13 messages over 2 pages: 1 2
Fajro Diglot Newbie Argentina Joined 6608 days ago 3 posts - 9 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Esperanto Studies: English
| Message 9 of 13 22 December 2006 at 12:07am | IP Logged |
I not finish reading that yet.
It would be interesting to collect the opinions of some "denaskaj".
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| alexptrans Pentaglot Senior Member Israel Joined 6769 days ago 208 posts - 236 votes Speaks: English, Modern Hebrew, Russian*, French, Arabic (Written) Studies: Icelandic
| Message 10 of 13 22 December 2006 at 2:23am | IP Logged |
sumabeast wrote:
Captain Haddock wrote:
Languages are always classified according to their origins, regardless of where they borrow words from. English is a Germanic language because it evolved from Old German, even though at least half its vocabulary is French or Latin. |
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No English is classified as a Germanic language because despite the vast number of French and Latin borrowings , it's grammar and structure are still Germanic in nature. |
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Languages are never classified into genetic families by structure, grammar, or vocabulary. The structure and grammar of French, for example, are completely different from Latin, and yet it is considered a Romance language. The structure and grammar of Bulgarian are completely different from all the other Slavic languages, and yet it is considered a Slavic language. English is a Germanic language because we can trace its evolution back to Proto-Germanic. French is a Romance language because we can trace its evolution back to Vulgar Latin.
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| sumabeast Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6930 days ago 212 posts - 220 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written)
| Message 11 of 13 22 December 2006 at 9:56am | IP Logged |
alexptrans wrote:
[Languages are never classified into genetic families by structure, grammar, or vocabulary. The structure and grammar of French, for example, are completely different from Latin, and yet it is considered a Romance language. The structure and grammar of Bulgarian are completely different from all the other Slavic languages, and yet it is considered a Slavic language. English is a Germanic language because we can trace its evolution back to Proto-Germanic. French is a Romance language because we can trace its evolution back to Vulgar Latin. |
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You are way off here.
The structure and grammar of French is clearly Latin in nature. ex: masc. fem gender, noun/adj order, admitedly I can't think of an example of a lang that has changed so significantly from it's origins that its grammar and structure has evolved along patterns of a completely different lang family.
If as you say French does not follow the Latin/Romance structure, then where would you put it?
same for Bulgarian and Slavic family, you say it's classed as Slavic only due to its roots, if not for that then how would you classify Bulgarian?
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| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6772 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek
| Message 12 of 13 22 December 2006 at 10:09am | IP Logged |
Obviously, Bulgarian would be an isolate if it hadn't evolved from Proto-Slavic, and ultimately Proto-IE. :) I think Alex's point is that a language might evolve a very different grammar and vocabulary from its progenitors, yet it's its geneology path, and not its features, that determines what family it's classified in. Language families are, by definition, groups of languages with common ancestors.
Edited by Captain Haddock on 23 December 2006 at 4:07am
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| alexptrans Pentaglot Senior Member Israel Joined 6769 days ago 208 posts - 236 votes Speaks: English, Modern Hebrew, Russian*, French, Arabic (Written) Studies: Icelandic
| Message 13 of 13 23 December 2006 at 3:42am | IP Logged |
You're right, Captain Haddock. That is what I meant.
Sumabeast: That is exactly my point. Even though the structure and grammar of Bulgarian are markedly different from other Slavic languages, it is still a Slavic language.
One of the most fundamental opposed divisions in linguistics is the division between languages with rich inflectional morphology (such as Latin and Russian) and rather isolating languages (such as French, Bulgarian, and English). A language that has changed from one of these types into the other (Latin>French, Proto-Slavic>Bulgarian) has undergone a dramatic change in its grammar and structure. The loss of Latin's seven cases in modern Romance languages, the development of articles (which did not exist in Latin), the change from Subject-Object-Verb in Latin to Subject-Verb-Object in modern Romance languages, the development of rather complicated, rigid syntax compared to Latin's relatively free word order--these are all very, very significant changes.
Edited by alexptrans on 23 December 2006 at 12:48pm
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