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Jt00 Newbie United States Joined 4513 days ago 28 posts - 30 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Latin, Ancient Greek, Russian, French
| Message 257 of 306 21 July 2012 at 11:58pm | IP Logged |
Arabic.
Name a language with no written form.
1 person has voted this message useful
| clumsy Octoglot Senior Member Poland lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5176 days ago 1116 posts - 1367 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Mandarin, Italian, Vietnamese Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swedish Studies: Danish, Dari, Kirundi
| Message 258 of 306 29 July 2012 at 11:03pm | IP Logged |
Dzongkha - they use Classical Tibetan to write their language.
Name a bantu language with its own writing system.
1 person has voted this message useful
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5565 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian
| Message 259 of 306 15 August 2012 at 12:15am | IP Logged |
Kikongo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandombe_script)
Name a tonal language that has ejective consonants.
1 person has voted this message useful
| clumsy Octoglot Senior Member Poland lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5176 days ago 1116 posts - 1367 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Mandarin, Italian, Vietnamese Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swedish Studies: Danish, Dari, Kirundi
| Message 260 of 306 22 August 2012 at 1:49am | IP Logged |
Hausa!
Name a language in which the speakers see future as being "behind" them, instead of the majority of languages that see it as something "before" you.
I have read about two such languages.
1 person has voted this message useful
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Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6701 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map
| Message 261 of 306 22 August 2012 at 10:53am | IP Logged |
Aymara
Name a language (or maybe rather a group of languages) which has two third persons, one for important ones and one for less important ones.
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Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6892 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map
| Message 262 of 306 28 August 2012 at 10:27am | IP Logged |
clumsy wrote:
Name a language in which the speakers see future as being "behind" them, instead of the majority of languages that see it as something "before" you.
I have read about two such languages. |
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English would qualify: To many people moving a date _forward_ means moving it to an earlier date, rather than postponing it.
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Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6701 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map
| Message 263 of 306 09 September 2012 at 1:22pm | IP Logged |
My question from 22. August had not been answered the 9. September so I gave the clue "obviative". But that didn't help so this time I'll just mention that a 'distant' third person is used in a number of American native languages (see Wikipedia under obviative). In some sources, including this one about Arapaho, the obviative is actually called the "fourth person",but most sources on the internet still label it as some weird kind of third person.
However Thai (see Clumsy's message below) qualifies if it systematically uses different third person forms for monks and royalty. And I did use the term "important" which is a salient feature in the case of Thai.
Edited by Iversen on 10 October 2012 at 2:00pm
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| clumsy Octoglot Senior Member Poland lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5176 days ago 1116 posts - 1367 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Mandarin, Italian, Vietnamese Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swedish Studies: Danish, Dari, Kirundi
| Message 264 of 306 10 October 2012 at 12:17pm | IP Logged |
Hencke wrote:
clumsy wrote:
Name a language in which the speakers see future as being "behind" them, instead of the majority of languages that see it as something "before" you.
I have read about two such languages. |
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English would qualify: To many people moving a date _forward_ means moving it to an earlier date, rather than postponing it. |
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hmm, interesting I didn't know about that.
but anyway the language I meant was Quechua or Aymara.
and the answer is: Thai
need to se different pronoun for royalty and monks, I think.
Name a language in which words ending in a voiced consonants followed by a suffix get devoiced.
like this: ug + i = uki
Edited by clumsy on 10 October 2012 at 12:18pm
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