Random Babbling - 114

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Nah, Old English. Hwæt is similar to "what", "wat", "was", "hvad", etc.

 

Aaa, but its very similar to what the danes speak now - hvæd, which means the same. Also similar to norwegian and swedish of course.

 

Scandinavians languages are known to be more conservative within the germanic family. Not conservative in a pejorative way, but rather closer to proto-germanic. An hypothetical language that would be the origin of every germanic languages.

 

Beowulf's about the Danes though! Well, it has some Danes.

 

He is correct, but it doesn't. I am not from there. These savages up north drink their tea with cream and sugar. I take neither, since it IMO ruins the taste.

Cream and sugar in tea are only acceptable and probably necessary to gloss over the taste of mediocre teas. Like when you go to Britain and ... oh, I better stop here, lest I forfeit my honorary dual citizenship with Britain ...

 

I agree, tea should be enjoyed on its own, the same concept also apply to coffee.

I'm trying to figure out something and some of you might be able to help me. I wonder if "trennbare" verbs* are unique to German or does the concept exists in other languages of the same family. Was it a fundamental aspect of proto-germanic, like say ablauting i.e. sing, sang, sung, that was somehow lost to English or was it an innovation of German.

* separable verb, where the verb's prefix remain unchanged and goes at the end of the sentence and the "core" of the verb gets conjugated.

I dunno about that, you might want to check with Beowulf

" HWÆT, WE GAR-DEna in geardagum,
þeodcyninga þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon! "

Suuurrre....

I theorize thought, that within a couple centuries, Shakespeare will be as foreign to future English speaker as is Beowulf to today's speakers.

 

No, coffee must be very strong, without sugar and with just enough milk to make it dark brown.

I have no idea.

PS: Example for 'trennbare Verben' in German:
nachdenken -> Sie denkt viel nach.

 

Think so? He is still modern English - there aren't many differences in the way we speak and he writes. He just flowers things up.

Although in a few more centuries past your expected date, our language will probably seem antiquated and unreadable.

 

That's exactly what I was saying ? I used the vague notion of "couple of centuries" to mean an imprecise future date.

 

Yes it might. Shame. Willie says nice thing. Especially with a mug of black tea wit a hint of cane sugar. Gunpowder tea is nice.

I have got a few on dvd. Two with Branagh. Much ado about nothing and henry 5.

There is something rotten in the state of Denmark.

 

Why would the English language change? It's pretty mature nowadays, unlike Old English.

 

Because many adolescents forget all semblances of grammar and spelling. Go to failbook, texts from last night, any of those websites that show (supposedly) real texts and messages by today's youth. Although high culture and literature hasn't changed, if an entire generation of people suck at grammar and spelling, the language will change. Especially if that generation fails to effectively teach the next one, and that one the next one, and so on until judgment day and bells ring and such.

I have little faith in American education.

(And I know Americans aren't the only English speakers. That brings up another point, however. I read an article a while back comparing American English (or British English for that matter) to English learned in foreign countries, particularly China (where there are more English speakers than the entire US population), where English has been changing as a result of non-fluency influencing the language and becoming the norm. If the largest nation in the world says English is changing, good luck to us.)

 

Well hasn't language evolved the same way then as now?

I mean in french, if you take the name "Jacques", there's no reason for the letter "c". In fact, apparently a tipsy priest misspelled it and it stuck. The word for "key" in french, "clef" (pronounced like "clay") can now be correctly spelled "clé" because the "f" was silent. When you think about it, a looooooot of grammar rules and spelling is just a set of rules dictated. But a lot of those rule make no sense whatsoever. We just repeat them because "that's the way to do it". We've been doing it for so long we forget what the initial reasons were (like the priest anecdote).

I think it's not so much kids not doing it "the proper way" than us being too hung up on rules.

Don't kill me Flix!

 

I think Beowulf and Shakespeare will still be around in a couple of centuries or so, except that they might be called iBeowulf and iShakespeare and they're probably be some sort of electronic gadgets.

 

I actually support orthographic reform of the French language. Mostly the elimination of truly useless letters (th and ph for instance), a standardization of nasal vowels, a rearrangement of the weird and illogical conjugation of some past participle (*cough* avoir *cough* ), but nothing too extreme. One of the reason the traditional spelling remained is because of the relative high number of homophone words of the language. A purely phonetic transcription would be impractical at best. I don't have to tell you how many verbs are phonetically identical in their singular conjugation. Also with a purely phonetic script how would we differentiate between a past participle from an infinitive verb ?


Anyway, back on language change;

I would like first to say that language change and orthographic change are two wildly different things. Any scripts and their inherent orthography is a language fixed in time, it reflects the language as it was. In the long term however, the minor changes in pronunciation and grammar become too substantial compared to the written norm. Thus reform becomes necessary or the speakers will face a situation where the written norm no longer resemble the spoken norm, a sort of linguistic dichotomy if you will. The inability to respect orthographic norm has little if nothing to do with the concept of language change itself.

With the rise of new technologies new words and locutions are being constantly created. Irregular form are reanalyzed and rearranged to fit regular pattern. Obsolete words whose meaning are no longer part of the daily life will be tossed out. As technology evolve and replace obsolete concept the words that describe them are eliminated. Just compared a dictionary from 50 years ago and one from today and look at all the words that have been eliminated and the new one created.

Contact and influence between different languages will also contribute in creating new words. Regional differences in any given language might become so divergent as to create dialect or even different tongue altogether. Language change is a subtle, gradual and a long term phenomena, but also an irrefutable aspect of human behavior.

 

True, but if more people speak the 'broken' version of English than there are people who speak 'proper' English, it seems likely that their version may take over at some point. Especially if China becomes to dominant world power people keep telling me they will be

On a less AoDA topic, I am casting for my next film, and got-damn, I have a lot of emailing to do. 35+ people have asked for auditions, and with classes hitting full swing this week (in addition to some other film work I am doing), I am... keeping busy, to say the least.

 

I had a strange experience once in Brazil, Amazon. We where on a lodge floating on the river. Early morning (or more like night), we got up to do some boat-seeing. I was really tired and could not keep my head up, when this guy asked if I was sleeping. Being half-asleep, my answer was somewhat of an hybrid between norwegian and english, almost like a nightmare hehe

Anyway, to my astonishment I found out quite some time later, that what I had said was actually an valid sentence. What I said was "not fast asleep"
When I said those words, my brain registered it as an fault, because I never heard it before in an english context and didn't know it could be used.

 

@saber, is your film going to be in English or broken English?