• kronisk @lemmy.world
      9·
      10 months ago

      More like rapidly flipping german, french, english, swedish and danish channels on a TV

  • ryan@the.coolest.zone
    1541·
    10 months ago

    Real answer: these are actually real languages! They’re just conlangs, or constructed languages, instead of natural languages. The major problem with conlangs generally ends up being the limited vocabulary, but the grammar foundations are usually solid.

    I actually really like Klingon as a language because it was intentionally designed to be alien, and specifically to be very Klingon. Most languages are Subject-Verb-Object (like English and other Western languages) or Subject-Object-Verb (like Japanese or Hindi). Klingon, however, is Object-Verb-Subject - it’s very direct with the emphasis placed on the target of the sentence, which makes sense with the Star Trek world and Klingon culture.

    Fun fact, Klingon has at least one native speaker - some guy raised his daughter to speak Klingon as well as English. (I’m not a fan of this - on one hand, learning multiple languages from an early age is a huge leg up in being able to learn more languages in the future, but on the other hand Klingon is entirely useless as a primary language given its structure and the few other people who speak it.)

    • nikita@sh.itjust.works
      9·
      10 months ago

      Even cooler, in my opinion, are languages that are even further outside of common indo european language paradigms, such as Navajo which uses degrees of animacy instead of grammatical gender and Basque which uses ‘focus’ and ‘topic’ to determine word order rather than subjects and objects.

      • Zagorath@aussie.zone
        5·
        10 months ago

        such as Navajo which uses degrees of animacy instead of grammatical gender

        What makes their use of degrees of animacy not a use of grammatical gender? Keep in mind that even though it’s called “gender” because in European languages it usually maps in some way onto human sexual identity, linguistically speaking grammatical gender has nothing to do with human gender identity.

        • nikita@sh.itjust.works
          2·
          10 months ago

          Good point. What I meant is that it’s different from grammatical gender typical of European languages as you defined it.

          Grammatical gender is a bad name for such a general concept that goes beyond the social definition of gender. In fact, that term is a bit eurocentric.

          • Zagorath@aussie.zoneEnglish
            2·
            10 months ago

            In fact, that term is a bit eurocentric

            Yeah without a doubt it is. There are a few non-European languages that use a masculine/feminine grammatical split, including Arabic and Hebrew, but both masc/fem and masc/fem/neuter are hugely prevalent in European languages, and I doubt the term got its name from Arabic linguists.

            I’ve just done some Googling and learnt that some people prefer the term “noun classes” rather than grammatical gender, especially when the classes are not based on human cultural genders. Other people make a distinction between what “noun classes” means and what “grammatical gender” is, using them for two different concepts. So apparently the term “grammatical gender” is not quite as uncontroversial within linguistics as I thought.

    • brbposting@sh.itjust.works
      20·
      10 months ago

      Speers was also the only person who would speak Klingon to Alec and the boy never saw Star Trek during this experiment, so didn’t ever see anyone but his father speaking it. As everyone else spoke English, Speers stated when Alec was about three years old, “He stopped listening to me when I spoke in Klingon. It was clear that he didn’t enjoy it, and I didn’t want to make it into a problem, so I switched to English…”

      Today the teenage Alec no longer is fluent in Klingon and reportedly can’t even pick out the meaning of individual words of the language.

      Wow

    • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.caEnglish
      51·
      10 months ago

      That can’t be right. I’ve never heard of a language called Dutch. That’s just something they print on some food labels to make them seem better.

      /s for the dense.

      • pankuleczkapl@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        5·
        10 months ago

        The main verb is most often in the second position, the second verb you are referring to is a placeholder for an auxiliary verb that usually is a different form of a previously main verb

    • IWantToFuckSpez@kbin.social
      16·
      10 months ago

      Wat de fak zei je fokkIng over mij, jij kleine trut? Weet je dat ik als beste in mij klas ben geslaagd bij de Koninklijke Mariniers and ik ben betrokken geweest bij meerdere geheime invallen tegen Al Kaida en ik heb meer dan 300 bevestigde doden. Ik ben getraind in gorilla oorlogsvoering en ik ben de beste sluipschutter van de gehele Koninklijke Nederlandse krijgsmacht. Jij bent niets meer voor me dan een doelwit. Ik zal je fokking wegvagen met een precisie zoals nog nooit eerder op deze aarde is gezien, let op mijn verdomde woorden. Denk je nou echt dat je weg kan komen met zulke shit over mij op het internet te zeggen? Denk nog eens na, klootzak. As we speak ben ik mijn geheimen spionnen netwerk over de de hele VS aan het contacteren en je IP word nu getraceerd dus je kan je maar beter voorbereiden voor de storm die komt, kakkerlak. De storm zal je trieste kleine ding die je jij je leven noemt wegvagen. Jij bent fokking dood, jonge. Ik kan overal zijn, op elk moment, en ik zal je in zeven honderd manieren doden, en dat is dan alleen met mijn blote handen. Ik ben niet alleen extensief getraind in het onbewapend vechten maar ik heb toegang tot het gehele arsenaal van de Koninklijke Mariniers en ik zal daar volledige gebruik van maken om je trieste reet van het continent weg te vagen. Jij kleine kut. Had je maar kunnen weten welke onheilige vergelding jouw kleine ‘slimme’ opmerking over jou heen bracht. Misschien hield je dan je kut bek. Maar dat had je niet kunnen weten en nu betaal je daarvoor de prijs. Jij godverdomme idioot. Ik zal woede over je heen schijten en je zal er in verdrinken. Jij bent dood jonge.

    • SSUPII@sopuli.xyzOP
      4·
      10 months ago

      Yeah, wrong shade of blue 😅

      But you see, if they actually did it the proper blue it would have been too dark for the minimal friendly design!