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Your Language Fantasy | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Luso Hexaglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6063 days ago 819 posts - 1812 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, French, EnglishC2, GermanB1, Italian, Spanish Studies: Sanskrit, Arabic (classical) | Message 33 of 49 27 May 2009 at 4:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
Funny you should mention that: in a T.V. program I saw recently, they were interviewing people from this town of Malaca and, although with a little nuances, their Portuguese is quite understandable. Of course, it was a bit unusual to watch folklore from the northern part of Portugal being played (and danced) by these same Malaysians, dressed in traditional Portuguese garb. But, being Portuguese means getting used to this type of thing; it seems we've, in a way or another, been almost everywhere. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Alkeides Senior Member Bhutan Joined 6150 days ago 636 posts - 644 votes | Message 34 of 49 27 May 2009 at 5:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It'd be interesting if the Abrahamic religions never developed. The Roman Empire might not have split (or fallen as early), but on the flip side, the Germanic tribes might not have been "civilized" so early (although this might be debatable; the Germani might have simply adopted Roman technological advances while maintaining a syncrestic religion like across most of the Roman-conquered polytheistic world). Hebrew would be one of the many Canaanite languages, which would probably be swallowed up by Greek eventually. Arabic would also never be as successful as it is, with the Arab tribes probably continuing to raid merchants and to fight each other, until maybe the Romans decided to conquer them.
If Xerxes had divided his forces more wisely, Greece would have been conquered as well. Also, if Ashoka's missionaries had successfully established Buddhism in the Mediterranean, the religious character and hence the linguistic aspect of the Middle East at least, might have been drastically different. And if China had made successful contact with the Romans (or Byzantines), they might have eliminated the Persians together earlier, and maybe establish a defence against the hordes of the steppes. If Julian had lived longer, the pagan religions might still have survived as well, and possibly Western-Eastern Roman contact would have gone on, eliminating the loss of Greek influence on the West during the "Dark Ages". The Hermetic schools would have gone on without persecution, with magic being treated as seriously as religion by some. Edited by Alkeides on 27 May 2009 at 5:58pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| skeeterses Senior Member United States angelfire.com/games5Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6620 days ago 302 posts - 356 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Korean, Spanish | Message 35 of 49 28 May 2009 at 3:50am | IP Logged | |||||
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Apart from winning the lottery and using the money to travel throughout East and Central Asia picking up different languages along the way, there is one silly thought I had in mind concerning the teaching of the English language.
Instead of offering courses on American English or British English, what if the textbook publishers offered courses that taught specific dialects of English like a course covering the American Deep South dialect of English and a course covering the New England dialect of English? Textbook publishers already are covering the spoken dialects of Arabic. Just imagine if someone over in China learned English and spoke English like a cowboy. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tritone Senior Member United States reflectionsinpo Joined 6122 days ago 246 posts - 385 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, French | Message 36 of 49 28 May 2009 at 7:03am | IP Logged | |||||
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In my linguistic fantasy the moors were never expelled from southern europe, arabic was the predominant language there today, and the iberian romance languages were all practically extinct.
...that would just be cool. Edited by tritone on 28 May 2009 at 7:19am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| kimchicurry Super Polyglot Newbie United States Joined 5997 days ago 12 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English, Cantonese*, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Hindi, Spanish, Nepali, Urdu, Taiwanese, Shanghainese, Kannada, Gujarati Studies: Biblical Hebrew, Arabic (Egyptian), Sinhalese, Swahili, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Arabic (Written), French, Persian, Bengali, Malay | Message 37 of 49 28 May 2009 at 9:38am | IP Logged | |||||
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My fantasy would be that humans were able to invent and use the concept of writing WAY earlier than they actually did. Imagine how much more we would know about early humanity if that had happened.
It would also be nice if someone deciphered the Indus Script one of these days. Still waiting on that one. Overall, it would be nice if more minority languages (Native American, Australian, etc.) could at least be at stable numbers for long-term preservation. At this rate, the only languages that will still be left on earth in 500 years will be Indo-European languages, Semitic (probably just Arabic, Hebrew, and maybe Amharic), Sinitic (probably just Mandarin by then), Turkic, Bantu (probably just Swahili and a few others), Dravidian (at least Tamil), Finno-Ugric (probably only Finnish, Hungarian, and maybe Estonian), Japanese, Korean, and a couple of the Southeast Asian languages with national status. My final wish while I'm at it would be to know the entire picture of the evolution of human languages. I wonder if there ever was one Proto-World language? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6705 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 38 of 49 28 May 2009 at 12:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
The idea of proto-languages is somewhat misleading. We might theoretically be able to trace all the modern languages back to a common ancestor, spoken by a community somewhere on the planet. But provided that there were other speaking communities elsewhere they also had languages, - those languages have just perished completely. The true proto-language would of course be the one spoken by the towering genius (male or female) who first got the idea of speaking: "Hey, it would really be practical to be able to say something about the weather". But I doubt that you could pinpoint the event, - there may have been some major steps ("Hey, if I invented past tense then I could say something about the weather yesterday"), but the whole process must have taken some time. The big big question is when it happened and which human species did it. Home antecesssor? Homo sapiens? Or maybe even Homo erectus? Could the Neanderthalers speak, and if they could, did they have anything philosophical to say about man's condition on this planet? Or could they only say that it was about time to get out and murder a mammoth? Edited by Iversen on 28 May 2009 at 12:36pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5840 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 39 of 49 28 May 2009 at 12:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Interesting to learn about the proto-language; I had never considered it.
I've read that the Dolphins have a language although I don't know how sophisticated it is. Imagine if somebody worked out a way to speak "Dolphinian" and was able to have a conversation with a dolphin. They are at least as clever as a human child, so it'd be incredibly interesting. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Russianbear Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6777 days ago 358 posts - 422 votes 1 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, Ukrainian Studies: Spanish | Message 40 of 49 28 May 2009 at 6:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think speech happened in very early stages. Like you wrote, it was probably a process, so it would be hard to pin point the exact point in time. Besides, when you say "when it happened and which human species did it" - what do you mean by "it"? If it is speech, then some forms of it existed (and exist) even in primitive primates. So the speech probably existed was probably just getting more and more complex as the species evolved. Edited by Russianbear on 28 May 2009 at 6:22pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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