History Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread VI

[Kyriakos]

IIRC, it is relatively close because outside of the priesthood, Hebrew was a dead language during the Diaspora. It only began to be reconstituted as a daily-use language during the 19th century as part of nationalist movements.

Which meant that Yiddish was destroyed, while it was the actual jewish language for aeons (in Kafka's time there were even plays written in yiddish, for the theatre).

 

[Mouthwash]

Which meant that Yiddish was destroyed, while it was the actual jewish language for aeons (in Kafka's time there were even plays written in yiddish, for the theatre).

Well, this is rather offensive to an entire side of my family.

(And, btw, it isn't yet dead among certain anti-Zionist sects. I've heard some Satmar even learn it as a first language.)

 

[Kyriakos]

Not sure if you are serious (about being offended by the mention of the status of yiddish), but yiddish was obviously a language of european jewish people. Don't know if the moroccan jewish people you linked to had their own language, or were speaking arabic or iberian or some dialect close to one of those.

But Yiddish was an actual language, used by many generations, for commerce as well as general (or even artistic) communication. So it is not like it was some sideshow which ended for other reasons.

 

[Domen]

There were several Jewish languages even within Europe, not to mention languages outside of Europe.

For example Ladino (some 200,000 speakers today) among Spanish Jews, Italkian (almost extinct today) among Italian Jews. There was also a Judaeo-Portuguese and a Judaeo-Slavic - the latter of which developed in what is now Czech Republic and Eastern Germany (among Lusatian Sorbs, etc.).

Even Yiddish itself was not one language but rather Western Yiddish (extinct today) and Eastern Yiddish (which evolved in oland).

Of course Western and Eastern Yiddish had a common ancestor language, which originally developed in what is now German-French borderland.

Eastern Yiddish became the most widely spoken of Jewish languages because its speakers were lucky enough to settle in tolerant oland.

 

[Traitorfish]

Do we even know what Pictish was like? If not, Gaelic's the closest thing.

Consensus seems to be that they were Brythonic-speakers, so its closest modern equivalent would be Welsh. The Picts weren't really a distinct people so much as "Britons who happen to live above the Forth-Clyde line", so when we talk about a "Pictish language" we're really just talking about the British dialects in that region.

And while we're on the subject, how related is biblical Hebrew to modern Hebrew? Are they mutually intelligible? I know that modern Hebrew has absorbed lots of spoken or literal English words (and I'm against it- why can't they just invent a perfectly good Hebrew word for that stuff?).

If it's anything like the Celtic languages, that's not something that you can easily
control. People will take to some invented words, and not to others, and after a while you just have to accept it.

This may be a tangent, but would you really classify Scots as a distinct language from English (or "standard English", assuming that there is such a thing)? I think the degree of mutual comprehension of written texts is higher than you think; at least I can understand Scots poetry without any difficulty and my familiarity with it basically extends no further than having watched Rab C. Nesbitt.

I know this is a controversial subject but it seems to me that if a speaker of language A can understand a text of language B with no great difficulty beyond unfamiliar spelling or pronunciation then really they're different dialects rather than different languages. Scots is surely closer to "standard English" (i.e. whatever I personally happen to speak) than, say, some versions of Singlish, which I think has more non-standard vocabulary and more divergent grammar - not to mention even more divergent pronunciation - and so surely has more claim to be considered a distinct language. (This is particularly so when you hear people who speak both Singlish and standard English, and who switch between them in different contexts - the difference is much more than just accent and a bit of slang.)

Well, what else can we call it? We can say "dialect", but that's always an arbitrary distinction, really. All it tells us is that for the purposes of whatever point I'm currently making, I'm stressing commonalities rather than differences. Which is also true of "language", just in the reverse. Intelligibility isn't even the primary concern, because Danish and Norwegian are distinct "languages" despite being largely mutually intelligible, while Moroccan vernacular Arabic and Omani vernacular Arabic are merely "dialects" despite being largely mutually unintelligible.

The only real basis for distinguishing "languages" is historical, whether they've been treated as distinct language, and despite the collapse in status over the last three centuries, I think Scots has been, by native Scots-speakers if not by native English-speakers.

 

[Flying Pig]

I think it has to be perception, which is a totally fluid thing - we say, for example, that Dutch and German are different languages, or English and Scots, or even Dutch and Afrikaans, but we don't say that Cockney, Glasgow and Jamaica are anything other than dialects. Homeric Greek is 'Greek', and Old English is 'English', but those language pairs have much less in common than many confirmedly separate languages. The best example, of course, would be the 'dialects' of Chinese, which would almost certainly be recognised as separate languages were it not for, well, China.

 

[Mouthwash]

Not sure if you are serious (about being offended by the mention of the status of yiddish), but yiddish was obviously a language of european jewish people. Don't know if the moroccan jewish people you linked to had their own language, or were speaking arabic or iberian or some dialect close to one of those.

Well, it seemed a bit like you were tacitly mentioning Yiddish as the "actual" Jewish language, not the artificial Hebrew made up by the usurping Zionists. But you might not have meant that at all, despite your reputation, so I won't make any accusations.

What I was actually offended by was the fact that Yiddish was an Ashkenazi language. Sure, in local terms it was the "Jewish" language because there weren't any other Jewish ethnicities around in Poland or Germany, but that doesn't make it the actual Jewish language by a long shot. My father's ancestors never spoke it.

 

[Joecoolyo]

Other people beat me to it, but yeah, Yiddish was just the language of northern European Jews.

You're not going to find Yiddish being spoken in Spain, Morocco, China, Ethiopia, etc. etc. etc.

 

[Domen]

because there weren't any other Jewish ethnicities around

There were. There were also Sephardi and some Mizrahi Jews, especially in south-eastern oland.

For example here is Sephardi synagogue in Zamość from the 17th century:

 

[Mouthwash]

There were. There were also Sephardi and some Mizrahi Jews, especially in south-eastern oland.

For example here is Sephardi synagogue in Zamość from the 17th century:

It's always nice to know I can be debunked on a semantic basis. Can you explain the relevance of this factoid?

 

[Traitorfish]

Mouthwash, you should probably stop using the word "semantic" until you learn what it means.

Just, put it down.

Step away from it.

It will still be there later, when you're ready.

 

[Mouthwash]

Mouthwash, you should probably stop using the word "semantic" until you learn what it means.

Just, put it down.

Step away from it.

It will still be there later, when you're ready.

It means refuting an argument on a technicality. I believe.

For instance: Traitorfish says that guns "are better" than bows and arrows because they are more effective. Mouthwash makes an appeal to morality and argues that bows and arrows are objectively better than guns because they result in fewer deaths and injuries. Getting the point?

 

[Quackers]

With regards to the Scots thing, reading those poems from Plotinus' link there are some difficulties but i think they're deliberately doing it in order to distance themselves even further from English.
I just listened to one minute of their radio programme with two speakers of Scots and i understand both of them perfectly. They are literally just writing English with a Scottish accent differently and calling it a different language. Nuts.

 

[ParkCungHee]

It means refuting an argument on a technicality. I believe.

That is not the case.

 

[History_Buff]

It means refuting an argument on a technicality. I believe.

No it doesn't.

And if your argument is refuted on a technicality, it isn't a very good argument. Technically Correct is the best kind of correct.

 

[Mouthwash]

That is not the case.

Explain it to me, O ParkCungHee.

 

[Dachs]

Explain it to me, O ParkCungHee.

semantics is about word meanings, not some broad sweeping comment about "technicalities"

the word technicality is just a pejorative way to refer to a fact anyway

 

[ParkCungHee]

Explain it to me, O ParkCungHee.

Semantics is the study of meaning and language.

If you think you can always be debunked on a semantic basis, you are saying that your statements are universally articulated poorly, and rely on fuzzy or interchangeable meanings that form coherent sentences, but not coherent thoughts.

 

[sophie]

I don't know if mutual intelligibility is necessarily the best way to go about things here. I mean theoretically you could create a chain starting in SW Sicily with a speaker walking to the next village and talking to somebody there and being understood and keep doing that, chaining all the way up Italy through the riviera and into Galicia or Portugal. Moreover, even though I've never learned Italian, I can usually figure out what an Italian speaker is saying assuming they speak very very slowly, likewise with Portuguese.

Of course there are tons of other examples I can point to, such as speakers of neighboring villages in Germany being entirely unintelligible to each other even into the 50s despite them all technically speaking German. There's the famous story of a shipwrecked Bretonese being picked up by Welsh fishermen and them understanding each other, despite Welsh and Bréton commonly being acknowledged as distinct languages. Finally of course, even though I might be able to read Scots with some effort, I can also essentially make out Latin with some effort through my knowledge of Spanish and French, however I don't know if I'd be able to understand one he if spoke to me, and I know I've heard stories of Jamaican English and Scots speakers speakers being mutually unintelligible.

 

[Mouthwash]

Semantics is the study of meaning and language.

If you think you can always be debunked on a semantic basis, you are saying that your statements are universally articulated poorly, and rely on fuzzy or interchangeable meanings that form coherent sentences, but not coherent thoughts.

But I've seen it used in that context plenty of times.