Here are some texts in the Scots language. I am getting really tired of people who keep insisting that this is just a dialect of English. And I bet if you heard it spoken you would understand even less than you do when it is written. Written down, you can make sense of some of it by figuring out the words. Good looking doing that when it’s spoken.
Embro to the Ploy (Robert Garioch 1909 – 1981)
The tartan tred wad gar ye lauch;
nae problem is owre teuch.
Your surname needna end in –och;
they’ll cleik ye up the cleuch.
A puckle dollar bill will aye
preive Hiram Teufelsdröckh
a septary of Clan McKay
it’s maybe richt eneuch,
Verflüch!
In Embro to the ploy.
The Auld High Schule, whaur mony a skelp
of triple-tonguit tawse
has gien a heist-up and a help
towards Doctorates of Laws,
nou hears, for Ramsay’s cantie rhyme,
loud pawmies of applause
frae folk that pey a pund a time
to sit on wudden raws,
gey hard
in Embro to the ploy.
The haly kirk’s Assembly-haa
nou fairly coups the creel
wi Lindsay’s Three Estatis, braw
devices of the Deil.
About our heids the satire stots
like hailstanes till we reel;
the bawrs are in auld-farrant Scots,
it’s maybe jist as weill,
imphm,
in Embro to the ploy.
From Hannlin Rede [yearly report] 2012–2013 (the Männystèr o Fairms an Kintra Fordèrin, 2012)
We hae cum guid speed wi fettlin tae brucellosis, an A’m mintin at bein haleheidit tae wun tae tha stannin o bein redd o brucellosis aathegither. Forbye, A’m leukkin tae see an ettlin in core at fettlin tae tha TB o Kye, takkin in complutherin anent a screengin ontak, tha wye we’ll can pit owre an inlaik in ootlay sillert wi resydentèrs. Mair betoken, but, we’ll be leukkin forbye tae uphaud an ingang airtit wi tha hannlins furtae redd ootcum disayses. An we’r fur stairtin in tae leukk bodes agane fur oor baste kenmairk gate, ‘at owre tha nixt wheen o yeirs wull be tha ootcum o sillerin tae aboot £60m frae resydentèrs furtae uphaud tha hale hannlin adae wi beef an tha mïlk-hoose.
This is an extremely interesting lect being spoken here. It looks more like Furniello spoken in the Fornela Valley region around where Asturias, Leon and Galicia all come together. The language itself looks something like Berciano, Western Asturian or Eastern Galician.
Forniellu is spoken in the Fornela Valley in and around the towns of Guimara, Peranzanes, and Transcastro. It is a mixture of Leonese, Asturian, Galician and Castillian. It is probably not intelligible with Galician. It is difficult to place this lect. Formally it is considered to be transitional between Leonese and Galician, but it is more likely to be Leonese transitional to Galician. This is sometimes said to be part of Berciano. Best characterized as Leonese. Intelligibility with Fabieru Berciano speakers from nearby Fabero nine miles to the south is excellent.
The people in this area say that they speak Galician, but the truth is they are really speaking Leonese or Berciano. When Berciano speakers go to Galicia, they are not understood, so Berciano is not a type of Galician.
I was utterly lost with this old lady’s story. I could hear a few words now and then, but it wasn’t enough to figure out what she was talking about. After seven minutes, I did not have the slightest idea of what she was talking about. You are listening to it and thinking, “You know, this really does sound like Spanish…” but then you still can’t seem to make out of a word of it. To my untrained ear, it also seems to sound like some sort of a Portuguese-Spanish mix.
If you can speak Spanish or Portuguese, see how much Furniellu you can understand.
As you can see, I really love Romance languages and I especially love Iberian Romance, probably because I understand, speak, read and even write Spanish pretty well. Hence, all of the Iberian Romance languages related to Spanish are pretty interesting to me.
I am finally figuring this show out. The announcer, who I previously thought was speaking some sort of Castillianized Asturian, is instead simply speaking Castillian Spanish. It is hard to understand because I cannot understand Castillian very well.
This clip is interesting. The announcer speaks Castillian all the way through it, but the 88 year old man speaks two languages. For most of the clip he speaks Castillian, but it is apparently so Leonized that I had the darnedest time understanding. So let us call his speech Leonese Castillian. At one point, the announcer asks him to speak something in Alistano and then he breaks into a short tale in Alistano. This starts at 3:54 and goes until 5:13. Then he goes back to his Leonese Castillian again. The Alistano was almost comical-sounding and I could barely get a single word of it. It almost sounded like a language from outer space.
If you can speak Spanish, see how well you can understand:
1. The Castillian of the announcer.
2. The strange Leonese Castillian of the old man.
3. The Alistano Leonese from 3:54 to 5:13.
Here are a couple of maps.
This shows the Asturian-Leonese language area at this time.
Western Asturian-Leonese is spoken in the orange area, except that Mirandese seems to be a separate language. In Leon, it is called Western Leonese and in Asturias, it is called Western Asturian. Western Asturian still has a lot of speakers. Western Leonese and Western Asturian do not seem to differ a lot. Western Leonese is the only Leonese that is in decent shape at all.
The green area is called Central Astur-Leonese. The Asturian standard is set in Central Asturias, which is where most of the speakers are. Leonese speakers dislike this standard because it is far from what they speak. This is one of the arguments they use to say that Leonese is a separate language from Asturian. As you can see, Central Leonese is in quite bad shape.
The brown area is Eastern Asturian-Leonese. The dialect is in quite bad shape. Even Eastern Asturian is not doing well. Eastern Leonese is almost dead, but it still has a few speakers.
The map shows the brown area extending into the western half of Cantabria, but this is not correct, as the lect spoken in Cantabria is Cantabrian, not Asturian, and it seems to be another language altogether. Cantabrian is frequently said to be dead, but that does not seem to be the case. There were monolingual speakers until very recently.
They had stubbornly refused to learn Castillian as they considered it to be an imposed language. In the mountains of Cantabria, as 2007, children were still showing up in school speaking a relatively pure Cantabrian. There were frequent complaints of teachers not being able to understand their students. As recently as 2003, a relatively pure Cantabrian could still be heard on a daily basis in the mountains. Cantabrian is best seen as an Asturian-Castillian transitional language.
Cantabrian seems to be together with Extremaduran in a single tongue, Cantabrian-Extremaduran. Both seem to represent far extensions of Eastern Leonese. In the case of Extremaduran, this is an Eastern Leonese dialect that got isolated down in Extremadura with the rapid expansion of Castillian. Extremaduran is intelligible with Cantabrian, but not with Central Asturian. This implies that we have two separate languages here.
The blue area on the map is Galician-Portuguese. The border between Galician and Portuguese is the red line on the far right of the picture. Galician is not well understood in Portugal, but people on the border speak a different lect that is intelligible on both sides of the border in the Minho and in Tras Os Montes. This lect looks Galician-Portuguese transitional, but it seems to be more Galician than Portuguese. In the Spanish part of the Minho, few residents speak Castillian because they have no use for it as all of their trade is across the border with Portugal. Spanish Minho speakers say that Minho Galician is not understood well outside of the Minho.
The yellow zone seems to be an area that was formerly Galician-speaking but has now gone over to Castillian. However, the Castillian in this area is heavily Leonized as you can see in the clip above. Castilian influence on Leonese was strongest in the south as this area is a lot less rugged so the language could penetrate easier. Up in the north, the Astur-Leonese area is very mountainous so Castillian had a harder time penetrating. Many towns still have only a poor road or even no road connecting them with the outside world.
Leonese in Zamora.
A better view of the languages of Zamora. As you can see, the far west of the province is indeed Galician speaking. The bright orange area is Leonese speaking, but Leonese here is in very bad shape and in many places, it is dying out. The yellow area is Castillian with heavy Leonese influence. The light area is some sort of a Leonese-Castillian transition zone. However, I would argue that Leonese is in terrible shape in the light orange area and is almost extinct in its purer form. Nevertheless, the speech here is quite Leonized.
Aliste on the map is where the Alistano speaker in the video is from. As you can see, it is at the far southern end of Leonese, and this is where Castillian influence was strongest.
Cabreirés is spoken in southwestern Leon near the Galician border north of the Senabrese speaking area in Zamora to the south.
This is a clip from a video called Asina Falamos which is a documentary of the Leonese language produced in the region. The man is much easier to understand. I believe he is speaking Asturian. His Asturian is very clear. I am not sure if this is what the pure Asturian sounds like or if his is heavily influenced by Castillian. At any rate, I can only understand him about half the time even though he speaks clearly.
I can barely understand a single word of what this woman is saying. Her language sounds like she took Castillian and ran it through a Vegematic.
The last half of the video the woman is speaking most of the time. She is apparently telling a story in Leonese. The only thing that I got out of it is that this story seems to have something to do with a dog.
It is interesting that they are able to communicate even though he is speaking Asturian and she is speaking Leonese.
If you can speak Spanish or Portuguese, see how much of this you can make out.
I can speak Spanish fairly well, not perfectly, and my understanding of it is adequate though not perfect by any means. This short video is narrated in Senabrese Leonese, which is still pretty widely spoken in northwestern Zamora, Spain on the Portuguese border near the border with southwestern Leon. Some Senabrese lects have heavy Galician, Castillian and even Portuguese influence.
At least one of them is considered an excellent representative of the Leonese language as spoken in the 1100’s and 1200’s. There are also some so-called Galician dialects spoken in this region, however, they are apparently not intelligible with Galician proper. The Senabrese Galician and Senabrese Leonese have much in common with each other and are essentially the same language.
Honestly, I really did not have the faintest idea of what this fellow was talking about. I kept turning off the Senabrese captions to be fair, but to tell the truth, the captions weren’t even helping much because I could hardly make sense of written Senabrese!
At one time, Asturo-Leonese was the most widely spoken language in Spain. Around 1000, Castillian began to expand south out of the Cantabria region and over time, it overwhelmed Asturo-Leonese, with Leonese being hit particularly hard. Extremaduran is a Western Leonese lect that got isolated down in Extremadura by expanding Castillian, and Mirandese is a Senabrese dialect that got isolated over in Portugal 1,200 years ago and has since come under heavy Galician influence. Mirandese is no longer fully intelligible with Leonese, even with the Senabrese Leonese it grew out of. At the moment, Mirandese is best characterized as a Senabrese Leonese lect transitional to Galician.
That Castillian actually grew out of Asturo-Leonese is fascinating because it implies that Castillian is an Asturo-Leonese dialect and not the other way around. In the same way, Portuguese is actually a dialect of Galician and not the other way around because Portuguese grew out of Galician.
Leonese is apparently not completely intelligible with Asturian. Instead the intelligibility is ~85%.
Leonese, even Senabrese Leonese, is in quite bad shape, however, unlike other Leonese lects, Senabrese still has child speakers.
If you speak Spanish or Portuguese, see if you can figure out what this guy is saying.
This clip is of an idiot ISIS jihadi giving an impromtu speech on a street in Aavaz, Syria. But he’s definitely speaking Albanian from what I can figure out. The jihadi is an Albanian Muslim from Kosovo.
This language is quite interesting. Don’t believe I have ever heard it before. But what does it sound like? I would say it sounds like a mixture of these three languages in descending order:
Slavic (especially Russian)
Romanian
Turkish
Beyond that, what does it sound like? I get the vibe of the following languages in descending order:
Classical or Ecclesiastical Latin
Italian (especially Neapolitan Italian and in particular Barese spoken around the city of Bari in Puglia on the southeastern coast)
That’s about it. Doesn’t sound much like Greek at all, despite the proximity to Greece.
As far as roots go, Albanian is an ancient Indo-European tongue, probably derived from a Hittite-Armenian-Greek base long ago. There were other Illyrian languages spoken in the Dinaric region, but they have all gone extinct. Contrary to what Albanian nationalists say, Albanians almost certainly came from the north, probably the region around Romania, Bulgaria and Serbia.
The Latin/Romanian sound is because Albanian underwent massive Latinization, and ~55% of the roots are Latinate. It shares many of these roots with Romanian, but the words are often different because Romanian and Albanian were Latinized at different stages in the language’s development.
The Barese resemblance is very odd, but Barese has many roots that are not found in Italian at all. Both the southeast coast of Italy and Albania shared an influence from the ancient extinct Messapian language, and this may be where the similarity comes from.
The Slavic sound probably derives from Slavic influences in that Albania has a number of Slavic countries around it.
Turkish influence is easy to explain as most languages in that region have been influenced by Turkish.
It’s a pretty interesting language, easy on the ears. At the end of the day though, I do not think this language sounds very close to any other language on Earth.
Upper Sorbian is a Slavic language spoken in Eastern Germany in Lusatia. Upper Sorbian is in pretty good shape and may have as many as 40,000 speakers, but Lower Sorbian is not in good shape and has only ~8,000 speakers, most of them elderly. I would expect Upper Sorbian to live at least until 2100 since children are being brought up speaking it. However, the outlook for Lower Sorbian seems to be quite poor.
East Germany always supported the Sorbian language, and the Sorbs had their own schools set up for them. However, upon German reunification, most of the Sorb schools were shut down for some dumb reason. This was just wrong.
Stanislaw Tillich is a major German politician with the Christian Democratic Party in Germany and he is also a Sorbian native speaker. It appears that children are still being brought up speaking Upper Sorbian.
Sorbian has a close relationship with both Czech and Polish. Its roots were in a movement of Slavic speakers into Lusatia in the 500’s, so it seems to have been split from the rest of Slavic for possibly 1,500 years. Lower Sorbian at least has undergone heavy German influence. Czechs say that they cannot understand a single word of Sorbian, but Poles say they can understand it quite well. I think the Poles are exaggerating though,and Sorbian-Polish intelligibility must not be complete. In fact, I doubt if even Lower and Upper Sorbian have full intelligibility.
I must say that this language sounds rather odd. To my untrained ears, it sounds something like a mixture of Polish and German. Anyone else have any impressions?
What language is this? I will give you a few hints. It is spoken in the general region of Eurasia (both Europe and Asia), it is the official language of a nation, and it is very well-known.
I removed a few words. One word was the name of the capital of the country. It wasn’t how we spell it but some of your smarter folks may have gotten it. Also the word for the language itself in various forms was removed as I thought some of you might be smart enough to get it.
Misticizmi ka shkuar deri ne perfeksion dhe kjo figure eshte teper e lashte, e koherave te Titanve…!
Ky është një ilustrim i një pllake guri me përmasa rreth 40×65 cm, gjetur në vitin 1974 në Labëri, me saktë në kalanë e Katafiqit në Kuç (Vlorë).
Ilustrimi është bërë nga grafisti Pandi Mele. Po në këtë vit i është dorëzuar në ngarkim Muzeut Vlorë me drejtor Llambi Durolli. Në 1978 objekti është marrë nga ky muze nga studiuesi Rrok Zojsi, dhe është dorëzuar në Akademinë e Shkencave në. Në 1980 objekti i është dërguar Frederik Stamatit në laboratorin e restaurimeve, dhe më pas i është kthyer Akademisë së Shkencave. Në vitet 1980-1981 ky artifakt zhduket nga mjediset e Akademisë së Shkencave. Vjedhja mund të jetë bërë nga grekët (apo blere nga ta) ashtu siç ka ndodhur edhe me shumë artifakte tjera.
Edhe Dhimiter Pilika e përmend këtë pllakë guri, kur flet për dykrerëshe. Vjetërsia dhe përmbajtja në kompozim e këtij artifakti ishin arsyet e zhdukjes së tij. Le t’a gjejë Akademia e Shkencave, t’i bëjë analizat e vjetërsisë, pastaj do t’i jepej një përgjigje mbi origjinën e shqiponjës dykrerëshe në flamurin. Kjo grafike, qe eshte vizatuar me vertetesi me origjinalin sjellin elemente te pa para ndonjehere. Krahet e shqiponjes tregojne kollona te fuqishme, pastaj gjethja e lisit ne mes i ve vulen pellazge kesaj figure. Gjethja e lisit është identike për Dodonën.”Lisi i shenjtë i Dodonës” është i njohur nga shumë shkrime të lashta.
Gërmimet në Dodonë filluan më 1885, me orientimin e Ismail Qemalit dhe u mbyllën më 1887 nga kisha ortodokse greke me mbishkrimin “επικινδι” (I rezikshem)…! Kurrë nuk është bërë përpjekje për vazhdimësin e zbulimeve. Deri ne ditet tona, me studime te ngjajshme gjuhesore dhe historike, u mor edhe mbesa e Ismail Qemal bej Vlorës, Nermin Vlora Falaski, e cila pati nje sukses te jashtzakonshem me disa kryevepra te saj, deri varianti i pare i deshifrimit te “Steles së Lemnos” me ane te gjuhes, per te vazhduar me tej edhe sqarimi me i modifikuar i ketij teksti nga studiues te ndryshem, vetem me ane te gjuhes.
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Yola is probably the language most closely related to English, although it is now extinct. It is apparently some sort of a split from Middle English that arose from 1100-1200 in Ireland. It survived well into the 1800’s. Here is a Yola song. Considering that this is the language most closely related to English, I do not have the faintest idea what in God’s name this song is about.
Alpha Unit
Robert A. Lindsay