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My family is transitioning from lower class to lower middle. Like most #Punjabi families, with marriages & the third generation being born, the home language is shifting to Urdu (between siblings, spouses, parents and kids, kids and kids)#sociolinguitics #linguistics #punjabiyat
Even the second generation (=my) siblings speak Urdu or switch b/W Urdu and Punjabi while speaking.
I, however, am an exception who insists on speaking Punjabi for topics that are considered too modern for Punjabi, e.g. technology and business.
Grandparents (mum and dad) to grand kids (my nephews and nieces) communicate in Urdu, only I keep Punjabi on (my niece says 'Shakir mamoo Punjabi boltay hain' Shakir (maternal) uncle speaks Punjabi. And then she laughs sometimes).
Read 6 tweets
Hey you Linguists -
If you are spending a large chunk of your time involved in
the language wars on Twitter - this article is for you!

Look what i found - A very interesting article on the evolution of South Indian languages.

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rs…

#language #linguist
In the research titled
"A Bayesian phylogenetic study of the Dravidian language family"
- researchers have tried to date the language using Bayesian analysis .
For those of you not aware - method of statistical inference in which Bayes' theorem is used to update
the probability for a hypothesis as more evidence or information becomes available.
It combines prior existing info with evidence from info in a sample to guide the statistical inference.

The study has some shortcomings
They have used the Swadesh 100 list
Read 6 tweets
Around 3000 BCE in eastern #Europe, a Proto-Balto-Slavic #language started to diverge from #ProtoIndoEuropean.

The #Slavic branch of the #IndoEuropean #languages began about 2,000 years later when Proto-Slavic deviated from Proto-Balto-Slavic.

[Image: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Balt…] Source: The Indo-European L...
As the #Slavic-speaking area expanded during the first millennium CE (striped area on map), Proto-Slavic transitioned to Common Slavic. The #language underwent minor changes that occurred mostly uniformly across eastern #Europe, thereby maintaining mutual intelligibility. A map of eastern Europe sho...
Around the year 1000 CE #CommonSlavic began to split into the South, West, and East branches to which all modern #Slavic #languages belong.

Roughly 315m people speak a Slavic #language, mostly in Eastern #Europe (including the #Balkan peninsula), #CentralAsia, and #Siberia. A map of Europe highlightin...
Read 359 tweets
In the early part of the first millennium CE, the #IndoEuropean language known as Proto-#Germanic diverged into an East branch (which included #Gothic) and a Northwest branch.

Northwest then split into West and North branches when Proto-#Norse developed in #Scandinavia. Image
Until the 8th century, #Germanic #languages, including Proto-#Norse, were written in Elder Futhark, the earliest #runic #alphabet.

The name #Futhark comes from the initial phonemes in the names of the first six #runes:
ᚠ ᚢ ᚦ ᚨ ᚱ ᚲ
F U Þ A R K

By the beginning of the #Viking Age around 800 CE, Proto-#Norse had evolved into Old Norse, and #Scandinavia's writing system transitioned from the 24 #runes of Elder #Futhark to Younger Futhark's 16 runes.

The #Swedish #Sparlösa #Runestone from ~800 CE features both #alphabets. Image
Read 92 tweets

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