@aeva @rygorous well there's still the grammar which...

@aeva @rygorous well there's still the grammar which is abysmal. iirc german used to have much simpler grammar until the romans inspired changes in conjugation

Like 9 August at 7:20 | Wall-to-wall | Open on mastodon.gamedev.place

4 comments

aeva

@lritter @rygorous I always get the feeling that language just gets worse over time, but I can't ever tell if that's actually the case or just the third hand opinions from linguists. like what do they know they weren't there either

9 August at 7:31 | Open on mastodon.gamedev.place

Irenes (many)

@aeva @lritter @rygorous "worse" is... language definitely acquires more interesting wrinkles over time

9 August at 7:37 | Open on adhd.irenes.space

Leonard Ritter

@ireneista @aeva @rygorous just an intuition but i feel there's a push-pull between at least two different factions: the "save energy, move mouth/hands less" faction (you see their handiwork everywhere), and the "we recognize elevated status in society by the use of multisyllabic technical terms under the guise of aiming for enhanced expressive precision" faction.

in addition, language is not only used to foster understanding, it's also used for demarcation. youth slang is mostly this.

9 August at 7:44 | Open on mastodon.gamedev.place

Mrs Beanbag

@aeva @lritter @rygorous Dutch and Norwegian have both been purposefully simplified on government initiative, in the mid 20th century, mostly removing a lot of pointless gender stuff. also as someone who just speedran Duolingo's Danish course it's kinda wild how all the Germanic languages start to just sound like dialects/strong accents once you get used to listening to it.

9 August at 10:40 | Open on ieji.de