Global Language Network 23 maps and charts on language by Dylan Matthews on April 15, 2015 "The limits of my language," the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once posited, "mean the limits of my world." Explaining everything within the limits of the world is probably too ambitious a goal for a list like this. But here are 23 maps and charts that can hopefully illuminate small aspects of how we manage to communicate with one another. The basics Indo-European language rootsMinna Sundberg, a Finnish-Swedish comic artist, created this beautiful tree to illustrate both the relationships between European and central Asian languages generally, as well as a smaller but still striking point: Finnish has less in common with, say, Swedish than Persian or Hindi do. Language divides Bilingualism Who in Europe speaks EnglishMany countries have more than one commonly used language, with many residents learning two or more. English American English
8 Ancient Writing Systems That Haven't Been Deciphered Yet The Indus Valley civilization was one of the most advanced in the world for more than 500 years, with more than a thousand settlements sprawling across 250,000 square miles of what is now Pakistan and northwest India from 2600 BCE to 1900 BCE. It had several large, well-planned cities like Mohenjo-daro, common iconography—and a script no one has been able to understand. Over at Nature, Andrew Robinson looks at the reasons why the Indus Valley script has been so difficult to crack, and details some recent attempts to decipher it. Since we don't know anything about the underlying language and there's no multilingual Rosetta stone, scholars have analyzed its structure for clues and compared it to other scripts. Most Indologists think it's "logo-syllabic" script like Sumerian cuneiform or Mayan glyphs. One team has created the first publicly available, electronic corpus of Indus texts. The Indus Valley script is far from the only one to remain mysterious. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
Why is English so weirdly different from other langu... English speakers know that their language is odd. So do people saddled with learning it non-natively. The oddity that we all perceive most readily is its spelling, which is indeed a nightmare. In countries where English isn’t spoken, there is no such thing as a ‘spelling bee’ competition. For a normal language, spelling at least pretends a basic correspondence to the way people pronounce the words. Spelling is a matter of writing, of course, whereas language is fundamentally about speaking. There is no other language, for example, that is close enough to English that we can get about half of what people are saying without training and the rest with only modest effort. We think it’s a nuisance that so many European languages assign gender to nouns for no reason, with French having female moons and male boats and such. More weirdness? Why is our language so eccentric? Sign up for Aeon’s Newsletter English started out as, essentially, a kind of German. I should make a qualification here.
Future - The secret “anti-languages” you’re not supposed to know Could you erectify a luxurimole flackoblots? Have you hidden your chocolate cake from Penelope? Or maybe you’re just going to vada the bona omi? If you understand any of these sentences, you speak an English “anti-language”. Since at least Tudor times, secret argots have been used in the underworld of prisoners, escaped slaves and criminal gangs as a way of confusing and befuddling the authorities. Thieves’ Cant, Polari, and Gobbledygook (yes, it’s a real form of slang) are just a few of the examples from the past – but anti-languages are mercurial beasts that are forever evolving into new and more vibrant forms. A modern anti-language could very well be spoken on the street outside your house. One of the first detailed records of an anti-language comes from a 16th Century magistrate called Thomas Harman. Byng we to Rome vyle to nyp a bounge, so shall we have lower for the bowsing ken – Thieves’ Cant As Green points out, many slang words concern our basest preoccupations.
Linguistic Family Tree 552K 18.4KShare337 When linguists talk about the historical relationship between languages, they use a tree metaphor. An ancient source (say, Indo-European) has various branches (e.g., Romance, Germanic), which themselves have branches (West Germanic, North Germanic), which feed into specific languages (Swedish, Danish, Norwegian). Also worth checking out is the page before the tree, where she gives a comparison chart of words in the Nordic languages, and illustrates what an outlier Finnish is with the concept of “meow.” You can order a poster version here. October 23, 2014 - 5:00pm ©2016 Mental Floss, Inc.
Ukindia Learn Sanskrit Lesson 1 Paperhelp to help you write papers Lesson 2 ..Home....Asian Books..Sanskrit lessons ( external)..Tamil.Gujarati. Punjabi. Hindi.Urdu.SanskritArabic.Greek.English. If you have enjoyed doing these lessons and would like to help develop the web site further you might consider a small donation of £3 or $5 . Sanskrit is one of the world's most ancient languages and is derived from the same proto mother language as Latin and Greek so many of the words are common. Many ancient Indian texts on Science and Mathematics were written in Sanskrit. To revise the Sanskrit/Hindi script click here. These are a few words in Sanskrit , we will in future often omit the half accent mark in the first word name and the full (two dots) one in the second word balAE . and here are some phrases using these words. The above phrases read : Bal patthti . Here is the script .Make sure you know it by heart . Please read the very helpful comments by Paul Newman below I think consistency is of the greatest importance.
The Recordings: BAPLAR (Babylonian and Assyrian Poetry and Literature: An Archive of Recordings) SOAS University of London Special characters (tsade and tet) are in Steve Tinney's Ungkam font, derived from sil.org's Gentium font. To display them correctly, download the font from oracc.museum.upenn.edu/doc/user/fonts. The download is free. There are both a Mac Suitcase version and a Win/Linux OpenType version. The Old Babylonian Period (c. 1900-1500 BCE) Ammi-Ditana’s Hymn to Ishtar The Codex Hammurabi The Epic of Gilgamesh, Old Babylonian Version, Tablet II The Epic of Gilgamesh, Old Babylonian Version, BM+VAT Lines ii.0'-iii.14, read by Martin West The Epic of Anzû, Old Babylonian Version, Tablet II Lines 1-83, read by Claus Wilcke Atra-Hasīs, Old Babylonian Version, Tablet I Lines i.1-iii.16, read by Claus Wilcke Diviner's Prayer to the Gods of the Night Read by Michael Streck Incantation for Dog Bite Read by Michael Streck Letter of Marduk-nāṣir to Ruttum (AbB III 15) Read by Wilfred van Soldt Letter of Kurkurtum to Erīb-Sîn (AbB XII 89) Read by Wilfred van Soldt The First Millennium BC Incantation for Tooth Worm