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People don't speak one universal language, or even a handful. Instead, today our species collectively speaks over 7,000 distinct languages.
And these languages are not spread randomly across the planet. For example, far more languages are found in tropical regions than in the temperate zones. The tropical island of New Guinea is home to over 900 languages. Russia, 20 times larger, has 105 indigenous languages. Even within the tropics, language diversity varies widely. For example, the 250,000 people who live on Vanuatu's 80 islands speak 110 different languages, but in Bangladesh, a population 600 times greater speaks only 41 languages.
Why is it that humans speak so many languages? And why are they so unevenly spread across the planet? As it turns out, we have few clear answers to these fundamental questions about how humanity communicates.
[...] Language diversity has played a key role in shaping the interactions of human groups and the history of our species, and yet we know surprisingly little about the factors shaping this diversity. We hope other scientists will become as fascinated by the geography of language diversity as our research group is and join us in the search for understanding why humans speak so many languages.
https://theconversation.com/why-do-human-beings-speak-so-many-languages-75434
Would you people care to speculate as to why there are so many languages ?
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday July 18 2017, @03:34PM (5 children)
We in the US spell Tyre wrong, because the pneumatic tyre was invented in Scotland (Wikipedia says it was spelled "tire" until the turn of the 20th century, short for "attire"). Lift makes far more sense than elevator, why use a four syllable word when there's a one syllable synonym?
But I can't figure out why they call a car's trunk a "boot". Wagons had trunks for tools and so forth before cars, or even the US, were invented. Why "boot"?
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday July 18 2017, @04:31PM (3 children)
I looked up Wikipedia's "elevator" article and couldn't find anything on the history of the difference in terminology (elevator vs. lift), but just going by what you said with tire vs. tyre and aluminum vs aluminium, it sure seems like the British have a nasty habit of trying to change words after they've already been adopted, and then getting mad when the Americans don't follow along.
Of course, this isn't true for all such differences. I just looked up color vs. colour, and it seems the version with the 'u' is older, but around 1840 Americans used the simplified version more often. This is probably the case with many other such words with extra letters: Americans prefer simpler spellings, for what I hope are obvious reasons. What does that 'u' need to be there for anyway? It isn't pronounced and doesn't add anything to the word.
The one thing that really annoys me about British English, however, is the use of plural forms when talking about groups (e.g., "Comcast are a cable company" instead of "Comcast is a cable company"). Do they do the same dumb thing with country names (i.e., "The UK are an economically failing nation")?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 18 2017, @05:40PM
Maths
That is the nails on the chalkboard for me. Its a collective singular word, so shortening it with an unnecessary s is silly.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday July 19 2017, @02:49PM (1 child)
Very strongly agree with your opinion of "Microsoft are". Microsoft IS, the people of Microsoft ARE. Cars are made of thousands of discrete parts, so why don't they say "My car are out of petrol"?
As to the U, I'd guess that at one point in the language's evolution it was pronounced. Many English words are also spelled funny (knife, laugh, cough, through) because English is a bastard language that borrowed from other European languages.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 3, Informative) by Grishnakh on Wednesday July 19 2017, @05:18PM
Microsoft IS, the people of Microsoft ARE. Cars are made of thousands of discrete parts, so why don't they say "My car are out of petrol"?
Exactly. Furthermore, do Brits use singular or plural for the word "group"? i.e., "The group is going there" vs. "The group are going there". I'm not sure, but the latter sure sounds goofy, and makes no sense. Every physical object, every thing really, is composed of smaller subcomponents. A car is made of thousands of parts, but even a single piece of steel is composed of countless atoms. A single atom is composed of protons, neutrons, and electrons. A subatomic particle like that is composed of quarks. Quarks are probably composed of smaller things. So when do you get to use singular forms? The whole thing is just plain stupid. I'm honestly flabbergasted that British English took this turn, and I actually don't know when it happened because I've known about their odd spellings for most of my life, but this feature I only learned about in the last few years so I really wonder if it's a new thing. To borrow some good parts of British English, it's bloody stupid and it's bollocks.
Many English words are also spelled funny (knife, laugh, cough, through) because English is a bastard language that borrowed from other European languages.
There's more to it than that. There's this thing called the Great Vowel Shift [wikipedia.org] that happened where they changed the way they pronounced all the vowels. Other European languages had similar shifts and changed their spellings to suit the new pronunciations when they had their vowel shifts, but English didn't for many words, so we have words with spellings that fit the older pronunciation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 18 2017, @11:04PM
Because the other end of the car has a bonnet, silly.
http://www.google.com/search?tbs=li:1&q=bonnet+hood+boot+caravan+car.park [google.com]
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