Language It Is A Funny Thing

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Brendan

Lifer
May 16, 2021
1,412
7,533
Cowra, New South Wales, Australia.
On the subject, I kind of feel sorry for people trying to learn English and having to get their heads around certain words we have taken from other languages and butchered, pronounced completely different to how they look. Especially in Australia where we can be very 'casual' or plain lazy with pronunciation.
I was only thinking about this the other day whilst reading the word 'lingerie' and wondering why the hell we pronounce it the way we do.

Then I got sidetracked thinking about lingerie and decided it's not that big a deal..
 

georged

Lifer
Mar 7, 2013
5,491
13,920
Fun language fact:

You know how regions of a country develop accents over time?

If the separation & isolation is strong enough, and enough time passes, the accents morph into separate languages.

Probably the most dramatic example that can be seen in realtime is Papua New Guinea. PNG is a smallish (in global terms) island about 1.8 times the size of Texas, and super rugged mountains kept the population separated in valleys for a long time. Today, over 850 languages are spoken there.

1.8 times the counties in Texas is 508.

Imagine going to Texas and every county had two separate and distinct languages... Yikes!