19
votes
Accepted
How Standard Average European is Modern Hebrew?
Modern Hebrew is not SAE by any stretch. Going through Haspelmath's criteria:
Definite and indefinite articles: Modern Hebrew (MH) has only a definite article (-ה), which is inherited from Biblical ...
- 2,765
13
votes
How Standard Average European is Modern Hebrew?
In his article "Is Modern Hebrew Standard Average European?
The View from European" (in "Linguistic Typology", Volume 17; 2013) Amir Zeldes lists 13 typological features defining SAE. Modern Hebrew (...
10
votes
Accepted
Subtypes of Standard Average European
First, Latin is not part of Standard Average European (SAE): the sprachbund is thought to have emerged through language contacts during the early middle ages and later, at a time when (classical) ...
- 1,174
7
votes
Why is the definite article in Balkan languages always called a suffix when it really seems to be part of the inflection?
The lines are blurry, but there are some good reasons to see these as distinct suffixes and not inflections:
etymology
Some of the suffixes evolved from previously separate words like determiners and ...
- 7,531
7
votes
Which languages have absorbed the most vocabulary from Russian, and which languages have influenced its vocabulary?
My guess is this question has more to do with history and culture than language per se.
You can say that English was influenced by French 'a lot' due to the Norman conquest (you can probably speak ...
- 171
6
votes
Which languages have absorbed the most vocabulary from Russian, and which languages have influenced its vocabulary?
You can find examples of words borrowed into Russian language on Wiktionary RU. However, this is far from being a comprehensive list. The number of words borrowed from Turkic languages is somewhere ...
- 161
4
votes
Which languages have absorbed the most vocabulary from Russian, and which languages have influenced its vocabulary?
To quickly address the first question only - about the most common donor languages, here's what Lopatin and Ulukhanov 1997 ("Russkij jazyk" pp. 437-444 in Russkij jazyk: entsiklopediia 1997) ...
- 8,684
4
votes
Why is the definite article in Balkan languages always called a suffix when it really seems to be part of the inflection?
In Bulgaria, the definite article did start as a separate word, which loosely translates to "this one". or "he", "she" and "it" for the 3 genders, so Bulgarian ended with different suffixes for each ...
- 41
3
votes
Accepted
Modern Khmer and modern Vietnamese genetic proximity
In speaking of a comparison of vocabularies between the languages, one may refer to the Swadesh list, which is a commonly used compilation of vocabulary items used for quantifying the relations ...
- 459
3
votes
Which languages have absorbed the most vocabulary from Russian, and which languages have influenced its vocabulary?
Besides the languages already named in other answers (Turkic languages, Finnic languages, German, French, and English) Greek should be mentioned. It seems that Russian prefers borrowing technological ...
- 29.8k
2
votes
Are Indian languages distinct or are they just different dialects?
The apt technical term for formerly different languages developing common features is sprachbund. And yes, there is a Sprachbund on the Indic subcontinent.
- 29.8k
2
votes
An East Asian sprachbund?
I asked my colleague Sally Thomason, whose book Language Contact has a special chapter on Sprachbunds. Her response:
Interesting idea, John. Some of the shared features listed are underwhelming -- ...
- 10k
2
votes
Accepted
Does Vietnamese mười reflects the Thai/Lao/Khmer uu sound?
Short answer
The Thai vowel อู is a high, back, rounded vowel.
The corresponding Lao vowel is very similar and for the Khmer one I can’t comment.
The first element of the Vietnamese diphthong in ...
- 462
2
votes
Do constructs like "going to do" and "ir a hacer" share a common origin?
It is quite possible that the parallel constructions have a common origin, but it is hard to prove.
Language features can cross language boundaries due to language contact, this is the basis of the ...
- 29.8k
1
vote
Western European languages tend to have fewer genders and simpler case systems than Eastern European ones, is this due to contact?
Except for linguistic islets such as Basque, Finno-Ugric languages or Turkic languages, modern Europe is dominated by Indo-European languages, so the question should be easy to answer. If we restrict ...
- 540
1
vote
Are there other pairs of languages that are as close grammatically despite not being in the same language family as Korean and Japanese?
A sort-of example is English and French (or English-Spanish or English-Italian, ...)
This isn't a truly valid example because they're both Indo-European languages. But the Germanic and Romance ...
- 679
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible