Unpopular Opinions

[Jo498]

Yes, in many languages the half hour is not counted past but until. Or at least in German it is rather the interval of the second hour which will be complete at 2 o'clock that is subdivided and designated accordingly. Therefore "halb zwei" (half two, i.e. 13:30) does not really stem from half an hour before two but "half of the hour #2 has passed". There is a consistent system that accordingly calls 13:15 "viertel zwei" (quarter two) and 13:45 "dreiviertel zwei" but this is regional and somewhat old fashioned.
Confusingly, the more common colloquial way (virtually all official times are in 24 hour time) mixes the way of dividing the interval I just described and the relation to the next full hour (as a point in time). "Viertel nach [past] eins, halb zwei, viertel vor [to/before] zwei." People used to this more common way are usually quite confused both by "dreiviertel zwei" and even more by "viertel zwei" meaning a quarter past one.
And of course, every German learner of English gets confused by "half (past) two" if in colloquial speech the past is left out.

[71 dB]

How do you say time in Finnish?

"Kello on ...." (the clock/time is...) where the "...." is:

14:00 = "kaksi" (two)
14:01 = "yksi yli kaksi" (one over two)
14:05 = "viisi yli kaksi" (five over two)
14:10 = "kymmenen yli kaksi" (ten over two)
14:15 = "varttia yli kaksi" (quarter over two) or "viisitoista yli kaksi" (fifteen over two)
14:23 = "kaksikymmentäkolme yli kaksi" (twentythree over two)
14:30 = "puoli kolme" (half three)
14:32 = "kaksikymmentäkahdeksan vaille kolme" (twentyeight to three)
14:41 = "yhdeksäntoista vaille kolme" (nineteen to three)
14:45 = "varttia vaille kolme" (quarter to three)
14:56 = "neljä vaille kolme" (four to three)

So, how do you say "The time is 15:00" in Finnish? 

(A) "Kello on vartti"
(B) "Kello on neljä"
(C) "Kello on kolme"

[pjme]

Half (an hour) until; ie. 13:30 is half until 14:00. That's my guess, anyway; I'm no Dutch speaker.

Well, I am.  And the translation is much simpler: Dutch or Flemish "vijf over half twee" translates as "five past half two".
That's it.

[Florestan]

proto-Indo-European had EVERYTHING. About 8 cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, ablative, vocative, locative, instrumentalis of which some slavic languages retain 6-7), dual in addition to singular and plural, tons of tenses, participles etc. (I don't know anything about the Indo-Iranian branch and I read that Lithuanian may be closest of all modern languages to the  hypothetical stage 5000 years ago but Classical Greek still has most of the tenses and participles). And that then most languages becames gradually simpler, losing most of the flexion, fusing tenses and all kinds of other complications together.
With the vaning of Latin as a standard language in higher education many Western Europeans (unless they learned a slavic language or Irish) take the rather simple grammar level of English and modern romance languages as typical. Which is not the case for Indo-european in general.

Romanian grammar is basically a simplified Latin one. It has 5 cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative --- for the latter only some names are modified, others stay the same), about 5 or 6 tenses, plural depends on genre for "two" and any number containing two units (the word for "two" in "forty-two dogs" is different from the word for "two" in "forty-two cats" because "dog" is male genre and "cat" is female). Actually, genre in Romanian is very important and different from other Romance languages --- for instance "day", "evening", "world" and "problem" are female genre, and we have a "neutral genre", meaning that the singular is male and the plural is female --- hard to understand, I know, but that's how it is; as a rule of thumb, most Romanian neutral nouns are female in French*. The conjugation of verbs has three regular forms and lots of irregular ones. There is no equivalent of, say, "I am reading" as different from "I read" --- "(Eu) citesc" is valid both for the former and the latter. The future tense can be formed either with "have" or "will" (in modified forms) --- for instance, "Am să vin la tine  mâine" (literal translation "I have to come to you tomorrow") is teh same as "Voi veni la tine mâine" (literal translation "I will come to you tomorrow"). Btw, the personal pronoun is dropped in most cases because the conjugation of the verb makes it redundant; it's used only in those cases where the actual subject of an action must be stressed.

In common usage, though, just two tenses, equivalent formally to present and present perfect in English, are enough, even for future actions, which, as Jo said about German, can perfectly be described and understood using the present tense with an adverb which clearly implies future, such as "mâine" which means "tomorrow".

Counting is honestly and hands down more coherent and consistent than all the languages I can fluently speak, read or understand (English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese) or I can partially speak, read or understand (Dutch, German), Anything between 10 and 20 is literally translated as "[digit between one and nine, two depending on genre]-to-ten"; 70 as "seven tens"; 93 as "nine tens and three" --- these last two examples are actually rules with no exceptions whatsoever for counting until 100, save that "two tens" is different for female and male genre. Past 100, you just say "one hundred seven tens" or "one hundred nine tens and three".

The common vocabulary is 90% Latin, 9% Slavic, 1% Turkish/Hungarian but I'm firmly convinced that if a 14th-century Romanian listened to the TV news he'd understand almost nothing. Moreover, and educated Romanian with a natural talent for learning foreign languages --- such as yours truly --- cand easily understand Italian, Spanish and French easier and more often than the other way around.

*Hungarian language having no genres at all, one of the greatest sources of laughter for a Romanian is to hear a Hungarian messing up Romanian genres --- this frequent confusion has even given rise to jokes which are untranslatable but very funny for us.

[Florestan]

Well, I am.  And the translation is much simpler: Dutch or Flemish "vijf over half twee" translates as "five past half two".
That's it.

Yes, but in Romanian "vijf over half twee" translates word by word as "cinci peste jumătate două" which makes no sense at all. Now, "cinci minute peste jumătate de oră până la două" makes sense, albeit an extremely convoluted one. And "până la" translates exactly as "until". 

The whole Romanian phrase translates in English as "five minutes past half-an-hour until two". If I told the clok to my wife this way she'd think I had much more beers than I usually have. 

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

While it is probably too simple, as I dimly recall it from popular linguistics, proto-Indo-European had EVERYTHING. About 8 cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, ablative, vocative, locative, instrumentalis of which some slavic languages retain 6-7), dual in addition to singular and plural, tons of tenses, participles etc. (I don't know anything about the Indo-Iranian branch and I read that Lithuanian may be closest of all modern languages to the  hypothetical stage 5000 years ago but Classical Greek still has most of the tenses and participles). And that then most languages becames gradually simpler, losing most of the flexion, fusing tenses and all kinds of other complications together.

All of this is basically true. The Lithuanian thing is often exaggerated - you'll hear people say "Lithuanian derives from Sanskrit" or "Lithuanian is the oldest Indo-European language" and other inaccurate things - but it does preserve more of the archaic I-E features than probably any other living language.

[Florestan]

All of this is basically true. The Lithuanian thing is often exaggerated - you'll hear people say "Lithuanian derives from Sanskrit" or "Lithuanian is the oldest Indo-European language" and other inaccurate things - but it does preserve more of the archaic I-E features than probably any other living language.

If the latter is true, then why is the former exaggerated? If Lithuanian is the closest living language we'll ever get to the PIE*, then that's it, period.

* the putatively Proto-Indo-European language.

And yet --- if no living linguist can write or speak one single word in the putatively Proto-Indo-European language, how can one assess the degree of closeness to it?

[Florestan]

proto-Indo-European

This is like the unicorn. No living person is able to utter a single word of it, let alone write it. It's all speculation.

[Florestan]

[...] Lithuanian [...]preserve more of the archaic I-E features than probably any other living language.

This presupposes three things.

1. You fluently speak Lithuanian.

2. You fluently speak the archaic I-E.

3. You fluently speak any other living language.

I'm admittedly in my contrarian mood but I honestly think neither of the above is true, except possibly (1).

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

If the latter is true, then why is the former exaggerated? If Lithuanian is the closest living language we'll ever get to the PIE*, then that's it, period.

* the putatively Proto-Indo-European language.

And yet --- if no living linguist can write or speak one single word in the putatively Proto-Indo-European language, how can one assess the degree of closeness to it?

1. The examples I quoted are the exaggerations.

2. Of course nobody speaks PIE nowadays. It's been reconstructed hypothetically by linguists over the course of a couple of centuries. And naturally that reconstruction itself is always subject to change.

So yeah, if you wanna be strict, we can't make statements regarding the relation of modern Lithuanian to PIE with any certainty. What I'm giving you is the current prevailing opinion of academic linguists.

[Florestan]

What I'm giving you is the current prevailing opinion of academic linguists.

Well, yes, I'm aware of it. I still maintain they're talking about unicorns.

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

Well, yes, I'm aware of it. I still maintain they're talking about unicorns.

It's the inherent flaw of historical research. Are archeologists "talking about unicorns" when they draw conclusions from bits of pottery unearthed in an ancient city?

[Florestan]

It's the inherent flaw of historical research. Are archeologists "talking about unicorns" when they draw conclusions from bits of pottery unearthed in an ancient city?

A "bits of pottery unearthed in an ancient city" is real; you can measure and weight it, describe its colors and design. You can be absolutely sure that real people created and used it.

The putatively proto-Indo-European language is an entirely intellectual construct --- nobody has even the slightest idea how it sounded or how it was written.

Question for you: where did the proto-Indo-European people originated from? What is the prevailing opinion of academic historians in this respect?

[Jo498]

It's not that dissimilar from speculation about "missing link" species in palaeontology or celestial bodies because of the disturbation of an orbit of another planet. One gets the rules of language change from experience, namely from the known languages and the respective changes in the last ca. 3000 years (mostly from Sanskrit and archaic Greek until today) and then extrapolates backwards another 2000 years. Of course there huge gaps. AFAIK, we don't know that much more about "proto-germanic" ca. 2000 years ago than about indoeuropean 2000-3000 years earlier, it's also a reconstruction because there are no texts and only a bunch of words (probably mangled by the Romans who recorded them)
AFAIK by now we have confirmation both from archaelogy and palaeogenetics (the latter is extremely recent, there are youtube lectures by David Reich and it's mostly from the last 10 years) for some features of archaic Indoeuropean culture and society that were hypothesized from mere linguistics already in the 19th and early 20th century. They came from the steppes close to the Caspian Sea.

So sure, it is speculation but not more so than in archaeology or even some physics.

[Madiel]

A "bits of pottery unearthed in an ancient city" is real; you can measure and weight it, describe its colors and design. You can be absolutely sure that real people created and used it.

The putatively proto-Indo-European language is an entirely intellectual construct --- nobody has even the slightest idea how it sounded or how it was written.

Question for you: where did the proto-Indo-European people originated from? What is the prevailing opinion of academic historians in this respect?

It's not pure speculation. It's based on science and careful observation about the way languages behave (including exactly why your 14th century Romanian wouldn't understand the news). Changes are not random. They follow patterns.

I mean, how is it that you can assert Romanian comes from Latin? Linguistics.

The proto Indo-Europeans lived in an area that had honeybees and beech trees. You can propose this because of the ways in which common words for these things exist in all the daughter languages.

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

It's not pure speculation. It's based on science and careful observation about the way languages behave (including exactly why your 14th century Romanian wouldn't understand the news). Changes are not random. They follow patterns.

I mean, how is it that you can assert Romanian comes from Latin? Linguistics.

The proto Indo-Europeans lived in an area that had honeybees and beech trees. You can propose this because of the ways in which common words for these things exist in all the daughter languages.

The Sintashta Culture is a good example of how the current synthesis works - bringing together archeology, genetics, hypothesized language, and attested language (from ancient literature):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sintashta_culture

[Florestan]

Ihe proto Indo-Europeans lived in an area that had honeybees and beech trees. You can propose this because of the ways in which common words for these things exist in all the daughter languages.

English: honeybee

Greek: melissa

Romanian: albina

Do you see any resemblance? I don't.

English: beech

Greek: figós

Romanian: fag

Do you see any resemblance? I don't, besides a vague one between the Greek and the Romanian word.

[Madiel]

English: honeybee

Greek: melissa

Romanian: albina

Do you see any resemblance? I don't.

English: beech

Greek: figós

Romanian: fag

Do you see any resemblance? I don't, besides a vague one between the Greek and the Romanian word.

Sigh. I did not say the current words matched. Again, that isn't how languages work. As illustrated by the fact that the Danish word for cloud is "sky".

AND as illustrated by the fact that you just posted 2 tree words that very much resemble English "fig" rather than "beech".

I'm not going to be able to explain all this in a single post.

[Madiel]

Plus in any case the English "beech" IS cognate with Latin "fagus". https://www.etymonline.com/word/beech#etymonline_v_8232

If you understand how a g becomes a k (extremely closely related sounds) and how a k then becomes a ch, then yes there's a resemblance.

And various languages have a word for honey related to the English word "mead".

[Florestan]

the Danish word for cloud is "sky".

Is this the English translation, or the actual Danish word? Either way, there is some logic in it. (Clouds are in the sky)

AND as illustrated by the fact that you just posted 2 tree words that very much resemble English "fig" rather than "beech".

I'm not going to be able to explain all this in a single post.

Tbh, I expected --- hoped, actually ---- you to retort that "beech" is actually not that different from" figós", just as the Greek "pisthis" is not that different from the Latin "fides" --- taking in account consonant for consonant and vowel for vowel. I'm disappointed.