New answers tagged language
13
First of all, religious ideas travel much more freely than languages. Christianity spread without Aramaic, Buddhism did not carry much Pali with it, etc. I would even argue that Islam spread in a much deeper way than Arabic, despite the central place of that language in that particular religion. The reasons for this are almost self-evident. It's a lot easier ...
0
We owe the dominance of English to the British Empire.
Decades, and in some cases centuries, of British rule and emigration have left their mark on the independent nations that arose from the British Empire. The empire established the use of English in regions around the world. Today it is the primary language of up to 460 million people and is spoken by ...
16
Professor David Crystal has written a whole book on this, but it is possible to provide a reasonable answer without going to great lengths. First, though, it would help to define what a global language is. Why, for example, is English widely considered to be the global language when there are far more native speakers of Mandarin?
Crystal, in English as a ...
0
Throughout times multiple languages were the dominant ones in Europe.
Mostly it was as follows:
Greek - because of Greek philosophy, crafts and conquests of Alexander the Great.
Latin - because of Roman Empire and Roman law.
French - Because of the philosophy, Versailles, and the French revolution
German - because of German technology, science and ...
4
Several points to be made here:
As the other answer mentioned, the names are far from identical. Linguists would probably categorise the language spoken at Cáo Cāo's time as Eastern Han Chinese. The Old Chinese reconstruction (Baxter-Sagart, 2014) would be /*N-tsˤu [tsʰ]ˤawʔ/.
As given in the Records of the Three Kingdoms, the only description of his name ...
14
I’m thinking I should rephrase my comment as an answer rather. I believe the correct answer would be “they didn’t”, and that’s why.
While the surname and name of Cao Cao almost match in modern Mandarin (except the tone is different, Cáo Cāo, so they don’t), it is but a figment of language development that led to modern Mandarin. He was active is AD II-III ...
37
Yes, George I was indeed able to speak English. Not particularly well, mind you, but also not nearly as incapably as popular history portrays. In fact, he even opened his first Parliament in English:
George is reported, when seated on the throne, to have uttered the words following; but, notwithstanding all the drilling to which he submitted, it must have ...
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