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functional.cafe is an instance for people interested in functional programming and languages.

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if I don't know something in Mando, which is 99% of the time, I'll just say something in Canto and hope that it either happens to be close enough, or the person randomly happens to know Canto 😅

@clacke This is me using German to try to speak Dutch

Apr 03, 2025, 11:21 AM·Public·SubwayTooter
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@tfb [functional.cafe] @musicman [mastodon.social] I should point out that it doesn't work at all well as trying to use Italian for Spanish or German for Dutch.

It's really a desperate last-ditch attempt, and if the person responds in Mando, I won't understand it.

Middle Chinese was 1400 years ago, and in particular Mandarin, with its almost one billion first-language speakers, has diverged a lot.

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@clacke It's interesting that we're about as far from Middle Chinese as from vulgar Latin, but the change seems more than in the Romance languages ? Though I guess if French had a billion speakers, it might have diverged even more

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@tfb [functional.cafe] Europe never had the space for 120 Vulgar Latins to evolve and cross-pollinate. 😊
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(number of languages in modern China, off the top of my head, probably not all Sinitic, but the vast majority would be, so ... 100+ Vulgar Latins?)
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@clacke Ethnologue says there are 284 living indigenous languages in China, out of which 154 is Sino-Tibetan. Those classified as "Chinese" (the closest they get to defining Sinitic I think) are "only" 21. The second largest family is Kra-Dai, the same family that Thai belongs to. ethnologue.com/country/CN/

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@clacke now enjoy this list for _half_ of the island of New Guinea. ethnologue.com/country/PG/

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@clacke @tfb historically I think there might be that many, though Ethnologue considers there to be 45 living Italic languages now. All of them are considered Romance languages apart from the Latin spoken in the Vatican.

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@tfb @clacke speaking Swedish with German grammar sound work in the Netherlands.

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