Language topic

Zare said:
Indeed.
I might have used the wrong word; poetic. I meant pjevan which would roughly translate as singable. As in good (in terms of compatibility) for introduction of melody.

In my opinion, Slavic and Romance languages definitely have the trait.
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Pjevan jne can translate as "певучий". Thanks to common roots.
 
You're giving us a whole new perspective on the field of philology here.
 
Perun said:
Let's spice this thread up with a little quiz. Post your answers in spoilers, I'll give out the solutions on the weekend (Sunday or Monday, depending on the amount of takers).

1. Name the ten languages with the highest amount of native speakers in the world. You can try to rank them or guess the number of speakers if you're adventurous, but try figuring out the languages themselves first.
2. Name the extant branches of the Indo-European language family. I'm only asking for branches, not sub branches. e.g. it is sufficient to include "Germanic", no need to list "Western Germanic", "Northwestern Germanic", etc.
3. Which region has the highest amount, both relatively and absolutely, of languages spoken in the world? The region is very clearly defined geographically and easy to distinctly name.
4. Which country has the highest amount of official languages? How many are they?
5. How many alphabets or scripts are currently in official use worldwide? This question does not distinguish individual adaptations of an alphabet, so e.g. the English, French and Turkish variations of the Latin alphabet are counted as one single alphabet or script.
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1. Mandarin, Spanish, English, Arabic, Hindi, Urdu, French, German, Russian, Vietnamese?
2. Germanic, Slavic, Romanic, Latin, Finno-Ugric?
3. I must admit to seeing Flash's guess, but it seems very plausible.
4. India?
5. A helluvalot of alphabets, I have no idea of the order of magnitude here. Let's say ... 200?

@Perun - when can we expect the judgement?
 
I'd put it down to artistic licence in this case. Its probably American slang anyway, and I'm not familiar with all of that.
 
jazz from hell said:
I found this quote:
“The blues is an expression of anger against shame and humiliation” (B.B. King). --> "The blues is", not "the blues are".
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In this quote, the blues clearly refers to the musical genre, so it's correct to use it in singular.
"The blues" is a singular noun when used as a separate noun, but can be singular or plural in construction, according to dictionaries.
Also, this noun is far from unique in the English language - just look at news, means and series, for example.
 
Ariana said:
In this quote, the blues clearly refers to the musical genre, so it's correct to use it in singular.
"The blues" is a singular noun when used as a separate noun, but can be singular or plural in construction, according to dictionaries.
Also, this noun is far from unique in the English language - just look at news, means and series, for example.
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Exactly.
 
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One glaring error. Swedish should be grouped closer to Danish than Norwegian... Danish and Swedish constitutes the two East Scandinavian languages whereas Norwegian, Icelandic and Faroese are West Scandinavian. The reasons for Norwegian and Swedish being as mutually intelligible/similar as they actually are, are historic. Short explanation: Several hundred years of Danish influence/using Danish as the official written language under Danish rule.
 
Perhaps the amount of different s sounds in Polish is too much for Cyrillic (a.o. historical reasons). :)
 
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