Thread by @Lg_on_the_Move

In this thread 👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼students @MQLinguistics @Macquarie_Uni share what they've learned so far (1st quarter of semester)

Favorite facts about #languages and #cultures in #contact

In #Arabic we say: “Footprints indicate trajectory”, but I never thought that a wheel would reveal a culture. This is how #cultures can be traced through #languages. The reading made me feel like I am solving a puzzle more than exploring languages.

Think twice before starting to learn #English, cuz you’ll end up learning even more -- #German and #French, and more …
After all, it was the Anglo-Saxons and Normans who influenced the vocabulary!!
English is a mixed #language!

Distracted Boyfriend Meme: Chain Shift Edition

How fascinating it is that a minority of only 1-2% of #French nobility affected much of the #English #vocabulary today. Specifically, the vocabulary of government, law, or military, etc. is of French origin since these were the domains where French nobility used to occupied.

The #etymology of many words in Eurocentric #languages bears witness to the “grand theft”. Interestingly enough most of the "discoveries" of the colonial period are plagiarized, to put it in modern terms

languageonthemove.com/thinking-langu…

#Multilingualism does not mean we can spontaneously maintain our home #languages. It takes joint effort from us to preserve the diverse languages with a multilingual mindset and an appreciation of multiculturalism
abc.net.au/radionational/…

Archaeology. Historical genetics. Paleoanthropology. Who would have thought that understanding human #mobility and #language diversity is like an interdisciplinary puzzle. Various disciplines offer insights to explain the forces behind linguistic diversity.

The history of the #Chinese #language is not isolated from Indo-European #languages. Moreover, linguistic evidence found that the ancestors of Indo-European and Sino-Tibetan speakers are from the same group, spoke languages from the same language family.

Hey, you want to know which new information I have learned so far is my favorite right? Hurry up and follow my footsteps to have a look at! Wow, my favorite is universal #words~ which come about through cultural diffusion of new #knowledge and innovations.

A child will never fully capture a #culture until they are immersed in its #language. What benefits, challenges of #bilingualism do #parents or parents to be who is or planning to raise a #bilingual child need to consider? Does it relate to #intercultural society?

Some #parents believe that raising #bilingual #children aims to keep their roots alive and maintain language connections. But parents should not force their children to be bilingual. It's essential to assess child's language ability and their willingness in learning languages.

#Vietnamese is one of the top most widely spoken #language in #Australia.

#Languages can be divided as analytic and synthetic really interested me. As a #Chinese, I know until now Chinese is an analytic language, unlike synthetic languages like Japanese which is highly agglutinative, Chinese has nearly no morphological inflections and bound morphemes.

People have loved #cows and #dogs for a long time! The words for these two things in Proto-Chinese and Indo-European are startling similar. An ancient tapestry woven between two modernly disparate #language groups is exciting and thought provoking.

I have learnt that #Sanskrit and #English have a common ancestor in Proto-Indo-European. I used to think that Sanskrit was more closely related to #Chinese than to English.

I was so ignorant about #multilingualism of #Australia! I barely thought of Australia as multilingual society and culture. I had English dominant monolingual mindset like the prime minister. I was also surprised by the fact Australia schools have no systematic language curriculum

Human #migration is the driving force of linguistic divergence and convergence. In prehistoric times, it helped establish #language families; in more recent times, it propelled language and cultural contact. It keeps shaping our cultural and linguistic membership.

The most interesting fact I have learned in this unit is that several pairs of words with similar meaning result from #language contact. I used to think that people created these words to avoid repetition in writing and speaking.

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We have linguistic, archaeological, historical, and biological evidence to show how #languages have been shaped by #language and #culture contact, and I wonder how our interaction now is going to shape the future language?

The most interesting fact I've learned so far is the role of #horses in the spread of the Proto-Indo-European language. I had not previously known about the the huge technological advantage that horse riding and horseback archery provided to the speakers of PIE.

Linguistic transfer initially spreads through #words. From there, it can also affect other aspects of the #language such as phonology, grammar, morphology, syntax, pragmatics, and completely reshape the receiving language.

My favourite piece of info that I have learned so far is about the historical and cultural context of various #languages. It is interesting to find out how #pronunciation has changed over time and how #English is influencing other #languages.

John Wycliffe’s idea of #translating the #bible is my favorite. My #Catholic grandma in #Vietnam knows how to pray in #Latin although not understanding it. Praying in Latin is practiced widely up until late 20th century in Vietnam. A relic of the past laid in the elders’ wisdom.

Despite centuries of history, a common thread between ancient #Egyptian speakers and modern native #English speakers is a shared #monolingual mindset along with a strong sense of superiority, which in both cases created painful situations and may also lead to a similar fates.

The most interesting part in this unit for me is the source of the most commonly used 10,000 #English words. They come from at least 5 different sources #languages!