it might be quiet tonight (Linguistics)

[Boreades]

All of the AEL Linguistics Department are glued to their TVs, watching Eurovision 2014.

I hasten to add, this is purely in the academic pursuit of knowledge.

Nothing at all to do with girls in skimpy dresses and boys in tight trousers.
Hatty, please do sit down, you're blocking the view.
Mick, have you just eaten all the crisps and pickled onions?

Anyway, what was I saying?
Oh yes, the big question is, why are they nearly all singing in English?

Or, perhaps I should rephrase that.
Why are the ones who are not singing in English doing so?

[Mick Harper]

It's an accident of history. You maximise your chances by singing in the language most people understand and that language presently is English. Not just presently, but probably forever. This happened because the previous 'international language', French, in the nineteenth century, lost out to English in the twentieth largely because the Americans (and the Brits) refuse to learn foreign languages and, since they were dominant in many international fields (air traffic control just to give a minor example) everybody else had to learn English.

Then the global economy took off and everybody is now obliged to learn English. The Eastern bloc held out for some time (promoting Russian as the international language) but even they are now fully in line. The only possibility now is if China insists on Chinese when she takes over.

AE says we (English-speakers) should take advantage of this situation by not bothering to learn foreign languages at school. Naturally the education lobby says different, "It broadens/trains the mind." So does studying pornography.

[Boreades]

[Boreades]

Hush please, we're practising our Welsh National Anthem.

Gwlad Gwlad

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The bilingual Gwlad Gwlad App has a unique and innovative user interface that will enable its users to pronounce the words and then to learn the anthem's melody slowly to begin and then at the usual speed.

http://www.llgc.org.uk/services/media-business/press-releases/gwlad-gwlad/

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Where's me giant leek?

[Wile E. Coyote]

[Boreades]

[N R Scott]

[Pete Jones]

[Pete Jones]

The following Wiki quote refers to Greek's KONKHOS, which means "conch shell."

[Mick Harper]

[Pete Jones]

I suspected this was the case.

But I wonder why they link CALX (limestone) with KHALIX (pebble). Because there's a much better Greek match: Greek's KALYX means shell or pod or husk. KALYX is a direct hit, but it's ignored.

I suspect its because they are too married to the idea of regular, law-like sound change. I suspect Latin C = Greek KH is defined in their charts, and so a Greek K (in KALYX) violates the rule. And so it is ruled out.

They want to be scientists, and so uniform change is required. Even when clear semantics and practically identical sounds are staring them in the face.

[Pete Jones]

Apparently very long ago....[continued]

This is a bit long, but notice that the K-vowel-K structure carries through, while the meaning expands from "shell" to "spiral shell," to just a plain ol' geometric "spiral":

[Pete Jones]

Contemporary English words like CAULK are present all the way back in Akkadian. And they are obviously connected if you trace back through some straightforward metaphors.

I guess there could be a loanword explanation, with the lending being traceable from modern English all the way back to the second millennium BC. That seems like a stretch. Even if there are 1,000-some phantom years of baloney chronology in there, it's still a long time.

But it's not just English and Akkadian (and Classical Syriac, Greek, and Latin)....

K'AK = shell (Dargwa, in the Caucasus)
KACSINT = shell (Hungarian)
QUAGGA = mussel (Dutch)
COKI = small shell (Tamil)
XAAK = shell (Tlingit)
COUCHE = shell (French)
HOGKI = shell (Naragansett Algonquian)
COCOYEHULOA = shell (Nahuatl)
KUGKU = snail (Aguaruana, in Brazil)
CAKKAR = spiral (Sanskrit)
KACS = tendril (a spiral vine) (Hungarian)
KUKU-O = shell (Rapa Nui)

I'll stop. It's everywhere but Australia (as far as I know). Typical.

[Mick Harper]

The upshot is the existence of a world mind that moves in mysterious ways.

PS You have though provided my AE conversation-of-the-day. The AEL moves in mysterious ways.

[Pete Jones]

One effect, one cause, right?

Potential causes:

1. Mysterious world mind.
2. Some linguists think sounds are psychologically caused in a law-like manner and so vocabulary is not arbitrary.
3. Others (most) insist on arbitrariness and so would explain this by the idea that there was once only one language.

But the last group would also insist that this first language has to be so old that we should at most find the barest scraps of it in modern languages. Certainly not a single word for something as straightforward as a seashell all over the world