic and the original Old English (Anglo-Saxon) was a Germanic language.



Romanic (also referred to as "Italic"):

Annotation: All modern Romanic languages originate from Latin, altough in earlier times other such languages existed which are commonly reffered to as "Italic languages", for they were all spoken all on the Appeninian Peninsula (todays Italy) before the Roman takeover.

Latin (written), Vulgar Latin (extinct; all modern Romanic languages originate from Vulgar rather than from written Latin), Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Provencalian, Catalan, Rhaeto-Romanic, Occitan, Corsican, Galician



Celtic:

Annotation: There are two different major groups of Celtic languages: Continental and Insular. All Continental Celtic languages are extinct (Gaulish was one of them). Only Insular Celtic languages remain and of those only five. They are again divided into two groups: Britannian and Giodelian.

Britannian: Welsh (Kymrian), Bretonian, Cornish

Giodelian: Irish Gaelish, Scottish Gaelish



Balto-Slawic:

Baltic: Lithuanian, Lettian

East-Slawic: Russian, White-Russian, Ukranian

West-Slawic: Polish, Czech, Slovak, Kashubian, Sorbian

South-Slawic: Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian, Slowenian



Indo-Iranian:

Indian: Sanskrit, Hindi/Urdu, Bengali, Punjabi

Iranian: Avestian, Persian/Farsi, Pashtu, Kurdish



Isolated Indo-European languages:

Greek, Albanian, Armenian, Tocharian





There several languages indegenous languages in Europe which aren't Indo-Euroean:

Uralian: Finnish, Ungarian, Estonian


And there is Basquian. Basquian is a very special language, for it is absolutely unique and does not fit in any known family of languages. Commonly it is assumed that Basquian is the last none language of the family of languages which was spoken before Indo-Europeans arrived in Europe. This antique language-family is called "Vaskonian". It was also proven with genetics that all Europeans at least in some parts originate from the Basques. Their language (or at least the group of languages to which their language belongs) was the language spoken before the Indo-Europeans arrived in Europe. And the Indo-Europeans mingled with them which shows in our genes.



About the origins of Indo-Europeans:

It was long speculated the Indo-Europeans originated from the steppes of central asia, especially after the Kurgan-culture was discovered. The Kurgans lived between 5000 and 3000 BC in the steppes west of the Ural mountains. It was assumed by most scientists that they began to migrate around 2000 BC and conquered the people living in Europe, Iran and India.

Modern scientists have a different approach. They think that it would be impossible for a small nomad-tribe to not only conquer almost two continents, but also force their language and culture on them. As a reminder, the Mongolians indeed conquered almost the whole of Asia, but they never succeeded in forcing their language, religion and culture on others. Quite the opposite, they were quite heavily influenced by the people they had conquered, not vice-versa.

It is therefore assumed that the origins of Indo-Europeans is in Anatolia (todays Turkey), where also agriculture and smithing had its origin. The "agricultural revolution" was certainly capable of supporting a spread of culture and language like the spread of the Indo-Europeans.

It was calculated that the amount of agricultured land growed about 1 km per year in every direction. This would have taken it 1500 years to reach Europe from Anatolia. Interestingly, this is supported by archeological findings.

[Graff]

That is very interesting, thanks for that.

Graff.

Actually, an interesting thing is that of the five Celtic language that are still in existence, only one or two are in common use. Welsh, and possibly Cornish. Irish and Scottish Gaelic are spoken by a select few, and I've never heard Bretonian.

[Darnoc]

@Graff the Nord: Just added something about the origin of Indo-Europeans too.

Actually, an interesting thing is that of the five Celtic language that are still in existence, only one or two are in common use. Welsh, and possibly Cornish. Irish and Scottish Gaelic are spoken by a select few, and I've never heard Bretonian.

This is uncorrect. Cornish is practically extinct. It was extinct for some time and they try to revive it. Welsh is quite a vivid language and also Irish Gaelic and Bretonian are spoken casually in some regions still. I do not know about Scottish Gaelic tough.

Bretonian is spoken in Brittany, that is in French. The Bretonians are the successors of Celtic Britains flying from the Germanic invasion during 5th/6th/7th century.

P.S.: I also forgot that there is even a sixth celtic language, a Goidelian one: The language spoken on the Isle of Man, called "Manx".

[Graff]

Wasn't sure about Cornish, though I thought it was used more than Gaelic. The impression I've always got about Scottish and Irish Gaelic was that while they are still spoken, they aren't spoken as a primary language, or by large groups of people. However, I haven't been to Ireland, so I can't say that for certain. Welsh is still spoken, as far as I know, by the majority of native welsh, and is counted as Wales' official second language, with most signs, leaflets, etc, being written in both english and welsh.

I've heard of Manx, never heard it.

Graff.

[Darnoc]

Irish Gaelic is the second national language of Ireland, altough it is the indegenous language for only about 20% of the population. But it is learned in school, being the second national language, and the Irish make quite a fuss about it. This is because they want to seperate themselves from the English, by whom they were surpressed for several centuries. Their culture and language was almost made extinct by English overlords during the middle ages and modern ages until the 19th century. In earlier times all of Ireland spoke Gaelic and they even had their own church, seperated from the catholic church, and their own kingdoms (four, to be more precise; the so called "Four Quarters of Ireland": Ulster (Northern-Ireland), Leinster, Connacht, Munster).

[Graff]

Some of that I knew, but very informative . To the Irish, language is a freedom, hence the popularity of the play Translations.

Graff.