[RD] Daily Graphs and Charts

[CavLancer]

Trying to determine what the definition of "is" is must have aged him. Perhaps this happened between the 6th row down, extreme left hand side and the 7th down, extreme right.

 

[Leoreth]

Have you noticed this being any sort of real problem in your lifetime? I'm old, and I haven't. Cold war, war on drugs, war on terrorism, assorted wars here and there, crime rampant in the streets, illegal alien invasions...fearmongering never really seems to fail, near as I can make out.

If the military won't buy your heavy equipment anymore, simply sell it to the police.

Composite chart thingy showing how Bill Clinton aged 20 years

I thought it was a picture of all Senate members for a second.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

If the military won't buy your heavy equipment anymore, simply sell it to the police.

When your military won't buy your equipment any more it is usually because they consider it to be obsolete...so they don't mind if you sell it to someone else's military.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

In the US we don't so much "sell" old military equipment to the police as give it away to them for free, on the condition that they can find some excuse to use it within one year's time. In most cases their uses are not really necessary and only serve to escalate situations, but the cops are incentivized to use it anyway lest it be taken away before it would really come in useful.

 

[Cutlass]

Spoiler :

 

[warpus]

And here I am worrying about the weekend.

 

[cybrxkhan]

The one about words going extinct in 1000 years makes no sense. We're still using words that were used a millennia ago, heck even longer than that - in Beowulf I'm certain even though it's in unintelligible Old English there's a number of familiar words that you can pick out, and if we go outside of English we have other words from other languages used a long time ago that are still around (and not just Latin or Greek or course). Of course if you're talking about a modern-day language evolving to the point where it's no longer intelligible to us, sure, 1000 years might make sense, but so would a couple of centuries, or a couple thousand years, given how at the moment we can't really predict exactly how a language will change.


But interesting chart anyways, that was my only quibble, i dunno much about the other ones but I've always been interested at the sort of things that could happen in the far, far, far future gazillions of years from now.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

The one about words going extinct in 1000 years makes no sense. We're still using words that were used a millennia ago, heck even longer than that - in Beowulf I'm certain even though it's in unintelligible Old English there's a number of familiar words that you can pick out, and if we go outside of English we have other words from other languages used a long time ago that are still around (and not just Latin or Greek or course). Of course if you're talking about a modern-day language evolving to the point where it's no longer intelligible to us, sure, 1000 years might make sense, but so would a couple of centuries, or a couple thousand years, given how at the moment we can't really predict exactly how a language will change.


But interesting chart anyways, that was my only quibble, i dunno much about the other ones but I've always been interested at the sort of things that could happen in the far, far, far future gazillions of years from now.

1000 years ago language wasn't changing at anything like the rate it is changing today. It was hardly changing at all. I wouldn't completely discount that part.

 

[cybrxkhan]

1000 years ago language wasn't changing at anything like the rate it is changing today. It was hardly changing at all. I wouldn't completely discount that part.

But language was changing. A lot. Constantly. Here's a comparison between various Bible passages between Old English, Middle English, and Early Modern English, a space of just about 600-800 years. Languages always change. There is nothing really unique about the modern era that really shakes the fundamental, basic ways language change happens. It's kind of like how right now we might have made great advances in genetics, but we can't really change the fundamentals of how we biologically evolve (yet). We get more special words, sure, but basics will remain. I hardly doubt we will lose basic words like "with" or "him" or "blue" or "and" and it's the basic words that still make up the majority of any speech.

Anyways, maybe I didn't make my point clear enough, but I'm saying it doesn't matter even if changes are happening faster or slower; I'm just nitpicking the fact that the chart says words will go "extinct" because present day words won't survive. Languages only go extinct when nobody uses them. Now our languages will evolve, certainly. Into what forms, who knows. There will always be plenty of words that will be familiar to people 1000 years ago (assuming English or its descendant languages don't become dead). Like I said, pick up any Middle or Old English text such as the example above and you'll be able to recognize at least a few words, especially basic words. Though it's written text, it also applies to spoken English - and actually for some people it might be easier to recognize words aurally. In other languages, sometimes change happens more slowly or faster for various reasons; some Persians can still understand Persian from 1000 years ago competently, for instance.


Sorry I'm kind of rambling.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

But language was changing. A lot. Constantly. Here's a comparison between various Bible passages between Old English, Middle English, and Early Modern English, a space of just about 600-800 years. Languages always change. There is nothing really unique about the modern era that really shakes the fundamental, basic ways language change happens. It's kind of like how right now we might have made great advances in genetics, but we can't really change the fundamentals of how we biologically evolve (yet). We get more special words, sure, but basics will remain. I hardly doubt we will lose basic words like "with" or "him" or "blue" or "and" and it's the basic words that still make up the majority of any speech.

Anyways, maybe I didn't make my point clear enough, but I'm saying it doesn't matter even if changes are happening faster or slower; I'm just nitpicking the fact that the chart says words will go "extinct" because present day words won't survive. Languages only go extinct when nobody uses them. Now our languages will evolve, certainly. Into what forms, who knows. There will always be plenty of words that will be familiar to people 1000 years ago (assuming English or its descendant languages don't become dead). Like I said, pick up any Middle or Old English text such as the example above and you'll be able to recognize at least a few words, especially basic words. Though it's written text, it also applies to spoken English - and actually for some people it might be easier to recognize words aurally. In other languages, sometimes change happens more slowly or faster for various reasons; some Persians can still understand Persian from 1000 years ago competently, for instance.


Sorry I'm kind of rambling.

No sweat. Extinct was clearly not an appropriate term there. What they actually seem to be saying is that no words over a thousand years old at the time will be in use, and that seems somewhat reasonable.

 

[cybrxkhan]

No sweat. Extinct was clearly not an appropriate term there. What they actually seem to be saying is that no words over a thousand years old at the time will be in use, and that seems somewhat reasonable.

Yeah, I think if you count more technical lexicon and slang, then it makes sense to an extent even if I don't like the wording. But basic words and terms? Those are often more resistant to change I think (though thinking about it I'm not exactly sure why); heck I'm pretty sure there's a few basic Proto-Indo-European words (from c. 4000-6000 BCE or what not) that we could recognize. There's that stereotype of old people not understanding the way kids talk, and it's not without reason because changes in slang can be very dynamic and complicated, but the difference between that and genuine language change is that old people and kids can still communicate more or less (well, I hope so) because the basics of the language are still the same.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

The is meaningless, so it is unlikely that it will ever change.

 

[Borachio]

I disagree. Meaning may have nothing to do with it. I think words can change as much out of pure musculo-mechanical habit patterns as anything else.

"The" could mutate in a number of directions in the fairly near future, especially since a lot of non-native English speaking people have trouble pronouncing "th". It could become "Ve", "Te", "Ze" or "De" for example.

Just look where it's recently come from.

 

[cybrxkhan]

Some sounds are more susceptible to change than others from what I know. For instance /c/ often goes to /&#679;/ and /&#632;/ to /f/ (I think, it's been a while since I studied this stuff). However, this is of course not a hard rule I think (otherwise we wouldn't be seeing a stable /c/ in various languages) and it doesn't mean people can't recognize the words even after they change <the> is hardly different from <de> or <se> and in context can still be understood given its a basic thing.

Anyways, all that doesn't change my original point for me regardless but it is interesting to know I suppose.

 

[cybrxkhan]

And now for something milky

 

[warpus]

I think this was covered earlier, but I missed it. Maybe not. Either way, do we owe the ability to consume milk to a mutation? Or do we owe the opposite to a mutation? The status quo used to be "this milk stuff makes us sick, we can't have it" and some people developed a mutation that allows them to drink it.. instead of the opposite.. right?

 

[stfoskey12]

But language was changing. A lot. Constantly. Here's a comparison between various Bible passages between Old English, Middle English, and Early Modern English, a space of just about 600-800 years. Languages always change. There is nothing really unique about the modern era that really shakes the fundamental, basic ways language change happens. It's kind of like how right now we might have made great advances in genetics, but we can't really change the fundamentals of how we biologically evolve (yet). We get more special words, sure, but basics will remain. I hardly doubt we will lose basic words like "with" or "him" or "blue" or "and" and it's the basic words that still make up the majority of any speech.

Anyways, maybe I didn't make my point clear enough, but I'm saying it doesn't matter even if changes are happening faster or slower; I'm just nitpicking the fact that the chart says words will go "extinct" because present day words won't survive. Languages only go extinct when nobody uses them. Now our languages will evolve, certainly. Into what forms, who knows. There will always be plenty of words that will be familiar to people 1000 years ago (assuming English or its descendant languages don't become dead). Like I said, pick up any Middle or Old English text such as the example above and you'll be able to recognize at least a few words, especially basic words. Though it's written text, it also applies to spoken English - and actually for some people it might be easier to recognize words aurally. In other languages, sometimes change happens more slowly or faster for various reasons; some Persians can still understand Persian from 1000 years ago competently, for instance.


Sorry I'm kind of rambling.

It's amazing how much easier it is to read a 400 year old text than a 1000 year old text.

 

[Kyriakos]

^Not all languages change that much. And i do not mean artificially resurrected ones (Jewish language in Israel, dead for millennia). Ancient Greek from the time of Aristotle is surprisingly easy to read (for myself, and i haven't really studied ancient Greek apart from in school and not that much either). But before that the texts do seem very difficult to read if one just knows current Greek. (and in the Homeric epics it is virtually impossible to do so). The new testament greek also is easy, but the texts are rather simple anyway (they weren't meant for scholars either).
Byzantine era texts also are ok, most of the time, but have other issues like more latinate terms.

 

[Domen]

Views of a YT video - since 10.09.2010 during almost 5 years it has had over 24 k views, including 6,5 k on a single day (23.04.2015):

 

[Cutlass]