- bdonvr ( @bdonvr@thelemmy.club ) English13•4 months ago
Fun fact, despite being more closely related, German is considered somewhat harder to learn for English speakers than Romance languages (Spanish, French, Italian, Romanian). Due to historical events, conquests, migration, etc, more than half of our vocabulary derives from Latin (and a good chunk of that is from French).
- JohnnyEnzyme ( @JohnnyEnzyme@lemm.ee ) English3•4 months ago
OK, maybe I’m wrong, but that seems to be a MASSIVE miscomprehension of the relationship between West Germanic and olde French.
In fact, modern German is arguably EASIER to learn for English-speakers due to all the common grammar and sentence structure.
- bdonvr ( @bdonvr@thelemmy.club ) English3•4 months ago
I’m just going by the FSI rankings. Romance languages are “Category 1” necessitating 600-750 class hours. German is “Category 2” needing 900 hours.
I think vocabulary is more important anyhow, if you know the words you can piece together the meaning even if it’s in a strange order. If you don’t, the order doesn’t really matter at all.
- jet ( @jet@hackertalks.com ) English8•4 months ago
Chinese? Japanese? Vietnamese? Hawaiian? Aboriginal Australian? Navajo?
- bdonvr ( @bdonvr@thelemmy.club ) English13•4 months ago
Those are of different language trees and are unrelated, though some researchers have tried to claim that Chinese and other Asiatic languages share a common ancestor with these, it’s not widely accepted and nearly impossible to prove.
- EvilCartyen ( @EvilCartyen@feddit.dk ) English9•4 months ago
These are indo-european languages, I am sure you could do one for sino-tibetan if you feel like it.
- sunbather ( @sunbather@beehaw.org ) English2•4 months ago
considering theres a small uralic bush the inconsistency is reasonable to point out
- EvilCartyen ( @EvilCartyen@feddit.dk ) English3•4 months ago
Sure but it also seems a bit, I dunno, silly. Sure, you could do a whole forest if you wanted to, and the name ‘old world languages’ is kinda dumb, as this is just two language families - but it’s still a neat visualisation. It’s not some conspiracy.
- sunbather ( @sunbather@beehaw.org ) English1•4 months ago
yea depending on how nitpicky you wanna get you can even point out that some language families are intercontinental between eurasia and the americas (not talking about colonialization, theres some related siberian and canadian languages iirc), but its pretty clear that this is supposed to be a general overview and pie languages do well enough for that
- tiredofsametab ( @tiredofsametab@kbin.run ) 6•4 months ago
Old world except for most of the world
- anguo ( @anguo@lemmy.ca ) English3•4 months ago
Its from a post-apocalyptic comic taking place somewhere in Scandinavia.
- TFO Winder ( @tfowinder@lemmy.ml ) English5•4 months ago
Almost half of them are spoken in single country India.
- blackbrook ( @blackbrook@mander.xyz ) English5•4 months ago
What is “year 0”?
- Whimseymimple ( @Whimseymimple@beehaw.org ) English3•4 months ago
This is from an online comic called Stand Still, Stay Silent. Year 0 is the year, well, the year everything changed for the Nordic countries.
It’s a gorgeous story, for any who might be interested!
- Whimseymimple ( @Whimseymimple@beehaw.org ) English2•4 months ago
Here’s the full original comic page of the map:
- MajorMajormajormajor ( @MajorMajormajormajor@lemmy.ca ) English2•4 months ago
Ahh, yes, the Albanian Albanian branch is my personal favourite.
- _NoName_ ( @JayDee@lemmy.ml ) English2•4 months ago
Fun Fact: I believe that one running hypothesis relating to the origin of the Indo-European Languages traces its lineage back to the Yamnaya culture. ‘Yamnaya’ in Russian (‘Я́мная’) translates to “relating to pits”, because some of the most noteable artifacts of this culture are their pit burial sites.
I’m still reading about them atm.
- DefederateLemmyMl ( @SpaceCadet@feddit.nl ) English1•4 months ago
So this is a huge pet peeve of mine: Flemish is not a separate language. It refers to a region inside of Belgium where Dutch is the official language. The Dutch and the Flemish share the same standard language.
I know dialects exist, and those can be considered a language on their own, but there is no unified Flemish dialect. West-Flemish for example is distinctly different from other dialects spoken in Flanders like Brabandic or Limburgish, and variants of Limburgish and Brabandic dialects are spoken in large areas of the Netherlands as well. So it doesn’t make sense to create a distinction between “Dutch” and “Flemish”.
The differences are on the level of American English vs. Australian English vs. British English. Or Austrian German vs. Swiss German vs. Bavarian German vs. North German … So if those are not singled out, it doesn’t make sense to separate Flemish from Dutch.