Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2013 July 22

= July 22 =

Estonian vs. Finnish
I have an archival document, evidently a translation of an original text in Cyrillic, whose language I'm trying to identify. So far, just on superficial visual inspection, I've narrowed it down to Estonian and Finnish. Referring to their respective alphabet pages here, I still have two queries: I'm not going to delve too deep into this, e.g. no translating for now, but would like to ID the language for our database. -- Deborahjay (talk) 09:44, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Is it correct that Estonian uses the letter ü (even doubled!) and Finnish does not?
 * Are there any other languages with similar alphabets that I'd also need to consider and rule out?
 * There is a website with the alphabets of Estonian and Finnish for you to compare. The main differences appear to be:
 * Finnish has C, F, Q, W, X, Y, Z, Å, which Estonian does not (except in foreign words and/or names).
 * Estonian has Õ and Ü which Finnish does not.
 * Other than that, I believe the 'shape' of the words is rather similar.
 * The only other major European language that I know of that is related to Finnish/Estonian is Hungarian, although the alphabet is quite distinctive. See also Finno-Ugric languages. It might also be worth ruling out any of the Sami languages, which, although less related to Finnish than Estonian is, have taken some influence from Finnish. - Cucumber Mike (talk) 11:35, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty sure that even in Finnish, C, F, Q, W, X, Z, and Å are used only in foreign words and names. It's really only Y that distinguishes Finnish in native words; and as Mike mentioned, Estonian has Õ and Ü. Another difference is that in Estonian it's very common for words to end in D, which is very rare in Finnish (again, except in foreign words and names). Also, Estonian doesn't have vowel harmony, so in Estonian, Ä is relatively rare in the final syllable of long words, while in Finnish it's quite common. Angr (talk) 13:46, 22 July 2013 (UTC)


 * See Language recognition chart.
 * —Wavelength (talk) 14:09, 22 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Finnish and Estonian look very close, the latter has final dees, which Finnish does not. Saami looks related but uses b, ,d, and g much more often.  Hungarian really has little common in appearance unless you notice it, like the Fennic languages, is not Indo-European.  It has a lot more final consonants.  The easiest way is to compare a standard text, heer the LOrd's Prayer:
 * Finnish
 * Estonian
 * Saami
 * Hungarian
 * Turkish
 * Prussian
 * μηδείς (talk) 18:03, 22 July 2013 (UTC)


 * If you get to the point where you can forgo the pleasure of determining the language yourself you could post a short sample here and a Finish or Estonian speaker could tell you right away which language it is. If posting the sample here doesn't bring a quick response, a link on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Finland and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Estonia probably will.--Wikimedes (talk) 19:47, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Or just use Google Language, which covers both--assuming you have a copy-paste text. μηδείς (talk) 20:44, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
 * OP replies: Those are good suggestions, but not appropriate in my present case. Besides the text being primary archival material I'm not at liberty to reproduce, my goal is to expand my skill set and get up to speed in identifying texts at a glance. This is a voluminous and woefully understaffed archive, and I'm keen on accomplishing as much as I can with what time I have. THANKS to ALL! -- Deborahjay (talk) 07:28, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
 * OP, con't. It was the double ü liberally sprinkled throughout the text that was entirely unfamiliar to me so tipped me off, then with the above confirmations settled on Estonian. The unexpected prize on this thread is the Language recognition chart, of whose existence I was (obviously) hitherto unaware. I've already gone and shared it with the translators' list I co-moderate, with praise and attribution to this forum. Cheers, Deborahjay (talk) 07:37, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Just to clarify, Finnish does use "y" for u umlaut and does have o umlaut, as in Väinämöinen. μηδείς (talk) 22:37, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Synopsis, summary, and plot?
I see these terms used interchangeably in a number of Wikipedia entries on TV shows and movies. What the correct usage of each? (And what do you call those obnoxiously long entries that virtually describe the entire show scene-by-scene??) --157.254.210.11 (talk) 16:14, 22 July 2013 (UTC)


 * My intuition would be that a "synopsis" ought to be somewhat shorter than a "summary" – the word synopsis means it's something you can take in "at a glance", so I'd probably want to use it for something that's not much longer than a paragraph. As for what you very aptly describe as "obnoxiously long entries", I personally tend to call them "plot renarration". A summary is meant to summarize, which implies taking a global, birds-eye perspective on the plot and abstract away from the details of scene-by-scene perspective. Many of our crappier articles don't do that. (Here's a horrible example from an older version of a high-profile TV episode that demonstrates what I mean ). Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:24, 22 July 2013 (UTC)


 * A synopis of Star Wars would be: Young look skywalker, a technician on a desert fm, finds a message about a mysterious princess addresses to a mystical old man, Ben Kenobi. After delivering the request for help, Skywalker finds his family murdered, and goes to space with Kenobi, who teaches him the mystical "way of the force", to find the princess.  Taking flight with a wanted smuggler, Han Solo, they are captured by the ship carrying the princess, led by a cybernetic military dictator, Darth Vader.  Escaping, they find the dictator's plans for a planet-sized weapon, which they risk their lives finally to destroy utterly.


 * A summary would have three or seven paragraphs based on the sentences of the synopis, with other details like kenobi's death, the various creatures and monsters and side plots with Solo thrown in. A plot is literally the entire part of a work which describes action, as opposed to bantering/filler dialog per se and descriptions not essential to the action, like the setting suns before Luke leaves Tattoine.  What is meant by "plot" when it's used as a header in an article is "plot summary" which is the same as summary as described above.


 * Even a one-sentence "plot-theme" is possible: "a wizard and a journeyman help a farm-boy rescue a princess from an oppressor and destroy his space-fortress." That might be good for a lead sentence itself, "Star Wars is a high-budget blockbuster American science fiction movie of 1977 in which a wizard (Alec Guiness) and a journeyman help a farm-boy rescue a princess from an oppressor (James Earl Jones) and destroy his space-fortress. It cemented the careers of... μηδείς (talk) 17:49, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't call Obi-wan Kenobi a wizard; he isn't a sorceror, he's an exiled knight. And Han Solo certainly isn't a journeyman; he's a smuggler. Angr (talk) 18:07, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Sorcerer has a bad connotation, but wizard doesn't. (We find out Obi-Wan is an exiled knight, his appearance and role is that of a Wizard, as when he glamours the imperial guards). I originally wrote smuggler.  I suppose rogue is better than the quite dishonorable journeyman. μηδείς (talk) 18:29, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
 * What's dishonorable about being a journeyman? Do you have some other definition of it than our article does? Aɴɢʀ (talk) 22:12, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Oh, lord. Double idiocy on my part there.  (Wonder if I can order "double idiocy" from the Chinese for dinner?)  I meant highwayman, not journeyman, and I was still'' wrong. μηδείς (talk) 22:35, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
 * What would you call a one-sentence "TV Guide" type of description? "Luke Skywalker joins forces with others to save Princess Leia from the evil Darth Vader and his planet-destroying Death Star." IMDB lists it as Plot. It also has various one paragraph "Plot Summaries" and 50 paragraph (!) "synopsis"  --157.254.210.11 (talk) 18:55, 22 July 2013 (UTC)


 * If forced, a blurb or a synopsis. As mentioned above "syn-opsis" is "together seeing" or seeing at one glace.  A summary gives a summation, the "sum" or total.  Bot summaries and synopsies have proper places at wikipedia. μηδείς (talk) 19:12, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

What is the oldest language in the world which is alive and still spoken by peoples??
"The dating of the earliest Tamil grammatical treatise Tolkappiyam has been debated much and it is still imprecise and uncertain[5][6][7] and has seen wide disagreements amongst scholars in the field.[7][8][9] It has been dated variously between 8000 BCE and the 10th century CE..." This information is taken from wikipedia notes.. And also wikipedia says 3500bc - Sumerian is the oldest language. But the Kumarikkandam(lemuria continent) is the historical proof where tamil and tamil peoples lived... Is it so.. How the oldest language will be the sumerian?? Why not Tamil?? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 115.242.220.160 (talk) 18:05, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Lemuria is a legend. Our article says it "is no longer considered a valid scientific hypothesis". It is thus not "historical proof" of anything at all. And the dating of the Tolkappiyam as early as 8000 BC has "now been rejected as being devoid of any archeological/linguistic evidence.[8][9] The disagreements now center around divergent dates from the 3rd century BCE or later,[5][8][10] with one estimate (by a botanist-author) being as late as the 10th century CE." Sumerian is clearly much older than the 3rd century BC, which is the oldest plausible date for Tamil. Angr (talk) 18:15, 22 July 2013 (UTC)


 * (ec) There is no such thing as an "oldest language". Every language spoken on earth today (with few exceptions, if you consider creoles to be special, or if you consider revived languages) has the same kind of history of being orally transmitted from one generation to the next, since time immemorial, so they are essentially all equally old. Any notion of "language A is still the same language as it was three thousand years ago, so it's older than language B, which is not the same language as its ancestor spoken three thousand years ago" depends on a subjective judgment of what it means to "be still the same language" or to "become a different language". What does a language have to be in order to count as "still the same"? One could think of a combination of various factors ("still called by the same name", "still spoken in the same area of the world", "still spoken by people of the same ethnicity", "hasn't structurally changed much", "hasn't split up into distinct daughter languages", "has preserved cultural memory through a tradition of writing", and so on), but which of these factors are you going to weigh how? Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:20, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Since 'time immemorial? Most languages have existed since well before 6 July 1189 (or twenty years ago, depending on which lawyer you prefer to throw money at). KägeTorä - (影虎) (TALK) 07:49, 23 July 2013 (UTC)


 * There is a lot of nationalist pseudoscience written about certain languages and their origins, especially Hungarian, Turkish (Sun language theory), Japanese, Korean, and the Dravidian languages of India. This seem in part a reaction against the long known histories of The Indo-European and the Chinese languages.  Future Perfect's assrtion that all languages are equally old (ceteris paribus) is correct.  But some languages have been distinct from their closest relatives for a longer period, such as Chinese, Hebrew, and Coptic/Ancient Egyptian, Whereas English and German were just dialects of West Germanic at the time of Christ.  On that criterion, the answer is probably the Egyptian language. μηδείς (talk) 18:37, 22 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Nobody has mentioned Australian Aboriginal languages. These are people who separated from the rest of the human race at least 40,000 years ago. HiLo48 (talk) 21:50, 22 July 2013 (UTC)


 * That's the Australian family as a whole. It's pretty likely from the evidence that the Pama-Nyungan languages spread more recently over the souther 5/6th of the continent, replacing whatever preceded them, and there's no evidence or especial reason to believe any of the northern languages is that old as a separate tongue. It's certainly possible one of the other Afroasiatic languages or one of the Nilo-Saharan languages is that old as a separate entity.  Isolates like the Ainu language of Japan or the Nehali language, or Kusunda language or the Burushaski language isolates of the Indian subcontinent may be remnants of branches that old.  But there is no evidence they didn't have much more recent siblings more closely related that went extinct, such as how Basque has apparently lost the Aquitanian language as a sister.  Egyptian has to hold the record as the oldest distinct and documented language.  We know of no immediate sibling for it from its origin. μηδείς (talk) 01:19, 23 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Wow, you have knowledge there that would be very rare within Australia. It's certainly a difficult area for which to have any certainty, in part because there was never a written form. There are still Australian Aboriginal people for whom their native language is their first language. Other Aboriginal languages might be their second and third languages. English is maybe a distant fourth. A small proportion, mainly older people, still don't speak English at all. A couple of examples of people who still primarily speak their native language and on whom we have articles would be Liam Jurrah and Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu. Those people are both from Australia's Northern Territory, but moving further south there are Yorta Yorta people in Victoria keeping their language alive. (Although English is definitely the first language for them.) So those languages are definitely still alive. Just have to guess how old they are. HiLo48 (talk) 01:25, 24 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks. You can approach Claire Bowern (see talk on Australian languages) and she'll likely send you a PDF of Australian Languages, Bowern and Koch, eds., although it is major or graduate level material.  It is impressive how aboriginals of Australia and other regions pick up languages.  There is a joke among Australianists that a professional field linguist highly trained in surveying languages finished his studies with one tribe and moved on to another whose language he slowly began picking up from scratch.  He could tell the Aboriginals were getting annoyed with him after the first few days.  After about two weeks he was  fluent, and asked politely why the elders had been so annoyed with him the week before.  They said they had thought he might be mentally challenged, the only other white man they had ever met (his doctoral advisor) had only taken 5 days to pick up their language from scratch. μηδείς (talk) 01:48, 24 July 2013 (UTC)


 * I've tried. Please assign me to the "VERY mentally challenged" category. My speciality is much more in the area of Australian Aboriginal English. HiLo48 (talk) 02:02, 24 July 2013 (UTC)


 * To the extent "oldest language" means anything, it means "oldest attested (i.e. written) language", which is how I interpreted the phrase in the OP's question and in my answer to it. And according to List of languages by first written accounts Sumerian is attested about 200 years before Egyptian and 2700 years before Tamil. To Fut.Perf.'s comment I would add that besides creoles and revived languages, there are a few languages that are demonstrably very young, the most famous example probably being Nicaraguan Sign Language, which was "born" in the 1980s. But yeah, unless by "oldest language" you mean "oldest attested language", almost all languages are equally old. Aɴɢʀ (talk) 20:50, 23 July 2013 (UTC)


 * The OP does say still alive and spoken in the section head. Coptic still has ecclesiastical speakers and was alive as a mother tongue as late as 1700.  Sumerian's been dead quite a while compared to that. μηδείς (talk) 21:00, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Fair enough, but the OP does also ask why Sumerian is considered the oldest language rather than Tamil, so the body of his question isn't consistent with its header. If Coptic doesn't count (what with not being anyone's native language and used only for very limited ceremonial purposes), Greek and Chinese are still very much alive and have been attested longer than Tamil. Aɴɢʀ (talk) 22:24, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
 * See MY reading of the question is "What language, spoken today, would be intelligible to a person from the farthest point back in history" That is, if I could get a person from a time machine from some time in the past, and bring him forward to today, and have him converse with a modern person, what language would the two need to speak if I am looking to go farthest back in time.  That is, the language which has been recognizably consistent over history?  Is that answerable?  -- Jayron  32  21:42, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
 * That's a different question. If all you mean is reading old words and pronouncing them how you like but understanding what you are reading, that will be Chinese as continuously spoken.  If you mean that the spelling is close enough to the modern pronunciation, it will probably be Icelandic, since Icelanders can read the Norse sagas without too much trouble as to be considered unintelligible. μηδείς (talk) 21:48, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
 * But Icelanders' pronunciation is considerably different from Old Norse pronunciation, though probably not as different as Chinese people's pronunciation of written Old Chinese. At any rate I'd say both languages are understandable only in their written forms and if a 10th-century Icelander were brought to 21st-century Iceland in a time machine he'd still have considerable difficulty making himself understood orally. Aɴɢʀ (talk) 22:24, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, my comments amount to OR there, and I have no idea about people reading old Tamil. I don't believe Jayron has interpreted the OP's question properly though. Given the context of the usual Dravidian nationalist claims it's pretty clear he means oldest continually spoken and distinct (written) language.  See Tamil nationalism and Indian Tamil nationalism. μηδείς (talk) 22:30, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I suppose you meant "Chinese as continuously written". But it's still worth mentioning that Modern Chinese is not Old Chinese written the same but pronounced differently. It's two different (but directly related, of course) languages, with different grammar and lexicon. A Chinese speaker should learn Old Chinese to understand like an English speaker should learn Old English.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 22:35, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Are you referring to the differences between Simplified Chinese characters and Traditional Chinese characters? If so, it's worth mentioning that Traditional Chinese characters are still regularly used outside Mainland China (e.g. Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau). -- 205.175.124.72 (talk) 22:56, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Although I'm definitely not an expert in the history of Chinese, but I'm not so ignorant to confuse the purely modern concept of "Traditional characters" with the Old and Classical Chinese languages.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 23:43, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Correct, i should have said written. My knowledge is entirely second hand and amateur.  I impressed the local restaurant owners, whom I can tell speaker Mandarin, by saying Wo lai le when I arrived for pickup after figuring out what lai le meant after hearing it a dozen times on Crouching Tiger after Li Mu Bai walked in the room. μηδείς (talk) 01:35, 24 July 2013 (UTC)
 * How about the Khoe languages? Plasmic Physics (talk) 23:39, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, as a family they would perhaps be the longest isolated from the rest of the world. [Merritt Ruhlen]] holds that Hadza and Sandawe are isolates related to Khoe-San, which implies a great age.  But his classification is unproven, and, worse, we have no real recent records or proof they don't have close relatives.  It's also quite clear that the Bantu languages have only recently extinguished various Khoi-San languages (Zulu and the other Nguni languages have clicks due to contact) and 500 years ago there may have been 1,000 such languages across Subsaharan Africa. μηδείς (talk) 00:51, 24 July 2013 (UTC)