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Thread: Cantonese kinship terms

  1. #61
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    Quote Originally Posted by jdhowland View Post
    You're right. He did mention Germanic. I was just taking opposition to this statement:



    I'm too lazy to look up the numbers but I think the is an overstatement if you include the other language families of Europe. And some people do seem to have the idea that Latin is somehow older than English or that we have a Latin-based syntax.

    Still fighting the Normans here, even if they are my ancestors now.

    I love tangents.
    English is Germanic as a base, but uses many other languages as well to bring itself to what it is now. Latin is one of them, but you are correct, English is not based in Latin. It's more of a mish mash with mostly a german based.
    Kung Fu is good for you.

  2. #62
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    Quote Originally Posted by jdhowland View Post
    You're right. He did mention Germanic. I was just taking opposition to this statement:



    I'm too lazy to look up the numbers but I think the is an overstatement if you include the other language families of Europe. And some people do seem to have the idea that Latin is somehow older than English or that we have a Latin-based syntax.

    Still fighting the Normans here, even if they are my ancestors now.

    I love tangents.
    Perhaps not "most" but certainly more than any other group. English is only more popular as a second language. It's pretty much only native to the UK. (Does that include Ireland? England vs. UK is confusing to us Yanks). Then there's Germany, Austria and ... any other Germanic places? I'm pretty sure Polish, Romania and other eastern European countries are different family. Slavic or something. )

    I suppose most or southern and western Europe would be more accurate.

  3. #63
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    Quote Originally Posted by omarthefish View Post
    Perhaps not "most" but certainly more than any other group. English is only more popular as a second language. It's pretty much only native to the UK. (Does that include Ireland? England vs. UK is confusing to us Yanks). Then there's Germany, Austria and ... any other Germanic places? I'm pretty sure Polish, Romania and other eastern European countries are different family. Slavic or something. )

    I suppose most or southern and western Europe would be more accurate.

    Yup. You can include Norway, Sweden, Denmark, The Netherlands, and parts of Belgium and Switzerland, with a respectful nod to the Sami, Finnish and Francophones in some of those countries. Not to disparage the Italic tongues--they became immensly important worldwide. And I wasn't trying to rag on your comment. It was valid. Tongue-in-cheek doesn't show itself well in text. I enjoy your posts and just wanted to keep the thread going in all its permutations.
    "Look, I'm only doing me job. I have to show you how to defend yourself against fresh fruit."

    For it breeds great perfection, if the practise be harder then the use. Sir Francis Bacon

    the world has a surplus of self centered sh1twh0res, so anyone who extends compassion to a stranger with sincerity is alright in my book. also people who fondle road kill. those guys is ok too. GunnedDownAtrocity

  4. #64
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    Quote Originally Posted by David Jamieson View Post
    English is Germanic as a base, but uses many other languages as well to bring itself to what it is now. Latin is one of them, but you are correct, English is not based in Latin. It's more of a mish mash with mostly a german based.
    I cannot conscientiously disagree with anything you wrote here. But for the fun of it I will channel my inner pedant and vehemently quibble with your choice of words. English is solidly germanic with only lexical borrowings from other tongues. For that matter much of late Latin was heavily influenced by Germanic languages and much of the supposedly romance influence on Germanic tongues is in words with germanic roots. Saloon/salon sounds French until you lool at the etymology.

    What this has to do with Cantonese kinship terms I'm not too sure. But carry on.
    "Look, I'm only doing me job. I have to show you how to defend yourself against fresh fruit."

    For it breeds great perfection, if the practise be harder then the use. Sir Francis Bacon

    the world has a surplus of self centered sh1twh0res, so anyone who extends compassion to a stranger with sincerity is alright in my book. also people who fondle road kill. those guys is ok too. GunnedDownAtrocity

  5. #65
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    Quote Originally Posted by jdhowland View Post
    Yup. You can include Norway, Sweden, Denmark, The Netherlands, and parts of Belgium and Switzerland, with a respectful nod to the Sami, Finnish and Francophones in some of those countries.
    Those languages are Slavic? I really don't know what language families Sweedish, Dainish, etc. fall into. I always got the impression Switzerland and Belgium were Germanic but that the Norweigian was in a whole different category.

  6. #66
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    What this has to do with Cantonese kinship terms I'm not too sure. But carry on.
    Meh. After GoldenArms summed it up back on page one I don't think there was much to add.

  7. #67
    Quote Originally Posted by omarthefish View Post
    Perhaps not "most" but certainly more than any other group. English is only more popular as a second language. It's pretty much only native to the UK. (Does that include Ireland? England vs. UK is confusing to us Yanks). Then there's Germany, Austria and ... any other Germanic places? I'm pretty sure Polish, Romania and other eastern European countries are different family. Slavic or something. )

    I suppose most or southern and western Europe would be more accurate.
    Romanian is actually a Latin based language not Slavic.

  8. #68
    Quote Originally Posted by jdhowland View Post
    Yup. You can include Norway, Sweden, Denmark, The Netherlands, and parts of Belgium and Switzerland, with a respectful nod to the Sami, Finnish and Francophones in some of those countries. Not to disparage the Italic tongues--they became immensly important worldwide. And I wasn't trying to rag on your comment. It was valid. Tongue-in-cheek doesn't show itself well in text. I enjoy your posts and just wanted to keep the thread going in all its permutations.
    Not sure I understood well what you were saying, but just in case, Finnish is a language of its own with unclear origins and not connected with any other of its neighbors; I was told by a Finnish friend that the closest language to Finnish is (in grammatical terms) Hungarian.

  9. #69
    Quote Originally Posted by omarthefish View Post
    Those languages are Slavic? I really don't know what language families Sweedish, Dainish, etc. fall into. I always got the impression Switzerland and Belgium were Germanic but that the Norweigian was in a whole different category.
    In Switzerland actually the have the three cantons with each its on predominant language, being German, French and Italian.

  10. #70
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    Quote Originally Posted by omarthefish View Post
    Those languages are Slavic? I really don't know what language families Sweedish, Dainish, etc. fall into. I always got the impression Switzerland and Belgium were Germanic but that the Norweigian was in a whole different category.
    Nope. Sorry for the confusion. I was ranting about germanic. All germanic languages supposedly originated in the north. Those descending from Old Norse became their own sub-family, but still germanic.
    "Look, I'm only doing me job. I have to show you how to defend yourself against fresh fruit."

    For it breeds great perfection, if the practise be harder then the use. Sir Francis Bacon

    the world has a surplus of self centered sh1twh0res, so anyone who extends compassion to a stranger with sincerity is alright in my book. also people who fondle road kill. those guys is ok too. GunnedDownAtrocity

  11. #71
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    Quote Originally Posted by Gru Bianca View Post
    Romanian is actually a Latin based language not Slavic.
    Da. Romanest is a beautiful language, even with some borrowings from Slavonic, Hungarian and Turkish it is solidly in the Romance category. It is the only remnant of the language of the Eastern Roman Empire.
    "Look, I'm only doing me job. I have to show you how to defend yourself against fresh fruit."

    For it breeds great perfection, if the practise be harder then the use. Sir Francis Bacon

    the world has a surplus of self centered sh1twh0res, so anyone who extends compassion to a stranger with sincerity is alright in my book. also people who fondle road kill. those guys is ok too. GunnedDownAtrocity

  12. #72
    Not hard to just wiki it. I was taught that English was based on Middle English which was based on old English which was based on languages brought from the Angles, hence the term English. The rest is just influence. But heres the wiki quote anyways.


    English is a West Germanic language that was first spoken in England and is now the most widely used language in the world.[4] It is spoken as a first language by a majority of the inhabitants of several nations, including the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, the Republic of Ireland, New Zealand, and a number of Caribbean nations. It is the third most common native language in the world, after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish.[5] It is widely learned as a second language and is an official language of the European Union, many Commonwealth countries and the United Nations, as well as in many world organisations.

    English arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and what is now south-east Scotland, but was then under the control of the kingdom of Northumbria. Following the extensive influence of Great Britain and the United Kingdom from the 17th century to the mid-20th century, via the British Empire, and of the United States since the mid-20th century,[6][7][8][9] it has been widely propagated around the world, becoming the leading language of international discourse and the lingua franca in many regions.[10][11]

    Historically, English originated from the fusion of closely related dialects, now collectively termed Old English, which were brought to the eastern coast of Great Britain by Germanic (Anglo-Saxons) settlers by the 5th century – with the word English being derived from the name of the Angles, and ultimately from their ancestral region of Angeln (in what is now Schleswig-Holstein).[12] A significant number of English words are constructed based on roots from Latin, because Latin in some form was the lingua franca of the Christian Church and of European intellectual life.[13] The language was further influenced by the Old Norse language due to Viking invasions in the 8th and 9th centuries.

    The Norman conquest of England in the 11th century gave rise to heavy borrowings from Norman-French, and vocabulary and spelling conventions began to give the appearance of a close relationship with Romance languages[14][15] to what had then become Middle English. The Great Vowel Shift that began in the south of England in the 15th century is one of the historical events that mark the emergence of Modern English from Middle English.

    Owing to the assimilation of words from many other languages throughout history, modern English contains a very large vocabulary, with complex and irregular spelling, particularly of vowels. Modern English has not only assimilated words from other European languages but also from all over the world, including words of Hindi and African origin. The Oxford English Dictionary lists over 250,000 distinct words, not including many technical, scientific, and slang terms.[16][17]

  13. #73

    Instructor title meanings

    Can someone please tell me what these titles mean.

    Sifu

    SiGung

    SiSuk

    Sibok

    and if there is any more Chinese instructor titles, please tell me what they are and what they mean, Thanks!

  14. #74
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    Shifu in no way means "instructor". You call a guy "Shifu", usually, in two cases:

    1. You have entered into a man's occupational space, in which case he is the "master" of his domain. An example of this would be calling the cab driver "shifu". This is a little old fashion but a good way to show friendly respect.

    2. You have entered into a master-disciple or master-apprentice relationship. He will guide and observe your progress, but the person who directly instructs you might be different. I imagine the other terms you've used (I don't know Catonese) refer to familial relationships that are formed when one is initiated as a disciple.

    Thus, if you are talking to a kung fu teacher, outside of his school and he is not your master, calling him shifu is a little strange, though this seems to be rather commonplace in the USA for Chinese teachers milking their students naivety.

    These days, a proper term for a kung fu teacher would be jiaolian, or "coach".

  15. #75
    i understand this now, but still what do the other names mean?

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