www.ethnologue.com
Printed From: History Community ~ All Empires
Category: Scholarly Pursuits
Forum Name: Linguistics
Forum Discription: Discuss linguistics: the study of languages
URL: http://www.allempires.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=21362
Printed Date: 25-Apr-2024 at 12:06
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 9.56a - http://www.webwizforums.com
Topic: www.ethnologue.com
Posted By: Suren
Subject: www.ethnologue.com
Date Posted: 23-Aug-2007 at 07:49
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Do you guys consider this website reliable site or not? At least their data about Iran languages is wrong. I saw the whole data and informations and it is obviously wrong about numbers. I want to know if you have the same problem about your country's informations. www.ethnologue.com |
Replies:
Posted By: Guests
Date Posted: 23-Aug-2007 at 09:27
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Yes, its the standard reference. What exactly is wrong? ------------- |
Posted By: Pretcov
Date Posted: 27-Aug-2007 at 12:19
| It's an excellent site, though it would be much improved if they added more maps on linguistic demographics. |
Posted By: Cryptic
Date Posted: 26-Sep-2007 at 15:29
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Sometimes I think they use the term "language" to describe what are really regional dialects.
But then I guess the line between "dialect" and seperate language can be fuzzy.
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Posted By: Guests
Date Posted: 26-Sep-2007 at 22:56
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The site is fine. The group that controls it, the Summer Institute of Linguistics, is nasty though.
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Posted By: Cywr
Date Posted: 16-Jan-2008 at 09:04
Extremely so, and politics/nationalism has just bollucksed it up further. -------------  Arrrgh!!"
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Posted By: Guests
Date Posted: 16-Jan-2008 at 10:17
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A dialect is a language without an airforce. ------------- |
Posted By: Flipper
Date Posted: 16-Jan-2008 at 11:53
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Yes, dialects are seen as languages as well by linguists. It is not wrong to call a dialect a language. It is the family of a language that matters.
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SÃ¥ nu tar jag fram (k)niven va! |
Posted By: Flipper
Date Posted: 16-Jan-2008 at 12:02
The only error i see is that the language maps can show sometimes like a language is a majority at a region. In Attica for example it looks like arvanitika is the main language  . I doubt there are any speakers left and if there are that's old people in Menidi in Athens. In Laurio outside Athens, where many Kurdish communities exist, Kurdish is spoken but it doesn't even mention it.
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SÃ¥ nu tar jag fram (k)niven va! |
Posted By: Styrbiorn
Date Posted: 16-Jan-2008 at 12:10
| They have some funny/debatable quirks. For example, of some reason the local language in my province is labelled "Christian", and the broken, accented Swedish used by many immigrants is labelled as a language of its own. |
Posted By: Flipper
Date Posted: 16-Jan-2008 at 12:18
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Add also that they label "Romani" the language of the gypsies in Sweden...It is not even close to Romani.
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SÃ¥ nu tar jag fram (k)niven va! |
Posted By: gcle2003
Date Posted: 16-Jan-2008 at 12:39
Well, Luxembourgish doesn't have an air force.
 Maybe you should change that to 'without an air force or major financial institutions'? ------------- |
Posted By: Bulldog
Date Posted: 16-Jan-2008 at 14:16
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I think ethnologue is the most reliable site out of its genre but the work of linguists is a difficult one, especially the blur between accents, dialects and languages.
For example Azeri Turkish or Turki.
Azerbaijani, South
| A language of http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=IR - IranISO 639-3: http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/documentation.asp?id=azb - azb
Dialects Qashqa'i may be a dialect. Part of the Qizilbash merchant group speak the Afshari dialect, which is strongly influenced by Persian. The dialect spoken in Syria is different from Kirkuk of Iraq, and may be closer to Turkish (Osmanli) than to Azerbaijani. There is a gradual transition of dialects from Turkish to Azerbaijani from central to western Turkey.
The information is detailed but starts getting confusing and complicated as it goes more in-depth.
How do they differentiate between Afshar, Aynallu etc as these arn't different dialects but different tribes and clan names.
290,000 Afshar, Afshar is one of the clans of the Oghuz Turks being part of the confederation for over a millenia. There are Afshar not only in Northern Iran but also among the Qashqai, the Turkmen region, in Turkey and Afghanistan.
Another point which I find confusing.
The language is listed as "Azerbaijani/Azeri Turkish/Turki" but its also noted that the distinction between the Turkish of Turkey is blurred and that actually it continues into Turkey and that its mutually intellegible.
In making a comparison, lets take the United Kingdom.
The Geordy English and London English are more different than Azeri Turkish and the Turkish in Eastern Turkey is from each other.
Furthermore, how do you classify dialects? languages? accents?
If a person can turn on a tv channel or meet somebody and fully communicate and understand them although having a different accent and some lexical differences, is this an accent, dialect difference?
Is dialect or language classifications based upon mutual intellegibility percentages? ------------- “What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal.” Albert Pine |
Posted By: Flipper
Date Posted: 16-Jan-2008 at 14:23
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Why not use http://linguist.emich.edu/ - http://linguist.emich.edu/ ? It has far more data on languages and it is accurate. -------------
SÃ¥ nu tar jag fram (k)niven va! |
Posted By: Bulldog
Date Posted: 16-Jan-2008 at 14:48
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Hey thanks for the site, I think they work with Ethnologue? as when you search for languages it gives Linguist/Ethnologue reports. ------------- “What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal.” Albert Pine |
Posted By: Flipper
Date Posted: 18-Jan-2008 at 14:01
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You're welcome! I don't know. It's possible that they exchange information. I've seen the linguist list in many wiki references about languages. -------------
SÃ¥ nu tar jag fram (k)niven va! |
Posted By: Suren
Date Posted: 18-Jan-2008 at 17:48
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Thanks Bulldog for telling us about the details. I don't know how this site found its data about Turkish speakers and Persian speakers in Iran. According to which reliable source it is claiming Azeri speakers in Iran are more than Persian speakers. Even if you put the population of major Persian speaker cities together it encompass the number that has given in this site. that is why I say i do not trust this site. Maybe they are accurate for other countries but not for Iran. Obviously, they used a biased data or follows an agenda. They categories small communities with different accents as different languages. They separated different dialects of Persian language too. We maybe had a lot of different dialects in different parts of Iran some centuries or decades ago, but now they have faded away slowly and official Tehrani Accent of Persian has been replaced. Most of those Accents or Dialects which have been replaced by Tehrani Persian were intelligible with Tehrani Persian. Another example is what happened in Turkey, they speak Istanbuli Accent of Turkish language and it is replacing all other accents and even languages ( Laz, Kurdish,...) |
Posted By: Guests
Date Posted: 18-Jan-2008 at 18:23
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Suren as said the difference between dialects and languages is a bit obscure, you have "dialects" which are pretty much mutually unintelligable, "langauges" which are almost totally intelligable, and accents which may be impossible to understand, especially if there is a long list of local slang. ------------- |
Posted By: Suren
Date Posted: 18-Jan-2008 at 18:55
Personally, I have no problem with understanding different accents or dialects in Iran. I have lived in different parts of Iran and I had no problems. I could understand 99.5% of their words for different accents. I can understand Mazandarani and even luri which maybe some people have hard time to understand it totaly correct. I admit Kurdish and Baluchi is a little harder to understand so they are different languages, but not Mazandarani. The number of Persian speakers in this site has been reduced obviously. Our last data is old, but it shows more than 50% of Iran population are native Persians and speak Persian language. I can tell you a lot of people who were bilangual in Persian and their own native language or dialect now have switched to Persian and their children only speak Persian now. With this logic after at least two decades do you think the number of Persian speakers has reduced or has increased ? |
Posted By: Zagros
Date Posted: 18-Jan-2008 at 20:05
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24 million Azari speakers in Iran is a weird number. For example, only 8 people million live in Azarbaijan area (Zanjan, West & East Azarbaijan and Ardabil). And ther eis no way that there are another 16 million distributed in other cities. Maybe 4 million in Tehran. Iranian census don't classify ethnicity for starters, only population per region, so I have no idea where they get their information from. ------------- |
Posted By: Suren
Date Posted: 18-Jan-2008 at 20:11
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4 mil in Tehran! kidding me? I used to live in Tehran and I can tell you where exactly Azari communities live. 2 mil is more likely. From those who live in Tehran only those who has been raised in Azerbaijan can speak azari perfectly and the rest of them (majority) speak Persian as their first language but can understand Azari, too. |
Posted By: Zagros
Date Posted: 18-Jan-2008 at 20:45
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I have no idea! You know better than me. I often hear Azerbaijani (rep.) and Turkish people say there is even 40 million Turcophones in Iran but often people who use such inflated numbers are extremists or just ignorant. I think Hamadan, Esfahan, Shiraz and Mashhad have sizable Azeri populations too and that's really it. They are scattered in most other cities and don't number very high in them. If you add the total populations of all of those cities together (including non-Azeries) the deficit with this stupid ethnologue number still doesn't add up. ------------- |
Posted By: Suren
Date Posted: 18-Jan-2008 at 21:38
| About Mashhad I have not enough Information, but Isfahan has no sizable Azari or even Turki community at all. Shiraz has some Qashqai communities, they live in rural areas. Hamidan: I have some relative who are from Hamidan. People from Hamidan (city not province) speak like written persian language and there are sizable Azari and Kurdish communities. almost all rural areas around Hamidan speak a Dialect of Turki. |
Posted By: Zagros
Date Posted: 19-Jan-2008 at 01:01
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Mashhad definitely has one. That's where Khamene'i is from too. I thought Hamadan was the other way around, like many in the city and not rurally. But you're right anyway in that the ones that have moved out of Azarbaijan have become Persianised. My friends, who've now gone back to Iran (students), were different because they could still speak it but were born in Tehran. I want to go to Iran for a long time to improve my Kalhori and Persian ( I can understand very well but my verbal and written skills aren't perfect) though I can only stay for three months at a time otherwise they will insist that I do my national service. I don't think that it would be a pleasant experience since some of the dahatis can't even tell their left from right and have even pulled the pins from grenades without knowing what to do next! ------------- |
Posted By: Suren
Date Posted: 19-Jan-2008 at 06:37
I have the same problem that you have about national service. I prefer to join American Army to go and serve for Mullahs. Hey Zagros! are you a UK citizen or just resident? If you are citizen then you don't need to be worried about National service since they consider you as a spy.
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Posted By: Bulldog
Date Posted: 19-Jan-2008 at 22:33
I agree the classifications can be confusing.
For example you can understan Mazandarani so how is it a different language?
This is similar to the example I gave. Regarding the number of Turki speakers in Iran, well the numbers are inflated and deflated depending on who you listen too. ------------- “What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal.” Albert Pine |