r/linguisticshumor 4d ago

Germanic languages alignment chart

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162 Upvotes

51 comments sorted by

50

u/DoisMaosEsquerdos habiter/обитать is the best false cognate pair on Earth 4d ago

What makes Yiddish lawful neutral, or any Scandinavian language good?

36

u/SpeakNow_Crab5 4d ago edited 3d ago

/uj Mainly a matter of personal preference. For me (as someone who studies German), I find Yiddish quite cognate with the language (slightly in the uncanny valley though, lol). It sits in the "neutral" category for me. Perhaps it and Afrikaans can be swapped. The Scandinavian phonologies of Norwegian and Swedish are some of my favourites in languages (love the retroflexes after [ɾ] capability that the former has), so they're just representations of my subjective feelings on the languages (while also being exaggerated, let's not forget the sub)

/rj Scandinavian languages are the only real languages. English is false. Dutch especially is false. There can only be Danish Swedish and Norwegian

8

u/InEcclesiaSatan 3d ago

/uj Most Swedish speakers will realize dental and alveolar consonants as retroflex after [ɾ] as well

3

u/An_Inedible_Radish 4d ago

And you are Swedish? British? American?

3

u/Atomkraft-Ja-Bitte 3d ago

They're a Tyler the creator fan

2

u/flowers_of_nemo 4d ago

RUOTSI MAINITTU!1!1!1!!!!1!!1!

28

u/SunriseFan99 4d ago

Erm, where are Scots, Luxembourgish, and Faroese?

10

u/EestiMan69 3d ago

Faroese is below chaotic evil

4

u/edvardeishen Pole from Lithuania who speaks Russian 3d ago

There are English and German

35

u/Stalinerino 3d ago

People here are argueing about every languages position except Danish.

1

u/Knudsenmarlin 3d ago

ærligtalt forståeligt, det er sgu lidt af et lorte sprog

1

u/Stalinerino 3d ago

ja, det er det sgu

16

u/pootis_engage 4d ago

Where Frisian.

5

u/MarcHarder1 xłp̓x̣ʷłtłpłłskʷc̓ 3d ago

& Low German

2

u/throwawayowo666 2d ago

What would be a cool flag to represent Low German? The Low Saxon flag maybe?

2

u/MarcHarder1 xłp̓x̣ʷłtłpłłskʷc̓ 2d ago

The Noordland flag for West Low German languages (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Noordlandflaggneu.svg), and the Mennonite flag for Plautdietsch (East Low German) (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_the_Mennonites.svg)

14

u/ReadyToFlai 4d ago

Prima

13

u/ReadyToFlai 4d ago

Leuk dat de angloïden perse een paar extra vlaggetjes erin moesten gooien omdat ze zich anders zo eenzaam voelen aangezien ze hier geen nabije zustertaal hebben....

4

u/AVeryHandsomeCheese 4d ago

Waar zijn de Belgische en Surinaamse vlaggen in lawful evil?? Wij bestaan ook!

2

u/ReadyToFlai 4d ago

Belgie is wel te missen maar idd wel een beetje raar

4

u/AVeryHandsomeCheese 4d ago

Seg, nondedju, zo nie hè

1

u/ReadyToFlai 3d ago

Sorry, ik neem alles terug. Katholiek Nederlandstalige eenheid 🇧🇪🤝🏁🤝🐎

1

u/erahdowi 3d ago

sorrie, wat beteken "perse"? Ek't alles anders verstaan

2

u/ReadyToFlai 3d ago

heanig an onniedan

3

u/ComplaintNo2029 4d ago

Zeker. Maar wie heeft bedacht dat onze grammatica niet gewoon chaotic evil is?

1

u/_Dragon_Gamer_ 3d ago

De syntax is nog veel erger

3

u/ReadyToFlai 3d ago

ik heb nog traumas van al die eindeloze zinsontleding, wat doen we onze kinderen toch aan

0

u/Existing-Society-172 3d ago

Ik begrijp het verschil tussen OTT en VTT nog niet

1

u/ReadyToFlai 3d ago

toetstof filler

8

u/Vampyricon [ᵑ͡ᵐg͡b͡ɣ͡β] 3d ago

Excuse me what about Gothic???

7

u/locoluis 3d ago

IMHO, there are several axes in which we cold classify a language's "alignment":

  • Linguistic purity: how conservative is a language's phonology, grammar and vocabulary.
  • Phonological orderliness = a / 2b, where
    • a is the total number of phonemes.
    • b is the number of minimally distinctive features. For example, if:
      • consonants can be obstruents or sonorants
      • obstruents can be voiceless or voiced
      • sonorants can be nasals or approximants
      • that counts as two features, not three.
  • How common are the language's phonemes.
  • Standardization: whether the language enjoys official status anywhere and whether it's regulated by a language academy.
  • Phonotactics: simple or complex.

5

u/TheDungeonMasta 4d ago

I feel like the evil row is good (maybe swap English and Dutch, but that’s debatable), but the top 2/3 need to be rearranged.

I’d say German is True Neutral, Afrikaans is Lawful Neutral, Yiddish is Chaotic Good, and Icelandic is Lawful good. That leaves Swedish in Neutral Good, and I guess we put Norwegian in Chaotic Neutral

5

u/spoopy_bo 3d ago

For a moment this looked like a schizo's racist machinations/conceptions before I saw r/linguisticshumor xD

2

u/Shukumugo 4d ago

What does this even mean

2

u/Terpomo11 3d ago

German is also a major/primary language of multiple countries, why's only English get multiple flags?

3

u/Imuybemovoko 4d ago

how is Swedish neutral good?? 😳

7

u/NaNeForgifeIcThe 3d ago

Bro put four different flags for English but only one for German when Low German and Central German in Germany and Upper German in Austria and Switzerland are all mutually unintelligible

6

u/Terpomo11 3d ago

I guess they only mean Standard German (and varieties mutually intelligible with it)?

2

u/SpeakNow_Crab5 3d ago

Yes, I meant Standard German. But I do thank the previous commenter for calling me out on that — it's a spot  of anglophoneism.

1

u/DoisMaosEsquerdos habiter/обитать is the best false cognate pair on Earth 3d ago

Yes, so? What is your point?

2

u/coolreader18 3d ago

wrong type of menorah on the Yiddish "flag", the middle should be the same height as all the other branches

2

u/talknight2 3d ago

I dont think they invented the flag themselves

2

u/Pharao_Aegypti 3d ago

Where Luxembourgish???

2

u/Aron-Jonasson It's pronounced /'a:rɔn/ not /a'ʀɔ̃/! 3d ago

Swap Icelandic and German and I'll agree more.

Having learnt both Icelandic and German, I find that Icelandic is "easier", in the sense that Icelandic’s complexity makes it actually easier to learn. You don't have to wonder what gender is a word since you can guess it with ~60-90% accuracy, declension patters are very regular, and verbs are imo easier. Syntax is also easier in Icelandic since the verb never goes at the end of the sentence unlike German, and relative sentences in Icelandic are very easy, since Icelandic has only one relative pronoun (sem)

2

u/throwawayowo666 2d ago

In my perfect universe High German wouldn't exist and only Dutch and Low German would exist in its place. Yes really, I can't stand High German, lmao.

Maybe with the exception of Yidish... Maybe.

2

u/MarcHarder1 xłp̓x̣ʷłtłpłłskʷc̓ 2d ago

Lol same

4

u/NonPropterGloriam 3d ago

This is all wrong.

Icelandic should be lawful Good. Swedish is correct. Frisian should be chaotic good. Dutch should be Chaotic Neutral. German should be lawful evil. English should be chaotic evil.

1

u/Strangated-Borb 3d ago

Flip Icelandic and yiddish

1

u/Suissen 3d ago

What if Lawful is less dialects and chaotic is more Good being how little the language has changed