Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2015 July 5

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July 5

inverted ‘Viva’ sign (Italian)

In a movie set in Italy – Don Camillo (1952) – we see placards saying “VV Peppone – ΛΛ la reazione”. The letters VV are crossed, forming a common abbreviation for Viva; by ΛΛ I mean the same sign inverted. I had never seen that before. Has it a pronunciation? —Tamfang (talk) 08:41, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

Probably not answering the question, there is this. --Askedonty (talk) 08:50, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

• With effort I can imagine something akin to a reason to think that's faintly relevant. —Tamfang (talk) 07:55, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Thank you; I suspected avverso could not be fitted into the slogan although it can be read either contrario, ostile, or enemico. --Askedonty (talk) 10:06, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

The Italian Wikipedia article on the letter W says "In titles and slogans the letter W is used as an abbreviation of "evviva" or "viva", while the same symbol upside down indicates "abbasso", used as an expression of disapproval." So in this case, "long live Peppone, down with the reaction". Hopefully that makes sense in the context of the film (Peppone is Don Camillo's nemesis, at least). Adam Bishop (talk) 17:34, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

It does make sense in the context of the whole set of stories. Peppone is a communist (and mayor) and thus against la reazione, the reactionary opposition. ---Sluzzelin talk 17:45, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

• Resolved
  The meaning was obvious. —Tamfang (talk) 07:55, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Greek language

I've heard that Greek is the language which has remained closest to its roots (that is, classical Greek). Is this true? --Halcatalyst (talk)

No but I bet a Greek person told you that, haha. Adam Bishop (talk) 18:58, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

Citation needed. --174.88.133.209 (talk) 19:07, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

IANAL (I am not a linguist) but I'd put my money on Icelandic. From the article: "modern Icelanders can easily read the Eddas, sagas, and other classic Old Norse literary works created in the tenth through thirteenth centuries". Sjö (talk) 19:49, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

It all depends on what is meant by "roots". It's all a matter of degree. Modern Icelandic is only about 800 years removed from Old Norse while Modern Greek is 2300 years removed from the Classical Period.--William Thweatt ^TalkContribs 20:42, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

• The question is difficult because not all the parts of a language change at the same rate. English has conservative consonants, radically changed vowels, and a hugely diminished grammatical system. The noun system of Spanish is highly changed from that of Latin, while the verb system is similar, with some changes and simplifications. Assuming we take "roots" to refer to the Proto-Indo-European language, Greek, Icelandic, Slovenian, and Lithuanian, especially in their literary forms, are all rather conservative. There's an anecdotal story from Anthony Burgess in A Mouthful of Air that a Sanskrit scholar could make himself understood to a Lithuanian. This non-RS blog entry gives some examples of retained resemblances between the Baltic and the ancient Indian language.

μηδείς (talk) 20:53, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

(EC) I was just about to mention that Lithuanian is often touted as being the most conservative of the Indo-European languages but she beat me to it :) .--William Thweatt ^TalkContribs 21:00, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

Quenya hasn't changed in Ages and Ages. Clarityfiend (talk) 23:37, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

The single most pure language of which all other languages are but corrupted dialects, is Quranic Arabic. I know this from comments on Youtube. Asmrulz (talk) 11:09, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

The holy God language spoken by Adam and Eve? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 14:42, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

That would be Enochian, reportedly. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 212.95.237.92 (talk) 20:17, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Not even close, it's the Brabantic dialect of Dutch. μηδείς (talk) 04:19, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

It's an interesting question, though: suppose a speaker of a modern language found a time machine and went back into the past. How far back could they go to be able to converse, in a mutually intelligible manner, with the "native" speakers of that time period? For example, I don't suppose that a speaker of modern English could go back beyond 1450-1500. But how far back can a speaker of, say, modern Japanese go? How far back can a speaker of modern Icelandic go? And who can go further back in time, and still be able to converse with the "locals"? 79.233.112.209 (talk) 21:34, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

And to generalize a bit more: what about written languages? Written Chinese, they say, is legible to both Mandarin and Cantonese speakers, so how old can written Chinese be, and still be legible today, by the locals? You don't need a time machine for that. Myrvin (talk) 06:23, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

This [1], swiped from Chinese characters, says "The Chinese civilization boasts the world's oldest continuous written languages". 1200BC or before. Myrvin (talk) 06:28, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

For spoken languages, this [2] picks a few, with Greek on top. This [3] picks Australian Aboriginal languages (10,000 years). Myrvin (talk) 06:43, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

That second link is a seriously terrible suggestion with zero basis in actual linguistics. Being isolated does not prevent your language from changing. And that particular "language" is a dialect of the Western Desert language...whose huge diversity in dialects should tell you all you need to know about this approach to answering this question. -Elmer Clark (talk) 08:19, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

So that's a no for the Aboriginals then? Myrvin (talk) 08:28, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

The first link is no good either. The fact that modern Greek and ancient Greek are both called Greek is actually rather unfortunate. It's like calling modern Italian "Latin". Wikipedia has a bunch of articles that may help with this...Koine Greek, medieval Greek, Demotic Greek, Katharevousa (an attempt to artificially archaicize Demotic), Greek language question, modern Greek (and the very sparse section Modern Greek#Differences from Classical Greek, varieties of Modern Greek, etc etc. Adam Bishop (talk) 10:40, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

I thought at least Greek was in there somewhere. This article [4] says 99% of the vocabulary of a modern Greek newspaper is of classical origin of 3 millennia ago. Myrvin (talk) 12:37, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

But that article was written in 1960 when they were still using Katharevousa, which basically means a 1960 Greek newspaper using an artificially archaic form of Greek would be, maybe, possibly, roughly similar to ancient Greek. But as that article itself points out, Katharevousa is rather clumsy, and "the Athenian man-in-the-street" didn't speak like that. The differences "are so many and so great that even a Greek of modest education and with no knowledge of foreign languages may be said to be bilingual". The author mentions a Greek person who "had no idea how to write the language he spoke", because Demotic was different from Katharevousa. In any case, Demotic became the official form of modern Greek in 1976, so this article is no longer relevant. The author mentions at the beginning that Greek flourished in medieval Constantinople while the rest Europe was in the Dark Ages...which does have something to do with it, but it's stated in an extremely irritating way (speaking as a medievalist). Adam Bishop (talk) 13:56, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

It would seem then that the questioner needs to be told that what s/he was told about Greek may have been true as late as 1960, but the link with ancient Greek was broken in the 70s. Myrvin (talk) 14:38, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

• In 1976 I met a Greek (my age, 16) who said he was only semi-literate in Greek although he spoke at least three other languages. (I once saw him reading a letter in Greek, handwritten in all caps.) At the time I supposed it was because he spent most of his life outside of Greece, but here's a better explanation. —Tamfang (talk) 20:49, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

• Isolation means lack of borrowing, which is one reasonable meaning of “remain close to its roots”. A language with heavy borrowing is close to other languages' roots. —Tamfang (talk) 08:07, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

Any objections to written Chinese? Myrvin (talk) 14:39, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

The encyclopedia that Wikipedia took the length crown from, Yongle Encyclopedia, was written in classical Chinese which is apparently very dense, archaic, and hard. There was a lot of this in history and the writing 3,000 years ago should be impenetrable. The modern writing's only about half that old. But note that that the vast majority of Chinese on Earth don't even use the modern writing anymore, they use an even moderner simplified Chinese which looks obviously different: [5]. Only Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau (and Singapore and Malaysia unofficially) still use the 1500 years old kind. Also, if languages were random walks then by blind chance there should be some language on Earth that's surprisingly unchanging or even changed some and changed back without intentional fundamentalism. Some really insular people that's small enough to stay cohesive, never gets invaded, doesn't trade much, is colonized or joins a nation-state late and stays a backwater that doesn't see outsiders much might be a good approximation for this. A tribe in Oceania maybe? When I read about languages it often says (paraphrased) that natural selection occurs on even the slightest bothers. Each generation might unknowingly soften the feature until it disappears. Thus giving the appearance of the collective speakers being extremely lazy and unrefined. This language should start with few of these then. Things like the b in in debt which used to be pronounced. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 16:18, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

I would say the principle of entropy applies. A language can change but it can never change back. There is one exception I know of - the dialects of Flemish spoken in Belgium were deliberately modified so that they became more like "proper" Dutch. 87.81.147.76 (talk) 16:22, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

Isn't Adam B's Katharevousa an example of that? Myrvin (talk) 17:41, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

I think the un-invaded idea was why I fancied Australian Aboriginal languages - at least up to Cpt Cook. Yet, we are told that they changed a great deal. Myrvin (talk) 17:45, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

Sard, spoken in the district of Nuoro in central Sardinia, is Latin with different endings. That's 2,000 years of intelligibility. 87.81.147.76 (talk) 15:10, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

The article Logudorese dialect says it altered little from vulgar Latin, so not quite that old. Myrvin (talk) 17:36, 7 July 2015 (UTC)