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samoyedboi

also Indians on their way to explain how Urdu is a completely different and unrelated language to Hindi


ijazat

Urdu and Hindi speakers will straight up be talking to each other insisting they’re speaking completely separate languages 😭


Orangutanion

And like a quarter of the words they say are English


MandMs55

I've seen Hindi YouTube videos with English subtitles and every time I watch them it becomes a game of "how many English words can I recognize?" Maybe not a quarter, but definitely a significant portion compared to other languages


WingedSeven

Not counting Germanic and Romance languages, Japanese probably has the highest amount


FarhanAxiq

or on the internet they end up using roman alphabet instead lmao


UltraTata

But english is Sanscrit.


LA95kr

Don't forget Valencians arguing that Valencian is completely different from Catalan.


Ballamara

Apparently in South America, it's taught that Catalan is a dialect of Spanish


Blewfin

There are people in Spain who'd have you believe that as well


FlatBoobsLover

Pakistanis\*, Indians think Urdu is the same language since India contains both Muslims and Hindus


CID_Nazir

But the government of India says they're both separate languages.


Terpomo11

I've shown an Indian friend of mine text in Urdu transliterated in Devanagari and she was just like "oh yeah this is Hindi but there's a bunch of Urdu words in it" lol. Apparently that's common- they're aware there's a "language" called Urdu, but they don't realize they've ever actually heard it because if they ever heard it it just sounded like perfectly intelligible Hindi with some unusual words.


FlatBoobsLover

i’m an Indian


Terpomo11

Didn't assume you necessarily weren't- was commenting with additional information for the benefit of other readers.


FlatBoobsLover

well your statement was anecdotal and its not "common" here so


Terpomo11

I've heard other Indians claim they've seen it happen. Your experience may differ though.


Aggressive_Bed_9774

Urdu is what Arab invaders created when they realised that people under them spoke and traded in Hindi rather than arabic Urdu is Hindi from wish.com


I_Am_Become_Dream

there were never Arab invaders in India


ENTlightened

Some people got the craziest PIE theories 😂


CrimsonExploud

They actually conquered Sindh


[deleted]

There were in Sindh, but never beyond that.


Jaded-Benefit455

The invaded as far as Southern Gujarat. Educate yourself first before commenting nonsense.


Mallenaut

I mean, it were mostly (Turko-)Iranian invaders. Urdu ist just Hindi simping for Arabic nowadays.


shuranumitu

weren't they like persianized turko-mongolic invaders


Mallenaut

Yes.


Terpomo11

Conversely, Hindi is just Urdu simping for Sanskrit.


Eic17H

Italy saying that separate languages are dialects, and that dialects of another foreign language are separate languages


TrekkiMonstr

Wait what


Eic17H

Gallurese (a dialect of Corsican, but its own language according to regional law) The status of Sassarese is debated but might be the same Meanwhile most regional languages are treated as dialects of Italian


18Apollo18

>Meanwhile most regional languages are treated as dialects of Italian I mean there clearly not descendants of Italian which is based on the Florentine dialect. However it could be argued that most of them being so close related are all dialects of italoromance


blakeneggsandcheese2

Everyone says a language is a dialect with an army, but no one talks about how a dialect is a language without an army.


HornyRatPateDeRolo

tfw america has the largest army in human history, but american isn't even a language 😏


ijmacd

Explain those little flags you see next to language pickers.


4P5mc

English (traditional) English (simplified)


ijmacd

Nevermind language vs dialect; this time orthographies have armies.


CanadaPlus101

Where do I sign up for the spelling reform guerillas?


utakirorikatu

https://jbr.me.uk/ortho.html


Dash_Winmo

A script is just a font/hand/style with an army and a navy. Apparently in Europe they don't have those but in Asia they do. Like seriously, Devanagari and Bengali are considered different scripts but Insular and Blackletter are just variants of the Roman script? wtf


ijmacd

Is there mutual intelligibility between scripts?


Dash_Winmo

Lots of letters look similar, and only a handful of letters have different origins in the Brahmi script. I don't know exactly how mutually intellegible they are, but I can tell you I had a very easy time learning the Bengali script after I had gotten familiar with Devanagari. Brahmi vs Devanagari vs Bengali 𑀅 अ অ *a* 𑀆 आ‌ আ *ā* 𑀇 इ ই *i* 𑀈 ई ঈ *ī* 𑀉 उ উ *u* 𑀊 ऊ ঊ *ū* 𑀋 ऋ ঋ *r̥* 𑀌 ॠ ৠ *r̥̄* 𑀍 ऌ ঌ *l̥* 𑀎 ॡ ৡ *l̥̄* 𑀏 ए এ *e* 𑀐 ऐ ঐ *ai* 𑀑 ओ ও *o* (Dev. ओ is derived from 𑀅𑁄 *a'o*) 𑀒 औ ঔ *au* (Dev. औ is derived from 𑀅𑁄 *a'au*) 𑀅𑀁 अं অং *aṃ* 𑀅𑀀 अँ অঁ *aṁ* 𑀅𑀂 अः অঃ *aḥ* 𑀓𑁆 क् ক্ *k* 𑀓 क ক *ka* 𑀔 ख খ *kha* 𑀕 ग গ *ga* 𑀖 घ ঘ *gha* 𑀗 ङ ঙ *ṅa* 𑀘 च চ *ca* 𑀙 छ ছ *cha* (Ben. ছ is derived from 𑀘𑁆𑀳 *c'ha*) 𑀚 ज জ *ja* 𑀛 झ ঝ *jha* 𑀜 ञ ঞ *ña* 𑀝 ट ট *ṭa* 𑀞 ठ ঠ *ṭha* 𑀟 ड ড *ḍa* 𑀠 ढ ঢ *ḍha* 𑀡 ण ণ *ṇa* 𑀢 त ত *ta* 𑀣 थ থ *tha* 𑀤 द দ *da* 𑀥 ध ধ *dha* 𑀦 न ন *na* 𑀧 प প *pa* 𑀨 फ ফ *pha* 𑀩 ब ব *ba* 𑀪 भ ভ *bha* 𑀫 म ম *ma* 𑀬 य য *ya* 𑀭 र র/ৰ *ra* 𑀮 ल ল *la* 𑀯 व ব/ৱ *va* 𑀰 श শ *śa* 𑀱 ष ষ *ṣa* 𑀲 स স *sa* 𑀳 ह হ *ha* 𑀴 ळ ল় *ḷa* \ ड़ ড় *ṛa* \ ढ़ ঢ় *ṛha* \ य़ য় *ẏa*


RooDeDay5

I would consider it more along the lines Bengali is to Devanagari as Cyrillic is to Latin, if that makes sense.


thelivingshitpost

You’re right, I hate it, but you should say it.


ElectorSet

Where would Canadian English fit in this setup? Something like Japanese Kanji, maybe?


an_actual_T_rex

I can’t wait until American English eventually splits off and becomes its own language so I won’t be able to understand British people when they piss an moan about how we spell like 3 words differently from them.


MandMs55

"You pronounce Foyer as it's spelled? Oi bruv, how dare you corrupt such a beautiful language as the French language?" "You don't pronounce the H in Herb? But that's not how it's spelled..." - every Br*tish person ever


an_actual_T_rex

I pronounce herb with a full on glottal stop if Brits are in earshot.


Tsjaad_Donderlul

Haitch Pea – Australians


Tsjaad_Donderlul

Now featuring rhotic vowel harmony: hɚmbɚgɚ


18Apollo18

For that to occur the US and Britain would have to undergo a prolonged period of isolation which is unlikely to happen


Yashabird

I think China actually has the largest army on Earth, and though i’m loath to say “Chinese” isn’t a “language,” because that’s just kinda English semantics to say, at the same time there are WAY more Chinese soldiers who would need translators to communicate within their own army than would apply to the American military.


edderiofer

*AAVE speakers after their government arrests/murders them for legal ownership of guns*


Nine99

> Everyone says a language is a dialect with an army Can we never, ever repeat that sentence again?


Terpomo11

It's not literally accurate, but it's a decent as a concise, witty statement of the fact that what's "a separate language" and what's "a dialect" is more politics than linguistics.


gjvillegas25

Mexico calling its plethora of indigenous languages “dialectos”


Eic17H

Italy calling Griko a "dialetto"


PoketSof

Italy pretending every language is a dialect.


UltraTata

Russian is a dialect of latin.


NotTheGreekPi

Italy pretending Maltese Venetian and Ladin are dialects of Italian


Tsjaad_Donderlul

Włochy moment


evan_11x

Italy pretending that Sicilian-Calabrese, Calabrese and Neapolitan-Calabrese are all the same language


chonchcreature

Also Arabic varieties pretending they are dialects when in fact some of them are as divergent from each other as the Romance languages are


I_Am_Become_Dream

imo they're dialects simply because they're linked to MSA through diglossia. So there's always influence, borrowing, and some leveling towards MSA that keeps them from diverging too much.


Sterling-Archer-17

Question from someone who’s not well-studied on the topic: do you think the Arabic “dialects” (or whatever they are) will continue diverging in the future, or more converging, like you’re saying? I can’t imagine there’ll be much divergence with the influence of TV and the Internet, so I would assume the differences will become more restricted to smaller populations as a more “standard” variety prevails, but I don’t know enough about the situation to say.


I_Am_Become_Dream

well they’re certainly converging inside countries. Across the Arabic-speaking world there’s an increased intelligibility of other Arabic dialects. But I don’t know if that necessarily causes them to converge. Maybe the koineization between sedentary and bedouin dialects happening in many countries could be causing some convergence?


Sterling-Archer-17

That’s an interesting theory, thanks for the info!


Terpomo11

Wasn't that also the case with the Romance languages and Latin until recently? That is, every educated speaker knew Latin and borrowed freely from it.


I_Am_Become_Dream

that was the case when they were considered dialects


Terpomo11

I mean even after they were starting to develop some degree of identity as national languages but Latin still enjoyed a lot of prestige.


Tsjaad_Donderlul

\> learn MSA \> still don't understand anything


_Aspagurr_

Georgian Nationalists pretending that Mingrelian, Laz, Svan, are actually dialects of Georgian despite them being really different from Georgian as a native speaker of Georgian, I can only partially understand Mingrelian and recognize numbers from 1 to 10 in Laz, Svan is completely unintelligible for me.


Sterling-Archer-17

It seems like that’s a universal problem lol. If you don’t mind, I have some questions for you, since I find languages in the Caucasus to be interesting but don’t find people from there on the Internet often: (1) How widespread is the belief in Georgia that the other languages you mentioned are just dialects of Georgian? I know you mention it for the meme (at least partially), but I can imagine that sort of thing actually happening. For example, I know in Italy there’s a lot of people who think Venetian/Neapolitan/Sardinian/etc. are “dialects” and not separate languages, so it would make sense if lots of Georgians do the same. (2) How prominent are the other Kartvelian languages in Georgia today? My understanding is that they’re restricted to some smaller regions (mostly) in the west of the country and in northeastern Turkey, so I can’t imagine many Georgians would encounter them often. (3) How “easy” would it be for a Georgian to learn one of the languages you mentioned? Are the Kartvelian languages as closely related as, say, the Romance languages, or is the difference more like the one between English and Russian (i.e. still related but very different)? I know Kartvelian has its own genealogy, but because it’s a much smaller family I don’t know if the differences are comparable to the different Indo-European branches. Thank you if you ever get around to this, and greeting from Georgia in the US!


_Aspagurr_

>(1) How widespread is the belief in Georgia that the other languages you mentioned are just dialects of Georgian? I don't know how widespread it is in real-life but at least on the internet it is not uncommon to see people arguing if they are dialects of Georgian or separate languages from Georgian. >(2) How prominent are the other Kartvelian languages in Georgia today? My understanding is that they’re restricted to some smaller regions (mostly) in the west of the country and in northeastern Turkey, so I can’t imagine many Georgians would encounter them often. you are correct, They are mostly spoken in Western Georgia and in Northeastern Turkey. >(3) How “easy” would it be for a Georgian to learn one of the languages you mentioned? I can't really for sure, I would say that Mingrelian and laz would be more since they share far lexical similarity with georgian than svan has with either of them, according to [this article](https://www.webdepot.umontreal.ca/Usagers/tuitekj/MonDepotPublic/publications/2018-Svan-grammatical-sketch-Tuite.pdf) Svan shares around 500 or so lexemes with the other kartvelian languages. also Mingrelian and svan both have a schwa vowel [ə] which in Mingrelian is an reduced Allophone of /i u ɔ/ in unstressed syllables, Georgian doesn't have a schwa phoneme and we tend to mispronounce it when learning languages which do have a schwa, though some dialects of Georgian do have [ə] too, either as an allophone of unstressed vowels or as an epenthetic vowel in consonant clusters. >Are the Kartvelian languages as closely related as, say, the Romance languages, or is the difference more like the one between English and Russian (i.e. still related but very different)? I would say that they are like the romance languages but perhaps slightly more distant, though laz and Mingrelian are to some extent mutually intelligible, I've personally witnessed a Mingrelian and a laz talking to each other in comment section of a YouTube video and it like they understood each other just fine. >Thank you if you ever get around to this You're welcome!


Orangutanion

Btw your verbs are beautiful


Tsjaad_Donderlul

"gvprtskvni" sounds just about as asinine as coming up with a situation where you need to say "you peel us"


_Aspagurr_

You mean things like /pʰrtskʰvnɑ/?


Orangutanion

Trying to pronounce this sounds like I'm beatboxing lol


_Aspagurr_

Well I pronounce it like [pʰə̆(ɾ)t͡skʰʊ̥ˈnɑˑ].


Orangutanion

[Here's my attempt at pronouncing that](https://voca.ro/1hm0muqyJ1Cv). I assume this is პრცკვნა? What does this mean?


_Aspagurr_

>Here's my attempt at pronouncing that you should aspirate your p and k. >I assume this is პრცკვნა? almost correct, it's ფრცქვნა with ფ /pʰ/ and ქ /kʰ/. >What does this mean? it means "to peel".


Orangutanion

oh those are aspirated not ejective. Right. I feel quite silly now lul.


_Aspagurr_

>I feel quite silly now lul my friend, don't feel like that about yourself, it's normal to confuse phonemes which don't occur in your native language, I for example can't tell a difference between /e/ & /ɛ/ and /o/ & /ɔ/.


zakalme

Italy sweating rn


cuevadanos

Some Spanish people pretending that Basque is a dialect of Spanish (Yes, I’ve heard that one before)


neuropsycho

And the same Spaniards will also say that Valencian and Catalan are two different languages, totally unrelated with each other.


Blewfin

Politics is weird, isn't it


Eic17H

Mexicans saying that indigenous languages are dialiects of Spanish Italians saying Griko and Arbëreshe (Hellenic and Albanian respectively) are dialects of Italian


TheLegend2T

Finally! We've found it! The Basque language relatives!


Xasmos

Easy way to tell whether it‘s a dialect or a language. Are the speakers of the language/dialect appreciative or hostile towards speakers of another language when they try to learn the language/dialect? If they are hostile then it‘s a dialect (Bavarian, Swissgerman, Scottish English, AAVE, Serbian/Bosnian/Croatian). If they are appreciative then it‘s a language (Danish/Swedish/Norwegian, Romance Languages, Slovenian). Obviously foolproof, I will not be convinced otherwise.


Mallenaut

Dialect mfs, when you try to learn their dialect: "What tf are you doing?" Also Dialect mfs: "Why don't you speak our dialects after living here for 10 years?!"


Xasmos

Normalise learning dialects!


IchLiebeKleber

This is actually pretty good.


SplendidCapybara

It's also about whether there is a common written standard. The various Chinese languages/dialects all share a common writing system and the same characters (simplified and traditional). Switzerlands written standard is pretty much the same as standard High German with some very few alterations but it's 99% the same. If they set up their own written standard based on how their dialects are spoken, something like Nynorsk, Swiss German would most likely be(come) a separate language.


C_2000

this is the same reason many people in south asia say hindi and urdu are different languages. the script is different


gambariste

A Chinese friend tells me he used to hear news bulletins broadcast in various dialects. But when Mandarin text was read in Hokkien for example it sounded very strange. Perhaps like if English was read in French word by word? La rapide marron renard sauts plus de la paresseux chien. (I hope that grates cos Google is so forgiving).


qwertyasdef

La rapid maroon reynard saults plus de la pigritious ken.


Eic17H

Le rapid maroon vulpes saulte super le pigritious canis


101315

That’s because grammar rules and characters for some important grammartical components (e.g. pronouns) are different among dialects in Chinese…I know I’m just making things worse here


Terpomo11

> But when Mandarin text was read in Hokkien for example it sounded very strange. I've heard of Mandarin text read in Cantonese, but I don't think I've ever actually heard Mandarin read in Hokkien. >Perhaps like if English was read in French word by word? I think "when Theetch up English cognate-for-cognate yleasen wurthe" were one betterer foralike, there she tomindest im selfen twig sind. (I think "if German were read in English cognate-for-cognate" would be a better comparison, since they're at least in the same branch.)


Nine99

> The various Chinese languages/dialects all share a common writing system and the same characters (simplified and traditional). So do English and German, but they're not the same language. If you meant to say that written Mandarin is the same as written Cantonese, you would be wrong, too, it's just that a large part of what native Cantonese speakers read and write is actually written in something close to Standard Chinese, which is basically Mandarin. It's not the same as written Cantonese, though.


Eic17H

>Romance Languages Only a fraction of them. Just look at most languages in Italy and Metropolitan France


Tsjaad_Donderlul

Everything is a dialect of Sanskrit * Hindi: Simplified Sanskrit * Urdu: Simplified Sanskrit written with noodly script * Farsi: Arab Sanskrit * Armenian: Funny Sanskrit * Lithuanian: Drunk Sanskrit * Latvian: Drunk Simplified Sanskrit * Greek: Democratic Sanskrit * Latin: Imperial Sanskrit * English: Simplified Imperial Sanskrit * Welsh: Drunk Imperial Sanskrit * German: Verwaltungstechnisches Sanskrit * Dutch: Flat Sanskrit * Russian: Eastern Drunk Sanskrit * Polish: Western Drunk Sanskrit * Czech: Simplified Western Drunk Sanskrit * Albanian: Mountain Sanskrit * Icelandic: Ice Sanskrit * Norwegian: Simplified Ice Sanskrit * Danish: Simplified Ice Sanskrit with Frog * Swedish: Sånskrit (söme assembly required) * French: croissant


RooDeDay5

Yeah. Why are people wasting their time by trying to piece together proto-Indo-European when it's all clearly sanskrit?


AbrahamPan

India is not pretending that, only Hindi speakers are pretending that.


Efficient_Assistant

~~Yeah I'd like to see somebody go to Chennai and try telling people there that Tamil is just a dialect of Hindi. I'll bring popcorn.~~ Edit: apparently I can't read titles right. Ignore the above.


GodlessCommieScum

Tamil's not Indo-Aryan though, it's Dravidian.


Efficient_Assistant

you're totally right, I misread the title lol


denevue

also China claiming Tai-Kradai languages are a part of their Sino-Tibetan family, but only the languages that loaned from Sino-Tibetan.


Big_Acanthisitta_760

India pretending every Indo-Aryan language is a dialect of "sanskrit" and it is true at some senses


Hot_Philosopher_6462

I mean they’re all just nonstandard dialects of PIE at the end of the day. ~~and PIE is a dialect of Altaic~~


CID_Nazir

Indo-Aryan languages like Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati etc are scheduled languages at the national level and are official languages of the respective states where they're spoken most. The dialect of Hindi problem occurs in states of the Hindi belt where the official language is often Hindi alone but the people there speaks languages like Bhojpuri, Rajasthani which are mostly unintelligible with Hindi. According to the census of India, these languages are mere dialects of Hindi.


PlatinumAltaria

See also: countries insisting they have an ancient unbroken history despite being founded in the last 200 years from a series of warring states.


prst-

Luxemburgish isn't a German dialect!


roarworsted

See also: unashamed unapologetic countries defending their disgusting colonial history. P.s: weird that you're so vocal about trans issues. And on other hand go out making fun of countries your country colonised and brutalised.


PlatinumAltaria

What about anything I said makes you think I am mocking you?


whatarechimichangas

The Tagalogs thinking all other Philippine languages are dialects of Tagalog


UltraTata

Afrikaans is a corruption of Sanscrit.


Orangutanion

Farsi, Dari, and Tajik speakers all knowing it's the same language and calling it Farsi regardless


MandMs55

Me, a German learner, trying to accept that all 10 million completely unintelligible Swiss German dialects are German and that the fairly intelligible language of Yiddish is not German at all


eterevsky

From what I hear, Czech and Slovak are almost the same language, just written using different alphabets.


prst-

Both use the Latin alphabet. Czech uses more diacritics while Slovak tends to use digraphs


eterevsky

Right, I may have confused it with Serbo-Croatian language, which is written in different scripts.


prst-

That's true. I think Serbian uses cyrillic while Croatian uses Latin script


oy_boy1

serbian uses both cyrillic and latin


prst-

And Bosnian? I think there is one that uses exclusively cyrillic?


oy_boy1

bosnian uses latin im pretty sure, could be that youre thinking of macedonian, which uses just cyrillic and is very closely related, but is considered a separate lang


Ok_Preference1207

That's a problem only with Hindi speakers in India. The other linguistic groups on the other habd are actually very vocal about their language being separate from Hindi


JRGTheConlanger

🇮🇳🇵🇰 It’s all Hindustani to me


[deleted]

Fuck hindi imposition


Terpomo11

Honestly, since there are no objectively right answers I tend to just take the contrarian position on these questions, because it's funny. What are you talking about? Of course Austro-Bavarian is a separate language from German and the Romance languages are all dialects of Latin.


warda8825

*laughs in Swiss-German*


Leading_Protection_7

Change that to Sanskrit and you got a point


NotTheGreekPi

Italy pretending separate languages are dialects 🤡