What makes a language. a language? - Martin Hilpert
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Date: 2021-09-09
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Comments and reviews: 9
Solar
Standard languages are important. Imagine if contracts could just be interpreted randomly because some words mean something different in different dialects/varieties. But we shouldn't look down on varieties. I do think that learning of the standard version should be encouraged though. Here in Germany, people from regions where they don't speak standard German usually speak good standard German with people from other areas, but switch back to their respective dialects when talking to family. Not teaching a standard dialect excludes people who don't speak it because it's important as I wrote in the beginning. However, speaking your home dialect shouldn't be discouraged/punishes either.
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Standard languages are important. Imagine if contracts could just be interpreted randomly because some words mean something different in different dialects/varieties. But we shouldn't look down on varieties. I do think that learning of the standard version should be encouraged though. Here in Germany, people from regions where they don't speak standard German usually speak good standard German with people from other areas, but switch back to their respective dialects when talking to family. Not teaching a standard dialect excludes people who don't speak it because it's important as I wrote in the beginning. However, speaking your home dialect shouldn't be discouraged/punishes either.
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Rick
For a very long time the phrase, Do the needful. that my co-workers would use drove me crazy. Needful isn't a word, I would think. After many years, it suddenly hit me, it is a word. It's not a word in American English, but it is a word in Indian English. India was, of course, under English rule for a long time, and spoke English along with their native language, such as Hindi. The English people from India speak today is no less valid a variety than the language people in America speak. I just didn't think about or realize that there would be a variety of English from India.
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For a very long time the phrase, Do the needful. that my co-workers would use drove me crazy. Needful isn't a word, I would think. After many years, it suddenly hit me, it is a word. It's not a word in American English, but it is a word in Indian English. India was, of course, under English rule for a long time, and spoke English along with their native language, such as Hindi. The English people from India speak today is no less valid a variety than the language people in America speak. I just didn't think about or realize that there would be a variety of English from India.
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Michael
I learned french as a kid and in university I spent a year in germany in a region near the french border, and during that time was when I started to realize that what really makes languages different is just where someone drew the lines on the map. Before the idea of nations became a huge thing, people in any area likely could talk similar enough to communicate with people in any neighbouring area until someone drew lines between them and started educated them in a language similar to their own but different to the one across the border.
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I learned french as a kid and in university I spent a year in germany in a region near the french border, and during that time was when I started to realize that what really makes languages different is just where someone drew the lines on the map. Before the idea of nations became a huge thing, people in any area likely could talk similar enough to communicate with people in any neighbouring area until someone drew lines between them and started educated them in a language similar to their own but different to the one across the border.
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Bianca
Exactly, with the rise of Duterte and maybe Cebuanos moving in the US and Canada, I've seen so many forms and people think that Cebuano is the official national language. It's even considered a language in Google translate. It's not. Not officially. It doesn't help when I have to teach students who speak Tagalog, then to realize they can't even speak Tagalog cause they speak Cebuano. You can understand aspects of it cause it's technically a dialect, but I can't teach fully cause by the child doesn't even speak Tagalog.
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Exactly, with the rise of Duterte and maybe Cebuanos moving in the US and Canada, I've seen so many forms and people think that Cebuano is the official national language. It's even considered a language in Google translate. It's not. Not officially. It doesn't help when I have to teach students who speak Tagalog, then to realize they can't even speak Tagalog cause they speak Cebuano. You can understand aspects of it cause it's technically a dialect, but I can't teach fully cause by the child doesn't even speak Tagalog.
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Paolo
Tbf on the Italy part there was a massive oversimplification on the history of the language: Italian isn't just a Florentine dialect, it was enriched and modified with many more features. Meanwhile the other regional dialects have little to do with standard Italian: the dialects in the Po Valley are more similar to French than, for example, the Roman dialect. Also Italian wasn't just chosen, it was kind of built through centuries by authors and authors through basically half a dozen centuries of history
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Tbf on the Italy part there was a massive oversimplification on the history of the language: Italian isn't just a Florentine dialect, it was enriched and modified with many more features. Meanwhile the other regional dialects have little to do with standard Italian: the dialects in the Po Valley are more similar to French than, for example, the Roman dialect. Also Italian wasn't just chosen, it was kind of built through centuries by authors and authors through basically half a dozen centuries of history
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Bananaforscale
_When they spoke so-called Standard American English, which is often associated with whiteness, landlords responded more positively. _
I'm pretty sure they would react as bad on any different dialect than standard, which is spoken by all big media and politicians, so don't even imply it's not standard. Please, don't force racewars onto every topic imaginable.
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_When they spoke so-called Standard American English, which is often associated with whiteness, landlords responded more positively. _
I'm pretty sure they would react as bad on any different dialect than standard, which is spoken by all big media and politicians, so don't even imply it's not standard. Please, don't force racewars onto every topic imaginable.
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Fabienne
Great video as always: ) I come from Austria which has a lot of variants of german. Mine can be very hard to understand sometimes since it derived from alemannic and has a lot of abbreviations and unique vocabulary. It's amazing how different language, rituals and culture can be, even within the same country.
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Great video as always: ) I come from Austria which has a lot of variants of german. Mine can be very hard to understand sometimes since it derived from alemannic and has a lot of abbreviations and unique vocabulary. It's amazing how different language, rituals and culture can be, even within the same country.
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totalfreedom45
What makes a language a language? Communication; without the power to communicate, any language is meaningless. Music is a language; math is a language; and our species has come up with 31, 000 natural languages in 300, 000 years of our existence.
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What makes a language a language? Communication; without the power to communicate, any language is meaningless. Music is a language; math is a language; and our species has come up with 31, 000 natural languages in 300, 000 years of our existence.
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education
I can't believe they talked about multiple dialects without mentioning one of the stranger examples like arabic which has a dialect seen as better than all the other ones but is not spoken as a home language anywhere
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I can't believe they talked about multiple dialects without mentioning one of the stranger examples like arabic which has a dialect seen as better than all the other ones but is not spoken as a home language anywhere
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