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Language X is older than Y | ||
Tags: Age | Foreign Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4708 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 17 of 31 20 November 2012 at 1:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The fact we have no evidence in what form Old Zulu was spoken does not mean it didn't
exist. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5057 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 18 of 31 20 November 2012 at 1:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
If we can't get knowledge about something, it doesn't exist for us. Like as if it were in a black hole. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4708 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 19 of 31 20 November 2012 at 2:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Nonsense. Just because you don't know that Old Zulu existed does not mean you can
definitively state it doesn't. It could perfectly well have existed without a trace in modern times. The most you can do is guess at a probability. Edited by tarvos on 20 November 2012 at 2:11pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 20 of 31 20 November 2012 at 3:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
What do you mean exactly? It seems we may not be refering to the same thing. The fact that a writing system has existed for a long time doesn't mean much with regards to the languages that use it. Latin and French are written with the same writing system, which dates back 2 or 3 millenia, but that doesn't mean they are the same language, and that doesn't mean French is an older language than say Inuktitut (writing system is about 40 years old) or any language that isn't written at all. Why would that be different for Chinese, for instance? Edited by Arekkusu on 20 November 2012 at 3:10pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 21 of 31 20 November 2012 at 5:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 22 of 31 20 November 2012 at 5:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
As in "the language that was used at the time of the first written records is no longer understood by speakers of the modern language, but it has the same name"? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5057 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 23 of 31 20 November 2012 at 6:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
Latin is an old language, because it is a definite, functional, real language which was spoken two thousands years ago. We can't talk about "Old Zulu", because it doesn't make much sense. We can talk about some ancestor of modern Zulu and reconstruct it with some accuracy for a certain (or uncertain) period of time. Edited by Марк on 21 November 2012 at 8:13am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 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 24 of 31 21 November 2012 at 12:06am | IP Logged | |||||
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If the earlier stages or ancestor or whatever of a language has been lost we may be able to reconstruct some ascpects of it, and based on its relationships with other languages we may even venture a guess about its tendency to be conservative in the period before the first attested sources. But we would call never such reconstruction 'Old Something' - we would call it 'Proto something'. So in that sense Марк is right - the name 'Old' Zulu doesn't make sense.
But even a proto-language is more than a black box. There must have been some kind of language in the area where an attested language later pops up, and by combining historical linguistic methods with archeology it may even be possible to venture a guess about the kind of language it was. The problem is that the facts rarely are sufficient to lead to an uncontroversial verdict about the linguistic situation. So we may never now how far back we have to go before the language which somehow developed into Modern Zulu was something so radically different that it deserved another name. But there must have been such a stage, and somewhere in between that point and Modern Zulu there must be something which deserved the name 'Old Zulu'. The only problem is that we won't ever know what it was like, except in very broad therms, and we may not even ever learn when such a suitable candidate was spoken. Edited by Iversen on 21 November 2012 at 12:22am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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