Cultural Post #6

[David R. Stevens]

I found this article very interesting.  The notion that the historical linguists created a computer program to review the thousands of languages that are spoken and have been spoken in the world is shocking.  In the end I do not believe that the actual region where all languages originate from is important.  However, I do find it very important to know what family the language you are studying comes from.   While studying Spanish I learned that I could easily pick up sentences from other "Romantic" languages.  However, languages such as German did not have many cognates with Spanish, thus I have a hard time understanding German when my father speaks it.   While learning Hebrew, there are many cognates within the languages.  Hebrew is an ancient language, but Modern Hebrew is relatively new.   Many modern day words either have a root stemming from an ancient word or are very similar to English.   Shir has been working with me on recognizing cognates within the language when they stem from an ancient word.  For instance, the word for computer is Maksheva and the word for "to think" is L'makshev.   

[Global Studio]

Languages descended from Latin are 'romance' not 'romantic', although many are perceived to be the latter as well.