Standard Average European: The European Sprachbund 

I just realized how massive of an effect this has had on Greek. Most of these didn't exist in ancient Greek, and have always seemed to me as "appearing out of the blue".

1:54 Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic: You've been kicked out of the group! Danish: What!? For who? Czech: Ahoj

lol 11:00 "and in german!" [silence]

As a German with English as a second languages, these differences really were very noticable when getting into Japanese. They make up a large part of what makes it feel so alien at first: 1. Articles don't exist, although there are article-like expressions that can indicate the definiteness. The anime title "A Certain Scientific Railgun" makes a good example, with "a certain" ("to aru") being one such term. 2. "The man who drives the car" is phrased as "The car-driving man". Verbs can simply be put in front of a noun to act as an adjective, no pronouns necessary. 3. There isn't really a past perfect, you just use the past. 4. Linking verbs are much rarer. Past passive is formed by just piling on endings on a verb. "Was stolen" is formed from ubau (to steal) -> ubawareru (is stolen) -> ubawareta (was stolen). 5. It matches up fairly well with English here, not with German/SAE("mother child's hair washes"). 6. Verbs are negated, nouns aren't. Rather than "nobody came", it's more like "whoever camen't". Most words for "every" automatically mean "none" if combined with a negative verb. 7. Comparisons use particles that can't be translated direclty into either English or German. For similarity it uses "hodo": "I hodo big" -> "as big as me". For disparities "yori": "I yori big" -> "bigger than me". 8. Japanese doesn't just drop pronouns, it drops entire nouns. And objects. Rather than say "I love you", it's more like "like" or "do love". You can include the object there (typically the other person's name), but the "I" is almost always omitted and would even sound weird. 9. Japanese has multiple words for "self" that can generally fit both roles. It barely has pronouns to begin with, but rather uses ordinary nouns for that role. And rather than Subject-Verb-Object, Japanese uses Subject-Object-Verb. This made for a good example to me that this definition of SAE seems to hold up well when compared with a totally different language, since didn't match on even a single point and highlights huge structural differences.

4:49 Das g wurde estohlen.

Hi everyone. I hope you like the new video! There are a couple of glitches. At 4:55 the "g" on "gestohlen" somehow got deleted, so it says "estohlen" instead of "gestohlen". And at 11:00 the audio clip for "Ich liebe Sprachen" is missing. Also, for "Yo quiero" I said "I want you" but I wrote "I need you" on the screen. The screen should also say "I want you". The major source for this video was "The European linguistic area: Standard Average European" by Martin Haspelmath. You can read the original article at this link (with no login if you read it online): www.researchgate.net/publication/247869081_The_European_linguistic_area_Standard_Average_European. I normally use a lot of different sources and piece things together, but this time I used mainly this source, so I want to make sure it's recognized.

in my region there is a Volga-Kama sprachbund which combines languages of Uralic and Turkic families such as tatar, bashkir, chuvash (turkic), udmurt, mari, moksha, komi (uralic)

One nice issue of this channel is that it brings together many people from different countries to discuss and enjoy our history and languages. A place that gathers of all nations. I hope I can be understerstood. Peace for all nations!

I have finals, but I think I can fit in some learning on something that I want to rather than I have to

I would love to learn see a video about the effects of native American languages on American English.

🇭🇺 Aw, this was heartwarming to watch 🥰 As a Hungarian I’m used to seeing my native language notoriously marked as the black sheep among all the Indoeuropean languages around that is different in so many ways. For once we can feel part of the club and realize that we DO share a lot with surrounding languages 😉

2:40 Paul: All the Romance languages have both definite and indefinite articles Latin: but ... Just for a laugh 😂

In Spanish class, I always wondered why English and Spanish use "have done" and "ha hecho" even though Old English and Latin didn't do this.

I'm impressed that you found a seemingly young Frenchman who's fluent in Breton. As a French guy myself, I can tell you that very few people can speak their region's historical vernacular language. Funny thing too is that he has a very exotic-looking name, that I think I'd be more expected to find in a Celtic area of the UK than in France, since first names from regional languages are typically shunned here.

Small error: Dutch should be included in 9. the intensifier reflexive differentiation. 1. De voorzitter gaf * zelf* een voordracht. 2. Hij houdt van *zichzelf*.

1:57 "Latvian, Lithuanian, Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Slovenian, Serbian, and Croatian..." begins to sound like a song!

6:33 Fun fact: In ancient Greek, there were negative pronouns with lack of verbal negation, however in modern Greek it has changed. For example the ancient Greek phrase "ἀγεωμέτρητος μηδεὶς εἰσίτω" It translates to Nobody uneducated in geometry should enter. (ἀγεωμέτρητος = uneducated in geometry μηδεὶς = nobody εἰσίτω = enter) In modern Greek it would have been "Κανένας αγεωμετρητος ας μην εισέλθει" Κανένας = no one Ας = should Μην =not Εισέλθει = enter I just found it interesting how this language evolved like this. In any case, great video, keep them coming.

You should do a video about "how Frankish is French", there are many features inherited from the Frankish language (including vocab and phonology) that make the French special among the Romance languages. :)

As to point 3. Latvian has three simple tenses (present, past and future), and three compound perfect constructions: present perfect, past perfect, future perfect. We have quite huge russian speaker community here in Latvia and over last decades (after collapse of the Soviet Union) they started to speak latvian quite well. Sometimes only lack of perfect forms in russian allows to detect that speaker's mother tongue is actually russian. One simple example. Russians say in latvian - Es redzēju to filmu (I saw that film), while latvians ALWAYS say - Es esmu redzējis to filmu (I have seen that film).

In Bulgarian: 1. there are both definite and indefinite articles in Bulgarian - 'човек' -- 'човека' -- 'човекът'. 3 . there is a "have perfert" construction in Bulgarian, but just like German and French with verbs for movement, it is actually "to be + past tense" - 'бях дошъл' , 'бил съм дошъл'

11:01 accidentally left out the German clip

I often think about the European Sprachraum but I have never imagined such a quantifiable treatise on the subject. Thank you. Gut gemacht...

Wow, this will make learning languages in or out of the Sprachbund even more fun! And becoming more aware of similarities and differences always makes learning easier! You present very clearly important concepts that many of us will now benefit from by being more than just vaguely aware of: Which languages, in effect, have have and how long have they had it? Which languages acknowledge that even the President himself may talk to himself? Etc. I will be re-watching this one! In increasing order of this fan's fluency: Merci beaucoup. Muchas gracias. Vielen Dank. Thanks so much!

We shouldn't overlook an immensely comprehensive work that was put into this bit!!!!!💪💪💪

Standard Average European sounds a lot like my friend group

Salut! Imi place mult canalul tau de RU-vid! Salutari de la Brasov, Romania! 🇷🇴😊

Amazing video,man ! You explain many "technical" aspects of linguism in a very simple way. You rock !

Let's see how Japanese, my mothertongue, is close to SAE: (I put spaces and hyphens in Japanese sentences for easy understanding) 1. Definite / indefinite articles: -NO, not even has definiteness. But sometimes we use demonstrative adjectives for indicating definiteness. 2. Relative clauses with relative pronouns: -No, not even has relative clauses. Relative clauses are considered as adjective phrases, so they come before the noun, like ordinary adjectives do. For example: 2.1. "The man drives the car" is "男-が 車-を 運転する", it's like "man-[nom] car-[acc] drive". 2.2. "The man who drives the car" is "車-を 運転する 男", it's like "car-[acc] drive man". 2.3. "The car which the man drives" is "男-が 運転する 車", it's like "man-[nom] drive car". Sentences with relative clauses can be analyzed as [noun] - [modifier] word order in English, but in Japanese, the word order is always [modifier] - [noun]. I don't know if it's natural for you to say this but it's like saying "car-driving man" or "man-driven car". Genitive relative clauses are difficult to translate into Japanese. For example: 2.4. "The man whose car I drove" is considered as a compound of nominative and accusative relative clauses: 2.5. "The man who owns the car which I drove" is "私-が 運転した 車-を 所有する 男", it's like "I-[nom] drove car-[acc] own man". It's like compound of "car-owing man" and "me-driven car" (yet I feel it's strange). 3. "Have" perfect: -NO, not even has the distinction between past tense and perfect aspect. 4. A passive formed with a linking verb and a past participle: -NO, not even has linking verbs or participles. A suffix is used for passive. For example: 4.1. "The man stole the car" is "男-が 車-を 盗ん-だ", it's like "man-[nom] car-[acc] steal-[past]". 4.2. "The car was stolen by the man" is "車-が 男-に 盗-まれ-た", it's like "car-[nom] man-[dat] steal-[passive]-[past]". 5. Dative external possessors: -NO, we use genitive a suffix for any possession. It's like English. 6. Negative pronouns with lack of verbal negation: -NO, we use interrogative pronouns and a suffix which means like "even" instead, and always negate verbs. For example: 6.1. "do nothing" is "何-も し-ない", it's like "what-even do-not". 6.2. "nobody comes" is "誰-も 来-ない", it's like "who-even come-not". 7. Comparisons of equality based on an adverbial relative clause: -NO, not even has relative clauses as said before, and equality is expressed by using a word and a suffix which mean "same" and "degree". For example: 7.1. "He is as tall as me" is "彼-は 私-と 同じ-くらい 高い", it's like "he-[nom] I-with same-degree tall". 8. Non-pro-drop -NO, (it's pro-drop,) not even has conjugations according to the person and number of subject, and subject is not necessary for a sentence. For example: 8.1. "I like languages" is "(私-は) 言語-が 好き", it's like "(I-[nom]) language-[acc] like". 8.2. "Does he like languages?" is "(彼-は) 言語-が 好き？", it's like "(he-[nom]) language-[acc] like?". 9. Intensifier-reflective differentiation: -NO, we use the same word for intensifier and reflective. It's like English. Or, just emphasize a word by tone or use "by oneself" to intensify, or use a word like "self" for reflective. For example: 9.1. "The president himself gave a speech" is "大統領 自ら 演説-を した", it's like "president by_himself speech-[acc] did". 9.2. "He loves himself" is "彼-は 自分-を 愛する", it's like "he-[nom] oneself-[acc] love". And less certain ones: 10. S-V-O word order: -NO, S-O-V is the most natural word order in Japanese. 11. Absence of reduplication: -NO, we have some reduplication nouns like "人々" ("person-person" for people), "家々" ("house-house" for houses), "山々" ("mountain-mountain" for mountains), and so many other types of reduplications like "ますます" ("increase-increase" for more and more), "軽々" ("light-light" for easily, effortlessly), "ぐんぐん" ("zoom-zoom", onomatopoeia), and so on. But reduplications are now not productive for common words; for example, we don't say "*手々" ("hand-hand" for hands), "*友々" ("friend-friend" for friends), "*梨々" ("pear-pear" for pears). The result is 0/9 or even 0/11. How interesting! It seems that Japanese has the opposite features against European languages, but actually there're so many Japanese who are good at European languages (and of course there're also Europeans who are good at Japanese).

This topic is so fascinating. Never thought about this

6:20 In french, the main negation word is actually "ne". It's true that we don't use it that much anymore, but in correct french, it has to be the "ne" that gives to the sentence its negative sense. This is why "l'a-t-il jamais vu ?" and "ne l'a-t-il jamais vu ?" are two different sentences. The first one means "did he ever see it?" and the second one means "did he never see it?" In this case, french works exactly like italian : "Lo ha mai visto?" and "Non lo ha mai visto?".

The Irish passive isn’t a combination of verbs but rather it’s own tense called the “Saor Briathar” and I personally find it so useful

Korean-Japanese and Altaic (Turkic-Mongolic-Tungusic) are also examples of Sprachbunds

I first heard of the concept of a sprachbund in a video by Native Lang about a sprachbund among indigenous languages in southern Mexico/Central America (or perhaps wider than that, into what is now the southern US). The focus of the video was primarily on shared features between Nahuatl (Aztec) and Maya but those aren't the only members.

Nice telling about one of the most difficult things)

Sprachbunds can pose a huge problem for linguists in the Americas who are trying to determine linguistic relationships. Since very few Native American languages were written pre-contact, it can be hard to tell whether two languages are related or if they just have a history of prolonged contact.

6:19 I feel like the French example “personne n’est venu” is more of an example of marginalizing “ne” as opposed to a result of the Sprachbund. The “ne” is actually the negating particle in this case, it’s just that modern French has marginalized it in favor of “pas” (which means “step”, so that “ne... pas” originally meant “not a step”). So although it may not be necessarily negated (at least in colloquial French), it’s not really a result of the European Sprachbund, and more just a result of a separate and independent linguistic evolution.

Idioms are the same or similar: with a heavy heart z ciężkim sercem (polish) schweren Herzens (german) unter dem Deckemantel (german) pod płaszczykiem (polish) (under the guise of) Augenblick Ogenblik Mgnienie oka aus der Rolle fallen wypaść z roli eine Rolle spielen - keine Rolle spielen grać rolę - nie grać żadnej roli the same adjectives: german - polish tief - głęboki (deep) tiefes Rot - głęboka czerwień tief geruhrt - głęboko poruszony tief gefroren - głęboko zamrożony deep night - głęboka noc

Waw! That’s a very dense video. Never heard about the Sprachbund but I find it utterly interesting. Thank you Paul.

We do differenttiate between intensifier and reflectives in Dutch though. Zelf is used to intensify, "de president zelf" while zichzelf is used to be reflective "hij houd van zichzelf". These cannot be used interchangably.

I love this video. I have never heard of this and lived in Belgium and Austria. I speak English, French and German and I never saw these features as unusual!

This is so interesting! I've never heard of it, but it does seem to make a lot of sense that they influenced each other over the years.

Due to your channel I TEACH my TEACHER.

The 8 point is wrong for Russian. We can say "Я люблю тебя" (I love you), but we also can say "Люблю тебя", without "Я" (I). Another example: - Что ты делаешь? (What are you doing?) - Книгу читаю ( I am reading a book.) But there isn't the word "Я", what means "I".

One Sprachbund I find incredibly fascinating is the Mesoamerican Sprachbund. One common feature is to use body parts for other parts of speech. Such as to say "inside the house" it would be "in the belly of the house"

3:53 In the area of Poland I come from, we sometimes also use the "have perfect" construction. Seems to me like it can be an influence of the two main historical languages of the place: German and Kashubian

14 December 2019, Palermo, Sicily. When RU-vid recommends a Langfocus video you already know you are going to learn amazing things you didn't know about and that you wouldn't find out even if you spent 5 hours a day closed in a library reading dozens of books.

One of the most interesting videos you’ve done. Great one

I've been watching your videos for the past few years, and my admiration to you has been growing year after year. Your videos are very informative and enlightening. Thank you very much. God Bless.

How close to SAE is the Basque language? 1. *Having both definite and indefinite articles.* It would be debatable if Basque has articles per se, since it does distinguish between definite singular, indefinite, plural and definite plural of proximity, but definite does not always equal the English THE and under no circumstances could the indefinite (or unmarked) be substituted for A. Kind of a NO for this one. Yes to definite article probably, not the indefinite. Let’s try with the word ‘friend’ Lagun (friend or friends, depending on the context). Indefinite or unmarked. Laguna (the friend). Definite singular. Lagunak (friends or the friends). Definite plural. Lagunok (close friends, you (my, our) friends, these friends). Definite plural of proximity. But if we take a look at a couple examples: - Nire laguna da {my friend-definite is} - It’s my friend - Hire lagun axolagabeak egin dinat {your-informal friend-indefinite careless-[Ergative denfinite] to-do have-(di-singular-object [Acc])-na-(when speaking to a girl using informal you)-t-(to-me [dat]} - As -- Your indefinite-friend careless-the (subjectof a transitive sentence) to-do has-something (I am speaking to you, girl)-to-me -- Your careless friend has done that to me - Aita, gaur laguna ikusi dut {Dad, today friend [Acc. Definite] to-see have-I} - It would literally mean {Dad, today I have seen the friend} but we would mean Dad, today I have seen a friend of mine - Zenbat laguni eman diozu hori? {How much/many friend [Dat. Indefinite] to-give di-(singular acc object)-o-(singular [Dat]object)-zu-(you [Dat]) that? ( notice that that would be the Spanish eso, not aquello. There are 3 as well).} - It would literally mean : To how many indefinite friend have you given that to? (not meaning one or some friends but rather literally indefinite number of friends.) - Lagunari eman al dizkiozu hoiek? {friend-definite-[Dat] to-give al(whether or not, for a yes or no answer) dizkiozu (di-object [Acc] zki- makes the object plural o- to him,her [Dat] zu-you[Nom]) -- kind of like this -- friend-the-to to-give whether things-have-to-him-you those? -- Have you given those to your friend? 2. *Relative clauses with relative pronouns* NO. It works similar to the Japanese language - The man who drives the car {Kotxea gidatzen duen gizona}- {Car-definite-[Acc] driving (unfinished regular action) has/does-(du-singular object [acc] en(when preceding the subject, it shows that the subject is not the car but the man) man-definite [Nom] - The man whose car I drove (this sentence wouldn’t be possible in traditional Basque, nowadays some would add invented relative pronouns to make it possible, but it would be just used in academic written style) 3. *The “have” perfect* NO. But actually yes. - I have finished the report {Txostena bukatu dut} With an easier example to explain this: Etorri: infinitive/perfect of “to come”. It’s both, there is no infinitive per se in Basque, nor is there any past participle. Etortzen: indefinite form, for a long time Etorriko: future form Etor: used for some conditionals, imperatives... These combine with an infinite number of aditz-laguntzaileak (verb-helpers) to make an almost infinite number of combinations. Note that in most cases, except the ones composed by only one word (etor, nentorren...) most of the information goes to the auxiliary verb, Dativ, Accusative, number of objects, subject... etc. Auxiliary verbs are very confusing so let us not focus on that (I will sometimes translate them by the English "to have" when they are actually not the same). So I said no, because there is no past participle, but there is a tense that would be equal to it. - Nator {I come} - Etortzen naiz {I usually come} - Etorri naiz {I have come} - Etorri nintzen {I came once} - Etortzen nintzen {I used to come} - Nentorren {I came, indefinite period of time} - Etorriko naiz {I will come} - Etorriko nintzateke {I will be able to come} - Etorriko nintzatekeen {I would be able to come} - Etor naiteke {I can come} - Etorri nintekeen {I was able to come} - Etorri zatzaizkit {you have come to me} - Etorri nintzaian {I came to you- informal masculine} - Etorri nintzainan {I came to you- informal feminine} - Etorri natzaizu {I have come to you-singular formal} - Etor banintzaizu {If I came to you} - Etor nintzaizuke {I would come to you} And this could go on forever 4. *A passive formed with a linking verb + a past participle* NOPE - The car was stolen {Kotxea lapurtu egin zuten} - {Car-the to-steal to-do they-have zuten-(z- past object u- singular te-they n-past tense)} We would usually use structures such as: lapurtutako/lapurturiko kotxea (difficult to translate word by word but meaning the car which has been stolen) 5. *Dative external possessors* YES. For once. - The mother washes the child’s hair {Amak semeari ilea garbitzen dio} - {mother-definite-singular-[Ergative] child-definite-[Dat] hair-definite to-wash-indefinite di(singular object [Acc]) o(singular 3rd person [Dat]} -- Simplified -- {Mother-the child-the-to hair-the washing has} - I haven’t seen his face. (this one would be similar to the Spanish “No le he visto la cara” - {Ez diot aurpegia ikusi} - {Not di(singular object [Acc] o(3rd person [Dat] t[1st person [Nom] face-definite to-see} 6. *Negative pronouns with lack of verbal negation* NO. There is verbal negation and it changes the word order, in order to emphasize it. - Nobody came {Ez zen inor etorri} -{Not was nobody to-come} - They never did it {Ez zuten inoiz egin} -- {Not z([Acc] object in the past)- u(singlular) te(they [Nom] -n(past tense)} -- Wouls mean something like -- {Not had they never do} 7. *Comparisons of equality based on adverbial relative clauses* NO. - As tall as me {Ni bezain garaia} - {I-as?- tall-definite} Bezain is not an adverb, I don’t even know what it is. 8. *Non-pro-drop* NO. Definitely pro-drop. In case in wasn’t clear, Basque verbs contain ALL the information, so subjects, objects... most things can be dropped. - Eman diezazkizuket {To-give di(3rd person object [Acc]) eza(object indicator [Dat] zki(plural direct object) zu(formal you [Dat]) ke(shows potentiality, to be able to) t(1st person [Nom]} - So this all means {I could give them to you} 9. *Intensifier reflexive differentiation.* YES. But not the way other languages do. - The president HIMSELF gave a speech at our school {Lehendakariak BERAK... (both in ergative case in this case) - He loves himself {Bere burua maite du} - literally {he loves his head}. There is no reflexive, we use our heads. - I have killed myself {Nire buruaz beste egin dut} - literally {I have made of my head the one of another} 10. *SVO* NO. Basque is a SOV language, but it is incredibly important to change the word order depending on ehat you are asked or what you are trying to say. - Hark hau egin du {He has done this} - {Berak egin du hau} Hark changes to berak. (It is him who has done this) - {Hau hark egina da} (This has been done by him) - {Hau ez du hark egin} (This hasn’t been done by him} Etc. 11. *Absence of reduplication.* NO. There is a LOT of it. We don’t use it to make plurals from singulars, but the most common use of it is to make adjectives or adverbs stronger. For exemple: - Urdin= blue. Urdin-urdina= truly blue, very blue. - Txiki = little. Txiki-txikia = tiny Also onomatopoeias are extremely common in Basque and often use reduplication. - Mara-mara (the calm way in which snow falls) - Kili-kolo (when something isn’t very stable) - Zalantza-malantza (when doubting something) -Mauka-mauka (when eating) -Ttipi-ttapa (when slowly walking, but non-stop) Etc. Result: 2/11. This was long but thank you for reading it, whoever has. Basque is a language isolate, surrounded by indoeuropeas languages, and I have personally found it to share a few similarities with Japanese, Hungarian, Finnish... It is however truly unique and still a bit endangered which is why it would make me extremely happy if someone read this. ;)

3:24 well, there _is_ a way to use a question-word: "Der Mann, *welcher* das Auto fährt." (welcher -> which or which one) but it's way more common to use 'der' instead of 'welcher' in modern day german.

Thanks, Paul, for yet another wonderfully informative video.

Glad to see your update again

Other SAE features: - a uvular/guttural [R] present in French, German, Dutch, Portuguese, Danish, parts of Swedish and Norwegian. - the reciprocal construction (e.g. "we see each other") is of a mixed type, including both a reflexive and another pronominal marker, like in Spanish "nos vemos" (lit. Reflexive we-see) or "nos vemos uno al otro" (lit. Reflexive we-see one to-the other). - order of possessive determiner and noun: most european languages have "possessive + noun" (my hat) and not *"hat my". - null object: present in Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, German, Serbo-Croatian, Hungarian, Bulgarian. This is the optional deletion of the object when inferred by the context like in Portuguese "eu vi a camisa e comprei" (lit. I saw the shit and bought"). In English you would have to use "and I bought it". - the palatal lateral [ʎ] is rare outside Europe: present in Portuguese, Spanish (north), Catalan, Basque, Breton, Scottish Gaelic, Slovak, Latvian, Serbo-Croatian, Ukranian, Greek, Bulgarian, Sami, Komi, Udmurt, and previously in French and Hungarian. - No degrees of distance in demonstratives (only "ce" for "this" and "that" in French, and only one demonstrative also in German, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic and Estonian). - A 2 or 3 way gender (feminine and masculine or feminine, masculine and neuter) - here English is an exception in that it does not have gender.

4:06 Irish also has a perfect tense “tá sé déanta ann” 9:16 Irish is in this group too you can say “A ghrá é féin é” or “Tháinig an t-uachtarán é féin le hóráid a thabhairt”

You really are a scholar of language. Thank you for the work you do, and I look forward to enjoying more in the future!

In South Asia, we've had several sprachbunds. First the IA-Dravidian sprachbund, then later the Eastern Iranian and Northwestern Indo-Aryan Sprachbund, the Deccan Sprachbund, etc

I have heard of Indian and Mainland Asian sprachbund. Indian sprachbund features include retroflex consonants (You may notice Indians sometimes pronounces T, D, and R a lil bit differently) while Mainland Asian sprachbund features include tonality.

I first noticed this when I was learning French in school. I was wondering why French has almost the exact same rules as my native German considering when to use to have to build the perfect tense and when to use to be. What was especially dazzling to me was that Latin, which I was learning as well back then, built its perfect tense in a completely different way which made expaining the similarity with the family-tree-model impossible. The sprachbund is in my opinion a very good example of how Europeans have interacted with each other across national borders (which are in fact a rather new invention) the past centuries and that languages borrowing grammar from neighbouring languages is a totally normal ocurrence and nothing worth ranting about (I'm thinking of how people who think they are saving "ye olde", pure German always complain about German borrowing the English expression "to make sense" when Goethe would have said something along the lines of "to yield sense")

This is very interesting, and I love the dedication and effort you put in the quality content you upload! :)

once again an excellent and interesting video Paul ! cheers

I hope that you reach 1 million subscribers by 2020!

Thanks for the fascinating video! On the topic of reduplication, it reminded me that in colloquial hiberno-english, or maybe english in general I'm not sure, it is fairly common to repeat words to change the meaning slightly. For instance there is home (where you live now) and then there is home-home (the family home), many other examples like this.

Thanks, Paul, for this introduction to a new (to me!) way to look these languages. I've been in love with language and languages since a young child, I'm truly a total linguistics nerd (I even loved diagramming sentences in school), and this was absolute candy to me!

Fascinating as always. You have a nice day Paul 😁

11:27 We have the same words "anak" in Filipino is child but in plural we say, "mga anak" but we have reduplication in actions and affix

This video reminds me to be grateful that I happened to pick a pro-drop Spanish as my third language in High School. It was an usual choice at my time. Now it is a common choice for school children in Sweden. Spanish helped me getting into Finnish my fourth language with some pre-understanding. Now I have lost count of my number of languages I studied a bit. Nowadays I enjoy studying Hebrew.

Hi. I've been watching your videos for almost a year, and I always enjoy watching them because I like learning new languages, though I'm 36 years old. Since some languages share some important features, such as the same word order, definite and indefinite articles and the same alphabet, it is somehow easy to learn one of each, because what we need is just learning vocabulary. Though I don't speak any of the romance languages, I noticed that they have a lot in common with each other and with the English language.

Fantastic video Paul ! Good work :)

I think that an intensifier (the word "kendi") is used in Turkish too. Also the reduplication is common in modern Greek, giving emphasis to some adverbs. Thanks for sharing!

9. Hungarian does actually use the word "saját(maga)" as an intensifier, "saját" normally means "self". For example: The president himself gave a speech at our school: "Az elnők *saját* maga adott egy beszédet az iskolánkban."

What a milestone! So fascinating.

I love these videos! The continue to teach me new things about languages!

11:17 Actually Romanian still uses reduplication at some extent. acasă - home acasă acasă - the place where one was born / where one originates from acum - now acum acum - right now Also Romanian speakers tend to reduplicate in order to emphasize something and not only to change meaning.

When I saw the thumbnail of this video, I though you were gonna speak about the Balkan sprachbund which is a prime example of a sprachbund.

So interesting, Merry Christmas!

The video was awesome, thank you for putting it so simple :)

Hi, I'm working as a sign language interpreter (Quebec's Sign Language, also known as LSQ) and I love your channel. Would you be interested into making a video about sign languages families around the world? That would be amazing. :)

The periphrastic perfect with “have” and the past particle is also used in Georgian, at least for transitive verbs. I wonder why it wasn’t included in the graph.

I'm following after your video about morrocan darija you really do a good work I'm so glad to know you and this fabulous channel ❤️

While I had some inkling that there was such a crossover Sprachbund within European languages, I had no idea that anyone has ever specifically studied it. This is one of the most fascinating videos on language I have seen. Thanks.

Never heard of Sprachbund before or "Standard Average European." Thanks Paul. I like that shirt, too. :-)

8:05 Interestingly, there are some pro-drop features in oral German. I actually do this occasionally in casual speech and quite a lot in casual writing/texting. Especially in these dialogue settings 1.Sg. and 2.Sg. personal pronouns are dropped by some speakers if they're lazy and we are dealing with a simple SVO-structured sentence.

Wow! This is the most interesting language video I ever encountered. Thank you very very much.

Great informative video as always. Very interesting! 👌🏽

I suspect that the thing about iranian languages having that type of passive may have been picked up through greek, as it was quite the common language there for some time.

11:56 the Vandals were some mad folk. I really can recommend reading up on them!

Very interesting video! Thank you a lot!

Excellent video and excellent explanation! Best wishes from Spain 🇪🇸.

In where I live, there is Rokitno-Bund. Rokitno-bund consists of: Polish language Lithuanian language Belarusian language Ukrainian language Kashubian language. I'm a speaker of Polish Language.

To what i know, Irish has its own passive forms (typically called autonomous) which are like a mode on their own and do not implement the past tense. Example: The car is stolen (goidtear an carr), the car was stolen (goideadh an carr), the car will be stolen (goidfear an carr) - So, all these are modifications to the original verb (goid: to steal) to express the passive mode. One can make out an adjective (verbal adjective) and might say (tá an carr goidte) which by translation would indeed translate as (the car is stolen) but with learning Irish for some years now, this kind of expression is more like to give or assign a character to "the car" rather than speak an info about an action. This is how it feels me though - and also verbal adjectives in Irish are just adjectives, they are not derived from past tense like in English (past of "goid" is "ghoid").

Nicely done, Paul. Many Thanks. The correspondence of number of SAE features with geography is very striking. I have heard, a famous Sprachbund was the one of Sumerian and Akkadian in ancient southern Mesopotamia. And I think another one developed in old Mesoamerica.

6:14 that's absent from literary Romanian, but in colloquial speech we use a rather odd equivalent, inserting an absurd noun (something obviously false in context) as a stand in for the negative pronoun. Example for "nobody came": "a venit dracu". Word for word this means "the devil came", but as the devil is a known fictional character (or at least not expected to show up as a real person), so the meaning is that nobody came.

4:23 I have studied French mor several years, and in my experience, most people say “J’ai fini la rapport” The only person who said “J’ai tarminé la rapport” was a person who knows the French spoken in France, which is weird compared to Canadian French.

A Sprachbund from the region of my grandparents: The German-Latvian-Estonian Sprachbund. In that area, you find a lot of common vocabulary, mostly of German origin, because they shared a German speaking elite for centuries. They also share local vocabulary like Estonian "piim" or Latvian "piens" for "milk" and vocabulary from their surrounding political powers, like Russian, Swedish or Polish. Would not be surprised if they also shared grammatical features, like noun case constructions... Indeed, the amount of German vocabulary is so high that it is easy for me as a German to spot the topic they are talking about without nearly any other knowledge of their languages.

Never heard of that before. Very fascinating.

I speak Slovenian and we do occasionally use 'reduplication'. Mostly to emphasize that the meaning of the word is meant literally or with its 'real' meaning if you will. An example would be "a je šel domov, al domov domov?" (did he go home, or to the 'real' home). In this case 'real' home could be his actual place where he lives, as opposed to the place where he temporarily lives.

Ever since I started learning Scottish Gaelic (which is close to Irish), I've been wondering why it evolved so differently from other European languages. So I found this video very interesting!

I like hearing about the features that make my language different from most. I didn’t realize articles were so unusual.

You sound like you have a Masters or Doctorate degree in Linguistics. Of all the language videos I have seen, yours exhibit a broader and deeper knowledge of the subject. Keep up the fine job. As a history and language enthusiast, I like how you show the influence of history on language.

4:48 one thing to note is that Greek doesn't have this. This is probably a mistake, as Greek forms a passive with verb suffixes.