sc94597 said: Lord Flashheart said: Senlis said: Lord Flashheart said: Yes it's an evolution of different languages foreign and regional but to simplify it as the first to use it is nonsense. How could we be the fir st to use it if it didn't exist. It was created by the English using what was around and standardised over time to form what we use today. It was created on English shores hence the name of the Language is English. Someone didn't spot it sticking out of the ground when out looking for buried Saxon gold and decided to use it. Most languages are formed the same way but no-one nit picks over them like they do with English. What I am saying is that the English people didn't just suddenly invent English like the wheel was invented.  It wasn't like some guy said "now we are going to call this a 'house' as opposed to what we were calling it yesterday".  People just talked to each other, and as time went on the languages changed.  That is how the U.K. was eventually speaking English. Still invented by the English. Whether intentionally or not. Suddenly or over time. Lots of things have been invented those ways we don't dispute that just who the inventor was. Do you say the same thing when someone says the Spanish invented Spanish? There was a need to sit down and invent a standard Language in England due to each area having it's own dialect and even language so people all over the country could trade and travel so in that regards and well every other the English invented English. I think you're being deliberately pedantic and nit picking and it doesn't aplly here. Let me ask you. Are animals invented? Did the ancestor of humans invent them? No. English is always evolving, and therefore never "invented". Actually, you can arguing that a lot of the English citizens can't claim to have been with the language from the begginning because many have Celtic, or some other Non-Anglo Saxon ancestry. Even then, if the language really was invented, it wasn't invented by the current generation, so you can never really take dominance as it being more "correct".

Most things invented evole, doesn't stop them from being originally being invented.

So the Spanish or Italians cant lay claim to their language? They also can't say there version is the correct original version.

So because some English have Celtic ancestry ,the English were Celtic have been as long as the Scots, they can't lay claim to have been with the language from the beginning (even though if they have Celtic ancestry then it likely means they was) it negates the part of them that has ancestry that was with the language from the beginning? Or the English people who's line goes back all the way to when the language was invented? No I don't think so.

Are animals invented? That's your argument? no they evolved or was created by god or placed here by aliens depending on what you belive. Taking something that wasn't invented and trying to use that as proof against something that was invented is flimsy at best, acurate never. To invent something usually is a process involving taking what's available and improving on it or using it to come up with something new. Would you argue Logie Baird didn't really invent the television because it used the Nipkow disk? When something is invented it's usually a long process of trial and error. Taking something and constantly refining it. Sound familier.

You are being pedantic and it doesn't apply. All Languages evole but they are created by the people on the lands that named them and spoke them first. Therfore they can lay claim to theirs being the correct language and their ancestors or fellow countrymen from the past having invented the language. With all the different languages in England there was an active process to come up with a standard language something not seen in most countries so someone from Nortumberland could trade with someone from East Anglia.

Lord Flashheart said: Most things invented evole, doesn't stop them from being originally being invented. So the Spanish or Italians cant lay claim to their language? They also can't say there version is the correct original version. So because some English have Celtic ancestry ,the English were Celtic have been as long as the Scots, they can't lay claim to have been with the language from the beginning (even though if they have Celtic ancestry then it likely means they was) it negates the part of them that has ancestry that was with the language from the beginning? Or the English people who's line goes back all the way to when the language was invented? No I don't think so. Are animals invented? That's your argument? no they evolved or was created by god or placed here by aliens depending on what you belive. Taking something that wasn't invented and trying to use that as proof against something that was invented is flimsy at best, acurate never. To invent something usually is a process involving taking what's available and improving on it or using it to come up with something new. Would you argue Logie Baird didn't really invent the television because it used the Nipkow disk? When something is invented it's usually a long process of trial and error. Taking something and constantly refining it. Sound familier. You are being pedantic and it doesn't apply. All Languages evole but they are created by the people on the lands that named them and spoke them first. Therfore they can lay claim to theirs being the correct language and their ancestors or fellow countrymen from the past having invented the language. With all the different languages in England there was an active process to come up with a standard language something not seen in most countries so someone from Nortumberland could trade with someone from East Anglia.

Like I said before, the problem lies in the word invent.

Invent, according to Webster.1 archaic : find, discover
2 : to devise by thinking : fabricate
3 : to produce (as something useful) for the first time through the use of the imagination or of ingenious thinking and experiment
As you can see, the involuntary changing of languages through time based off of the languages before it is not invention.  Invention is a very deliberate process.  The only reason "English" is called "English" is because the English were the ones who spoke it.

Lord Flashheart said: Most things invented evole, doesn't stop them from being originally being invented. So the Spanish or Italians cant lay claim to their language? They also can't say there version is the correct original version. So because some English have Celtic ancestry ,the English were Celtic have been as long as the Scots, they can't lay claim to have been with the language from the beginning (even though if they have Celtic ancestry then it likely means they was) it negates the part of them that has ancestry that was with the language from the beginning? Or the English people who's line goes back all the way to when the language was invented? No I don't think so. Are animals invented? That's your argument? no they evolved or was created by god or placed here by aliens depending on what you belive. Taking something that wasn't invented and trying to use that as proof against something that was invented is flimsy at best, acurate never. To invent something usually is a process involving taking what's available and improving on it or using it to come up with something new. Would you argue Logie Baird didn't really invent the television because it used the Nipkow disk? When something is invented it's usually a long process of trial and error. Taking something and constantly refining it. Sound familier. You are being pedantic and it doesn't apply. All Languages evole but they are created by the people on the lands that named them and spoke them first. Therfore they can lay claim to theirs being the correct language and their ancestors or fellow countrymen from the past having invented the language. With all the different languages in England there was an active process to come up with a standard language something not seen in most countries so someone from Nortumberland could trade with someone from East Anglia.

Well, it definately isn't "invented". The only language that could be described as "invented" is the original one. Everything else is a deviation and evolution on this original language. That is unless, language didn't start with the first humans, and it sprouted out in different human populations at different times, which would make very little sense but is quite possible. Also, the Spanish and Italian speakers, could very well argue that they are the Original speakers of their languages, but they cannot argue that they "invented" them. This is because these languages started out as the same language, latin, then they diverged not through being invented but through evolution. As Senlis noted as well, in order to "invent" something, you need at least a basic form of consious decision or idea that you are inventing something. As for the celtic, anglo-saxon comparison, that was just a base argument for Americans who many are of English ancestry(including myself), but some would argue it isn't "full ancestry" therefore we have less of a right to claim toward this  basis of "invention". Basically, I'm saying the language was created by the generations of people who deviated from the root language enough to call it different, but it wasn't thoughtfully invented and shouldn't be noted as "oh we invented it, we have more of a right to say what it is or isn't".

Edit: Basically a language is "created" yes, but it is definately not invented.

Lord Flashheart said: With all the different languages in England there was an active process to come up with a standard language something not seen in most countries so someone from Nortumberland could trade with someone from East Anglia.

I seriously doubt this, source plz.  

@ what is being discussed:  IMO it is you, not they, being a bit silly here.   

Final-Fan said: I think the complaint about having various genders for nouns with no apparent rhyme or reason (see c03n3nj0's example) is that learning it is complete brute force memorization. And complete nonsense from the perspective of an English speaker like me. Maybe it's not a big deal if you're used to it, but for me it's like "the sun is male? WTF."

Well, for me it makes no sense when I study languages like English or Japanese that they don't have genders, it's like something's missing, if that makes you feel even weirder. I mean, I have deeply engraved in my brain that in Spanish PCs are female, telephones are male, chairs are female and books are male. It's only logical

 

dtewi said: You know what language is difficult? Latin. Oh. My. God. There are like 130 (!?) different forms of one verb, 12 different forms of ONE noun, a handful of exceptions, and too many different conjugations and noun declensions (a declension being all the different forms of one noun). Ugh...

Nuuuuu. Latin is awesome, even though I know I'll never use it I'm very glad of having learned it, it opens your mind a lot. And it's not that difficult, of course, I knew beforehand Spanish (therefore I'm used to a hundred differently conjugated tenses) and German (therefore I knew what cases like accusative and dative were)

 

@Zexen What do you do if you learn a language where the gender is different from the native one? I would definitely get messed up with that.

sc94597 said: @Zexen What do you do if you learn a language where the gender is different from the native one? I would definitely get messed up with that.

No, not really, at least not in my case. When you're born with a language with gender, you automatically each sustantive with its gender. So, "chair" is not "silla" but "la silla". You don't end worrying about if chair is male or female, you have it inscribed in your brain its gender. Therefore, when learning either German or French (the two languages I learnt that use genders), you do the same, each new sustantive you learn you immediately give it an article so your brain remembers it with both the article and the word, without needing to associate it to the original article it had in spanish

Thus, I never had problems knowing that chair is female in Spanish (la silla) but male in German (der Stuhl)

 

RolStoppable said: In that case you simply stick with English and say "screw you, french people". The sun is not male and the moon is not female, it's the other way around.

Actually, the French got it right, it's you Germans who are wrong

The sun is male and the moon is female

RolStoppable said: zexen_lowe said: RolStoppable said: In that case you simply stick with English and say "screw you, french people". The sun is not male and the moon is not female, it's the other way around. Actually, the French got it right, it's you Germans who are wrong The sun is male and the moon is female I knew there was a good reason that I should never bother with Spanish. I knew it.

At there's no Neutral gender like fucking remedium!

Amicus, porta, remedium.

Three different genders!

It's so much simpler with one...

English does still have genders, we just use them for logical things, like people, animals, ships and countries.

In fact down here in the antipodes we even use it for situations 'She'll be right'. Or the even more confusing gender-bending saying, 'She'll be Jake'.

English has so many different dialects it's insane.