4 ms·

There are so many fascinating things about languages. Here are a couple: - Toss people together who don't really have a common language, and they quickly evolv

There are so many fascinating things about languages. Here are a couple: - Toss people together who don't really have a common language, and they quickly evolve a pidgin, which is a very simplified kind of language that lets them communicate. Over a couple of generations, the pidgin evolves into a full language. This has happened repeatedly over history, often through things like conquering or enslaving other groups or nations. - Isolate people, and they quickly develop their own dialect. Continue the isolation, and the dialect will diverge into a separate language. Dutch is an evolved German dialect. On the other end of Germany, Swiss German is much the same, but isn't quite regarded as its own language. As another comment says: it really makes no sense to suppose there was one, unique, proto-language. Evolution is a gradual process, and the complexity of communication will have evolved just as gradually. Likely, different tribes will have had different communication patterns. Interbreeding, warfare and slavery will have mixed things up occasionally, but there will surely have been many different dialects and languages.

retrac 3y ago
> Over a couple of generations, the pidgin evolves into a full language. Yes, and full creole languages, ones with relatively little of the grammar of their parent languages, have a number of similarities in their grammar. These similarities persist whatever the parent languages. Different continents, different parent languages, grammatical similarities. For example, plurals are often formed by reduplication (dog -> dog-dog = dogs), word order is subject-verb-object or subject-object-verb, suffixes follow the morpheme they're attached to. The grammars are extremely regular, almost no exceptions, no complex sound-fusion rules. It's generally thought that creole languages, immediately after formation, are actually simpler than most other languages grammatically. Which may have been like creoles at one point but then picked up a bunch of useless nonsense you just have to memorize. (This view is sometimes challenged, and it must be admitted, it is hard to define and measure complexity in language.) That is one of those small hints that language may be physiologically innate, or an emergent phenomenon that recreates itself in similar ways each time it is invented by people who need to communicate -- i.e., universal grammar, that ever-so-tempting yet ever-so-unprovable idea that got everyone tangled up last century.
linguistics__ 3y ago
Just as a little correction: Dutch is not an "evolved German dialect". German and Dutch are both West Germanic languages, but so is Scots, Frisian and English. So it would be like saying that German is an evolved English dialect then (though to be fair, Dutch and German are grouped closer to each-other in that family tree usually and have provided a lot of substrate for each-other due to close contact). Swiss German is not regarded as a its own language by any nation, though from a purely linguistic perspective it could very well be classified as its own language. What is deemed a language vs. a dialect usually comes down to politics. The saying usually goes something like: "A language is just a dialect with an army".
- ffhhttt 3y ago
  > Swiss German If we go a few hundred years or so it would’ve been considered a language as much as any other German “dialect”. But somebody decided to pick another dialect to be the “standard German” language. Same applies to France and Italy. Especially when some northern Italian “dialect” are actually more closely related to “French” and some southern “French” ones to Catalan. Just like for instance Dutch interestingly enough is closer to Franconian than to Frisian.
- ochrist 3y ago
  There are those who believe that English should be considered North Germanic (Scandinavian) rather than West Germanic: https://brill.com/view/journals/ldc/6/1/article-p1_1.xml?language=en https://brill.com/view/journals/ldc/6/1/article-p1_1.xml?lan...
- ZeroGravitas 3y ago
  I saw a a neat video recently that mapped the spread of language through Germany as a gradient, with each successive wave being understood by their neighbours but people at opposite ends of the spectrum having difficulty. Then national boundaries cut right through that. https://youtu.be/ilWSllUAM7U?si=t7IFX2QxdIq_jL5d https://youtu.be/ilWSllUAM7U?si=t7IFX2QxdIq_jL5d
LudwigNagasena 3y ago
> Isolate people, and they quickly develop their own dialect. Are you sure of that? I think the absence of external communication would make a language more conservative.
- ffhhttt 3y ago
  Yeah, it’s generally the inverse from what they are saying. Isolated groups retain the old form of the language for much longer. e.g. Romansh or even Basque.
  - tyg13 3y ago
    It seems multi-dimensional. Isolation allows for parallel language development, but that development could be conservative relative to the rest of the speakers, or it could be heavily divergent. Basque is an example where there's an obvious motivation for linguistic conservatism: the maintenance of a language that is "untainted" by the constant and unbalanced contact with French and Spanish speakers. There's a need to preserve a language that would otherwise be consumed and die out. English is actually a great example, I think, of how isolation can lead to divergence. Compared to other languages in its family (e.g. Dutch and German) it's wildly unintelligible, largely owing to the fact that English was spoken on an island where contact with speakers of other Germanic languages was much less common.
    - LudwigNagasena 3y ago
      English is a great example of a language with huge influence from other Germanic languages and the French language. It wasn’t isolated in any meaningful sense: there were local Celtic tribes that lived there before Anglo-Saxons, then there was Danelaw, then there was the Norman conquest. Icelandic is a better example.
      - tyg13 3y ago
        Sure, maybe not entirely isolated. I just mean that the geographic isolation of being an island means you don't see a dialect continuum between English and other languages the way that you do with say, the various Germanic languages.
BurningFrog 3y ago
> Over a couple of generations, the pidgin evolves into a full language What I read is that children born into a pidgin speaking society will turn it into a full (creole) language, because that's how people work.
- giraffe_lady 3y ago
  So, yes, but it can take a little time. The two main things is that a language will meet the needs of its speakers, and that people will have at least one native language. You can't prevent either thing across a group. A new & true pidgin has no native speakers, so no group will depend on it for all of their communication needs, falling back to their native languages when possible/necessary. It will be a native language of the first generation born into its communities. But critically they will also usually be native speakers of another language, the one their parents use at home, and will still be able to fall back to that for some of their communication needs. So the pidgin will grow and change from the use of the first native speaker cohort, but it can take multiple generations for it to have a base of native speakers who depend on it absolutely. Though in other cases, esp with more than two combined languages, it can happen in one generation. And as it's happening, it's fuzzy on whether it's a pidgin or a creole. I don't think linguists consider them separate non-overlapping categories, but more like the two modes in a bimodal distribution. Understanding is also complicated by the fact that these emerge relatively rarely, and tend to be in groups & parts of the world, until relatively recently, without a lot of scholarly attention on them.
  - BurningFrog 3y ago
    That sounds right. I appreciate the added detail. I learned what little I know on this from John McWorther's book "The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language": https://a.co/d/edvzLuB https://a.co/d/edvzLuB

retrac 3y ago

> Over a couple of generations, the pidgin evolves into a full language. Yes, and full creole languages, ones with relatively little of the grammar of their parent languages, have a number of similarities in their grammar. These similarities persist whatever the parent languages. Different continents, different parent languages, grammatical similarities. For example, plurals are often formed by reduplication (dog -> dog-dog = dogs), word order is subject-verb-object or subject-object-verb, suffixes follow the morpheme they're attached to. The grammars are extremely regular, almost no exceptions, no complex sound-fusion rules. It's generally thought that creole languages, immediately after formation, are actually simpler than most other languages grammatically. Which may have been like creoles at one point but then picked up a bunch of useless nonsense you just have to memorize. (This view is sometimes challenged, and it must be admitted, it is hard to define and measure complexity in language.) That is one of those small hints that language may be physiologically innate, or an emergent phenomenon that recreates itself in similar ways each time it is invented by people who need to communicate -- i.e., universal grammar, that ever-so-tempting yet ever-so-unprovable idea that got everyone tangled up last century.

linguistics__ 3y ago

Just as a little correction: Dutch is not an "evolved German dialect". German and Dutch are both West Germanic languages, but so is Scots, Frisian and English. So it would be like saying that German is an evolved English dialect then (though to be fair, Dutch and German are grouped closer to each-other in that family tree usually and have provided a lot of substrate for each-other due to close contact). Swiss German is not regarded as a its own language by any nation, though from a purely linguistic perspective it could very well be classified as its own language. What is deemed a language vs. a dialect usually comes down to politics. The saying usually goes something like: "A language is just a dialect with an army".

ffhhttt 3y ago
> Swiss German If we go a few hundred years or so it would’ve been considered a language as much as any other German “dialect”. But somebody decided to pick another dialect to be the “standard German” language. Same applies to France and Italy. Especially when some northern Italian “dialect” are actually more closely related to “French” and some southern “French” ones to Catalan. Just like for instance Dutch interestingly enough is closer to Franconian than to Frisian.
ochrist 3y ago
There are those who believe that English should be considered North Germanic (Scandinavian) rather than West Germanic: https://brill.com/view/journals/ldc/6/1/article-p1_1.xml?language=en https://brill.com/view/journals/ldc/6/1/article-p1_1.xml?lan...
ZeroGravitas 3y ago
I saw a a neat video recently that mapped the spread of language through Germany as a gradient, with each successive wave being understood by their neighbours but people at opposite ends of the spectrum having difficulty. Then national boundaries cut right through that. https://youtu.be/ilWSllUAM7U?si=t7IFX2QxdIq_jL5d https://youtu.be/ilWSllUAM7U?si=t7IFX2QxdIq_jL5d

LudwigNagasena 3y ago

> Isolate people, and they quickly develop their own dialect. Are you sure of that? I think the absence of external communication would make a language more conservative.

ffhhttt 3y ago
Yeah, it’s generally the inverse from what they are saying. Isolated groups retain the old form of the language for much longer. e.g. Romansh or even Basque.
- tyg13 3y ago
  It seems multi-dimensional. Isolation allows for parallel language development, but that development could be conservative relative to the rest of the speakers, or it could be heavily divergent. Basque is an example where there's an obvious motivation for linguistic conservatism: the maintenance of a language that is "untainted" by the constant and unbalanced contact with French and Spanish speakers. There's a need to preserve a language that would otherwise be consumed and die out. English is actually a great example, I think, of how isolation can lead to divergence. Compared to other languages in its family (e.g. Dutch and German) it's wildly unintelligible, largely owing to the fact that English was spoken on an island where contact with speakers of other Germanic languages was much less common.
  - LudwigNagasena 3y ago
    English is a great example of a language with huge influence from other Germanic languages and the French language. It wasn’t isolated in any meaningful sense: there were local Celtic tribes that lived there before Anglo-Saxons, then there was Danelaw, then there was the Norman conquest. Icelandic is a better example.
    - tyg13 3y ago
      Sure, maybe not entirely isolated. I just mean that the geographic isolation of being an island means you don't see a dialect continuum between English and other languages the way that you do with say, the various Germanic languages.

BurningFrog 3y ago

> Over a couple of generations, the pidgin evolves into a full language What I read is that children born into a pidgin speaking society will turn it into a full (creole) language, because that's how people work.

giraffe_lady 3y ago
So, yes, but it can take a little time. The two main things is that a language will meet the needs of its speakers, and that people will have at least one native language. You can't prevent either thing across a group. A new & true pidgin has no native speakers, so no group will depend on it for all of their communication needs, falling back to their native languages when possible/necessary. It will be a native language of the first generation born into its communities. But critically they will also usually be native speakers of another language, the one their parents use at home, and will still be able to fall back to that for some of their communication needs. So the pidgin will grow and change from the use of the first native speaker cohort, but it can take multiple generations for it to have a base of native speakers who depend on it absolutely. Though in other cases, esp with more than two combined languages, it can happen in one generation. And as it's happening, it's fuzzy on whether it's a pidgin or a creole. I don't think linguists consider them separate non-overlapping categories, but more like the two modes in a bimodal distribution. Understanding is also complicated by the fact that these emerge relatively rarely, and tend to be in groups & parts of the world, until relatively recently, without a lot of scholarly attention on them.
- BurningFrog 3y ago
  That sounds right. I appreciate the added detail. I learned what little I know on this from John McWorther's book "The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language": https://a.co/d/edvzLuB https://a.co/d/edvzLuB