Re: Latin in the future?

Zeborah <zeborah@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

John W Kennedy <jwkenne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Brian M. Scott wrote:
On Thu, 17 Jul 2008 14:00:51 +1200, Zeborah
<zeborah@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in
<news:1ik85xd.147iul29w0lzfN%zeborah@xxxxxxxxx> in
rec.arts.sf.composition:

Jonathan L Cunningham <spam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I think I knew that. I thought Korean was most like
Japanese... (but not very like).

I'm pretty sure they're very unrelated languages, and the
main similarity between them is that they've each
borrowed a writing system and chunks of vocabulary from
Chinese.

There are some serious linguists who think that Japanese and
Korean are related, but I think that it's fair to say that
this is a minority view.

That's partly because it's a white-hot political/racial issue in Japan.

Huh, I'd expect it to be more political in Korea. Though I think
current younger generations think more fondly of Japan (thanks to pop
culture) than their parents and grandparents do (thanks to war and
occupation).

In any case, even if they are related, they're not related very closely
at all.

Even if it is a language isolate, my statement may be true!

It's false if Korean is more like some other language than it is like
Japanese. (Note that I included the paranthetical "not very like".)

You (Brian et alia) might prefer "I thought Korean was least unlike
Japanese" :-)

As a slightly more sfnal speculation: did humans invent language more
than once? I *think* that would require evolution of the ability to
learn and use language before language was invented, and a period in
which proto-humans capable of language didn't actual have it, so that
the language capable humans could separate into isolated groups before
inventing language.

This is quite hard to imagine, but not impossibly difficult. Modern
humans appear to invent language spontaneously, judging by twin data,
but children raised by wolves don't - in any case, the mechanisms for
acquiring language are very robust, where it is possible.

But they may not have been so true of our ancestors. My personal hunch
is that language is *much* older than commonly accepted, and that even
spoken languages don't need all the physical adaptations that fossil
hunters seem to think so important. Ok, they may make it easier to speak
modern languages, but I'm not speculating that early hominids spoke
modern languages... :-)

The idea that Neanderthal's *didn't* have a spoken language is, to me,
frankly incredible[*]. I'd look for their lack of innovation in an
entirely different direction than inability to communicate.

Jonathan
[*] Literally, i.e. I find it impossible to believe. I cannot imagine
what evidence would be required to convince me (that is consistent with
what is already known).

--
Jonathan L Cunningham
.

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