The word lox was one of the clues that eventually led linguists to discover who the Proto-Indo-Europeans were, and where they lived.Photograph by Helen Cook / Flickr One of my favorite words is lox,” says Gregory Guy, a professor of linguistics at New York University. There is hardly a more quintessential New York food than […]
Literally never went to school or learned how to read or write.
You’re describing every language for the overwhelming majority of the last 150,000+ years. English is not unique in that.
Which is why it’s one of the hardest languages to learn
It’s not. English has a lot of irregularity to remember, but not the most. How difficult you find a language depends on your native language. English lacks things like elaborate case structures or grammatical gender which can be hard unless your native language has something similar. The ‘th’ sound is rare, but there are no clicks or tones. SVO is not the most common word order, but it’s not the rarest.
there wasn’t even a noble population who were helping rules be set logically, it’s a slang language.
Huh? That’s not how having a nobility works. Or what slang is. The rich aren’t more logical, and they aren’t concerned with making language easier. If anything nobles want more arcane language that takes longer to learn to better differentiate themselves from those with less free time.
It sounds like you’re thinking of the prescriptive grammar movement where from the 1700s or so rich English speakers decided if it’s not possible in Latin then it’s uncouth in English, and started making up nonsense rules like no split infinitives or ending sentences with a preposition. They couched it in terms of being logical and correct but it was in reality a novel way of marking social class. And ~700 years after the English peasant/Norman aristocrat divide.
You’re describing every language for the overwhelming majority of the last 150,000+ years. English is not unique in that.
Name a single language that didn’t have an aristocracy that knew how to read and write and learned formalized Grammer for the majority of that languages history.
I didn’t read anything else you didn’t understand after that first bit tho.
I can help a little, but I’m not teaching an etymology class over here.
Name a single language that didn’t have an aristocracy that knew how to read and write and learned formalized Grammer [sic] for the majority of that langauges [sic] history.
You do realize more than half of the world’s ~7,000 languages still have no writing system, right?
Name a single language that didn’t have an aristocracy that knew how to read and write and learned formalized Grammer for the majority of that languages history.
😂 I’m going to be generous and assume you’re just trolling now and don’t seriously believe this.
You’re describing every language for the overwhelming majority of the last 150,000+ years. English is not unique in that.
It’s not. English has a lot of irregularity to remember, but not the most. How difficult you find a language depends on your native language. English lacks things like elaborate case structures or grammatical gender which can be hard unless your native language has something similar. The ‘th’ sound is rare, but there are no clicks or tones. SVO is not the most common word order, but it’s not the rarest.
Huh? That’s not how having a nobility works. Or what slang is. The rich aren’t more logical, and they aren’t concerned with making language easier. If anything nobles want more arcane language that takes longer to learn to better differentiate themselves from those with less free time.
It sounds like you’re thinking of the prescriptive grammar movement where from the 1700s or so rich English speakers decided if it’s not possible in Latin then it’s uncouth in English, and started making up nonsense rules like no split infinitives or ending sentences with a preposition. They couched it in terms of being logical and correct but it was in reality a novel way of marking social class. And ~700 years after the English peasant/Norman aristocrat divide.
Name a single language that didn’t have an aristocracy that knew how to read and write and learned formalized Grammer for the majority of that languages history.
I didn’t read anything else you didn’t understand after that first bit tho.
I can help a little, but I’m not teaching an etymology class over here.
You do realize more than half of the world’s ~7,000 languages still have no writing system, right?
😂 I’m going to be generous and assume you’re just trolling now and don’t seriously believe this.
Cool…
I’m going to continue to not use emojis and take a quick step to make sure I never try to help you understand something again.
Everyone wins!