International Party! (a thread for lovers of languages)

[Shayne Parkinson]

Some kinship words in Maori, conveying birth order as well as sibling relationships:-

A man's older brother, or a woman's older sister: tuakana.
A man's younger brother, or a woman's younger sister: teina.
A man's sister: tuahine.
A woman's brother: tungāne

[MacEachaidh]

Originally Posted by Shayne Parkinson

They can be, but that usage isn't common in modern English. "Tree" is an old word for shaft of a spear, or of a tool like a spade. The usage also survives (more or less) in compounds like axle-tree, but as cars replaced buggies and carts, "axle" more or less replaced "axle-tree".

There's also the old compound "roof-tree", which was the main beam (or shaft) of a wooden roof that ran the length of the house and carried the greater part of the weight. Originally, obviously, it was essentially a tree that was used for it, probably only roughly dressed.

[Shayne Parkinson]

Maori distinguishes between inclusive and exclusive first person. "Mātou" is "we but not you", and "tātou" is "we including you". Very handy for avoiding awkward situations like, "We're going to that new movie tonight". "Great, I've been looking forward to that!" "Um, I didn't mean you..."

Roger's been trying to introduce "wex" to the English language to serve the same purpose. Not much success so far...

[ficbot]

Originally Posted by Shayne Parkinson

Maori distinguishes between inclusive and exclusive first person. "Mātou" is "we but not you", and "tātou" is "we including you".

See, this is the kind of thing I wish they had taught us during my obligatory Maori language course while I was there. Instead, we spent a lot of time learning about who is the caretaker of the volcano or the fern roots or what have you, and what the ancestral canoe is for the local region where we were. I think they were confused about whether they wanted people to come out of the class actually being able to speak to someone (which would have been my preference) or whether they just wanted us to be culturally sensitive (which is a nice goal too but is then going to be a very different course). They mixed it all up and I feel like we didn't really learn much of anything.

[omk3]

Originally Posted by Shayne Parkinson

Maori distinguishes between inclusive and exclusive first person. "Mātou" is "we but not you", and "tātou" is "we including you". Very handy for avoiding awkward situations like, "We're going to that new movie tonight". "Great, I've been looking forward to that!" "Um, I didn't mean you..."

Roger's been trying to introduce "wex" to the English language to serve the same purpose. Not much success so far...

Wow, that's so incredibly useful! I wish more languages had such distinctions!


Thank you all for your contributions to this thread so far. It's full of interesting stuff that make me want to quit work so that I can have time to devote to every language out there

[TGS]

Originally Posted by omk3

... make me want to quit work so that I can have time to devote to every language out there

Dim ond yn ei wneud

Spoiler:

It's Welsh!

[Freeshadow]

@shayne & omk
I remember having read about such a usage of the word "friend" in the mafia: when a member introduced somebody to another member, usage of "its my friend" meant exactly that. by saying "its our friend" pointed out that the introduced 3rd person is a member too.

[avinatbezeq]

Shalom.

I'd like to introduce you to the amazing story of Hebrew, and how I’ve lost the Bible!

Please notice that I’m a layman, and this is a “rough cut” version.

To tell a long story short Hebrew was spoken here in Israel about 2500 years ago. We wrote The Book. Then we were conquered by the Romans, have revolted and were exiled.

Sometime later, Hebrew became a Holly language. It was not to be used for everyday needs, only for prayer and study. Instead Aramaic and later Ladino (Judaeo-Spanish) and Yiddish (German variant) were used for communication between Jews of different Galuyot (countries of exile).

About a hundred years ago, a revolution occurred. One person called Eliezer Ben-Yehuda single-handedly revived the language. He raised his son entirely through Hebrew, shielding him from exposure to any other language. Fighting his ultra orthodox environment and his own fears that he’s damaging his son by raising him on a dead language, he has proven that the rumors of the death of Hebrew were a little early.

For some duration we were in a unique position of essentially pressing “play” on a “paused” language. This means that the language I learnt to read in, during the 60s, was not much different than that of the bible. During high school we’ve also learnt a little bit of Aramic when studying the Talmud, providing us with a little additional perspective on Hebrew (as the two languages are related).

Then, around the age of 14, I started reading English. I discovered Sci-Fi and throughout high school have read a few English books a week.

Lately I’ve opened the Bible, and found out that I no longer understand most of the tougher parts. I feel I’ve lost something important.

[avinatbezeq]

Originally Posted by FlorenceArt

I have a challenge for you: find one word in any language that can be translated by one word in any other language.

mother?

[MacEachaidh]

Shalom to you, avinatbezeq. That's a fascinating history; thanks for sharing it. I wasn't aware of exactly how the languages fit and had evolved.

One thing I'm not clear on: when you say

Originally Posted by avinatbezeq

Lately I’ve opened the Bible, and found out that I no longer understand most of the tougher parts. I feel I’ve lost something important.

do you mean that you've lost some fluency by not using Hebrew as frequently as you used to, or that you don't understand the scriptures as clearly because modern Hebrew has changed from the language used to write the Bible?

I understand that modern spoken Hebrew was revived from the ancient Holy language, but like most ancient languages it must have changed a little to adapt itself to the modern world, mustn't it?

[FlorenceArt]

Originally Posted by avinatbezeq

mother?

Good one! I think you won the challenge. Karma for you

[Kumabjorn]

Originally Posted by omk3

Well, as I'm learning japanese right now, I'm not sure if the words for I and you are new (they don't seem to be), but they are amazingly varied (me as in small boy, me as a superior adult man, me as a sexy woman, me as an equal, etc etc, in very simplistic terms), and still are never used if it can be avoided. It is a source of surprise that you don't learn I and you on your very first lesson, as in most languages I know, but it makes sense, as you can actually speak japanese without ever using these words.
And of course it says something about how japanese think, and how their society is structured. Maybe this is changing in recent years, but it seems that the sense of a japanese person's place in society (or any other group, like an extended family, or a company) is more important than the sense of self as we know it. Oversimplifications and gereralisations are dangerous and often wrong of course, and I would appreciate a japanese person's views on this, if there is one around.

Although I'm not Japanese, I've lived there for 13 years and I teach the language.

First of all, the concept of self and other appears very early in any language, Japanese is no exception. The language however doesn't use personal pronouns as a grammatical tool as in Western languages.
Hence the the concept of I is relative to a situation.
The following words are all I:
拙者
我
己
私
僕
俺
but they are used very differently depending on who you are and you're social status in relative terms.
There are plenty more, some related to gender, some historical that would only be used in jest or as a threat and some that are so ambiguous as to mean either I or you depending on the construction of a sentence.

[ardeegee]

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by avinatbezeq

To tell a long story short Hebrew was spoken here in Israel about 2500 years ago. We wrote The Book. Then we were conquered by the Romans, have revolted and were exiled.

Sometime later, Hebrew became a Holly language.

You've got your timeline a little mixed up.

The Jewish revolt took place in 70AD. Hebrew had already long been a "Holy language" by that time and had pretty much died out as a spoken language; the everyday languages of Judea were Aramaic and, for trading purposes, Greek. (Greek had been the "lingua franca" of the Eastern Mediterranean since the days of Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC).

The Bible in everyday use by Jews in that time was the Septuagint - written in Greek, not Hebrew. That's why all the Old Testament quotes in the New Testament are from the Septuagint, not from the Hebrew Old Testament. (The Septuagint is not a very good translation, so it's easy to tell the difference.)

[travger]

Very interesting thread, thank you!

I heard somewhere that iroquais has 14 ways to... what you do with verb. In addition to usual 6 - I-you-s/he + plurals, it has forms that imply 'everyone does, but I do not', 'everyone does, and at least one of them is woman'... It totally amazed me.
Mindset HAS to be different to have evolved a language that needs to point out actors' sex and numbers in every activity.

And some loose connections:

I (english)
hai = yes (japanese)
jaa = yes (estonian)
ja = I (russian)