Linguistics & Languages

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Anyone other than me interested?

Yeah...I'm interested in linguistics--more applied than theoretical.

There's a guy named Kip (nor his full screen name) who is very, very interested in linguistics.

There's a girl named Kuraudo who has made up her own language.

I'm interested in languages and linguistics. I've often tried to start a discussion about words with people, but they don't have any enthusiasm for it, so I end up almost pontificating until they change the subject. I have, on a few occasions, attempted to construct a language, the most recent of which being blended Scando-Germanic.

Me!! ! Ever since I was little I've wanted to speak many languages. Now I mostly just study them for fun although I'm teaching myself one at the moment. When I was a teen, I tried to invent my own writing system, but got bored after awhile. I even started to learn Esperanto at about 15.

My major problem is, I get really interested in a particular language, or any other interest, for a period of time. I'm obsessed. It could be months or years. But then I suddenly get bored of it for no apparent reason and abandon it completely. So I never really master anything.

I really like learning how languages naturally evolve over time, and how they are related to one another. I'm also interested in evolution in general. I like discovering the often extremely different ways we have managed to communicate similar concepts. And the unwritten rules that you won't find in most grammar books, such as intonation in the English language. It comes naturally to native speakers, but is not necessarily intuitive to others, especially those not speaking an Indo-European language.

Wouldn't you say, especially in the northern dialects of Old English around the time of the Vikings, that English was a Germanic-Scandinavian hybrid?

it had a whole lot less romantic influence in those times than it had now i think. i wonder of it had stayed like that, german and english would have a higher degree of mutual intelligibility?

English started picking up Romantic influences after the Norman Conquest. Then it transformed from Old to Middle English. English always had Latin influence, and Latin borrowings.

Most borrowings, however, occurred after about 1300--and especially after 1400.

The transition from Middle to Modern English was accelerated by the Great Vowel Shift--wherein vowel sounds became more influenced by Romantic, rather than Germanic, pronunciation. The advent of printing accelerated the process, and rendered English (at least written English) a much more standardized language than previously.

I have a book that deals entirely with the evolution of English. It's pretty interesting.

According to the book, English became a Scandinavian-west Germanic hybrid following the Danelaw. After all those years of fighting off the Danish, the English established a border where crossings were only allowed in order to trade.

As English (at the time), was not yet very much differentiated from Danish (at the time), there was a lot of confusion when trading. English didn't have prepositions at the time and depended upon word endings (inflections) to indicate relationships between words. These were similar to the ones used by the Danes, but similar sounds had entirely different meanings so everyone became confused. So prepositions eventually came about to eliminate confusion, word order became important and English lost many of its inflections.

Many words used in English now are Scandinavian in origin, and came into use during that time period.

English was basically entirely Germanic (west and north) until the Norman invasion.

The "language" I am most fascinated by is music notation. I started reading music before I began reading English.
The evolution of the process of writing down music is fascinating, too.

I guess you could call music notation a language of sorts. It is a means of communicating information through writing, but it doesn't really meet the common definition of a language. But I can definitely see some similarities.

I do remember reading somewhere about the different ways cultures have thought about, and organized music. Kind of like the different number systems that have existed.

If I could read music I might have more to say on the subject. Unfortunately I took music lessons as a child and was too bored to continue. I didn't get to pick the instrument I wanted and the lessons moved too slowly for my taste.

Actually one language I would really like to learn is ASL. Sign languages are fascinating. They are able to fully communicate complex ideas without any spoken or written words. I remember that head movements and facial expressions, in addition to the hand signs, were very important in communicating and had specific meanings.

Being able to communicate in that manner is like teaching your brain an entirely different way of perceiving and thinking. I think that's one reason I find languages so fascinating. There is no way to fully translate a language with all it's nuances to another. Something is always lost in translation.

Learning another language is like opening a door into another way of thinking. It's almost like becoming another person, because language can shape the way you think over time.

Then of course language by itself is fascinating to study and analyze without actually learning to speak/communicate with it. There are so many I would love to learn about.