LL-L "Language history" 2011.04.18 (02) [EN]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 18 April 2011 - Volume 02
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From: Paul Finlow-Bates <wolf_thunder51 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Language history" 2011.04.16 (01) [EN]


You may not need to share a language to interbreed, but having interbred,
you (or your offspring) are pretty likely to share a language.



Paul

Derby

England



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From: Pat Barrett <pbarrett at cox.net>
Subject: LL-L "Language history" 2011.04.18 (01) [EN]


Funny you should write this. On a listserv for fl teachers we are having to
"entertain" the notion that Spanish Usted ("you" formal) is from Turkish
'ustad' (a Persian word borrowed into Arabic and thence into many other
languages and meaning "master/teacher"). So many people with no background
in linguistics believe that their language is the center of the universe and
that any mild coincidence in form between two words with similar meaning is
evidence of borrowing, always from the writer's language, of course. Doesn't
the whole world learn from Turkish?

Serbian saying: Speak Serbian and the whole world will understand you -
?????????



This is not a comment on the recently proposed single source theory.

Pat Barrett
http://ideas.lang-learn.us/barrett.php



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From: Marcus Buck <list at marcusbuck.org>

Subject: LL-L "Language history" 2011.04.18 (01) [EN]



From: R. F. Hahn
<sassisch at yahoo.com<http://uk.mc286.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=sassisch@yahoo.com>>


And then there are the terms *indogermanisch* (German) and
*Indo-Germaans*(Dutch) that are still being used for “Indo-European”
...



I agree that there's much nationalism involved in linguistics but I don't
think this is a good example. It was named after the two geographic extremes
among the language families united by the Indogermanic superfamily. There's
nothing nationalist about that.

And if you look at this:
<http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=Indogermanic%2CIndoeuropean&year_start=1700&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3><http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=Indogermanic%2CIndoeuropean&year_start=1700&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3>
you could easily get the impression, that quite the opposite is true.
"Indoeuropean" is the true nationalist term. The English language almost
exclusively used the term "Indogermanic" until WW I when "Indoeuropean"
sprung up. It was still the preferred term until WW II, when "Indoeuropean"
became more prevalent than "Indogermanic".

The English-speaking world changed the term because they disliked the name
of their war enemy appearing in the name of their language family. The
Germans and the Dutch just sticked to the established term.

Marcus Buck



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