Fallout Studios Forums

WNxmastrefubu, on 16 Jan 2009, 23:17, said:

That comment was in response to this. I'm fully aware that they are all Latin languages. But with the logic in his comment, it can be inferred that all Latin languages are the same language, simply different dialects. I disagree with this. Granted, there are cognates, but that doesn't mean that the languages are the same, even if of the same origin.

-Rorschach
Edited by Rorschach, 17 January 2009 - 18:29.

CodeCat, on 16 Jan 2009, 14:20, said:

Аре јоу абсолутелеј цертаин тхат ис цореццт? Бецаусе и'м нот со суре мајселф...

Sorry, just had to do it

Anyways, isn't there supposed to be an official declaration on this matter? Because, all we have is opinions right now.

Z_mann, on 21 Jan 2009, 1:02, said:

Are you absolutely certain that is correct? Because I'm not so sure myself. Really not difficult.

But transliteration is something else than orthography, IMO they can't be compared. Both English and American write with the same alphabet. Still they spell things differently. A lot, in fact. Can you smell sulphur in the centre of your favourite neighbourhood?

Yet the spelling differences are so minute that they are easily understood either way, no?

-Rorschach

Z_mann, on 21 Jan 2009, 0:02, said:

Essentially, spelling is arbitrary just as the symbols used to represent words are arbitrary. The only thing that makes any writing English is that it is understood to be English by others. If I decide to write English in Chinese characters, then most of you would say it's no longer English. But what if you and the rest of English speakers had learned that each of those characters had an English word associated with it, just as they have Chinese words associated with them as well? To take the matter even further, there are actually languages that are written in more than one writing system. Serbian for example can be written in both the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets. Korean, for a while at least, was written with both the native Hangul system and Chinese characters.

So the matter is simply whether a certain manner of writing is accepted by speakers of that language. English speakers are likely to accept only the Latin alphabet, and only when the letters of that alphabet are arranged in the ways according to English spelling rules. Yet my point is still shown: writing is merely a representation of language, and does not have any bearing on the internal structure of the language itself. English is still English no matter how you represent its words.

Rorschach, on 20 Jan 2009, 18:42, said:

Indeed I would say they are more or less the same languages with some different words sprinkled here and there.

For once, I have an agreement with CC in the PC.

My 2 cents: I use British spellings very frequently(probably because I read The Economist), and nobody seems to notice.