Re: Related languages (Re: A China-Sumer connection)

From: Ruud Harmsen (realemailseesite01_at_rudhar.com.invalid)
Date: 03/24/05 

Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2005 12:57:17 +0100

Thu, 24 Mar 2005 11:46:31 GMT: "Comm" <no@spam.com>: in sci.lang:

>I'd believe a Chinese language instructor over a western linguist.

I wouldn't. People often have blind spots about their own language,
and those of neighbouring countries.

><phippsmartin@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>news:1111640265.515654.194990@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
>>Yet people on this
>> group have insisted that Chinese (Mandarin, Cantonese, etc.) and
>> Vietnamese belong to unrelated language groups. Comm suggests that
>> this is a paradigm, that people are classifying Chinese languages as a
>> group for political reasons whereas, in reality, Cantonese differs from
>> Mandarin to the same extent that Vietnamese differs from Cantonese.
>> Who is right?
>
>I'd say your teacher is right.

I wouldn't. (Even without knowing anything about Mandarin, Cantonese
and Vietnamese).

The example doesn't mean much. Spanish differs from Hindi, or Modern
Greek, as much as it differs from Finnish. It sounds somewhat similar
to Finnish and to Greek. Yet Spanish, Hindi and Greek are related, and
Finnish is not.

What's more, Finnish and Hungarian differ as much from each other as
Spanish from Finnish. Yet Finnish and Hungarian are related, and both
not to Spanish.

German and Hungarian have a very similar phoneme inventory. Yet they
sound completely different, and are not related.

All such comparisons are too superficial to mean anything. Much more
detailed study, including historical study, is required to decide
about language family relationships.

If linguistic scholars say Vietnamese is in a different language
family than Chinese, I believe them. When I first heard Vietnamese I
assumed (because of the geographic vicinity) and kept thinking while
listening, that it was related to Chinese too. But I was wrong. I can
now hear the difference. Not surprising, becasue the difference is
huge. 

-- 
Ruud Harmsen - http://rudhar.com/

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