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You have done an excellent job on this website. Your division of language groups and classification criteria are very easily understood. I also find your website easy to read and browse through because of the colour scheme you have used.
However, with repsect and open criticism, I would like to bring to your attention some information that is clearly incorrect on your website. On your page entitled "The Afro-Asiatic Family of Languages", you have surprisingly chosen to identify three languages under the branch "Semitic" as being extinct. I believe that the sources you probably cited that led you to label them extinct were either out of date or biased. (I am curious as to which sources they were). The three languages I am referring to are Syriac, Aramaic & Assyrian. The reason I am pointing this out to you is because my ethnicity is Assyrian and I speak it! Assyrian is spoken by over 4 million people across the globe in countries like Iraq, USA, UK, Canada, Australia, Sweden and Germany.
Syriac is also spoken by millions of people in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, USA, Canada & Sweden. Aramaic is the umbrella term that embraces both Assyrian and Syriac. To put it another way, Aramaic is divided geographically into the Western branch known as "Syriac" and the Eastern branch known as "Assyrian". These languages are most definately NOT extinct and are in fact thriving.
In fact, they are the official languages of three churches that have their headquarters in the Middle East. Syriac is for the "Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch" and Assyrian for the "Assyrian Apostolic Catholic Church of the East" and "The Chaldean Diocese". These three chruches all have their own websites.
Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch - http://www.syrianorthodoxchurch.org/
Assyrian Apostolic Catholic Church of the East - http://www.cired.org/
The Chaldean Diocese - http://www.chaldeandiocese.org/
I just finished reading your summary and found it very interesting but saw two errors about the Portuguese and Galizan(I prefer to call it this away) or Galego language.
The first one was:
"Portuguese has been separate from Spanish for over 1000 years."
This is a huge mistake by the simple fact that the spanish language didn't exist but let's go to a small history crash course. Galizan was one of the direct languages that came from romance so Portuguese never belong to the spanish language but to the Galizan one. As the matter of fact until the XVII century, almost four centuries after the independence of the south part (Portugal) of the Galizan Kingdom, Portuguese was call Galizan-Portuguese only after that Portuguese assume herself was an independent language due to political reasons.
This bring us to the second error:
"Galician is a Portuguese dialect..."
It's just the opposite.
Portuguese florish to become a modern Galizan language with infuences from all around the globe, where the Portuguese people went. Our Galizan brothers spoken language became well defined by the term : Galego-spanish or like the Brazilians say Portunhol.
To try to explain your mistake here's a small text from the site Free Galiza (We remember. Documents in Galizan, French and English)
"What is currently known as Spain is an intricate compound of four basic nationalities (Galiza, Spain itself, the Basque country and Catalonia) that was set up for the first time at the end of the XVth century --therefore any reference to Spain prior to that time is either politically-oriented, simply wrong, or confuses the otherwise obviously different concepts Spain and Hispania (id est, the Roman administrative division that englobed the whole Iberian Penninsula, including today's Portugal)."
Obrigado pela sua atenção. Continue o bom trabalho.
Cumprimentos de Portugal.(Greetings from Portugal)
Freedom for Galiza.
KryssTal Reply: Obrigado. Your history lesson is very interesting.
What a Great Site in the wonder of Yak and Chat. Please, a quick yak, in the hope of a chat.
What is the worlds oldest known spoken language? What is the worlds most simply spoken language?
I understand ancient Hebrew, the most primitive of Semitic language, was child like, bi-stately spoken, polarized, no neutral contexts. Did it have any hint of a neutral, mid points, estimations to grade greys in scale thought constructs, tonal evidence or similar.
Some examples about ainu language isolation:
sine -- sin (greece)-- singlar
tu -- duo, two. dva (rus)
tre -- tri (lat), three, tri (rus)
kem, gem -- haima gema (greece) --blood
orutoro -- alter (lat)
kes -- galas (greece) -- end
mon -- manus (lat) --hand
pe (be) -- be (engl), byt (rus),
ruru -- juru (greece) -- the see
etc, etc (if you are interested that list may be prolonged). I think the ainu language not isolated, it's not well study
Once a year in the Syrian village of Maalula, one hour northeast of Damascus, the priest of a small Greek-Catholic church attempts to keep an ancient form of communication alive by conducting his sermon in the withering language of Aramaic. Spoken by Jesus Christ and dating back over three thousand years, Aramaic is now sadly on the brink of extinction. Approximately 5000 minority Christians in Maalula and the surrounding villages still converse daily in the tongue of Christ, but pressures from the predominantly Muslim population of Syria are threatening the existence of the language. The lack of work in Maalula has been forcing villagers to immigrate to Damascus and other more affluent areas of Syria where Arabic must be spoken in order to assimilate into the community. Aramaic is also a language which has no written form, its existence relying solely on an oral tradition. The Syrian government, which prohibits the teaching of Aramaic in schools, is also doing little to prolong the life of a cultural relic.
http://www.lloydstsb2.lloydstsb.com/life_events/travel/scoop/0,1001,general
I am a student at Johnson and Wales University ( Buisness school) in Gothenburg (Sweden), I am looking for a part-time job. I speak: Czech, Slovak, English, Italian and a little bit of French! If you have any kind of job that could fit me or for a closer information please contact me on my e-mail address: cindymarkos@hotmail.com
Thank you in advance...
KryssTal Reply: Huh?
hi,
i was looking around your web site and found it quite interesting....however, i did find a mistake in your indo-european languages family page under "Iranian Languages", you put down Persian as an extinct language which is indeed not true, persian is just another name for the language Farsi. However, OLD PERSIAN (or sometimes refered to as "Pahlavi") is an extinct language which is VERY closely related to farsi(new persian).....
just wanted to let you know
Dear Sir, I visited today your website and I found it very interesting (especially for the non-European languages of which I don't know so much).
Let me alow to make a small correction, which - I have that impression - is to be found in a considerable number of Anglo-Saxon writings and websites.
You mention "Flemish" as a language of the Germanic branche. This is however not correct. Dutch is the language of Flanders, the North of Belgium. However, in daily life a considerable number of Flemings are using a dialect form of Dutch (this is also the case in the Netherlands). The main dialects of Flanders are: Brabandian (spoken in the middle of Flanders - main cities Brussels and Antwerp - also spoken in the Dutch province of Northern Brabant), Limburgian (in the East, and also spoken on the other side of the Dutch border) and... Flemish. Flemish dialect is also spoken in a small enclave of the Netherlands and also in the North of France. Flemish is the most archaic Dutch dialect and didn't undergone considerable changes since the middle ages. That's why a Flemish dialect speaker can easily read the old manuscript of that time, especially since the most important dialect of Dutch (which hadn't yet a standard form) was Flemish. This was due to the enormeous political and economic influence of Bruges and Ypres, two cities located in the Flemish dialect area. Today Flemish is spoken by only 25 % of the Flemings, the rest is using Brabandian or Limburgian as their native dialect, apart from to the standard form of Dutch. (By the way, I speak at home Flemish dialect...).
A few other suggestions:
You forgot to mention also a language which have been for so many centuries in the shadow of its big brother, namely "Low Saxon" / "Nedersächsich" (also known by the name of "Low German" / "Niederdeutsch"). This language was a literary and administratif language until the unification of Germany (19th century) in the states of Northern Germany. Only recently the German state has recognized the language again and efforts are made to bring the language (now divided in a considerable number of dialects) to a standard level so that it can be used in administration and schools (they have started alsready with primarcy schools).
Cornish is still alive, although very threatened. Only a few hundred people are able to speak it. However, this language was introduced a few years ago in the "kindergarten" and a few primary schoolbooks were printed in Cornish. Not yet dead....
I didn't see Scots as a Germanic language (Scots isn't a dialect differing from English - there is a special Scots Academy, there are publications and grammatical and lexicograhical works).
For the Romance languages I have observed that a few are missing:
Bosnian is not a language as such. It is only a political name, since that language is simply pure Croatian.
You wrote:
These languages originate from Old Norse and Anglo Saxon. They include English (the second most spoken language in the world, the most widespread, the language of technology, the language with the largest vocabulary). A useful language to have as your mother tongue. Dutch and German are the closest major languages related to English. An even closer relative is Frisian. Flemish and Afrikaans are varieties of Dutch while Yiddish is a variety of German. Yiddish is written using the Hebrew script.
This paragraphe is containing a considerable number of errors.
In the first place, the contemporary Germanic languages don't originate from Old Norse nor Anglo Saxon. There mother language was "Old Germanic". That "Old Germanic" developped in three branches:
You have a special "taste" for languages? Greetings and hoping to read from you.
KryssTal Reply: Thank you for all your interesting comments. Most of it is new to me.
Scots is really a form of Gaelic and as such is not Germanic but Celtic. When I say Faroes is old I do not mean it is extinct but that it has been around for a long time.
Kryss,
What a wonderfully clear and concise introduction to language families !!
Thank you for an entertaining and informative read. Whilst at university, I majored in German and Russian studies and took two courses in Historical Linguistics and Comparative Philology. Now I am alternately living in Japan and Turkey (teaching English, would you believe ?) and am interested in the possible ("controversial") Altaic link between these two languages. Thanks again.
Dear Sir
I have with just visited interest, your excellent website on languages and linguistics. However, I must point out to you what appear to be two inaccuracies which I feel may be better cleared up on your site to give a more accurate account of the situation, notably regarding the Manx and Cornish languages.
These two languages are in fact NOT extinct at all as you state. Both of them although considered minority languages, are quite alive and healthy in their respective communities. Cornish indeed is spoken by many expatriots in Australia as well. Indeed, I am myself studying both of them so I consider myself qualified to comment on this issue. If you would like more information regarding both Cornish and Manx please contact me again.
KryssTal Reply: Hi there
There seems to be a revival of these languages. Do you have figures of number of speakers?