Most & Least Changed Languages

Discussion of natural languages, or language in general.
richard1631978
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Most & Least Changed Languages

Post by richard1631978 »

I was wondering which languages in current use have changed the most & least over the years.

I've heard that Armenian & Albanian have very small percentages of 'native' words.

Supposedly early medeival Icelandic sagas can be read by modern Icelandic readers without much effort.

I'm not sure if the above are good examples, I imagine some very isolated places have limited language development for even longer.

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Re: Most & Least Changed Languages

Post by Soap »

Finnish is known for being particularly conservative in terms of sound changes, though proto-Uralic is only a reconstruction, so we can't know for sure. Many branches of the Austronesian family are phonologically conservative as well. It may be that highly vocalic languages are inherently more stable than monster languages such as PIE, at least in phonology. Though phonological changes are often the mother of changes in grammar and other areas as well.

When Jeff Burke was still posting here he gave us an example of a reconstructed proto-Algonquian word *peponwi, meaning "winter", which over about 1500 years had evolved into ae in Cheyenne and in Miami stayed the same as the proto-language.
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Re: Most & Least Changed Languages

Post by Drydic »

richard1631978 wrote:Supposedly early medeival Icelandic sagas can be read by modern Icelandic readers without much effort.
Read, yes. But could a 10th century Icelander and a modern Icelander (with no training in Old Norse that is) understand each other? Nope. The sound changes have been quite extensive.
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Re: Most & Least Changed Languages

Post by Beli Orao »

Depends on what you mean by "changed." If (like in your examples) you mean languages that have the highest loanword/native word ratio, then Hungarian is probably up there. Out of those that had undergone the most drastic sound changes, French is a classic example. Out of the languages that have undergone the most reduction in noun declension, Macedonian-Bulgarian is the winner out of standard Slavic tongues. Etc

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Re: Most & Least Changed Languages

Post by Nortaneous »

Drydic Guy wrote:
richard1631978 wrote:Supposedly early medeival Icelandic sagas can be read by modern Icelandic readers without much effort.
Read, yes. But could a 10th century Icelander and a modern Icelander (with no training in Old Norse that is) understand each other? Nope. The sound changes have been quite extensive.
A good example of the general principle behind this is English. The main obstacle to reading Chaucer is vocabulary, but it'd be practically impossible to understand him, since between Chaucer and now, English vowels went to hell.
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Re: Most & Least Changed Languages

Post by Skomakar'n »

I'm pretty sure the whole deal about Icelandic gets a bigger fuzz about it than it should. I'm not native, but I've been studying it for about four years, and my native language (Swedish) is close to it. I had no trouble reading a book by Arnaldur Indriðason, who's a modern author, and the book was only a year old or something. On the other hand, I could barely read a book by Laxness, which I think was slightly less than a century old, and thus not even close to mediæval. The story was about vikings, though, and sure, there were lots of words and concepts I wouldn't even know in Swedish, but it was still quite different. Extracts from the Edda are no easier. So I at least believe that at least Icelandic vocabulary has changed a lot over a not so long period of time. On the other hand, I'm not too good with the 'big words' yet, even though I'm very conversationally fluent.
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Re: Most & Least Changed Languages

Post by Salmoneus »

Nortaneous wrote:
Drydic Guy wrote:
richard1631978 wrote:Supposedly early medeival Icelandic sagas can be read by modern Icelandic readers without much effort.
Read, yes. But could a 10th century Icelander and a modern Icelander (with no training in Old Norse that is) understand each other? Nope. The sound changes have been quite extensive.
A good example of the general principle behind this is English. The main obstacle to reading Chaucer is vocabulary, but it'd be practically impossible to understand him, since between Chaucer and now, English vowels went to hell.
Not really true, in my experience. At first, yes. But if you read along for a while to get your ear in, as it were, most of it becomes pretty understandable - it's just a very odd accent. Obviously there have been both grammatical and semantic changes, so you'll get stuck now and then - but it's at least as easy as understanding a Glaswegian.
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Re: Most & Least Changed Languages

Post by King of My Own Niche »

I met a lady recently who claimed that her and her husband's native language, Lithuanian, was one of the oldest and most unchanged languages in Europe. I'm not sure how accurate this claim is, anybody know how accurate this claim is?
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Re: Most & Least Changed Languages

Post by Zumir »

Wikipedia wrote:The Lithuanian language is believed to be the most conservative living Indo-European language, retaining many features of Proto Indo-European now lost in other Indo-European languages.
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Re: Most & Least Changed Languages

Post by vec »

King of My Own Niche wrote:I met a lady recently who claimed that her and her husband's native language, Lithuanian, was one of the oldest and most unchanged languages in Europe. I'm not sure how accurate this claim is, anybody know how accurate this claim is?
That's a claim similar to what my fellow Icelanders say about Icelandic in marketing material on the country – not founded in science.

I can read the Sagas, yes, but the books we used in school have modernised spelling. And it was hard. A lot of words and turns of phrase had to be learnt as we went.

Laxness is hard too. Not only does he use non-standard system of spelling that he invented himself, he also has a lot of archaicising vocabulary and, in certain cases, very ideosyncratic syntax that's not attested elsewhere. I remember that it got easier as I went on; I stopped noticing the weird spelling and so forth; but it was definitely harder than the average book.
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Re: Most & Least Changed Languages

Post by Shrdlu »

I, being a swede have no problem reading old Norse. Gothic is a bit more trickier but not much.
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Re: Most & Least Changed Languages

Post by richard1631978 »

Nortaneous wrote:
Drydic Guy wrote:
richard1631978 wrote:Supposedly early medeival Icelandic sagas can be read by modern Icelandic readers without much effort.
Read, yes. But could a 10th century Icelander and a modern Icelander (with no training in Old Norse that is) understand each other? Nope. The sound changes have been quite extensive.
A good example of the general principle behind this is English. The main obstacle to reading Chaucer is vocabulary, but it'd be practically impossible to understand him, since between Chaucer and now, English vowels went to hell.
English has had many changes over the last 1000 years, which is partly why I started this thread.

It did cross my mind what it would be like if English was basically the same as the style Beowulf was written in.

One of the main reason languages change over the years are the need for words to describe new situations etc.

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Re: Most & Least Changed Languages

Post by Soap »

I think a strong argument could be made for Lithuanian being the most conservative modern IE language, actually. Here are a few reasons:

*It preserves the PIE masculine nominative ending -s, and the thematic vowel before the -s is still there unlike in many other languages that have preserved just the -s.
*Noun and adjective declensions are still preserved.
*A true vocative case
*A passive voice that likely goes back to the original PIE passive rather than just being derived from something else

Plenty more but I'd just be copying from sites such as http://www.lituanus.org/1984_3/84_3_05.htm
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Re: Most & Least Changed Languages

Post by alice »

Is there actually any remotely usable way to measure how much a language has changed? What units would be used for the measurement? Could it be used to measure the "distance" between two not necessarily related languages?

Not having studied linguistics properly, I don't know the answers, of course.
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Re: Most & Least Changed Languages

Post by Shrdlu »

Well, Swedish has "bär[béhr]" from proto-indo-european "ber".
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Re: Most & Least Changed Languages

Post by Izambri »

I didn't had many problems reading Tirant lo Blanc in its original 15th century Catalan, but it was a pain in the ass to other classmates, all non native speakers.
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Re: Most & Least Changed Languages

Post by vec »

Soap wrote:I think a strong argument could be made for Lithuanian being the most conservative modern IE language, actually. Here are a few reasons:

*It preserves the PIE masculine nominative ending -s, and the thematic vowel before the -s is still there unlike in many other languages that have preserved just the -s.
*Noun and adjective declensions are still preserved.
*A true vocative case
*A passive voice that likely goes back to the original PIE passive rather than just being derived from something else

Plenty more but I'd just be copying from sites such as http://www.lituanus.org/1984_3/84_3_05.htm
PIE hadno passive. And just the fact s is retained in masc. words, doesn't mean more conserviativism. Icelandic has r in the same position, but other things may be less changed there than in Lithuanian.
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Re: Most & Least Changed Languages

Post by Mecislau »

vecfaranti wrote:PIE hadno passive. And just the fact s is retained in masc. words, doesn't mean more conserviativism. Icelandic has r in the same position, but other things may be less changed there than in Lithuanian.
a) He means the mediopassive, clearly.

b) Read what he wrote. He says it preserves the -s and the thematic vowel, which is unusual.
Soap wrote:Finnish is known for being particularly conservative in terms of sound changes, though proto-Uralic is only a reconstruction, so we can't know for sure. Many branches of the Austronesian family are phonologically conservative as well. It may be that highly vocalic languages are inherently more stable than monster languages such as PIE, at least in phonology. Though phonological changes are often the mother of changes in grammar and other areas as well.
Is it? After all, Finnish completely lost the Proto-Uralic palatalized series. Also, grammatically, Finnish is one of the most Indo-Europeanized languages, and lexically, it is absolutely full of IE loanwords throughout history.

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Re: Most & Least Changed Languages

Post by Shrdlu »

Mecislau wrote: Is it? After all, Finnish completely lost the Proto-Uralic palatalized series. Also, grammatically, Finnish is one of the most Indo-Europeanized languages, and lexically, it is absolutely full of IE loanwords throughout history.
And this is nothing compared to Estonian.
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Re: Most & Least Changed Languages

Post by vec »

Mecislau wrote:
vecfaranti wrote:PIE hadno passive. And just the fact s is retained in masc. words, doesn't mean more conserviativism. Icelandic has r in the same position, but other things may be less changed there than in Lithuanian.
a) He means the mediopassive, clearly.

b) Read what he wrote. He says it preserves the -s and the thematic vowel, which is unusual.
Soap wrote:Finnish is known for being particularly conservative in terms of sound changes, though proto-Uralic is only a reconstruction, so we can't know for sure. Many branches of the Austronesian family are phonologically conservative as well. It may be that highly vocalic languages are inherently more stable than monster languages such as PIE, at least in phonology. Though phonological changes are often the mother of changes in grammar and other areas as well.
Is it? After all, Finnish completely lost the Proto-Uralic palatalized series. Also, grammatically, Finnish is one of the most Indo-Europeanized languages, and lexically, it is absolutely full of IE loanwords throughout history.
I'm just saying. I find trying to make these kinds of assertations kind of pointless. Measuring the amount of language change that has occurred in any case is impossible. Certain things will seem conservative, others not.
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Re: Most & Least Changed Languages

Post by MisterBernie »

Mecislau wrote:Is it? After all, Finnish completely lost the Proto-Uralic palatalized series. Also, grammatically, Finnish is one of the most Indo-Europeanized languages, and lexically, it is absolutely full of IE loanwords throughout history.
But those loanwords often are relatively unchanged (at least those taken from Proto-Germanic or Proto-Norse)... as long as the loaned word fit phonological constraints. So you have kuningas from *kuningaz, which is much closer than king, König, konge, koning, etc., and rengas from *hrengaz > ring. So Finnish appears relatively phonologically stable for the past 2000-something years.

And from Wikipedia, the earliest sentence in Finnish:
'Mÿnna tachton gernast spuho somen gelen Emÿna daÿda'
which in modern Finnish is
'Minä tahdon kernaasti puhua suomen kieltä, [mutta] en minä taida'
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Re: Most & Least Changed Languages

Post by merijn »

Soap wrote:I think a strong argument could be made for Lithuanian being the most conservative modern IE language, actually. Here are a few reasons:

*It preserves the PIE masculine nominative ending -s, and the thematic vowel before the -s is still there unlike in many other languages that have preserved just the -s.
*Noun and adjective declensions are still preserved.
*A true vocative case
*A passive voice that likely goes back to the original PIE passive rather than just being derived from something else

Plenty more but I'd just be copying from sites such as http://www.lituanus.org/1984_3/84_3_05.htm
Isn't the same also true for modern Greek? And Greek has also retained the neuter gender (but lost more cases).

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Re: Most & Least Changed Languages

Post by vec »

Like I said; counter-examples upon counter-examples. Greek, clearly a very prominent IE language, is also a very prominent counter-example of preserving the thematic vowel being unusual. In fact, so do most languages on the Indo-branch of Indo-European, at least to some extent. And Latin did as well, and most of its descendents as well; another prominent branch of IE languages.

So no, Lithuanian doing so is not so unusual. Besides, the fact it did is just random. There could have been a sound change eliminating it, but there wasn't.
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Re: Most & Least Changed Languages

Post by Herra Ratatoskr »

merijn wrote:
Soap wrote:I think a strong argument could be made for Lithuanian being the most conservative modern IE language, actually. Here are a few reasons:

*It preserves the PIE masculine nominative ending -s, and the thematic vowel before the -s is still there unlike in many other languages that have preserved just the -s.
*Noun and adjective declensions are still preserved.
*A true vocative case
*A passive voice that likely goes back to the original PIE passive rather than just being derived from something else

Plenty more but I'd just be copying from sites such as http://www.lituanus.org/1984_3/84_3_05.htm
Isn't the same also true for modern Greek? And Greek has also retained the neuter gender (but lost more cases).
WHS.

And from what I understand of Modern and Ancient Greek, I wouldn't consider modern Greek to be all that conservative. It's got some archaic features, but it's also made some major changes. I mean, the verbs still have an inflected passive, but the TMA system looks to have been severely reworked.

I guess most or least changed depends on what you consider important. How important does one consider phonology? What about morphological forms? And how those forms are used, compared to earlier (e.g. modern English's limited-use genitive vs. Anglo-Saxon's use of it). What about archaic forms that are rarely - if ever -used, like English thou? Where does vocabulary fit in?

Still, I do, think it is possible to describe languages as more or less changed than others from a common ancestor. I just think that you need to recognize that not all parts of the language will be equally conservative/innovative, and be more specific whenever warranted. For instance, from my (albeit limited) knowledge of Romance languages, I consider Italian phonologically more conservative than Spanish, but in terms of verbal morphology, Spanish seems a bit more conservative. Nominally, I'd say that they're pretty similar in terms of conservation/innovation, but in different ways. And both are quite a bit more conservative than French in most areas. Romanian is hard to really decide, as it has some rather old forms, but the rules governing their usage are very different from those governing Latin. It really depends on how you weigh morphology relative to syntax.
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Re: Most & Least Changed Languages

Post by finlay »

What's the thematic vowel?

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