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Sikander
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Boulder, Colorado, United Snakes of America
Jan 2000
time: 22:35
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quote:
Originally posted by Last Conformist
A truly bizarre language is Pirahã, from Brazil. Apart from some extremely freaky properties you need some linguistics background to appreciate, it includes an utter lack of numbers, and of colour terms. It also has an extremely limited array of sounds (11 for men, and only 10 for women!). |
So is the extra sound available to men a burp, a grunt or a fart?
I voted Arabic, in part because of the way it sounds and in part because of the histrionic character of the speakers most of the time I've heard it spoken (mostly on the soccer field, though a fair amount on television as well). I do agree with Dissident's theories regarding language however. For instance, at one time I thought German and Russian were really ugly languages, largely because I mainly heard them spoken by real Nazis, Nazi caricatures and Brezhnez.
I soon learned differently when I started to take Russian while in the Army. It sounds a lot more like Italian (sound pallet wise, though the cadence is very different) than I could have imagined. Once I got the 6 foot tall blonde bade from Leningrad teaching my section all resistance to the language was demolished.
A similar thing happened with German when I was stationed there. Firstly I found German women to be quite attractive, which softened my mood immensely. Everyone in Germany was so nice to me, and eventually I fell in love with the recorded voice that announced the street car stops. She was probably a rancid old lady in reality, but what a pleasant voice!
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Gangerolf
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huuhh
May 2001
time: 06:35
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 Odd.
quote:
a. Pirahã is the only language known without number, numerals, or a concept of
counting.
b. Pirahã is the only language known without color terms.
c. Pirahã is the only language known without embedding.
d. Pirahã has the simplest pronoun inventory known and evidence suggests that
Pirahã's entire pronominal inventory may have been borrowed.
e. Pirahã has no perfect tense.
f. Pirahã has perhaps the simplest kinship system ever documented.
g. Pirahã has no creation myths its texts are almost always descriptions of
immediate experience or interpretations of experience; it has some stories about the past,
but only of one or two generations back.
h. The Pirahã in general have no individual or collective memory of more than
two generations past.
i. Pirahã people do not draw, except for extremely crude stick figures representing
the spirit world that they (claim to) have directly experienced.
j. Pirahã has no terms for quantification, e.g. 'all', 'each', 'every', 'most', 'some', etc. |
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Ecthy
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Zhonghuà Rénmín Gònghéguó
Mar 2000
time: 06:35
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let's just call them a primitive society on the pre-homo sapiens level
can they thus be deemed animals and extincted? no.
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Brent
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I probably shouldn't comment on this, but said TNG character was originally going to have two or three pairs of breasts.
Tsolyani sounds cool. Mayan rules. Not that I know anything about it of substance.
I consider myself linguistically inclined, but I don't know much so far. Maybe I'm not as interested as I think I am.
I'm interested in Native American languages, but pretty much just the most major ones, like Cherokee, Maya, Nahuatl, Quechua, Aymara, and Guarani. Of those, the one I'm least interested in is Cherokee because it seems more difficult/ different from European languages.
European languages I'm linguistically interested in: Faroese, Sami, Karelian, Basque, Romansh. As for dialects, Stavangersk and Gutnish.
African languages if I ever get around to it, I think I'll stick with Swahili.
Asian languages the one I'd try first would be Vietnamese because it would be easier to learn to read, and Korean would be good because I like its writing system.
I love mauling languages.
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d=me
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cantonese sounds horrible.
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Ecthy
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Zhonghuà Rénmín Gònghéguó
Mar 2000
time: 06:35
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Marina Sirtis doesn't sound too mexican... and she's the only one around proper like that
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Vince278
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She was in Death Wish 3.
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23-08-2004 12:07
) and the last 1/3 thinks I'm Swedish
(see below).
The sample of "nice Norwegian" in my post above is Stavangersk, or pretty close to it anyway.
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