@scriptlinguist-blog / scriptlinguist-blog.tumblr.com
So since the blog just recently broke 2,000 followers I thought I’d set up a chat server so that the community can really come together and build something great, because all you guys are fantastic.
Now this is a bit of an experiment as, well, I have no idea how many of the 2,000+ of you are going to be joining the server so it could either be near empty or it could be so teaming with people it’ll be insane, so we’ll see how this works.
Anyhow, don’t be shy, swing by and say hello!
How realistic is it for a group of several cultures to live in close proximity for many years, and to keep both their own individual languages and a common trade language between them? And could a culture over time "forget" or "lose" their own language if they had a shrinking population that had to speak the common language more often? Thanks in advance. Sorry if this doesn't fall under your job description.
So in answer to your first question, pretty realistic. I mean you’d get some loanwords and some influence between the languages and that common trade language would, depending upon circumstances, likely be a pidgin or creole, but that’s 100% plausible.
In answer to your second question, most definitely. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of examples of this happening in the real world throughout history and around the globe.
Hiya! As far as I know, there are few, if any, human languages that contain syllables without vowel sounds. Tashlhiyt Berber has a few. My question would be whether such a language - if, let's say, made by an alien species that was brought to humankind - could be spoken by human beings, just in general. I'd assume not 'fluently', as those aliens would, but theoretically it should be possible, despite being awkward, right? I'd appreciate a reply!
I actually once designed a language pretty much right along these lines!
(Also man am I excited about this question as I love talking about what I call “theoretical xenolinguistics”.)
So short version: Yes, you’re totally right. While awkward, it would be possible.
Long version: Really depends on the alien physiology. See there’s a lot of sounds humans can, and regularly do make, that at least to most English speakers don’t strike you as being very vowel-ish while still being able to serve the same purpose as a vowel.
One example of this is nasals. At the very least you can start a word with a nasal then go directly into another consonant, even a stop. Just to make up a word, you can for instance say “mturi” (note: this would not be pronounced like “muh-turi” or anything but like “mmmmm-turi”). You find this feature in most Bantu languages, for instance.
So yeah, point is, that’s totally doable! (Hell the language I created even went without voiced sounds and was still pronounceable.)
I read that we have no idea of how Latin sounded. But I once read that Latin is still spoken in a very small area in Italy. Is that true?
As I mentioned in this post here, there are a wide variety of versions and dialects of Latin, many of which are basically lost to us.
Still if you mean Classical Latin, well, there’s no way to say for sure how it sounded. Obviously there are no recordings from 2,000 years ago. There are, however, a number of ways we can get a pretty good idea.
If I’m honest, I’m not terribly familiar with these methods, but regardless, while there is no way to say 100% for certain how any language no longer spoken sounded, we can usually get a fairly decent idea.
As for some form of Latin still spoken in some little pocket of Italy… I did a bit of digging and couldn’t find anything at all. That’s not to say that what you read absolutely 800% isn’t true, but given the popularity of Latin, I’m guessing that if there were still some people whose native language was some descendant of Latin, there would be a substantial amount of information on them.
Which leads me to another point. Language changes. There’s no set speed and it typically changes in sudden bursts, in my experience, though there are also gradual shifts as well, but unless there was a conscious effort to stick to a form of Latin as it was always used, by now the language would have changed so much that I doubt it’d be even classified or recognizable as Latin.
Not sure if this falls exactly within your realm of expertise, but thank you in advance. I have a character who was forced to learn a new language when she was 10 (world jumping) and finally returns home at age 19. Given that she would not have been speaking her first language with anyone else for 9 years, what would her transition to speaking her native language look like? I assume she'd only have the vocab of a 10-year-old, but can still learn more over time.
This falls kind of under psycholinguistics I think which I’m not super well versed in, but here’s what I’d think.
By the age of ten our native language (especially if we’re monolingual) is pretty firmly cemented in our minds. So for those nine years, despite speaking in another language, she’d probably be thinking in her native one. I mean she might occasionally use words from her second language that she doesn’t have a word for in her native tongue because, as you pointed out, she’d only have the vocab of a 10 year old.
Still, while it might feel a little weird and she might occasionally use bits of her second language to fill in any blanks, switching back to her native language would be pretty easy.
Language is… kind of like riding a bike, once you’ve got it, well I won’t say you never forget, but it’s pretty easy to get back on it and figure it out in one go.
hi i'm writing a story taking place in ancient rome and the main character is originally from thrace, what language did they speak there or at least what languages is it related to?
Ha! I was actually recently just researching something along these very lines. Well they spoke Thracian, which was a bit of a weird language we don’t know much about.
We’re pretty sure it’s related to modern day Albanian, Lithuanian, and Latvian, which, I know, seems a bit confusing (at least Lithuanian and Latvian) given that they’re pretty far from where Thrace was, and that Bulgarian, which now more or less occupies that space, isn’t on the list, but there’s a lot of history of whole groups of people migrating long distances all around that area to explain it.
Hey! Can you tell me if the latin taught in schools today is simular or even the same as the language spoken in ancient Rome? And if not what was the language of the Romans like back than? Thank you for answering all the questions. Your blog is amazing!
Disclaimer: Latin is not one of my strong suits so if any of my followers spot an error with this post, please let me know.
It’s possible that it’s similar but the same? Not at all. Probably not even terribly similar. What’s taught in schools these days is a cross between what some call High Latin and Ecclesiastical Latin.
What people spoke has, rather dismissively if you ask me, been labeled Vulgar Latin.
Unfortunately, last I checked, we know virtually nothing about Vulgar Latin. A best guess at how different it would be is… alright, think about how you and your best friends talk just normally. That’s Vulgar Latin. Now take a really dense scientific article or maybe medical textbook and cross it with the King James Bible and you get the Latin we are taught in schools.
I'm writing a book with angelic figures (tall, just, and winged). How would a language form that needs to be communicated with little misunderstanding (the presentation of laws and arbitrary but confusing ideas), but over the specific noise of wind (flying)?
This is a bit of a toughy. To keep things clear and avoid misunderstanding, you’d probably want to go for a highly inflected language such as Latin.
As for getting it across over the sounds associated with flying, I have two recommendations.
I'm creating a story based off the Mandela Effect, and there are small, gradual changes in parallel universes. What do you think the first few changes would be? I'm thinking maybe house colour, or even nationality of Main Characters parents etc.
I think you’ve got the wrong blog, friend, as I can’t see what this has to do with language or linguistics if we’re talking house color and the like. Sorry!
I am writing about a culture with a heavy focus on religion in which value is placed upon those who have qualities/traits of the 2 ' pure ' gods and who follow the path of the gods. Would there be a latin equivalent to describe this and possibly an Antonym to describe one veers too closely to the 'Evil' gods
1) This is pretty vague.
2) It explicitly says on the blog I am not a translator.
Hello! Thank you so much for running this blog. A big question I have is how do you realistically write dialogue for a character that is bilingual or knows more than one language? What if they are not fluent in the language that is not their mother tongue? Thank you again!
Frankly, if someone is truly bilingual, trilingual, whatever and fluent in all their languages then there’d be virtually no hint of that in their dialogue, apart from perhaps an accent if not speaking their mother tongue (though if they learned their many languages as a child they would have learned the proper accents too).
The only times it might appear is if they are around a lot of people who speak one of their other languages, then they’d probably speak a mix of the two. The other is if they want to say something in probably not their mother tongue but what they want to say there’s a word for in their mother tongue, but no good translation into the second language.
However, if they say were born and raised in Russia and speak okay English, but not great, this would be evidenced in their speech patterns. Now how much and in what ways it’d be evidenced depends on their mother tongue. I chose Russian because it’s one of the more obvious ones.
Instead of saying, “Get in the car and call your grandparents, tell them we are coming.”
They would likely say something like, “Get in car, go call grandparents, tell them we are going.”
Sorry this blog has been on an unannounced and unofficial hiatus for a while, I’ve just had... well, let’s say a lot of real life stuff to deal with. Most of it very unpleasant, and I just haven’t had it in me to keep up with the asks.
Well my real life situation hasn’t changed but the outpouring of actual interest in linguistics and the like has breathed new life into me so to speak, so I’m going to attempt to resurrect things here. It’ll be slow going at first and I’m sorry if I never answered your question, but I’m working on it, I promise!
Hello and thank you for your work ! Do you know where I could find an accurate dictionary of idioms and expressions in various languages ? With distinction between regional variants, ie canadian french/côte d'ivoire french/etc. By accurate I mean the expressions really exist, are commonly known by the speakers, and are correctly reported. Thanks !
Unfortunately I’m not aware of any such resource that I’d trust, but perhaps one of my many lovely followers is?
hi! thank you so much for running this blog. So i'm writing a world that's very technologically/engineering based (let's say 100 years into the future). All of society is focused on coding. I'm trying to think of slang that these people would use, but the only thing I can come up with is "shiny", and that's already been used by firefly. Do you have any suggestions? Also, do you think people would use slang/profanity that's being used right now? (like, we still say "cool" and "neat" today).
Like I’ve said before, slang and profanity are very difficult to predict, but given that we say “fuck” some 700-900 years after it’s first found written down (so it was probably used earlier than that even), I’d say a lot of slang and especially profanity would stay the same.
As for new slang, perhaps do a bit of research on computers and the like and borrow words and phrases from that as metaphors or similes for other things.
For example if someone just woke up and someone was talking to them really fast they might say, “Slow down, I’m still in the boot sequence here…”
I have imagined an alien language which runs in two simultaneous parts: the words, and the tune. Both parts are complete languages (may have to work outside human hearing). Socially, they can hold dual conversations, or use one to comment on the other. As you can imagine, humans have a hard time learning the languages -- in fact, they only know the first one exists for quite a long while, a distinct diplomatic disadvantage. Do you have any ideas for ways I can depict this/these langs in text?
Unfortunately there’s no perfect way of doing this that I can think of, but the best I can come up with would be something along the lines of…
“How are you? - I ask as you look quite sickly - May I escort - Protect, really - you to your ship?” Gnarvuk asked. The stuff between hyphens and in italics would be the sort of “meta language”. Hope that helps!
