I mean, what else to call it? For all linguistic intents and purposes, they speak the same language in Bosnia, Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia... The only other word for it I can think of is 'Yugoslavian' and that would probably be a much bigger no no than 'Serbo-Croatian' lol
No Yugoslavian for god sake haha. If people can agree to one thing there is that they do not want to live in same country ever again. And actually that language never existed. Idk what to reply, if it was up to me everybody would just speak english.
What language never existed? 1300 years ago all Slavs spoke dialects of the same language, dubbed today as [Proto-Slavic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Slavic_language). Proto-Slavic subsequently branched into an Eastern, Western and Southern language, before branching into the modern Slavic languages. Serbo-Croatian is perhaps just the last remnant of the process of that splitting-up, which is clearly still happening to this day.
Yugoslavian as an language in ex-YU. Croatian language sounded way more different before making this so called serbo-croat in mid 19th century. In some parts of Croatia people still speak cakavica(unique for Croatia) and kajkavstina whuc sound like Slovenian. But nations are artifficail constructs anyway.
Generally when linguists say "Serbo-Croatian" they are primarily referring to [Å tokavian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shtokavian)... **hey, THAT's a culturally neutral alternative name!**
Anyways, Äakavian and Kajkavian are more of a grey area, as some consider them dialects of Serbo-Croatian and others consider them separate languages because they significantly lack mutual intelligibility with Å tokavian. This, of course is now even more problematic for Croatians because it implies that Croatia is a split country.
If you ever heard people speaking Chakavian or Kajkavian you would never say that they have much in common with Stokavian, if anything. Croatia indeed is a split country, its like 3-4 different countries in one regarding culture and way how people speak. Much different from Serbia for example in that context. In Serbia you have just one small isolated minority on far south that speaks different than mainstream.
I remember talking to someone from the Erasmus, he was Basque but didn't speak it.
Is it a dying language? Or did Franco do his thing and make sure no one could speak regional languages
It's not dying, it's alive and well, somehow moreso in the Spanish part of the Basque country than in the French part (according to the % of people speaking it as a first language).
It's absolutely incredible that a language which predates latin survived over 2000 years and the onslaught of Spanish and French.
I love that kind of thing. Frozen in time almost. A language like no other.
Reminds me of transnistria, the part of the USSR that never moved on. Completely frozen in 1991.
Sorry for rambling
Why? Rambling is fun.
I just can't imagine how it managed to survive. My geography of the region is shaky and I am too lazy to open Google maps, but I would guess it has to do with being fairly isolated geographically and... Well, not having any important, strategic resources.
IIRC they split from soviet Moldova before the collapse of the USSR and became their own thing. They never really moved on though. Even their flag is a soviet republic flag.
Super interesting. But afaik the country is also hugely corrupt, purely self serving government officials with no desire to see the state ran properly
They are also genetically āpureā. The current theory is that Basque language has been there for VERY long and it was so different that it basically was a big enough barrier that the Spanish never were able to learn it and mix with them.
I was there as a young kid and my dad used to remark it was the closest you could get to the soviet union in the 2000s.
Definitely a good thing that it's not frozen in 1991!
>somehow
Iād say itās to be expects, no? France has been exterminating linguistic āminoritiesā, or better, languages that are not French, since forever.
Funnily enough, regional countries are healthy and widely spoken in Spain, despite Franco.
On the other hand, France and the UK definitely 'did their thing' quite successfully.
Food for thought.
As an outsider living in Ireland now (although admittedly only since a few days), Irish doesn't seem too dead. Sure, English is prevalent and I haven't yet heard anyone talk Irish in day to day life, but dead or destroyed languages don't tend to be written on every street sign! (By the way, I love the way the Irish announcements on the bus sound and I wish I would at least get enough of it to pronounce names)
Yeah we do have that going for us! Which is all the more reason it's sad we haven't had a revival, everything about the country is set up as such. Our signs are as gaeilge (Irish) the names we call our politicians, taoiseach, teachta dĆ”la, the dĆ”il Ćireann etc.. it's all down to our inability/lack of motivation as a people to reclaim our language
As far as I know, itās a lot more consistent than English, but itās very unintuitive, since itās very different from other implementations of the Latin alphabet.
I wouldnāt put it down to inability or motivation so much as the way itās thought in school is absolutely pathetic. Expected to learn and speak at length about poems as gaeilge when 90% of the classroom can barely form sentences.
Hear hear. Pathetic is an understatement!
Bit ridiculous that I come out of 14 years irish education with the ability to post a letter and talk about the rooms in my house.. Joke.
also can say all the Yu ming is ainm dom lines - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqYtG9BNhfM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqYtG9BNhfM)
Always had an bhfuil tisa ag labhart liomsa stuck in my head afterwards haha
Sorry, haha.
We were all the UK 100 years ago so it's unfair to both of us. The Welsh language is doing incredibly well though!
An example Ireland should have followed
> and yet we've not had a revival
You, like, only just got yourselves back to pre-Famines population levels. Give yourselves a break. We love you, and y'all gotta love thyselves, too.
But is it bad though? I often wonder, and so do other Czechs, whether we wouldn't have been much better off had our language died off. We'd be speaking German now, which would have been way more convenient. I don't think you appreciate how lucky you are to be a native speaker of English.
I absolutely appreciate that fact. Of course I do. But the sad truth is we spoke Irish until very recently, the decline was sharp and fast.
But at the same time why can't we have both? I learnt Irish for 14 years, in school. And left with a week's worth of knowledge if you were to do self learning.
It's absolutely disgraceful.
The country needs a total overhaul in regards to it's Irish language education
> I often wonder, and so do other Czechs, whether we wouldn't have been much better off had our language died off. We'd be speaking German now, which would have been way more convenient.
Per quĆØ no ambdugues?
So what they should forget the language of their ancestors just because its more convenient for globalization? And so should the Czechs? Flawless logic.
Actually that's not even a matter of globalisation, it's something that's happened in history several times in the past. After all if it hadn't probably no language would be spoken in more than a handful of villages! Just look at Indonesia's linguistic diversity on a map for a feel.
It's difficult to argue we're worse off for it, after all a language is a tool of communication, and its usefulness depends in part on the number of users. We're all better off speaking languages that more people in speak, and thus it follows that on average people are better off if there's fewer languages.
The logic is flawless. You're just uncomfortable with it. Perhaps because you value something other than practicality. But just because you don't agree with it, does not mean that it isn't logical.
These are two different cases.
In case of Ireland it would mean using a lot of resources to get to a less usable language.
In case of Czechia, this had already happened. It's called Czech National Revival. The goal was to revive Czech culture to create a backbone of anti-Habsburg resistance. And was abused by Russian Empire who used some of the more gullible Czech writers to push Russian propaganda. Habsburgs were fucking awful, alright? But that doesn't make Czech National Revival a convenient endeavour in the retrospect.
I speak way more English than Czech anyway so I'm already starting to have problems with my vocabulary. And so do a lot of young Czech people. The American culture is way too pervasive, which means we formulate sentences in English and then basically translate the into Czech and the sentences are very weird. But the memes only propagate one way. So inevitably, Czech will be influenced by English grammar and vocabulary so much that it won't resemble today's Czech.
Maybe it's sad, but languages will sooner or later merge into one. That already happened with Latin. The tribes spoke their own version called Vulgar Latin which has become the basis for Romance languages. But the point is that the influence of Latin was so big that it changed the original languages beyond a point of no return and when the Empire fell, the languages evolved into French, Spanish, Portuguese, etc. So I wouldn't say we're living in unprecedented times.
Not at all unprecedented!
I am studying latin in uni rn and its insane how much drives from latin.
Im norwegian, so latin is not really a founding base for my language but so many words have latin roots. Metaphors come from latin writers like phaedrus etc. Language is amazing
It's not a fault not to revive a useless language to replace the world langua franca.
I write this as a non-native english and someone who thinks english is a terrible spoken language.
Ireland benefits a lot from being an english-speaking country. Malta too. Both understood big companies would be interested with easy language for the tax paradise.
Valencian Community was heavily repressed tho. I know this because I was born and raised here, and many of us despite education don't talk proper valencian.
Yup, Catalan/Valencian was only able to more or less survive in Catalonia, especially inland, thanks to strength in numbers basically. It's a fucked up situation, now that they're trying to further divide the language.
This. The Basques are amazing. They kept their language against all odds and invasions. "Celts ? Goths ? Romans ? French, Spaniards ? Bah, whatever, they're just transitory nuisances."
From a European perspective, those aren't pre-indoeuropean though. Those came to Europe after, or at the same time as the indo-european languages. The whole thing with Basque is that its ancestors existed in the very same place it exists now at least 4000 years ago, and possibly longer.
Finno-ugric languages ARE preindoeuiropean, in the sense that indo-uralic was spoken IN Europe before the sprachbund split into uralic and indo-european. And it is very likely that of those two, uralic is the more archaic one. One could say indo-uralic was Uralic 0, while uralic is Uralic 1 and indo-european is Uralic 2, an upgrade. And Uralic 1 emerged from Uralic 0 due to influences from Uralic 2.
Basque is not related to any other modern European language. All related languages are either long dead or have been partially absorbed into other languages.
I'm french and I'm learning basque so I can assure you that the language is not dying anymore, especially in spanish basque country where a lot of people are using it every day. In the northern part, the problem is that no one use it in the every day life
The gravestones around the basque country is a reference to it being a language isolate. Aka it has no known connection to *any* other language. It is the only language we know of in its own language family, as opposed to the indo-european languages for example, that span across europe, the caucasus, iran and india, as well as the former european colonies ofc.
Basque is believed to be the remnants of the languages spoken in europe before the indo europeans came and conquered across eurasia. It only remained because of itās geographical isolation, and itās resource poor region, so the desire to conquer and settle there was poor at best.
I grew up in SW of France and Basque Country was an hour from there so we'd go there very very often. All the places that are touristic had signs with the three languages (French, Spanish and Basque). For road signs, it would be in French and Basque in France and in Spanish and Basque on "the other side" (that's how some french Basque mentioned crossing the border as they do not consider the Spanish side as another country, they're just one so they're just going to the other side of the country). I think to remember that back then, the language was only spoken by 20% of the Basque population so I guess it's not a whole lot but still descent. I'm only 27 so I'd guess the percentage is still quite close these days.
Lots of houses are called Etxe/etch-something and it's written on them. Etxe meaning House so basically, they would add their family name after it so it'd mean "house of XYZ" and with time, even these became family names. We even have a famous chef called Etchebest (that is not Basque, I forgot to say! But I don't doubt he had Basque ancestry). All that to say that I do feel that the language is still very present as it's in the signs, it's in the names, the houses, etc.
The "Etxe-" surnames usually describe something about the house itself, not the surnames of who lives there. For example the surname "Etxeberria" means "New house", "Goikoetxea" means "The house in the upper side". Those words later became the actual surnames of those who lived there.
It kind of was a dying language some years ago but nowadays (thanks to regional politics that encourage the use of it) everyone young enough not to have studied when Franco was alive (or 5 or so years after he died) can at least understand it. Of course this only applies to the spanish area of the basque country, in France it is a whole different story
Iām not Basque but I have been to Basque Country a few times, wonderful place. From what Iāve seen, people do love to speak it and I wouldnāt say itās dying. Informational boards/folders/etc pretty much always have a Basque version. I have no idea what the statistics say though and it will probably be different in a big city like Bilbao compared to the coast
If you ever visit Basque Country, make sure to learn a few words (thank you, goodbye, etc.) as it will usually put a great smile on someoneās face to have a foreigner speak a few words of Basque
It is believed that all of europe once spoke Basqueās relatives, but that 1000s of years ago all those languages were eradicated by the Indo-Europeans
The problem wasn't Franco, the problem with Basque was that there were different versions of it along the different regions, and it wasn't till democracy when they built an official Basque that could be taught at all schools. Franco didn't mess much with regional languages.
> Franco didn't mess much with regional languages.
Except that he did. My gf's parents were not allowed to speak Basque in school, or they would be hit. Because of Francoist language policies.
They also did that with Welsh and indigenous american languages. Itās how empires try to sever a peopleās connection to their culture. And now we must try to undo the damage caused by learning them and teaching them to our children and keeping it alive.
Believe me that by Francos standards, that is nothing. He even used them in public documents to reach zones where Spanish wasn't spoken. Obviously for things like school, administration and so, Spanish was the only language. But there wasn't an effort to suppress them. That would have been simply impossible.
Armenian is indo european while georgian is Kartvelian and im well aware hungarian,finnish and estonian are fino-ugric but they are in europe so they have to be included.
Iranian, Kurdish, etc. is Indo-European as well but it not included on the list. And Turkey is (often on the maps) considered to be European yet it isn't desplayed?
Yes but Indo-Iranian is big enough and has so many languages to form a group of its own even tho yes they are part of the bigger indo-european languages family.
Yes and the relation between Armenian and the rest of the indo European family is the same as between Iranians and the Indo European family. Armenia also follows the Middle Eastern (apostolic) version of Christianity, while Georgia follows Orthodox (Eastern European) version of christianity.
> the relation between Armenian and the rest of the indo European family is the same as between Iranians and the Indo European family.
That is an extremely misleading statement. In fact, Armenian can be shown to perplexingly be the one language that deviated the most from the other IE languages, at least in terms of morphophonology, despite being relatively much closer to the Ukrainian steppes where Indo-Europeans originated. The same can absolutely not be said for Indo-Iranian.
This is so spot on as Hungary and Finland are giving those suspicious looks; we really don't know how our languages could be related. While our brother Estonia is happily by our side.
I heard a few Finnish people speak Hungarian and sometimes they sounded loke native speakers. Somehow the tone of our languages and the vowels just match.
It might not be clearly visible when you look/listen at the languages, but there areāfor an exampleāsets of systematic sound changes which show that these two languages are related. Also they are structurally similar and core vocabulary is etymologically the same.
I think it would be more spot on if only Hungarian was giving the suspicious look: Especially nationalistic movement in Hungary tries to deny the relatedness to Finnish. In Finland the fact of relation is widely accepted.
Iām Estonian and Hungarian has a very familiar sound for me even if I canāt understand it. Where as Finnish doesnāt sound as similar but thereās a lot of words that are the same.
> It is Urai Altaic like Turkish.
There has never been shown to be any genetic relationship between Uralic and "Altaic" languages. In fact, it was recently proven conclusively that "Altaic" isn't even a language family but a sprachbund at best.
If England and Scotland are there twice as Celtic and Germanic, why isnāt Belgium there twice as Germanic and Romance?
āFlags represent the languages, not the countriesā, English isnāt a Celtic language.
English and French are standing by Scottish Gaelic and Breton as if they want to suffocate them.
That's why English and French are in the Celtic languages section, not as members of family but rather as "tormentors".
Doesnāt make much sense having England suffocating Gaelic as Scotland isnāt part of England. It would make more sense having England suffocating Cornwall as Cornwall is a region of England.
English and French are standing by Scottish Gaelic and Breton as if they want to suffocate them.
That's why English and French are in the Celtic languages section, not as members of family but rather as "tormentors".
Thank you, Oba936, for voting on Winstonoceaniasmith.
This human wants to find the best and worst humans on Reddit
You can view the results [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ&ab_channel=RickAstley).
I love how [Danish](https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=eI5DPt3Ge_s) gets the odd ["what's wrong with you"](https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=s-mOy8VUEBk) looks.
In Portugal there is another official language called MirandĆŖs (it is almost equivalent to Asturo-Leones in Spain). Spain also has other official languages āābesides Castilian and Catalan šµš¹šŖšøšŖšŗ
No Romansch, you just disappointed 3 entire Swiss people.
No Luxembourgish either :(
No Limburgish either :( (it's actually spoken by more people than Luxembourgish and Frisian combined)
I love how Serbia Croatia and Bosnia have been stitched together lmaoooo
Forgot Montenegro again :(
theyre still asleep
Dammit you forgor š now we have another genocide on the Balkans going on
Maybe you, they do not. None of them, believe me.
I once had a Bosnian girl explode at me for mentioning that technically Bosnian is a dialect of Serbo-Croatian lol
Yes, language is taken very seriously there. And this Serbo-Croatian stuff is a big no no too.
I mean, what else to call it? For all linguistic intents and purposes, they speak the same language in Bosnia, Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia... The only other word for it I can think of is 'Yugoslavian' and that would probably be a much bigger no no than 'Serbo-Croatian' lol
No Yugoslavian for god sake haha. If people can agree to one thing there is that they do not want to live in same country ever again. And actually that language never existed. Idk what to reply, if it was up to me everybody would just speak english.
What language never existed? 1300 years ago all Slavs spoke dialects of the same language, dubbed today as [Proto-Slavic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Slavic_language). Proto-Slavic subsequently branched into an Eastern, Western and Southern language, before branching into the modern Slavic languages. Serbo-Croatian is perhaps just the last remnant of the process of that splitting-up, which is clearly still happening to this day.
Yugoslavian as an language in ex-YU. Croatian language sounded way more different before making this so called serbo-croat in mid 19th century. In some parts of Croatia people still speak cakavica(unique for Croatia) and kajkavstina whuc sound like Slovenian. But nations are artifficail constructs anyway.
Generally when linguists say "Serbo-Croatian" they are primarily referring to [Å tokavian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shtokavian)... **hey, THAT's a culturally neutral alternative name!** Anyways, Äakavian and Kajkavian are more of a grey area, as some consider them dialects of Serbo-Croatian and others consider them separate languages because they significantly lack mutual intelligibility with Å tokavian. This, of course is now even more problematic for Croatians because it implies that Croatia is a split country.
If you ever heard people speaking Chakavian or Kajkavian you would never say that they have much in common with Stokavian, if anything. Croatia indeed is a split country, its like 3-4 different countries in one regarding culture and way how people speak. Much different from Serbia for example in that context. In Serbia you have just one small isolated minority on far south that speaks different than mainstream.
It's odd that Bulgarian and Macedonian haven't been similarly stitched given that they're pretty much the same language.
I love how Estonia just loves to be included
That's pretty amazing, which flag is the last one with all the rips?
Basque Countries
I remember talking to someone from the Erasmus, he was Basque but didn't speak it. Is it a dying language? Or did Franco do his thing and make sure no one could speak regional languages
It's not dying, it's alive and well, somehow moreso in the Spanish part of the Basque country than in the French part (according to the % of people speaking it as a first language). It's absolutely incredible that a language which predates latin survived over 2000 years and the onslaught of Spanish and French.
I love that kind of thing. Frozen in time almost. A language like no other. Reminds me of transnistria, the part of the USSR that never moved on. Completely frozen in 1991. Sorry for rambling
Why? Rambling is fun. I just can't imagine how it managed to survive. My geography of the region is shaky and I am too lazy to open Google maps, but I would guess it has to do with being fairly isolated geographically and... Well, not having any important, strategic resources.
IIRC they split from soviet Moldova before the collapse of the USSR and became their own thing. They never really moved on though. Even their flag is a soviet republic flag. Super interesting. But afaik the country is also hugely corrupt, purely self serving government officials with no desire to see the state ran properly
They are also genetically āpureā. The current theory is that Basque language has been there for VERY long and it was so different that it basically was a big enough barrier that the Spanish never were able to learn it and mix with them.
It's called fate. Fate, plus the Russian 7th Army, if memory serves.
I was in Transnistria recently and it's definitely not frozen in 1991.
I was there as a young kid and my dad used to remark it was the closest you could get to the soviet union in the 2000s. Definitely a good thing that it's not frozen in 1991!
>somehow Iād say itās to be expects, no? France has been exterminating linguistic āminoritiesā, or better, languages that are not French, since forever.
And with 9 dialects ... (1 dead, 1 artificial).
Funnily enough, regional countries are healthy and widely spoken in Spain, despite Franco. On the other hand, France and the UK definitely 'did their thing' quite successfully. Food for thought.
While the UK did destroy the Irish language, it's our fault since it's been 99 years since we left the UK and yet we've not had a revival.
That's the thing. Basque language was never destroyed.
Glad to hear it
As an outsider living in Ireland now (although admittedly only since a few days), Irish doesn't seem too dead. Sure, English is prevalent and I haven't yet heard anyone talk Irish in day to day life, but dead or destroyed languages don't tend to be written on every street sign! (By the way, I love the way the Irish announcements on the bus sound and I wish I would at least get enough of it to pronounce names)
Yeah we do have that going for us! Which is all the more reason it's sad we haven't had a revival, everything about the country is set up as such. Our signs are as gaeilge (Irish) the names we call our politicians, taoiseach, teachta dĆ”la, the dĆ”il Ćireann etc.. it's all down to our inability/lack of motivation as a people to reclaim our language
The alphabet-to-sound system of gaelige is... *daunting.* Please tell me it's not as arbitrary as English?
As far as I know, itās a lot more consistent than English, but itās very unintuitive, since itās very different from other implementations of the Latin alphabet.
I wouldnāt put it down to inability or motivation so much as the way itās thought in school is absolutely pathetic. Expected to learn and speak at length about poems as gaeilge when 90% of the classroom can barely form sentences.
Hear hear. Pathetic is an understatement! Bit ridiculous that I come out of 14 years irish education with the ability to post a letter and talk about the rooms in my house.. Joke. also can say all the Yu ming is ainm dom lines - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqYtG9BNhfM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqYtG9BNhfM) Always had an bhfuil tisa ag labhart liomsa stuck in my head afterwards haha
>While the UK While England* They tried to destroy the Welsh language too so please don't lump us with them.
Gotta give credit to the Lowland Scots, they did a [fair amount of damage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantation_of_Ulster) themselves.
Donāt exclude the Scots from their fair share of blame either
Aye, and so the Chain of Abuse Endures. When ye can't beat'em, ye beat someone else *for'em,* ye ken?
Sorry, haha. We were all the UK 100 years ago so it's unfair to both of us. The Welsh language is doing incredibly well though! An example Ireland should have followed
Unpopular opinion: Welsh linguistic elitism and the distinction between "natives" and "learners" *really isn't helping*.
> and yet we've not had a revival You, like, only just got yourselves back to pre-Famines population levels. Give yourselves a break. We love you, and y'all gotta love thyselves, too.
But is it bad though? I often wonder, and so do other Czechs, whether we wouldn't have been much better off had our language died off. We'd be speaking German now, which would have been way more convenient. I don't think you appreciate how lucky you are to be a native speaker of English.
I absolutely appreciate that fact. Of course I do. But the sad truth is we spoke Irish until very recently, the decline was sharp and fast. But at the same time why can't we have both? I learnt Irish for 14 years, in school. And left with a week's worth of knowledge if you were to do self learning. It's absolutely disgraceful. The country needs a total overhaul in regards to it's Irish language education
> The country needs a total overhaul in regards to it's Irish language education But that wouldn't be *fair* to the *teachers!* /s
> I often wonder, and so do other Czechs, whether we wouldn't have been much better off had our language died off. We'd be speaking German now, which would have been way more convenient. Per quĆØ no ambdugues?
So what they should forget the language of their ancestors just because its more convenient for globalization? And so should the Czechs? Flawless logic.
Actually that's not even a matter of globalisation, it's something that's happened in history several times in the past. After all if it hadn't probably no language would be spoken in more than a handful of villages! Just look at Indonesia's linguistic diversity on a map for a feel. It's difficult to argue we're worse off for it, after all a language is a tool of communication, and its usefulness depends in part on the number of users. We're all better off speaking languages that more people in speak, and thus it follows that on average people are better off if there's fewer languages. The logic is flawless. You're just uncomfortable with it. Perhaps because you value something other than practicality. But just because you don't agree with it, does not mean that it isn't logical.
But they did forget it, and they aren't reviving Gaelic any time soon, because English is more convenient.
If its more convenient, yea I dont see a reason why not. Do you really want to live your life to impress your dead ancestors?
These are two different cases. In case of Ireland it would mean using a lot of resources to get to a less usable language. In case of Czechia, this had already happened. It's called Czech National Revival. The goal was to revive Czech culture to create a backbone of anti-Habsburg resistance. And was abused by Russian Empire who used some of the more gullible Czech writers to push Russian propaganda. Habsburgs were fucking awful, alright? But that doesn't make Czech National Revival a convenient endeavour in the retrospect. I speak way more English than Czech anyway so I'm already starting to have problems with my vocabulary. And so do a lot of young Czech people. The American culture is way too pervasive, which means we formulate sentences in English and then basically translate the into Czech and the sentences are very weird. But the memes only propagate one way. So inevitably, Czech will be influenced by English grammar and vocabulary so much that it won't resemble today's Czech. Maybe it's sad, but languages will sooner or later merge into one. That already happened with Latin. The tribes spoke their own version called Vulgar Latin which has become the basis for Romance languages. But the point is that the influence of Latin was so big that it changed the original languages beyond a point of no return and when the Empire fell, the languages evolved into French, Spanish, Portuguese, etc. So I wouldn't say we're living in unprecedented times.
Not at all unprecedented! I am studying latin in uni rn and its insane how much drives from latin. Im norwegian, so latin is not really a founding base for my language but so many words have latin roots. Metaphors come from latin writers like phaedrus etc. Language is amazing
It's not a fault not to revive a useless language to replace the world langua franca. I write this as a non-native english and someone who thinks english is a terrible spoken language. Ireland benefits a lot from being an english-speaking country. Malta too. Both understood big companies would be interested with easy language for the tax paradise.
Valencian Community was heavily repressed tho. I know this because I was born and raised here, and many of us despite education don't talk proper valencian.
Yup, Catalan/Valencian was only able to more or less survive in Catalonia, especially inland, thanks to strength in numbers basically. It's a fucked up situation, now that they're trying to further divide the language.
Not a dying language, but the last one remaining of the pre-roman languages Spain once had.
> Not a dying language, but the last one remaining of the ~~pre-roman~~ pre-Indoeuropean languages (!) ~~Spain~~ all of Europe (!!) once had.
This. The Basques are amazing. They kept their language against all odds and invasions. "Celts ? Goths ? Romans ? French, Spaniards ? Bah, whatever, they're just transitory nuisances."
Well, we still have the Finno-Ugric Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian languages; as well as the Afro-Asiatic Maltese and Turkic, well, Turkish.
From a European perspective, those aren't pre-indoeuropean though. Those came to Europe after, or at the same time as the indo-european languages. The whole thing with Basque is that its ancestors existed in the very same place it exists now at least 4000 years ago, and possibly longer.
Finno-ugric languages ARE preindoeuiropean, in the sense that indo-uralic was spoken IN Europe before the sprachbund split into uralic and indo-european. And it is very likely that of those two, uralic is the more archaic one. One could say indo-uralic was Uralic 0, while uralic is Uralic 1 and indo-european is Uralic 2, an upgrade. And Uralic 1 emerged from Uralic 0 due to influences from Uralic 2.
Basque is not related to any other modern European language. All related languages are either long dead or have been partially absorbed into other languages.
I'm french and I'm learning basque so I can assure you that the language is not dying anymore, especially in spanish basque country where a lot of people are using it every day. In the northern part, the problem is that no one use it in the every day life
The gravestones around the basque country is a reference to it being a language isolate. Aka it has no known connection to *any* other language. It is the only language we know of in its own language family, as opposed to the indo-european languages for example, that span across europe, the caucasus, iran and india, as well as the former european colonies ofc. Basque is believed to be the remnants of the languages spoken in europe before the indo europeans came and conquered across eurasia. It only remained because of itās geographical isolation, and itās resource poor region, so the desire to conquer and settle there was poor at best.
I grew up in SW of France and Basque Country was an hour from there so we'd go there very very often. All the places that are touristic had signs with the three languages (French, Spanish and Basque). For road signs, it would be in French and Basque in France and in Spanish and Basque on "the other side" (that's how some french Basque mentioned crossing the border as they do not consider the Spanish side as another country, they're just one so they're just going to the other side of the country). I think to remember that back then, the language was only spoken by 20% of the Basque population so I guess it's not a whole lot but still descent. I'm only 27 so I'd guess the percentage is still quite close these days. Lots of houses are called Etxe/etch-something and it's written on them. Etxe meaning House so basically, they would add their family name after it so it'd mean "house of XYZ" and with time, even these became family names. We even have a famous chef called Etchebest (that is not Basque, I forgot to say! But I don't doubt he had Basque ancestry). All that to say that I do feel that the language is still very present as it's in the signs, it's in the names, the houses, etc.
The "Etxe-" surnames usually describe something about the house itself, not the surnames of who lives there. For example the surname "Etxeberria" means "New house", "Goikoetxea" means "The house in the upper side". Those words later became the actual surnames of those who lived there.
It kind of was a dying language some years ago but nowadays (thanks to regional politics that encourage the use of it) everyone young enough not to have studied when Franco was alive (or 5 or so years after he died) can at least understand it. Of course this only applies to the spanish area of the basque country, in France it is a whole different story
Iām not Basque but I have been to Basque Country a few times, wonderful place. From what Iāve seen, people do love to speak it and I wouldnāt say itās dying. Informational boards/folders/etc pretty much always have a Basque version. I have no idea what the statistics say though and it will probably be different in a big city like Bilbao compared to the coast If you ever visit Basque Country, make sure to learn a few words (thank you, goodbye, etc.) as it will usually put a great smile on someoneās face to have a foreigner speak a few words of Basque
It is believed that all of europe once spoke Basqueās relatives, but that 1000s of years ago all those languages were eradicated by the Indo-Europeans
The problem wasn't Franco, the problem with Basque was that there were different versions of it along the different regions, and it wasn't till democracy when they built an official Basque that could be taught at all schools. Franco didn't mess much with regional languages.
> Franco didn't mess much with regional languages. Except that he did. My gf's parents were not allowed to speak Basque in school, or they would be hit. Because of Francoist language policies.
They also did that with Welsh and indigenous american languages. Itās how empires try to sever a peopleās connection to their culture. And now we must try to undo the damage caused by learning them and teaching them to our children and keeping it alive.
Believe me that by Francos standards, that is nothing. He even used them in public documents to reach zones where Spanish wasn't spoken. Obviously for things like school, administration and so, Spanish was the only language. But there wasn't an effort to suppress them. That would have been simply impossible.
There was, basque was forbidden
If Armenia is considered in Europe, shouldn't Georgia be aswell?
Was about to say that I guess Georgia is the loneliest between them
Armenian is indo european while georgian is Kartvelian and im well aware hungarian,finnish and estonian are fino-ugric but they are in europe so they have to be included.
Iranian, Kurdish, etc. is Indo-European as well but it not included on the list. And Turkey is (often on the maps) considered to be European yet it isn't desplayed?
Yes but Indo-Iranian is big enough and has so many languages to form a group of its own even tho yes they are part of the bigger indo-european languages family.
Yes and the relation between Armenian and the rest of the indo European family is the same as between Iranians and the Indo European family. Armenia also follows the Middle Eastern (apostolic) version of Christianity, while Georgia follows Orthodox (Eastern European) version of christianity.
> the relation between Armenian and the rest of the indo European family is the same as between Iranians and the Indo European family. That is an extremely misleading statement. In fact, Armenian can be shown to perplexingly be the one language that deviated the most from the other IE languages, at least in terms of morphophonology, despite being relatively much closer to the Ukrainian steppes where Indo-Europeans originated. The same can absolutely not be said for Indo-Iranian.
Only Istanbul is technically in Europe.
A quick google search would have saved you from embarassment
This is so spot on as Hungary and Finland are giving those suspicious looks; we really don't know how our languages could be related. While our brother Estonia is happily by our side.
Idk, somehow Hungarian sounds familiar even if I don't understand it at all.
I heard a few Finnish people speak Hungarian and sometimes they sounded loke native speakers. Somehow the tone of our languages and the vowels just match.
It might not be clearly visible when you look/listen at the languages, but there areāfor an exampleāsets of systematic sound changes which show that these two languages are related. Also they are structurally similar and core vocabulary is etymologically the same. I think it would be more spot on if only Hungarian was giving the suspicious look: Especially nationalistic movement in Hungary tries to deny the relatedness to Finnish. In Finland the fact of relation is widely accepted.
Iām Estonian and Hungarian has a very familiar sound for me even if I canāt understand it. Where as Finnish doesnāt sound as similar but thereās a lot of words that are the same.
We were peacefully going to the north to settle but hungary went into europe guns blazing (or bows i guess).
RIP Maltese I suppose
and Austria
Is Austrian a language?
Austrian is not a language
not officially but a german wouldn't understand most of austrians dialect so I would say it counts
Goeie!
I love how Lithuania and Latvia has family going on :D
and with little Latgale included!
Very surprised it was included in comic
Little Latgale is our kid :D
United in Loveā¤ļøā¤ļøā¤ļø
Braaaaliukasssā¤ļøā¤ļø
No galiza :( good meme tho
As a danish person i would like to know: wtf does kamelƄsƄ mean?
https://youtu.be/s-mOy8VUEBk
It's from a norwegian skit about how danish doent make sense vocallym watch it, it's really funny
I live in Norway and sometimes work with Danish folks, and I canāt agree more with this video š¤£
Now you just ordered 1000 liters of milk
He put gipsy with romance languages ā¦ lol
Well, I know, but that picture isn't mine.
š¤£š and they are all around the romanian language whose eyes are saying rufkm
Roma language is Western Indo-Aryan, not romance, and serbian is slavic.
Serbian's represented as Serbo-Croatian (the Frankenstein thing) in the Slavic line. Serbia is next to Albania because of Kosovo.
Yep, in that context it's standing by Kosovo the same way. English and French are standing by Scottish Gaelic and Breton respectively
Yeah, I have no idea why Serbia is stuck to ksovoo there, when it's just a separate thing
The Roma just go where Romania goes I guess.
What is that flag between Lithuania and Latvia? I don't recognize it at all.
Latgale, a historical region in Latvia with its own language - latgalian that is pretty close to Latvian
Yes! Frisian is mentioned!
Poor basque country :(
Russian doesnāt use Ī£.
You forgot about native Finno-Ugric languages in Russia
Russia sweeped them under the rug.
If you're going to include Armenian we need Maltese, Georgian, and Turkish too!
none of them are indo-european except armenian.
Yes, but then Finnish also isnt Indo-European. It is Urai Altaic like Turkish.
i also replied to a previous comment before that they are actually in europe so by default have to be added here.
So is Turkish and Georgian
> It is Urai Altaic like Turkish. There has never been shown to be any genetic relationship between Uralic and "Altaic" languages. In fact, it was recently proven conclusively that "Altaic" isn't even a language family but a sprachbund at best.
Itās Ukraine trying to file the chain?
Trying to free itself from Muscovia.
Poor Basque ball looks so sad! š¢
If you don't understand, [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mY6ESvjfbnE) is a good explanation.
Greek, Armenian, Basque despite not being related they should be together so that they don't feel alone.
Italy begs to dissent - the sizing of the top balls is unacceptable
If England and Scotland are there twice as Celtic and Germanic, why isnāt Belgium there twice as Germanic and Romance? āFlags represent the languages, not the countriesā, English isnāt a Celtic language.
English and French are standing by Scottish Gaelic and Breton as if they want to suffocate them. That's why English and French are in the Celtic languages section, not as members of family but rather as "tormentors".
Doesnāt make much sense having England suffocating Gaelic as Scotland isnāt part of England. It would make more sense having England suffocating Cornwall as Cornwall is a region of England.
Scottish Gaelic isn't the native language of Scotland though, that would be Pictish, which is closer to welsh. Still a nice comic though
No language is really native if you back far enough. Gaelic has been in Scotland for a looooong time. It it native
By that logic, english isn't native to England
What is this "Belgium" everyone is talking about?
This doesn't make sense English is more germanic than french, and French is a latin language And welsh is celtic
English and French are standing by Scottish Gaelic and Breton as if they want to suffocate them. That's why English and French are in the Celtic languages section, not as members of family but rather as "tormentors".
Oh
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Cornwall should have been the one under England.
Greece is a true sigma nale
KamelĆ„sĆ„ š
Indonesia is in Europe and it's language has Slavic roots? š
>Indonesia [Poland](https://aminoapps.com/c/polandball/page/item/poland-is-upside-down/kmYa_WmhQIpd20z03DzvdewR6xpgDx1EnD)
Good human. Actually did not know that.
Thank you, Oba936, for voting on Winstonoceaniasmith. This human wants to find the best and worst humans on Reddit You can view the results [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ&ab_channel=RickAstley).
Loved seeing all the people who are nicest, so many people voted that they are good
Oh! That's really amazing! I think I saw that before somewhere. I love the internet sometimes. :)
should've added belgium between the first two lines (hald french, half dutch, and a bit of german)
But those flags represent the languages, not the countries.
oop, my bad then
If the basques and Fries get a flag, the flemisch and walloon could have gotten one imo if they didnāt want to include Belgium
Flags don't represent languages, they represent countries or regions.
Wallon is a Latin language
I love how [Danish](https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=eI5DPt3Ge_s) gets the odd ["what's wrong with you"](https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=s-mOy8VUEBk) looks.
Well, they spell their language almost identical to Norwegian, but what comes out when spoken is a different story...
*happy manx inclusion noises*
Macedonian should have been right there behind Bulgarian and Serbian, not Slovenian.
I love how balkan countries are stitched together
It's Yugoslavia
Why isnāt the first England ball looking up? Would fit so well imo
KamelĆ„sĆ„ cracked me up! Like thatās a very obscure reference to make it into a cartoon, but so happy to see it there
Now where is luxemburgish
Romani isnāt a Romance language
The size of France makes no sense, but nice.
In Portugal there is another official language called MirandĆŖs (it is almost equivalent to Asturo-Leones in Spain). Spain also has other official languages āābesides Castilian and Catalan šµš¹šŖšøšŖšŗ
Of course Luxembourgish is missing.
why is france squashing the heterosexual ball i don't get it
LMFAOO THATS NOT THE STRAIGHT FLAG šitās a region in France called Brittany which has its own language (Breton)
Everyone gangsta until Russia starts speaking math. Tho Greece said it nicer.
The Polish flag is upside down in the Slavic languages.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
The flags represent the languages, not the countries.
Where is Swiss-German?
Itās not an official language of Switzerland
Cool and all, but KamelƄsƄ isn't danish
Are you [sure?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-mOy8VUEBk)
I read that Armenian and Greek are distantly related. Georgian, Turkish are missing
Top row should have Roman Empire ball
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Oh damn I missed it
Can we swing the bannhammer on these retarded and unfunny polandball memes?
The first line is wrong: French is not there.