Questions tagged [language]
Questions on historical use of languages and their development.
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Why are the German and French languages so different?
My understanding (which could be wrong) is the following:
During and before the period of the fall of western Rome (roughly 400 AD), the Franks and the Alemanni were tribal people who moved around a ...
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Why are Germans referred to so differently in different languages?
I was inspired by the other question "Why are the German and French languages so different?". But while, for me, the answer was obvious (the Romans did not conquer most parts of today's Germany and so ...
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Why did modern "Romania" remain the most "Roman" part of the Balkans?
The so-called "Romanians" are the Vlachs who inhabited the territory just north of the Danube in Roman times, and today. Wallachia (home of the Vlachs), represented the outer limit or Roman expansion. ...
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Why does Romanian culture have Latin influences?
Romania is located between Bulgaria, Serbia on one side and Ukraine/many Slavic countries on the other. Romanian is however a Romance (Latin) language, and not Slavic. They don't use the Cyrillic ...
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When did the Greeks stop calling themselves "Roman"?
I've been reading a lot about the Byzantine Empire recently, and one of the things I see pointed out over and over again is that "Byzantine" is a term coined by historians, not by the people ...
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Language of Franks vs later French
I am reading that before the 8-9th(10th?) century, Franks were a Germanic-speaking nation.
How it is possible to explain that in later centuries their language became a totally different Latin-...
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What was the official language used across European monarchies in the XII century?
I have been reading about European history in the XII century and I am finding out that several of the modern day languages hadn't yet evolved to what they are now: Langue d'oïl was still being used ...
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The practice of translating foreign monarch's or noble's name
In history texts, past foreign monarchs are normally referred to by the English version of their name, e.g. Francis I (not François), Charles V (not Carlos, Karel, or Karl), Phillip II (not Felipe). ...
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In the "Immigrationist theory" of Romanians (Vlachs), how did they became the vast majority in Transylvania?
The origins of Romanians is, for me, one of history's more interesting problems and I mostly agree with the "Immigrationist theory".
The great mystery for me is how could they become the majority in ...
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How do historians and linguists know how to pronounce the names from non-phonetic scripts?
If we take hieroglyphic writings like the Egyptian one, an Egyptologist knows that this hieroglyph must be interpreted as Nefertiti.
Or we can see in the following Sumerian cuneiform script that ...
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Did China ever consider a phonetic writing system?
I was surprised to learn the following about the Japanese and Korean languages:
Japanese used a lot of Chinese characters in their language and had no phonetic system, until around the year 800 when ...
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Why does Ngram show an extreme spike in use of "LOL" in mid 1600s?
In the google "Ngram" search, which allows you to search the usage of words in recent history, I typed in the widely-used internet word "LOL". To my surprise, this came up:
As you can see, there was ...
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Are there confirmed cases where a country changed its language without being conquered?
I thought about this question and wondered: Are there any known cases where a country switched to a different language other than because of being conquered? If some country ever did this I would be ...
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Why did Meiji government consider switching from Japanese to English?
During the Meiji restoration, the Meiji govenment sought to switch Japan's national language from Japanese to English.
Who and why advocated that?
Ultimately, why was it unsuccessful?
Source: ...
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Who was the last English king whose first language was French?
What I remember from my college course is that whenever a delegation of barons came to discuss their grievances in English, the King would hear them out politely without understanding a word, conclude ...
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Is there convincing evidence that the language of Bulgars (proto-Bulgarians) was not Turkic, but Indo-European?
Wikipedia says that "Bulgar (also Bulghar, Bolgar, Bolghar) is an extinct Oghur Turkic language which was spoken by the Bulgars. "
I was not aware of a different hypothesis on this until I ...
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Are there any existing foreign language teaching texts from the Ancient Near East?
The various cultures of the Ancient Near East spoke a wide array of languages and we know that there was plenty of communication between cultures. We even have a language like Akkadian that served as ...
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How did it happen that countries and cities got different names in different languages?
I wonder why a single city's (or country's) name is different in various languages. To me, city and country names are somewhat similar to a person's given name, and it doesn't seem right to call ...
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What was the standard spoken language (dialect) in the Three Kingdoms period?
Mandarin is the standard spoken language (dialect) in today's China, meaning distinct regions may have their own dialect, but they can all use Mandarin to communicate with each other.
Since all ...
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What language was the Charter of Liberties written in?
While researching my answer for the What was the official language used across European monarchies in the XII century? question I came upon the Charter of Liberties, or Coronation Charter, issued by ...
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During the French Revolution, how did the French address non-citizens?
I've read in multiple books and articles that during the French Revolution the address of monsieur / madame (my lord / my lady) was suspended in favor of the more égalité-friendly citoyen / citoyenne (...
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How long did Latin survive in Bavaria?
After my question What happened north of the Alps after the romans "left"?, I read through the sources given by the comments and answers. One paragraph in this post was especially interesting to me:
...
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Why did the the East-Pakistanis oppose Urdu as their national language while Indians accepted Hindi as theirs?
In 1947, Both India and Pakistan were given independence from Britain. India was able to establish Hindi as its national language with minimal problems. Pakistan, on the other hand, was created with ...
user806
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Is there any idea of why Cao Cao's parents would give him a nearly identical name to the family name?
I've been doing a lot of reading up about the Three Kingdoms era of China, and Cao Cao stuck out to me as an interesting name. After some research I found that the words in Chinese are different, and ...
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Did 20% of the Soviet Population use a Latin script in 1935?
Did 20% of the Soviet Population use a Latin script in 1935?
The literacy campaigns in the Soviet Union between 1917 and 1940 taught many people to read. Many people who did not speak Russian had no ...
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Are there examples of wrong / inaccurate translations that had a major impact?
Are there examples of wrong or inaccurate translations that had a major impact on the historic course of events (e.g. prevent a conflict from escalate)? And are there examples where the interpreter ...
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Why are Turkish people and other Turkik people considered of Mongolic race if their language is not in the Mongolic language family? [closed]
I saw that Turkish people are considered of Mongolic race even though Mongolic and Turkic are separate language families? Why are those races considered the same but their languages are so different ...
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