17
votes
Accepted
How to explain differences in mutual intelligibility?
The previous answers gave a lot of possible factors, including external ones. I'll give a single example where it clearly has a lot to do with quirks of the harder-understandable language: Danish.
The ...
- 446
12
votes
How to explain differences in mutual intelligibility?
There are a lot of things factoring in here, the following list is by no means exhaustive
exposure to the other language: this is often asymmetric between the languages A and B, and more exposure ...
- 29.2k
12
votes
Accepted
If Hebrew is not related to Slavic, why there are apparent sound correspondences?
Just as you cannot compare two random species today to accurately assess their taxonomy (otherwise we would conclude all crabs form a single family when they actually form at least five distinct ...
- 6,114
10
votes
Is Russian the most diverged Slavic language?
Your question shows that you are unfamiliar with both Russian and other slavic languages.
To add to Anixx's answer:
Think:
misliet - misliet - misliec - misliti - misliti - mislityi - mislyati - dumat
...
- 417
10
votes
How to explain differences in mutual intelligibility?
Linguists would start with comparing social status of the languages. For example, there is a massive comprehensive asymmetry between Cantonese and Mandarin: more Cantonese speakers understand Mandarin ...
- 77.2k
8
votes
If Hebrew is not related to Slavic, why there are apparent sound correspondences?
what can be done to rule out false sound correspondences when
reconstructing proto-languages
The main thing that is commonly done is to not directly compare random words from the modern languages, ...
- 77.2k
8
votes
Accepted
Is there a standardized way to classify languages according to how much the order of the words is tied to the words themselves?
It seems to me that you're basically describing the differences between inflected v. isolating (or analytic) types of languages.
With inflected languages, the ending is extremely important, and the ...
- 851
6
votes
Is Russian the most diverged Slavic language?
You have just picked Russian synonyms that are not related to the words in the other Slavic languages that you picked. You can pick other synonyms.
Think: мыслить (myslit')
I have: я имею (ya imeyu)
...
- 6,309
6
votes
Accepted
Is Linguistic Nihilism a legitimate philosophical/linguistic position?
It's not a view I've ever heard espoused, at least.
Language has been serving its purpose quite well for millennia. Plenty of philosophical traditions talk about things that can't be conveyed via ...
- 60.3k
5
votes
What measures are there of similarity between languages? And where can I find data on such measurements?
There are many approaches to similarity of languages, usually expressed as a small linguistic distance. There are several approaches to linguistic distance, including
phonemic distance measured, e.g., ...
- 29.2k
5
votes
Is Linguistic Nihilism a legitimate philosophical/linguistic position?
This is mostly not a position discussed in linguistics (it is sort of identifiable as an application of nihilism in philosophy), but on occasion – this is one – linguists can offer reasons to reject ...
- 77.2k
4
votes
How do consonant clusters originate?
There are a ton of ways that consonant clusters can be created: here is an outline of the main ways. The question is how does the sequence (V,#)C(V,#) end up with CC. First, there is morpheme ...
- 77.2k
4
votes
Questions about the "Hand of Irulegi"
The Hand of Irulegi was found in 2021, so there is not much scholarship on it yet. I will try to answer your questions based on what I know about Basque linguistics, keeping in mind that some things ...
- 445
4
votes
Accepted
Qualifying similarities between languages - e.g., German and Norwegian
There are two reasons why German and Norwegian seem similar. One is that they come from the same language spoken a few thousands of years ago. The second is that German had a more modern influence (...
- 77.2k
3
votes
Is Russian the most diverged Slavic language?
It's totally ok to compare and contrast different languages based on the factors other than their genetic affinity. Even though you'd hardly find a serious linguist questioning the status of Russian ...
- 8,603
3
votes
Why are telling and counting related in many languages?
The American Heritage Dictionary gives these primary definitions of count (v)
To name or list (the units of a group or collection) one by one
in order to determine a total; number.
To recite numerals ...
- 9,828
3
votes
Are Hungarian and Turkish related?
Hungarian and Turkish are not proven yet to be related, and likely aren't. Hungarian is Finno-Ugric like Finnish, Estonian, Khanty, Mansi, Udmurt, Komi, Sami etc., though with very distinctive ...
- 41
3
votes
Etymological relationship between picture/image and education/formation
The development in German is the noun Bild “picture, image”, then the verb bilden “to make a picture, form, create”, then figuratively “to educate, to form someone’s character”, Bildung “education” ...
- 23.5k
3
votes
Etymological relationship between picture/image and education/formation
To get the direction of the calque, one has to date the word senses as good as possible.
The quoted sense of German Bildung is astonishingly young: It dates from 1754. But there is a metaphor that is ...
- 29.2k
2
votes
Etymological relationship between picture/image and education/formation
Conclusion
It’s almost certainly a calque and almost certainly not originally from Germanic.
So the main question is if it came into Slavic via Germanic.
It seems like it has at some times come into ...
- 7,313
1
vote
How do consonant clusters originate?
Just to add in more observed possibilities and potentialities for such phenomenon.
C1V1C2V2(C3) → C1C2V2(C3)
De-voicing on voiced plosive consonants (for examples, Austro-Daic, Cantonese, at least ...
- 11
1
vote
Could the precursor to Pre-Proto-Quechua have been a monosyllabic tonal language?
This falls under the historical reconstruction of tone - not an easy job, and even more difficult if there are no contemporaneous records of the language or of discourse about the language that have ...
- 6,868
1
vote
How to explain differences in mutual intelligibility?
To me, this sounds like diglossia.
Suppose the speakers of language A understand language B a lot better than the speakers of language B understand language A.
Diglossia is when two related dialects ...
- 735
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