4 ms·
I read somewhere that English is quite rare in that it doesn't have at least one mutually intelligible near relative. If true, the diagram doesn't reflect that.
by billforsternz 11y ago
I read somewhere that English is quite rare in that it doesn't have at least one mutually intelligible near relative. If true, the diagram doesn't reflect that.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- glup 11y agoThat seems like a weird assertion on the part of whatever you read, because 1) it isn't clear what constitutes a separate, well-defined language (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect_continuum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialect_continuum) and 2) mutual intelligibility is a gradient, not a binary. Many speakers of Standard American English have to turn on subtitles to understand what's going on in movies from the UK (like Trainspotting). So maybe we call a great many things English?
- billforsternz 11y agoFor what it's worth, I think I recall where I read it. "The Power of Babel" a popular science linguistics book by John McWhorter. I'll see if I can dig up the quote later and report back......
- barry-cotter 11y agoScots, Jamaican patois, Hawaiaan Pidgin, Tok Pisin
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- Wildgoose 11y agoThe Scots language is a good counterpoint - they aren't just speaking "English" with an accent and the odd bits of different vocabulary such as the word "outwith". And Frisian comes close, e.g. "Bread, butter and green cheese is good English and good Fries", which sounds not very different from "Brea, bûter en griene tsiis is goed Ingelsk en goed Frysk". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Frisian_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Frisian_language
- jacobush 11y agoI don't think it's true. Depends on what you mean by rare, I guess.