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   clacke (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Thursday, 03-Apr-2025 23:20:27 JST clacke
   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 😅
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     Thomas (tfb@functional.cafe)'s status on Friday, 04-Apr-2025 18:19:20 JST Thomas

     in reply to

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

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     Doug Whitfield [Minneapolis] (musicman@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 04-Apr-2025 18:19:31 JST Doug Whitfield [Minneapolis]

     in reply to

     @clacke this is what I told my wife to do with French and Spanish. I told her to just pronounce her French like an American and you'd probably be close

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     Doug Whitfield [Minneapolis] (musicman@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 04-Apr-2025 18:19:32 JST Doug Whitfield [Minneapolis]

     in reply to

     @clacke it'd work MUCH better with Italian and Spanish but she doesn't know Italian. Apparently neither did the waiter one place when I ordered the sorbetto. That was easy to sort though 😂

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     clacke (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Friday, 04-Apr-2025 18:19:33 JST clacke

     in reply to

     • Thomas

     @tfb @musicman 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 it's almost one billion first-language speakers, has diverged a lot.

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     Elias Mårtenson (loke@functional.cafe)'s status on Friday, 04-Apr-2025 21:09:18 JST Elias Mårtenson

     in reply to

     • Thomas

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

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     Thomas (tfb@functional.cafe)'s status on Saturday, 05-Apr-2025 03:59:01 JST Thomas

     in reply to

     @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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     clacke (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Saturday, 05-Apr-2025 03:59:08 JST clacke

     in reply to

     • Thomas
     @tfb Europe never had the space for 120 Vulgar Latins to evolve and cross-pollinate. 😊
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     clacke (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Saturday, 05-Apr-2025 03:59:09 JST clacke

     in reply to
     (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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     Björn Lindström (bkhl@social.sdfeu.org)'s status on Saturday, 05-Apr-2025 10:55:51 JST Björn Lindström

     in reply to

     @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. https://www.ethnologue.com/country/CN/

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     clacke (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Saturday, 05-Apr-2025 10:56:02 JST clacke

     in reply to

     • Björn Lindström
     @bkhl Thanks!
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     Björn Lindström (bkhl@social.sdfeu.org)'s status on Saturday, 05-Apr-2025 22:48:19 JST Björn Lindström

     in reply to

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

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     Björn Lindström (bkhl@social.sdfeu.org)'s status on Saturday, 05-Apr-2025 22:48:24 JST Björn Lindström

     in reply to

     • Thomas

     @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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