I am a basque speaker myself and to us it's a mistery to have our language alive. Lots of civilizations (romans, celts, germanic tribes, ...) and cultures have passed through our territory, Spain and France have tried and in some ways try to wipe our language out via laws and the school system but here we are!
+Asier Sanz that's so cool i spent some time in the basque country and i found it so awesome how the signs are both in french or spanish AND basque. i would love to go back and learn more about this culture and this language. It's unfortunately quite hard to find resources to learn it
+Carrier Pigeon Then come, because whatching the respect you show in your comment you will be wellcomed. Signs are in all languages, true, but you can't imagine how hard it has been to reach that goal. Even now, basque language is not official in the french ruled basque provinces, so... hard times for our little language! Anyway we are around 1 million speakers and I think you can learn the language on line and for free. Try here: www.ikasten.net
+Asier Sanz It's a good online course? I'm interested since the father of my girlfriend speaks Basque and I myself want to know the four official languages (plus some asturleonese) and have some competency in them, at least the minimum to have a small conversation in them. With Galician I ahve no problem (it's my native), and I reached the level of català where I can kind of speak it, i can understand it, but i cannot write it. But i never found a good resource for Basque.
I find language isolates very interesting and I speak one of them (Basque) :) I love reading about them, how and why they survived. All the mystery surrounding them. I love your channel, by the way.
I think you may have forgotten to mention that languages can be isolates within a greater phylum. Greek, Albanian, and Armenian have no family but are all still part of the Indo-European language phylum.
Greek is not an isolate within the Indo European language family. It belongs to Hellenic branch along with Tsakonian (which are still used up to this day), Cypriot Greek (a dialect of Greek), and other extinct Hellenic languages/dialects.
Kārlis Ķemeris She can read, and although Armenian or Albanian are unique and alone in their branches, they are NOT ISOLATED languages, they have the same origin( Indo-European) than Baltic languages , Slavic languages , or Romance labguages unlike Basque or Burushaski whose origins are unknown and that are isolated languages.
Could you do a video on Hungarian, Finnish or Estonian language they are quite different than languages surrounding them. Also Albanian, and how did South Eastern European countries manage to keep their languages so separate over all those years and centuries of Ottoman rule.
According to our present knowledge Hungarian is an isolate language. Hopefully our history (Hungarian) as well as world history will be revealed soon. Time will tell.
Isolated languages are some of the most fascinating things in the world, and are pretty much the reason that I'm so into linguistics now. I think they deserve more love!
Firstly, I love your videos. They're exactly what a linguaphile needs!!! I would love to see you do a video on Spain and all of its regional languages (like Basque, Catalan, Galician, etc)!
Well, Korean does have the Jeju language and dead relatives (languages of Buyeo, Okjjeo, Yemaek, Goguryeo, Barhae, and Mahan), but these are debated. Some say Jeju language is a dialect although it's not mutually intelligible with other Korean dialects and some people say the ancient Korean kingdoms spoke dialects of the same language.
Korean is a language isolate. In this sense I trust Britannica more than Wikipedia editors with vested interests, who may or may not even be versed in historical linguistics. I don't really understand why they're so quick to promote "Koreanic"; being a language isolate should be a point of pride, since you know there's no other language like it!
@@bag3lmonst3r72 on an unrelated note, I find it interesting how almost every major country in East Asia speaks a language from a different language family. Chinese is Sino-Tibetan, Korean is Koreanic, Japanese is Japanic, and Mongolian is Mongolic. (And Russian is Indo-European too if you count Russia as a part of East Asia).
I feel like it's important to note just because a language is an isolate does not mean it hasn't been influenced by other languages or taken loan words from them.
I'm not sure if you are familiar with the rule of thirds, but I'd suggest using it. When making your videos position your head in the same spot just about a third of the way more up the screen. This is a common cinematography trick
Here in Colombia happened something quite similar: languages like Chibcha (center of the country) or Wayuu (north) where eliminated by the spaniards in the XV century. I would be really cool if you could say something about those languages, because our spanish has a lot of words from those dead languages. Greetings from Colombia!
Thank you, Paul, kindly for your excellent video on language isolates. Perhaps the oldest language isolate is ancient Sumerian which is not related to any other modern or ancient (Semitic) language family. Keep up the great work you are doing!
@bartekj81 I dont know anything about Basque, so I will just highly respect it:) But still that doesn't change the fact that Albanian is very unique and antique language. I can confirm this because I know Albanian, English, Norwegian (Swedish and Danish). I listen too many Spanish and French songs, but still Albanian/illyrian is different in an unique and beautiful way ;))
@vito 777 Because there is no proof that Albanian language has anything to do with ancient Illyrian. The entire Illyrian hypothesis is a myth. Simply because some toponimes remained and became bastardized in the Albanian variant doesn't mean that Albanian originated from Illyrian. In fact, what little remains of Written Illyrian proves that language has NOTHING in common with Albanian.
Hmm, interesting... I'd kind of like to see an experiment where they isolate a couple of toddlers and observe them creating their own language :D Although its ethicalness may be debatable!
+Marco Murkrow Haha, yeah I don't think that would be allowed. But there is the evidence from deaf schools, as well as some evidence from the way children spontaneously create more complex language structures when they grow up learning a pidgin as their native language (ie. when pidgin languages become creoles).
***** I heard something similar where some guy left two babies on an island to be cared for by a mute mother, and the guy claimed that they learned Hebrew, which I don't think anyone believed.
Nah man it is very similar with japanese a lot of words are the same but pronounced diffrent (By the way my language is only spoken in one city😅😅) (But it is related with 10 languages in the area but they are extremly simular sometimes only pronounciasion is diffrent but the group language has no other family connection so idk if you can call it a isolated language cause diffrent tribes speak the same but only slightly diffrent so....😅)
I love that you mentioned Sign Languages!! Even the Sign Languages used in the US and the U.K. are extremely different, to the point that they are pretty much unintelligible to each other. You should make more videos about them😊
Question and I'm sure you get this a lot (sorry I'm new to this channel, awesome videos by the way.) but could you do a video on Albanian? I am a native speaker (learned it in the home through my parents) but I have no idea of the formalities of my own language or even its history and I would love to find out more about it.
Just discovered your channel and I'm totally into it. As a constant language learner and lover, I have found in you a new source of inspiration. Thank you very much for these awesome videos!!
here in Brasil there is the Pirahã language. it has some fascinating aspects, as the lack of numbers, the lack of colors, and the really small phonetic inventory
+Freedom Warrior Well languages unintelligible for those who don't speak it even if it's in the same family. For example My native language is spanish and I don't know french for shit so I don't know what the hell french people are saying. If your native language is english then you probably don't understand what the hell german people say even if both languages are in the same family
Yes, but in close families, there are often "Sister languages". I speak Slovak, yet understand all Czech without learning it. Other Slavic languages I understand simple sentences if the speakers speak slowly, enough to get by on a holiday in Croatia for example.
Joaquin Gaute A wild idea. Both Proto-Slavic and Vulgar Latin were spoken as lingua francas in Roman Empire and Avar Khanate, respectively. After their empires fell, they started developing into separate languages, but they started diverging only about 1400 years ago (as opposed to say Ugro-Finnic languages which diverged 4000 years ago), so they are still fairly close today. English is spoken as a lingua franca now. Imagine the following hypothetical scenario: 1. A part of the world adopts English as the daily laguage. 2. Cultural hegemony and influence of the Anglosphere ends with a catastrophe and the nations are cut off from English language media, thus Standard English is no longer "correcting" how they use English 3. After 1000 years, you have a family of "Anglic" languages, mutually mostly unintelligible with each other (but with close pairs maintaining intelligibility between themselves, but not the original English language). For a made up example: Present day English: Hello my friend, how are you doing? Neoenglish 1: Haelu ma frond, ha á j duin? Neoenglish 2: Hall mei prjent, hoe reá ju doin? Neoenglish 3: Hai min pael, howduin? Neoenglish 4: Elo my budde, hoi isit oen? You can already see with English based Creoles, although the process there has been hyper-accelerated by the influencing of English by the native languages. Search for Hawaiian Pidgin, Tok Pisin, Solomons Pidgin or Bislama Creole. Compare English: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. Bislama Creole: Evri man mo woman i bon fri mo ikwol long respek mo ol raet. Oli gat risen mo tingting mo oli mas tritim wanwan long olgeta olsem ol brata mo sista. Solomons Pidgin: Evri man en mere olketa born frii en ikwol lo digniti en raits blo olketa. Olketa evriwan olketa garem maeni fo tingting en olketa sapos fo treatim isada wittim spirit blo bradahood. Tok Pisin: Yumi olgeta mama karim umi long stap fri na wankain long wei yumi lukim i gutpela na strepela tru. Uumi olgeta igat ting ting bilong wanem samting I rait na rong na mipela olgeta I mas mekim gutpela pasin long ol narapela long tingting bilong brata susa.
I would love a video about southern Italian dialects that are almost unintelligible to other Italians, and how they developed. Also, they are not actually "dialects". They are really distinct "sister" languages. Thanks, Paul! Keep up the good work, love your videos!
Herodotus claimed that there was such an experiment conducted with children and that after being raised without any language, they spontaneously spoke out in Phrygian.
Dear Langfocus guy, THERE IS SUCH AN EXPERIMENT! It came about fortuitously in Australia. They had a community of First Australian ("Aborigines") babies that grew up in an isolated location, isolated from their parents but also from the Anglo-Saxon conquerors and they DID DEVELOP THEIR OWN SPOKEN LANGUAGE. It happened a couple of years ago. It was a printed article I don't have the name, right now, but if you research/google it you will find it.
please, try to do something on AMAZIGH or TAMAZIGHT which is the original language of North Africa before the Arabs came to the region. it's still exists and it is one of the unique languages.
1 particular place i think of language isolation is the tribe living in north Sentinel island they've been separating from the world for like 60000 years so i think theirs language at this point do not related to anyone since no contact with others.
Paul, would you consider Albanian, Armenian and possibly greek (if you exclude Tsakonian which only has a handful of speakers) to be language isolates? Other than being part of the indo-european they don't have any surviving relatives.
Daniel Bromwich Proto Indo-European is an ancient language thus all language descendant from it are sister languages i.e. Greek and Latin are sister languages
Friend, Greek is not sister to any living language. It is most definitely indo european but Indo-European is a language phylum, not an immediate family. Phylums contain many families that are related to each other- greek is, as far as we know, the last surviving member of its family. Latin is in the Italic family and thus not a direct sibling of greek because they are not the result of dialectic divergence from a single language, they are the children of many, many series's of dialectal divergence. If you want to use the kinship term analogy, you could say that they're maybe second or third cousins. The same above goes for Albanian and Armenian. Both are Indo-european languages but are the only languages that have their specific, unique variations on the progression from PIE.
S.A. H. Although I know that Indo-European Languages is a very very large family, and Greek is considered an isolated branch within it, I've never heard the terminology "phylum" so thx for teaching me something new As far as I know Greek (Old and modern considered as one) is the only member of it's branch While Latin belongs to the Latin Branch (I don't know why you said Italic family, if you mean the Romance languages these exclude Latin) Latin is not a direct sibling to Greek but it's more like a second cousin, they both originate from an ancient nonwritten language called by linguists Proto Indo-European (P.I.E. for short), Ancient Greek and Sanskrit are the closest languages to P.I.E. while Latin is a bit further (more changed), but Latin was also influenced by Greek That's why Greek is considered not to be an isolated language *by most linguists*
Shehab Omran Isolation is not this binary term that completely occludes a language from any and all relation. A language can be an isolate within its phylum, having no family of its own. This is the situation that greek is in- it has no immediate family- the proto language that descended from PIE only either produced one surviving child or all of the other languages are extinct or Greek is a member of a known, possibly extinct family that creolized with another unnattested language- we simply do not know. What we do know that, amongst Indo European languages, it is unique, hence why it is still *called* an isolate member of the family even though it's not a total isolate like Basque, Ainu, or the like. You are definitely familiar with this, you must know that many things about language exist on a continuum- Isolation is one of these things.
S.A. H. Yeah, but that's kinda what I'm saying, Greek is an isolated branch within its family (or as you are saying: an isolated family within its phylum), but is not a total isolate :)
In Brazil every region or state are different ways to speak Portuguese. Some are so different that, for example, we, in Rio de Janeiro, needs subscribe to understand people from Ceará. I think that so much interesting!
Hello Paul! Great channel, I enjoy waching these videos and learning something new. Keep it going on! :) I'm from Caucasus and my native language is lezgi (also called lezgian,lezghin), that belongs to Northeast Caucasian languages. I just would like to advise you to make a video about Caucasian languages, there are a great number of languages and language diversity is quite high. Sorry for my English, I feel that I've done a lot of mistekes writing this :) Prosperity to your channel and wish you all the best!
For the curious ones, here's a little example of the difference between standard Spanish/French and standard Basque: ENG: My house is near a river. FRE: Ma maison se trouve à côté d'un fleuve. SPA: Mi casa está al lado de un río. BAS: Nire etxea ibai baten alboan dago. Simple sentences that I hope will satisfy you :-)
You need to do an Albanian language episode it'a a language isolate that I am surprised you did not mention here but other wise Great video keep up the good work
Benito Mussolini Yes but it not connected to no other branch of languages for example Spanish and Italian are Romance languages Albanian is an Albanian language like Armenian and Greek are also examples of isolate languages
They're still only isolates within the Indo-European family at most. This video especially was about the true isolates that don't even belong to any other family, like Basque. The vast majority of Europe speaks Indo-European languages, the exceptions being Finland, Estonia, Hungary, Malta, and the Basque people. (+ immigrants speaking their own languages)
Joke? Its not a joke you fucking idiot, Its a fact. In 1450 his full name was written in Old Slavic Cyrillic as Đurađ Kastriot (Ђурьђ Кастриот) His mother, Voisava (100% serbian name), was a *Serbian princess*, most likely a member of the Branković family (Serbian royal family). He had three older brothers, Stanisha (serbian name), Reposh and Kostandin(serbian name), and five sisters, Mara (serbian name), Jelena(serbian name), Angjelina (serbian), Vlajka (100% serbian) and Mamica (diminutive of mama - in serbian language). Learn facts.
yo paul i am a big fan here!! do you know that other than the language isolates there are also language family isolates. when speaking of language isolates we can see that there a re many like albanian or armenian or to some extent the modern greek language. well!! yes i am also a fellow linguist and i am also a fluent speaker of several languages like you, and this was the reason why i am a fan of yours, man!! did you know there is a large language family isolate other than the disputed finno- ugric languages like hungarian, finnish and estonian, and that is the language family of south india, where they do not speak any indo european languages, which itself is a misconception. there the languages belong to the 'dravidian' language family, and the same is being traced back to ancient times and listed as one of the oldest known living language family in the world, and the same evolved from 'proto dravidian '. the most largely spoken dravidian languages are tamil, kannada, telugu, malayalam, tulu, konkani, and many others with hundreds of dialects. historians are trying to make the family connected to other famillies like the turkic, and the finno ugric ones along with the extinct tocharian languages of central asia. tamil is being said to as the second oldest syllabic and structured language in the world and this can be supported by evidences and preceeds greek, hebrew, latin.... and others. could you please consider my suggestion in making a video on this - dravidian language family, as when i was in india, i was surprised to find out this, the people of south indian have different dravidian culture and heritage and hate the north indians whatsoever the reason. the theory of aryan invasion also supports the dravidian people being driven to the south if the subcontinent. historians have also found out that the writings and language of the indus valley civilization - which is the oldest civilization, as to be the proto dravidian in origin, even though it still remains a mystery. so.. my man paul please do consider this.. still a fan - - - peace;)
My grandparents were poor and lived in isolated area in Brazil.One of my aunts is deaf and speeachless. As my grands couldn't pay any special school for her (even they could there wasn't any school like that nearby), she created a sign language that my relatives use to talk to her.
By the way, Armenian, is not just One Language. There are 4 different, *survived living Armenian Languages. And they are distinct but still similar to each other.. In Armenia they have 2 of them and "Arevela-hayeren" and "Ğarabaği" And, in Turkey, they have 2 another. "Homshetsi" and "Arevmda-hayerēn"..
Albanian is the sole survivor of the family of Thracian languages from the Indo-European group, a family driven out by Romance, Greek and Slavic languages. It is not Illyrian clearly, due to some particularities that relate it to Romanian and make it little related to Greek. If it were Illyrian, it would be the opposite. As a native Romanian speaker, I can have some understanding of Albanian vocabulary, in a different way then I have of Italian, for example. Greek and Armenian languages are the closest relatives one to the other, suggesting that Eastern Armenian and Western Armenian derive from a an old Illyrian branch that migrated early in Asia Minor from the Balkans.
Pretty much all known Illyrian words can be translated with ease in modern Albanian , However it could have had a lot of influence with the thracian and dacian langauges . The similarity between Romanian and Albanian can be dedicated to a once close proximity, Albanians had territory up north, and Romanians had territory down south. There's no structural similarities but there's a lot of influence from Albanian to Romanian . We could easily conclude that Romanian and Albanian territories and languages lived closely and developed independently from ancient Balkan languages, while romanian would have had more dacian and thracian , Albanian definitely got more influece by Illyrian .
Do you speak albanian? No. So mind your NON-ILLYRIAN BUSINESS. Albanian, the name itself derived from illyrian and was a name if an illyrian tribe. Fkn fools, everywhere.
From the wikipedia article "Albanian is considered an isolate within the Indo-European language family; no other language has been conclusively linked to its branch."
There is also the possibility that a language has ties to other languages, but those go so far back that genetic relatedness is impossible to be proven and thus, the language has to be classified as isolated. This is the case with Korean, which likely belongs to a bigger language family, however the relationship is so distant that it cannot be proven and Korean has to be classified as isolated for now.
Read recently that Romansh is descended from/related to Rhaetic languages, which are possibly/probably descended from Etruscan. We know very little about Etruscan and even less about it's origins, but some have suggested it might be related to Basque, but this is mainly due to them both being pre-Indo-European languages in Western Europe, and they might have been long diverged by even the 500 BC or so that was the height of the spread of the Etruscan language.
You could also add (I'm just going to quote Wikipedia now) Some sources use the term "language isolate" to indicate a branch of a larger family with only one surviving daughter. For instance, Albanian, Armenian and Greek are commonly called Indo-European isolates.
So happy you're making videos often now! Also, what happened to that thing where you play a language at the start of the video and tell us what the language is at the end. You started it a few months ago, but I don't think you continued doing it. I really want more videos like this, that are shorter but are uploaded more often. Keep it up!
+Rohan Pandey The language profile videos and documentary type videos take a really long time to make, but those are the ones that are really making the channel grow. Ones like this don't really grow the channel. But I'm traveling at the moment so I made 2 shorter ones for this week (well the next one isn't really short but it was a fairly simple one to make).
un·fath·om·a·ble ˌənˈfaT͟Həməb(ə)l/ adjective 1. incapable of being fully explored or understood. This, in my opinion, would be a good word to describe the mentality of the type of people that Igdogzigsifzigz Itdogsigsitsigsig mentioned
Hey Paul, nice little sketch for Latin (romance) languages, but where are Occitan, Catalan, Aragonese, Asturian...? We are not (yet) extinguished as Dalmatian!
+Joan Marco Then, as a native speaker, I say you that you should learn it, appart for being interesting, it is useful. All of the languages that exist are ways of seeing the world.
This makes perfect sense, considering Koreans, Japanese and Ainu have no genetic relations to surrounding Asian people such as Mongolian, Chinese etc.. and also country like Korea have no ethnic minority, they just speaks same identical language and have no dialects either, just different accents and rural slangs.
Having a language isolate has nothing to do with genetic aspects. Those two are different concepts from different fields. For the case of Koreans, clearly they have genetic similarities with Mongolians and Chinese, rather than with Germans for say.
What you mentioned about raising kids without any language to see what they come up with - The language isolation experiment has been tried many times throughout history (unfortunately). Frederick II tried this and, as I recall, the kids grew up speaking no verbal language whatsoever.
How about Georgian language? It belongs to Proto-Kartvelian language family, but the family as a whole is an isolate within the Caucasus region (unrelated to Indo-European and Turkic language families)
Hi, Paul! I have two questions: 1. Are conlangs or artificial languages 'language isolates'? 2. For the infants and the no-language environment, which linguists mention it, and how? I think it'd be cruel to conduct a social experiment like that or is there another way to have the result? Sorry for a lot of questions! :)
I'm not Paul, but I'll try to answer these questions :) 1. Artificial languages are classified in their own language family called, well, constructed languages. However, when people create their own languages, it is almost always influenced by other languages. Esperanto, for example, would undoubtedly be an Indo-European language should it be spoken naturally. 2. Maybe looking at how babies develop speech could be a way to predict if this would happen in a no-language environment, though I'm not sure.
Slight correction: there *are* native-language esperanto speakers, albeit very few. Mostly people born to esperanto enthusiasts, the parents would often have different native languages and might be into esperanto enough that it would end up as a shared home language for them. And regarding 2. The best case studies I've heard for the language invention thing are schools for the deaf in countries where there either doesn't exist a standard sign language, or the teachers at the school don't know it. In that kind of environment, there have apparently been several instances of the children spontaneously inventing languages. I thought Paul mentioned it in the video, but could have been some other video too.
Lang Focus, I really do appreciate all of ur videos!!! They are really interesting and knowledgable ..... And could u make a video of Khmer language (official & national language of Cambodia) !!! Thz from ur massive fan!!!
+cx2055607 Kind of. It's an Indo-European isolate, meaning it's part of the Indo-European family but forms its own branch with no other members. It's a branch like Romance or Slavic, etc. but in that branch its the only language.
+Langfocus Being an Albanian I'd always thought my mother tongue to be an isolate language. Thanks for clearing up the definition. My girlfriend is Korean and she's always maintained Korean is a isolate langue, or at least one where it's relatives are extinct. Great video as always Paul, keep it up!
Albanian is an Indo-European language, but it is an isolate within the Indo European family. It may Also be that Albanian is actually a family to which the gheg and tosk language belong
+The Artist formerly known as Al-Mansura Abbassid Very likely about the last part. I'm a Gheg speaker and like many other Gheg speakers, we have a very difficult time understanding spoken Tosk. I think it goes just a little beyond being a different dialect.
Hi Paul! Thank you for your videos, they are very informative and interesting. Perhaps you can make a video about the Hungarian language and give some tips about how to learn it? Thanks and Peace :)
+Langfocus because my degree is on English language and literature, and i have done a course about the history of English language but I totally forgot about it. Thanks to you I learn new stuff about languages.... 😉
To be a language isolate you have to be completely isolated and different from all other language groups. Indo-European is the language family in which Albanian falls under. Albanian is a single language branch not a family. A isolated family would be the basque language stated in the video.
Hi Paul. Great videos! I was wondering if “manufactured” languages, like Esperanto, Elvish, Klingon or High Valyrian, are also considered Language Isolates? Or does the concept apply to real/natural evolving languages?
Talking about Language Isolate, aborigine languages in Peninsula Malaysia like Jakun, Sakai, Negrito, Semai or even Mah Maeri are actually language isolated too although the linguistic experts try to put them under Austronesians or even sometimes Micronesians which are not even close at all. And surprisingly none of them is Malayo-Polynesian.
The Basque language is also disputed by the linguists. Some researchers say that it's a distant relative of the Georgian language spoken in Georgia. They say sometime ago one people split into two and they proceeded to settle down in different places.
I can tell you what happens when you raise a group of children without any language: they all die. They conducted this experiment back in ancient Greece
+Haris Obradovac That's what I thought too! But I've just looked it up, and apparently, Albanian is an Indo-European language that is in it's own branch. So, Albanian seems to be like a cousin in the Indo-European language family, without any brothers or sisters, not a "language isolate".
is a isolated as a branch but it belong to protoeuropean thats why we have so many similar words wih protoeuropean even thought protoeuropean was constracted from all the european languages.
Many years ago I read about a tragic experiment which took place I think in the 18th century. Someone took several infants and had them looked after by servants who were instructed not to talk to the children. The experimenter wanted to see whether the children would talk Latin, Hebrew or Ancient Greek. The children didn't talk at all but ended up with severe mental health issues. I suppose it's possible that the children developed their own language of gestures or other signals that weren't recognised as a language at the time.
Generally a community has to be a bit larger than the two children used in that experiment for this to work, because of the exact problem you mentioned. Sociability is a basic human need.
@@clarencemerritt5003 Literally every linguist agrees with me. I'm not ignorant; it's the universally accepted consensus that Greek, Albanian, and Armenian are Indo-European.
I am a basque speaker myself and to us it's a mistery to have our language alive. Lots of civilizations (romans, celts, germanic tribes, ...) and cultures have passed through our territory, Spain and France have tried and in some ways try to wipe our language out via laws and the school system but here we are!
💪👏
+Asier Sanz that's so cool i spent some time in the basque country and i found it so awesome how the signs are both in french or spanish AND basque. i would love to go back and learn more about this culture and this language. It's unfortunately quite hard to find resources to learn it
+Carrier Pigeon Then come, because whatching the respect you show in your comment you will be wellcomed. Signs are in all languages, true, but you can't imagine how hard it has been to reach that goal. Even now, basque language is not official in the french ruled basque provinces, so... hard times for our little language! Anyway we are around 1 million speakers and I think you can learn the language on line and for free. Try here: www.ikasten.net
Thanks I'll check it out! :)
+Asier Sanz It's a good online course? I'm interested since the father of my girlfriend speaks Basque and I myself want to know the four official languages (plus some asturleonese) and have some competency in them, at least the minimum to have a small conversation in them. With Galician I ahve no problem (it's my native), and I reached the level of català where I can kind of speak it, i can understand it, but i cannot write it. But i never found a good resource for Basque.
Paul, just want to say that your videos are great. Whenever I find a new video of yours in my subscriptions, it brings a smile on my face
+Vishu Vicenta Excellent! I'm glad that you enjoy them that much. :)
+Vishu Vicenta Excellent! I'm glad that you enjoy them that much. :)
Same!!
+Vishu Vicenta I second that!
I wholeheartedly agree!!!!!
I find language isolates very interesting and I speak one of them (Basque) :) I love reading about them, how and why they survived. All the mystery surrounding them.
I love your channel, by the way.
+Евгений Увин Yeah it has, the subject the verb and the object are in a different order
Great, I speak Burushaski ❤
I think you may have forgotten to mention that languages can be isolates within a greater phylum. Greek, Albanian, and Armenian have no family but are all still part of the Indo-European language phylum.
Monaspa Can you read?
Greek is not an isolate within the Indo European language family. It belongs to Hellenic branch along with Tsakonian (which are still used up to this day), Cypriot Greek (a dialect of Greek), and other extinct Hellenic languages/dialects.
Kārlis Ķemeris She can read, and although Armenian or Albanian are unique and alone in their branches, they are NOT ISOLATED languages, they have the same origin( Indo-European) than Baltic languages , Slavic languages , or Romance labguages unlike Basque or Burushaski whose origins are unknown and that are isolated languages.
S.A. H.
I think so Armenian and Georgian languages are related they are even similar, telling as half Georgian (i was learning it but stopped)
@@მემარივარ so, you didn't read the OP's comment too. Nice. Try again. Read the original comment front to back.
Could you do a video on Hungarian, Finnish or Estonian language they are quite different than languages surrounding them. Also Albanian, and how did South Eastern European countries manage to keep their languages so separate over all those years and centuries of Ottoman rule.
I am determined to learn Hungarian. It really is a fascinating language, but so, so difficult to learn.
The Finnish connection to Hungarian was a propaganda to hide Hungarian History.
The Finnish connection to Hungarian language was a propaganda to hide the real Hungarian history.
+Suzanne Szárai To be honest I didn't know that, does that mean that Hungarian is another isolate language? What is its origin then?
According to our present knowledge Hungarian is an isolate language. Hopefully our history (Hungarian) as well as world history will be revealed soon. Time will tell.
Isolated languages are some of the most fascinating things in the world, and are pretty much the reason that I'm so into linguistics now. I think they deserve more love!
Isolated languages seem like ''Chthulu''
Firstly, I love your videos. They're exactly what a linguaphile needs!!! I would love to see you do a video on Spain and all of its regional languages (like Basque, Catalan, Galician, etc)!
I would like to see you doing a video about Albanian Language as well!
He did
Well, Korean does have the Jeju language and dead relatives (languages of Buyeo, Okjjeo, Yemaek, Goguryeo, Barhae, and Mahan), but these are debated. Some say Jeju language is a dialect although it's not mutually intelligible with other Korean dialects and some people say the ancient Korean kingdoms spoke dialects of the same language.
So modern Korean language is directly descended from a language spoken in Kingdom of Silla.
@@ironheart5830 Yeah
Korean is a language isolate. In this sense I trust Britannica more than Wikipedia editors with vested interests, who may or may not even be versed in historical linguistics. I don't really understand why they're so quick to promote "Koreanic"; being a language isolate should be a point of pride, since you know there's no other language like it!
@@bag3lmonst3r72 on an unrelated note, I find it interesting how almost every major country in East Asia speaks a language from a different language family. Chinese is Sino-Tibetan, Korean is Koreanic, Japanese is Japanic, and Mongolian is Mongolic. (And Russian is Indo-European too if you count Russia as a part of East Asia).
All your videos are great, buddy. Since I'm quite fascinated by linguistic, I really enjoy almost all your videos. Keep it up, man.👍🏻
I feel like it's important to note just because a language is an isolate does not mean it hasn't been influenced by other languages or taken loan words from them.
You are right. Absolutely. In basque we have plenty of words of different origin. That's the secret to keep it alive
Thanks for enlightening Paul. I learned a lot from this channel.
+Attor Safar Thanks Attor! It's been great to have you as a longtime subscriber :)
I'm not sure if you are familiar with the rule of thirds, but I'd suggest using it. When making your videos position your head in the same spot just about a third of the way more up the screen. This is a common cinematography trick
another amazing video, thanks Paul for putting out great content
Here in Colombia happened something quite similar: languages like Chibcha (center of the country) or Wayuu (north) where eliminated by the spaniards in the XV century.
I would be really cool if you could say something about those languages, because our spanish has a lot of words from those dead languages.
Greetings from Colombia!
Thank you, Paul, kindly for your excellent video on language isolates. Perhaps the oldest language isolate is ancient Sumerian which is not related to any other modern or ancient (Semitic) language family. Keep up the great work you are doing!
Could you, please, make a video about albanian language and its ancient dialects all around Europe as arbёrisht??
Elena Lo Greco yes!
Elena Lo Greco yass the most unique language in Europe..
@bartekj81
I dont know anything about Basque, so I will just highly respect it:)
But still that doesn't change the fact that Albanian is very unique and antique language.
I can confirm this because I know Albanian, English, Norwegian (Swedish and Danish). I listen too many Spanish and French songs, but still Albanian/illyrian is different in an unique and beautiful way ;))
@@avitiusrufinus6980 Albanian has nothing in common with Illyrian language.
@vito 777 Because there is no proof that Albanian language has anything to do with ancient Illyrian. The entire Illyrian hypothesis is a myth. Simply because some toponimes remained and became bastardized in the Albanian variant doesn't mean that Albanian originated from Illyrian. In fact, what little remains of Written Illyrian proves that language has NOTHING in common with Albanian.
Hmm, interesting... I'd kind of like to see an experiment where they isolate a couple of toddlers and observe them creating their own language :D Although its ethicalness may be debatable!
+Marco Murkrow Haha, yeah I don't think that would be allowed.
But there is the evidence from deaf schools, as well as some evidence from the way children spontaneously create more
complex language structures when they grow up learning a pidgin as their native language (ie. when pidgin languages become creoles).
***** I heard something similar where some guy left two babies on an island to be cared for by a mute mother, and the guy claimed that they learned Hebrew, which I don't think anyone believed.
Omg I did a paper on that .!!
At r/conlangs we did this, execpt with not toddlers just normal people than they created a fully fleshed out language without translating or anything
+isulanu20600 they say that all children actually died... I'm not sure whether it's true
I'm isolated language speaker! (I'm Korean) We are very hard learning other languages
계시
Y’all niggas have a hard time driving too
Nah man it is very similar with japanese a lot of words are the same but pronounced diffrent
(By the way my language is only spoken in one city😅😅)
(But it is related with 10 languages in the area but they are extremly simular sometimes only pronounciasion is diffrent but the group language has no other family connection so idk if you can call it a isolated language cause diffrent tribes speak the same but only slightly diffrent so....😅)
ilias men which language(s)?
@@user-ze7sj4qy6q barber but from al-hoceima its very diffrent from commen barber
@@Helmuesi911 do u have trouble having braincells?
I love that you mentioned Sign Languages!! Even the Sign Languages used in the US and the U.K. are extremely different, to the point that they are pretty much unintelligible to each other. You should make more videos about them😊
Question and I'm sure you get this a lot (sorry I'm new to this channel, awesome videos by the way.) but could you do a video on Albanian? I am a native speaker (learned it in the home through my parents) but I have no idea of the formalities of my own language or even its history and I would love to find out more about it.
He did a video. You probably saw it but still
@@linkinparahybana9634 yeah lol I did but thanks though!
@@albaniancolossus19 Based Albanian chad responds to a kind stranger
Just discovered your channel and I'm totally into it. As a constant language learner and lover, I have found in you a new source of inspiration. Thank you very much for these awesome videos!!
+Marta Martrix You're very welcome. I'm glad you're here. :)
Hi Paul, I would like that you talk about the Guaraní language, spoken mostly in Paraguay, thank you!
I LOVE this channel, it covers all the stuff i am interested in :-) keep it going Paul.
More on sign languages, please!
Best TH-cam channel I've ever seen. Extremely informative and interesting. I hope that you keep this up!
+Dekkaaaaa1 Thanks! That's an amazing compliment to get. :)
I do intend to keep it up for a long time.
You REALLY need to do a Hungarian language video, or at least one on the Finno-Ugric family?
+Sebastian Lund Nielsen So many languages, so little time (because each video takes at least 50 working hours, but more like 80-100 these days).
He's done one on Finnish.
here in Brasil there is the Pirahã language. it has some fascinating aspects, as the lack of numbers, the lack of colors, and the really small phonetic inventory
Great video! Can't wait to here more about the Native american languages ;)
nice video man, thank you for covering this group! regards from a burushaski speaker!
Must be amazing to speak a language isolate. Knowing that your language is incomprehensible to any non-speaker. If only more languages were isolates.
+Freedom Warrior Well languages unintelligible for those who don't speak it even if it's in the same family. For example My native language is spanish and I don't know french for shit so I don't know what the hell french people are saying. If your native language is english then you probably don't understand what the hell german people say even if both languages are in the same family
Yes, but in close families, there are often "Sister languages". I speak Slovak, yet understand all Czech without learning it. Other Slavic languages I understand simple sentences if the speakers speak slowly, enough to get by on a holiday in Croatia for example.
Michal Zušťák I experience the same with portuguese and italian
Joaquin Gaute Interesting. Can you understand spoken Portuguese too? I heard written is easier for Spanish speakers.
Joaquin Gaute A wild idea.
Both Proto-Slavic and Vulgar Latin were spoken as lingua francas in Roman Empire and Avar Khanate, respectively. After their empires fell, they started developing into separate languages, but they started diverging only about 1400 years ago (as opposed to say Ugro-Finnic languages which diverged 4000 years ago), so they are still fairly close today.
English is spoken as a lingua franca now. Imagine the following hypothetical scenario:
1. A part of the world adopts English as the daily laguage.
2. Cultural hegemony and influence of the Anglosphere ends with a catastrophe and the nations are cut off from English language media, thus Standard English is no longer "correcting" how they use English
3. After 1000 years, you have a family of "Anglic" languages, mutually mostly unintelligible with each other (but with close pairs maintaining intelligibility between themselves, but not the original English language).
For a made up example:
Present day English: Hello my friend, how are you doing?
Neoenglish 1: Haelu ma frond, ha á j duin?
Neoenglish 2: Hall mei prjent, hoe reá ju doin?
Neoenglish 3: Hai min pael, howduin?
Neoenglish 4: Elo my budde, hoi isit oen?
You can already see with English based Creoles, although the process there has been hyper-accelerated by the influencing of English by the native languages. Search for Hawaiian Pidgin, Tok Pisin, Solomons Pidgin or Bislama Creole.
Compare English:
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Bislama Creole:
Evri man mo woman i bon fri mo ikwol long respek mo ol raet. Oli gat risen mo tingting mo oli mas tritim wanwan long olgeta olsem ol brata mo sista.
Solomons Pidgin:
Evri man en mere olketa born frii en ikwol lo digniti en raits blo olketa. Olketa evriwan olketa garem maeni fo tingting en olketa sapos fo treatim isada wittim spirit blo bradahood.
Tok Pisin:
Yumi olgeta mama karim umi long stap fri na wankain long wei yumi lukim i gutpela na strepela tru. Uumi olgeta igat ting ting bilong wanem samting I rait na rong na mipela olgeta I mas mekim gutpela pasin long ol narapela long tingting bilong brata susa.
I would love a video about southern Italian dialects that are almost unintelligible to other Italians, and how they developed. Also, they are not actually "dialects". They are really distinct "sister" languages. Thanks, Paul! Keep up the good work, love your videos!
can you Langfocus make a video about the Albanian language?
Herodotus claimed that there was such an experiment conducted with children and that after being raised without any language, they spontaneously spoke out in Phrygian.
Albanian video plsssss
Adrian Corday and Armenian
Great video, thanks Paul.
Some languages have no families, poor babies 😭😭
descendingoncewhile no sex
No homo pls
Dear Langfocus guy,
THERE IS SUCH AN EXPERIMENT!
It came about fortuitously in Australia. They had a community of First Australian ("Aborigines") babies that grew up in an isolated location, isolated from their parents but also from the Anglo-Saxon conquerors and they DID DEVELOP THEIR OWN SPOKEN LANGUAGE.
It happened a couple of years ago. It was a printed article I don't have the name, right now, but if you research/google it you will find it.
please, try to do something on AMAZIGH or TAMAZIGHT which is the original language of North Africa before the Arabs came to the region. it's still exists and it is one of the unique languages.
Yes please
abdelhadi radjai salmi are you sure?????
tamar tamar sure about what?
abdelhadi radjai salmi
about that comment you made above.........
TAMAZIGHT is a semitic language like arabic, hebrew, tigrigna....
It's kind of cool that our Keres language is on the global list of language isolates. 👊🏽
Another great video. Many thanks
+Arif Furkan Alkan It's my pleasure :)
Second reply to second posted comment.
+John Doe and could you tell us what makes it special :)
+Arif Furkan Alkan Because it is unique and un replicable in the universe. 2nd reply to 2nd comment is also scale symmetric.
1 particular place i think of language isolation is the tribe living in north Sentinel island they've been separating from the world for like 60000 years so i think theirs language at this point do not related to anyone since no contact with others.
Paul, would you consider Albanian, Armenian and possibly greek (if you exclude Tsakonian which only has a handful of speakers) to be language isolates? Other than being part of the indo-european they don't have any surviving relatives.
Daniel Bromwich Proto Indo-European is an ancient language thus all language descendant from it are sister languages i.e. Greek and Latin are sister languages
Friend, Greek is not sister to any living language. It is most definitely indo european but Indo-European is a language phylum, not an immediate family. Phylums contain many families that are related to each other- greek is, as far as we know, the last surviving member of its family. Latin is in the Italic family and thus not a direct sibling of greek because they are not the result of dialectic divergence from a single language, they are the children of many, many series's of dialectal divergence. If you want to use the kinship term analogy, you could say that they're maybe second or third cousins.
The same above goes for Albanian and Armenian. Both are Indo-european languages but are the only languages that have their specific, unique variations on the progression from PIE.
S.A. H. Although I know that Indo-European Languages is a very very large family, and Greek is considered an isolated branch within it, I've never heard the terminology "phylum" so thx for teaching me something new
As far as I know Greek (Old and modern considered as one) is the only member of it's branch
While Latin belongs to the Latin Branch (I don't know why you said Italic family, if you mean the Romance languages these exclude Latin)
Latin is not a direct sibling to Greek but it's more like a second cousin, they both originate from an ancient nonwritten language called by linguists Proto Indo-European (P.I.E. for short), Ancient Greek and Sanskrit are the closest languages to P.I.E. while Latin is a bit further (more changed), but Latin was also influenced by Greek
That's why Greek is considered not to be an isolated language *by most linguists*
Shehab Omran Isolation is not this binary term that completely occludes a language from any and all relation. A language can be an isolate within its phylum, having no family of its own. This is the situation that greek is in- it has no immediate family- the proto language that descended from PIE only either produced one surviving child or all of the other languages are extinct or Greek is a member of a known, possibly extinct family that creolized with another unnattested language- we simply do not know. What we do know that, amongst Indo European languages, it is unique, hence why it is still *called* an isolate member of the family even though it's not a total isolate like Basque, Ainu, or the like. You are definitely familiar with this, you must know that many things about language exist on a continuum- Isolation is one of these things.
S.A. H. Yeah, but that's kinda what I'm saying, Greek is an isolated branch within its family (or as you are saying: an isolated family within its phylum), but is not a total isolate
:)
Langfocus's videos have the best comments section in all TH-cam. You can always learn reading the comments
Could you do a video on Dravidian languages?
In Brazil every region or state are different ways to speak Portuguese. Some are so different that, for example, we, in Rio de Janeiro, needs subscribe to understand people from Ceará.
I think that so much interesting!
Hello Paul! Great channel, I enjoy waching these videos and learning something new. Keep it going on! :)
I'm from Caucasus and my native language is lezgi (also called lezgian,lezghin), that belongs to Northeast Caucasian languages. I just would like to advise you to make a video about Caucasian languages, there are a great number of languages and language diversity is quite high.
Sorry for my English, I feel that I've done a lot of mistekes writing this :)
Prosperity to your channel and wish you all the best!
+Lek Amirkhanov Thank you, Lek! I might do a video on the Caucasian languages sometime. Honestly, though - I don't know very much about them yet.
Langfocus Then, you'll be surprised you didn't learn about them earlier
アㇺペネ ヤヤイケレ ココラン アイヌ イタㇰ ウサ
Thank you also for exist the Ainu language😊
For the curious ones, here's a little example of the difference between standard Spanish/French and standard Basque:
ENG: My house is near a river.
FRE: Ma maison se trouve à côté d'un fleuve.
SPA: Mi casa está al lado de un río.
BAS: Nire etxea ibai baten alboan dago.
Simple sentences that I hope will satisfy you :-)
Paul, where are you from? The way you speak is really articulate and doesn't sound like any region I've been to!
You need to do an Albanian language episode it'a a language isolate that I am surprised you did not mention here but other wise Great video keep up the good work
Benito Mussolini Yes but it not connected to no other branch of languages for example Spanish and Italian are Romance languages Albanian is an Albanian language like Armenian and Greek are also examples of isolate languages
They're still only isolates within the Indo-European family at most. This video especially was about the true isolates that don't even belong to any other family, like Basque. The vast majority of Europe speaks Indo-European languages, the exceptions being Finland, Estonia, Hungary, Malta, and the Basque people. (+ immigrants speaking their own languages)
+Rushid Tahiri - It will be one of the dead languages if you keep waving with that flag of Greater Albania...
Btw. Skënderbej had Serbian origin, his mother was Vojisava, a serbian woman.
Joke? Its not a joke you fucking idiot, Its a fact.
In 1450 his full name was written in Old Slavic Cyrillic as Đurađ Kastriot (Ђурьђ Кастриот)
His mother, Voisava (100% serbian name), was a *Serbian princess*, most likely a member of the Branković family (Serbian royal family). He had three older brothers, Stanisha (serbian name), Reposh and Kostandin(serbian name), and five sisters, Mara (serbian name), Jelena(serbian name), Angjelina (serbian), Vlajka (100% serbian) and Mamica (diminutive of mama - in serbian language).
Learn facts.
yo paul i am a big fan here!! do you know that other than the language isolates there are also language family isolates. when speaking of language isolates we can see that there a re many like albanian or armenian or to some extent the modern greek language. well!! yes i am also a fellow linguist and i am also a fluent speaker of several languages like you, and this was the reason why i am a fan of yours, man!! did you know there is a large language family isolate other than the disputed finno- ugric languages like hungarian, finnish and estonian, and that is the language family of south india, where they do not speak any indo european languages, which itself is a misconception. there the languages belong to the 'dravidian' language family, and the same is being traced back to ancient times and listed as one of the oldest known living language family in the world, and the same evolved from 'proto dravidian '. the most largely spoken dravidian languages are tamil, kannada, telugu, malayalam, tulu, konkani, and many others with hundreds of dialects. historians are trying to make the family connected to other famillies like the turkic, and the finno ugric ones along with the extinct tocharian languages of central asia. tamil is being said to as the second oldest syllabic and structured language in the world and this can be supported by evidences and preceeds greek, hebrew, latin.... and others. could you please consider my suggestion in making a video on this - dravidian language family, as when i was in india, i was surprised to find out this, the people of south indian have different dravidian culture and heritage and hate the north indians whatsoever the reason. the theory of aryan invasion also supports the dravidian people being driven to the south if the subcontinent. historians have also found out that the writings and language of the indus valley civilization - which is the oldest civilization, as to be the proto dravidian in origin, even though it still remains a mystery. so.. my man paul please do consider this.. still a fan - - - peace;)
Basque is amazingly interesting.
My grandparents were poor and lived in isolated area in Brazil.One of my aunts is deaf and speeachless. As my grands couldn't pay any special school for her (even they could there wasn't any school like that nearby), she created a sign language that my relatives use to talk to her.
what about
albanian language???
Solomon Jonk indo european
Not a language isolate. It's part of the Indo-European family
It’s its own branch of Indo European
By the way, Armenian, is not just One Language.
There are 4 different, *survived living Armenian Languages.
And they are distinct but still similar to each other..
In Armenia they have 2 of them and "Arevela-hayeren" and "Ğarabaği"
And, in Turkey, they have 2 another. "Homshetsi" and "Arevmda-hayerēn"..
Albanian is the sole survivor of the family of Thracian languages from the Indo-European group, a family driven out by Romance, Greek and Slavic languages. It is not Illyrian clearly, due to some particularities that relate it to Romanian and make it little related to Greek. If it were Illyrian, it would be the opposite. As a native Romanian speaker, I can have some understanding of Albanian vocabulary, in a different way then I have of Italian, for example. Greek and Armenian languages are the closest relatives one to the other, suggesting that Eastern Armenian and Western Armenian derive from a an old Illyrian branch that migrated early in Asia Minor from the Balkans.
Lotusisrael I think that the albanian language is the Thraco-Illyrian one, you don't think so bro?
Lotusisrael its illyrian and from pelasigians look all the old words are the same to albanian.
It is Illyrian
Pretty much all known Illyrian words can be translated with ease in modern Albanian ,
However it could have had a lot of influence with the thracian and dacian langauges .
The similarity between Romanian and Albanian can be dedicated to a once close proximity, Albanians had territory up north, and Romanians had territory down south.
There's no structural similarities but there's a lot of influence from Albanian to Romanian .
We could easily conclude that Romanian and Albanian territories and languages lived closely and developed independently from ancient Balkan languages, while romanian would have had more dacian and thracian , Albanian definitely got more influece by Illyrian .
Do you speak albanian? No.
So mind your NON-ILLYRIAN BUSINESS.
Albanian, the name itself derived from illyrian and was a name if an illyrian tribe.
Fkn fools, everywhere.
I was waiting for this video :')
May I know which language you speak as your mother tongue?
+Cyrus The Great Her name is spanish
What about Albanian language?!
They're part of the Indo-European family, actually. It's just that it's not related to other Indo-Euro languages (i.e. neither Germanic nor Romance).
From the wikipedia article
"Albanian is considered an isolate within the Indo-European language family; no other language has been conclusively linked to its branch."
Albanian is not a language isolate. It belongs to the Indo-European language family.
Theo Buniel
It is related to all of the other Indo-European languages.
oops no its not . It has no links
I am impressed by your every single video. Thanks a lot for sharing your knowledge with us. I am from Bangladesh.
There is also the possibility that a language has ties to other languages, but those go so far back that genetic relatedness is impossible to be proven and thus, the language has to be classified as isolated. This is the case with Korean, which likely belongs to a bigger language family, however the relationship is so distant that it cannot be proven and Korean has to be classified as isolated for now.
Korean possibly relates to the Altaic languages like Mongolian, Tartar, Turkic, and possibly Japanese though this theory has yet to be proven.
Read recently that Romansh is descended from/related to Rhaetic languages, which are possibly/probably descended from Etruscan. We know very little about Etruscan and even less about it's origins, but some have suggested it might be related to Basque, but this is mainly due to them both being pre-Indo-European languages in Western Europe, and they might have been long diverged by even the 500 BC or so that was the height of the spread of the Etruscan language.
AlternaWorld where Manchuria
You could also add (I'm just going to quote Wikipedia now) Some sources use the term "language isolate" to indicate a branch of a
larger family with only one surviving daughter. For instance, Albanian, Armenian and Greek are commonly called Indo-European isolates.
Are you going to make a video about basque? I know basque and I'd like it!
+Iker Barriocanal Olaiz Yes, I plan to do that. I definitely need to do some research for it.
+Iker Barriocanal Olaiz Yes, I plan to do that. I definitely need to do some research though.
+Iker Barriocanal Olaiz Second that!
+Langfocus If you need any help i offer myself as a native basque speaker, ask me please.
+Langfocus If you need any help i offer myself as a native basque speaker, ask me please.
So happy you're making videos often now! Also, what happened to that thing where you play a language at the start of the video and tell us what the language is at the end. You started it a few months ago, but I don't think you continued doing it. I really want more videos like this, that are shorter but are uploaded more often. Keep it up!
+Rohan Pandey The language profile videos and documentary type videos take a really long time to make, but those are the ones that are really making the channel grow. Ones like this don't really grow the channel. But I'm traveling at the moment so I made 2 shorter ones for this week (well the next one isn't really short but it was a fairly simple one to make).
Wow no dislikes lets keep it that way
I think someone looked at your comment and disliked
+Elion Agar it was not me
+Igdogzigsifzigz Itdogsigsitsigsig most likely this. unfathomable how people like that exist
un·fath·om·a·ble
ˌənˈfaT͟Həməb(ə)l/
adjective
1.
incapable of being fully explored or understood.
This, in my opinion, would be a good word to describe the mentality of the type of people that Igdogzigsifzigz Itdogsigsitsigsig mentioned
Hey Paul, nice little sketch for Latin (romance) languages, but where are Occitan, Catalan, Aragonese, Asturian...? We are not (yet) extinguished as Dalmatian!
there are many similar words with same meaning in korean and tamil( from south India)
Basque is so cool. I mean there's nothing cooler than a language that we don't know where it comes from. I wish I could speak it.
+Joan Marco Then, as a native speaker, I say you that you should learn it, appart for being interesting, it is useful. All of the languages that exist are ways of seeing the world.
+JOKIN EZENARRO GARATE I've actually thought about it, and might study it in a few years when I'll have more free time, hopefully
Hi, mate, where are you from? it's so cool to see how people from other places see our language the way you do ;)
This makes perfect sense, considering Koreans, Japanese and Ainu have no genetic relations to surrounding Asian people such as Mongolian, Chinese etc.. and also country like Korea have no ethnic minority, they just speaks same identical language and have no dialects either, just different accents and rural slangs.
Having a language isolate has nothing to do with genetic aspects. Those two are different concepts from different fields.
For the case of Koreans, clearly they have genetic similarities with Mongolians and Chinese, rather than with Germans for say.
You should do a video about Boontling, which isn't a language at all but nearly impossible to understand if you don't know the terminology.
If time travel were possible I’d trace the evolution of languages
I know exactly what you mean! 🙂
seeing all of the invented the growing and the dying it would be a marvel
What you mentioned about raising kids without any language to see what they come up with - The language isolation experiment has been tried many times throughout history (unfortunately). Frederick II tried this and, as I recall, the kids grew up speaking no verbal language whatsoever.
Make a video about Basque!
+pinoxmb I agree
How about Georgian language? It belongs to Proto-Kartvelian language family, but the family as a whole is an isolate within the Caucasus region (unrelated to Indo-European and Turkic language families)
+omar1306 the Kartvelian family group is very much alive so Georgian is not an isolate.
Hi, Paul!
I have two questions:
1. Are conlangs or artificial languages 'language isolates'?
2. For the infants and the no-language environment, which linguists mention it, and how? I think it'd be cruel to conduct a social experiment like that or is there another way to have the result?
Sorry for a lot of questions! :)
I'm not Paul, but I'll try to answer these questions :)
1. Artificial languages are classified in their own language family called, well, constructed languages. However, when people create their own languages, it is almost always influenced by other languages. Esperanto, for example, would undoubtedly be an Indo-European language should it be spoken naturally.
2. Maybe looking at how babies develop speech could be a way to predict if this would happen in a no-language environment, though I'm not sure.
Slight correction: there *are* native-language esperanto speakers, albeit very few. Mostly people born to esperanto enthusiasts, the parents would often have different native languages and might be into esperanto enough that it would end up as a shared home language for them.
And regarding 2. The best case studies I've heard for the language invention thing are schools for the deaf in countries where there either doesn't exist a standard sign language, or the teachers at the school don't know it. In that kind of environment, there have apparently been several instances of the children spontaneously inventing languages. I thought Paul mentioned it in the video, but could have been some other video too.
2:08- We must test this theory!
no mention of Yukaghir? 😔
Tell us something about it! 🙂
Yukaghir is a small family consisting of two languages: Tundra and Kolyma.
Lang Focus, I really do appreciate all of ur videos!!! They are really interesting and knowledgable ..... And could u make a video of Khmer language (official & national language of Cambodia) !!! Thz from ur massive fan!!!
+Chhay Vatanak Hi. Thanks! Yes, I'll probably do Khmer sometime (but I don't know when).
+Langfocus Thanks, right here waiting!!!
What about Albanian
+cx2055607 Kind of. It's an Indo-European isolate, meaning it's part of the Indo-European family but forms its own branch with no other members. It's a branch like Romance or Slavic, etc. but in that branch its the only language.
+Langfocus Being an Albanian I'd always thought my mother tongue to be an isolate language. Thanks for clearing up the definition.
My girlfriend is Korean and she's always maintained Korean is a isolate langue, or at least one where it's relatives are extinct.
Great video as always Paul, keep it up!
+Langfocus Oh and a side note, I'd love it if you explored Albanian in a video one day!
Albanian is an Indo-European language, but it is an isolate within the Indo European family.
It may Also be that Albanian is actually a family to which the gheg and tosk language belong
+The Artist formerly known as Al-Mansura Abbassid Very likely about the last part. I'm a Gheg speaker and like many other Gheg speakers, we have a very difficult time understanding spoken Tosk. I think it goes just a little beyond being a different dialect.
Hi Paul!
Thank you for your videos, they are very informative and interesting.
Perhaps you can make a video about the Hungarian language and give some tips about how to learn it?
Thanks and Peace :)
Don't pairs of twins in their early childhood sometimes develop their own language?
James Matthews
Only if they’re Siamese twins.
interesting video!!! 😊 I'm always fascinated about languages......
+Maria Ioakeim Me too! :)
+Langfocus because my degree is on English language and literature, and i have done a course about the history of English language but I totally forgot about it. Thanks to you I learn new stuff about languages.... 😉
Albanian language is isolate.. It forms its own family in indo european.
To be a language isolate you have to be completely isolated and different from all other language groups. Indo-European is the language family in which Albanian falls under. Albanian is a single language branch not a family. A isolated family would be the basque language stated in the video.
P4ssiveTurtle 850 Aha.. thank you for explaining
The Dardans No problem :)
Hi Paul. Great videos! I was wondering if “manufactured” languages, like Esperanto, Elvish, Klingon or High Valyrian, are also considered Language Isolates? Or does the concept apply to real/natural evolving languages?
Some researchers have propounded the similarities between the Basque language and the Caucasian languages , especially the Georgian language.
I've heard of this, but is currently controversial at best and unfounded at worse.
My 2 year old baby cousin once talked to a stranger baby and they moderately understood each other.
Triplets create their own language.
Idioglossia?
Talking about Language Isolate, aborigine languages in Peninsula Malaysia like Jakun, Sakai, Negrito, Semai or even Mah Maeri are actually language isolated too although the linguistic experts try to put them under Austronesians or even sometimes Micronesians which are not even close at all. And surprisingly none of them is Malayo-Polynesian.
Actually, if you come to Hokkaido, you cannot hear Ainu language. I have lived Hokkaido since 2013, but I have never heard Ainu conversation.
The Basque language is also disputed by the linguists. Some researchers say that it's a distant relative of the Georgian language spoken in Georgia. They say sometime ago one people split into two and they proceeded to settle down in different places.
+NmLs42 It is only a theory, there isnt any proof
Vape Naysh-yall?
+Ian Miller Did Papa Ethan send you? ;)
Ah, these TH-camr circles never cease to surprise me.
What are you talking about?
Ian Miller VAPE NATION!
I can tell you what happens when you raise a group of children without any language: they all die. They conducted this experiment back in ancient Greece
I'm an Albanian speaker and it just sounds so weird and different from other European languages .
po po
***** Qato deshta me tregu 😀
1:02 Wait, so what language group is Korean a part of?
Isn't Albanian an isolated language?
+Haris Obradovac That's what I thought too! But I've just looked it up, and apparently, Albanian is an Indo-European language that is in it's own branch. So, Albanian seems to be like a cousin in the Indo-European language family, without any brothers or sisters, not a "language isolate".
You can also be an isolate within a phylum.
is a isolated as a branch but it belong to protoeuropean thats why we have so many similar words wih protoeuropean even thought protoeuropean was constracted from all the european languages.
Tony Montana
Albanian is Indo-European.
S.A. H.
If it's related to any other living languages, it cannot be an isolate by definition.
Many years ago I read about a tragic experiment which took place I think in the 18th century. Someone took several infants and had them looked after by servants who were instructed not to talk to the children. The experimenter wanted to see whether the children would talk Latin, Hebrew or Ancient Greek. The children didn't talk at all but ended up with severe mental health issues. I suppose it's possible that the children developed their own language of gestures or other signals that weren't recognised as a language at the time.
Generally a community has to be a bit larger than the two children used in that experiment for this to work, because of the exact problem you mentioned. Sociability is a basic human need.
Isn't Albanian or Armenian isolated?
Nah, they're Indo-European languages.
Tony Montana
No, they're not. They're part of the Indo-European family.
@@gayvideos3808 yes they are! Stop being ignorant!
@@clarencemerritt5003 Literally every linguist agrees with me. I'm not ignorant; it's the universally accepted consensus that Greek, Albanian, and Armenian are Indo-European.
*Yes but actually no*
I don't think there are really such things as language isolates there are merely languages that survive longer than others for whatever reason
He said in the video that a language does not have to be isolated forever. Technically every language phylum began as an isolate.
I prefer calling them orphaned languages :D
+Nour El Islam Foudih That seems more accurate, but to many people it would probably sound too depressing!
I agree.
I feel like that should be a subtype. The type where it's the only surviving one in its family.
That's a good idea actually !
Except they do have a parent language. Sibling languages are what they are missing.
Paul I love your videos, you should do a video on chinese and its dialects