GalacticCactus Forum

Forums => English & Linguistics => Topic started by: Noemon on July 31, 2006, 08:11:03 PM

Title: Linguistic Maps
Post by: Noemon on July 31, 2006, 08:11:03 PM

I just came across this today and thought that I'd share:

(http://www.mapsofindia.com/maps/india/india-map-languages.jpg)

To justify making a whole thread for this I'll probably be posting additional linguistic maps as I come across them.

[Edit--the site it cool enough that it's worth checking out--all sorts of great maps of India.]

Title: Linguistic Maps
Post by: JT on August 02, 2006, 08:00:17 PM

Well, that settles it.  I'm never going to India.

Title: Linguistic Maps
Post by: skillery on August 02, 2006, 08:24:05 PM

Can you find a map that shows similarities in languages from one region to another and probable migration paths of those languages?

Where did I see that tree-chart that traced all modern languages back to their origins?

 

Title: Linguistic Maps
Post by: Jonathon on August 02, 2006, 08:31:05 PM

This site (http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/languagefamilies.html) has maps of all the known language families (though some of these are a little conjectural, from what I understand), but it doesn't show migration paths or anything like that.

If you found a chart that traced all modern languages back to one origin, then it was probably bunk. Only a few nutty linguists on the fringe believe that it's even possible to reconstruct a language more than five or ten thousand years old, and human language has allegedly existed for at least ten times that long.

Title: Linguistic Maps
Post by: skillery on August 02, 2006, 08:54:05 PM

The chart I saw had me scratching my head, as Japanese and Finnish were shown to have common roots.

Title: Linguistic Maps
Post by: Jonathon on August 03, 2006, 08:38:41 AM

I've seen that before. If you go to the site I linked to and scroll down to Uralic-Yukaghir, you'll see the family that includes Finnish. Right below that is the Altaic family, which includes a lot of Central Asian languages. Some linguists believe that Uralic and Altaic are related, and some other linguists include Japanese, Korean, and Ainu in the Altaic family, though that's pretty controversial.