New language discovered recently in Malaysia.

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ThatAnalysisGuy
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New language discovered recently in Malaysia.

Post by ThatAnalysisGuy »

https://www.sciencealert.com/new-langua ... -gatherers

I heard that a language had recently been discovered. It is called Jedediah, which is an Aslian language spoken in Malaysia. The language was discovered by Swedish linguists from Lund University who were documenting the Jahai language, another closely related Aslian language in the same area; it has words, phonemes, and grammatical structures that are not in the Jahai language. Speakers of Jedek are highly multilingual, usually able to speak Jahai, and in some cases have intermarried with the Jahai.

This appears to be the first new discovery of a language in at least several years. I think that this discovery is an important to the understanding and classification of various languages of Malaysia, such as the Aslian languages. Any thoughts?
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Re: New language discovered recently in Malaysia.

Post by Parlox »

Are there any online tidbits of it's grammar or lexicon?
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ThatAnalysisGuy
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Re: New language discovered recently in Malaysia.

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Parlox wrote: 02 Mar 2018 00:34 Are there any online tidbits of it's grammar or lexicon?
I found a resource on Omniglot about Jedek numbers.
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Re: New language discovered recently in Malaysia.

Post by shimobaatar »

ThatAnalysisGuy wrote: 02 Mar 2018 00:26 It is called Jedediah,
Hmm.

In all seriousness, though, I did skim over the article. I find languages in general pretty interesting, and it's always cool to hear about a new one being "discovered", but this doesn't sound like anything groundbreaking to me.

Parts of the article also sound a bit sensationalized, for lack of a better term.
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KaiTheHomoSapien
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Re: New language discovered recently in Malaysia.

Post by KaiTheHomoSapien »

I read about this in NatGeo. I think it's pretty interesting, even if it is only a small language closely related to other known ones. I find the Austroasiatic languages fascinating--their large distribution throughout Southeast Asia, the fact that they're spoken by the "Negrito" and other native peoples of the entire region and that aside from Vietnamese and Khmer, we don't seem to have a lot of information about most of the others.
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Re: New language discovered recently in Malaysia.

Post by Salmoneus »

Hmm. The researchers should go to Glasgow; they'd find plenty of 'words, phonemes and grammatical structures' that aren't in English.

Seriously, though: Jedek and Jahai are very closely related. Jedek is spoken in an area adjacent to Jahai. Jedek speakers are not aware of forming a distinct group, and consider themselves the same as other Jahai/Menriq speakers. Jedek speakers can all understand standard Jahai. Jedek speakers can and do all speak standard Jahai when they want. There are only 280 speakers of Jedek, and only 1,000 speakers of Jahai.

Given close genealogical connection, geographic continuity, ethnic identity, diglossia and mutual intelligibility, why exactly is this considered a 'new language' suddenly, rather than a series of dialectical features that it seems is only used in code-switching any? Particular when the speaker sizes are so tiny, especially for Jedek, that we're basically talking about something less absolutely notable than, say, a couple of classes in one high school developing a bit of slang?
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Re: New language discovered recently in Malaysia.

Post by Axiem »

Salmoneus wrote: 02 Mar 2018 14:58 why exactly is this considered a 'new language' suddenly
My guess is that they suddenly acquired an army?
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ThatAnalysisGuy
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Re: New language discovered recently in Malaysia.

Post by ThatAnalysisGuy »

Salmoneus wrote: 02 Mar 2018 14:58 Given close genealogical connection, geographic continuity, ethnic identity, diglossia and mutual intelligibility, why exactly is this considered a 'new language' suddenly, rather than a series of dialectical features that it seems is only used in code-switching any? Particular when the speaker sizes are so tiny, especially for Jedek, that we're basically talking about something less absolutely notable than, say, a couple of classes in one high school developing a bit of slang?
When I said "new language", I meant to say a new discovery. That does not mean the language is newly invented, but rather some language that was previously unknown and undocumented.
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Re: New language discovered recently in Malaysia.

Post by Salmoneus »

ThatAnalysisGuy wrote: 02 Mar 2018 22:37
Salmoneus wrote: 02 Mar 2018 14:58 Given close genealogical connection, geographic continuity, ethnic identity, diglossia and mutual intelligibility, why exactly is this considered a 'new language' suddenly, rather than a series of dialectical features that it seems is only used in code-switching any? Particular when the speaker sizes are so tiny, especially for Jedek, that we're basically talking about something less absolutely notable than, say, a couple of classes in one high school developing a bit of slang?
When I said "new language", I meant to say a new discovery. That does not mean the language is newly invented, but rather some language that was previously unknown and undocumented.
That wasn't my point. What makes this "a language"?
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Lambuzhao
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Re: New language discovered recently in Malaysia.

Post by Lambuzhao »

A dissertation advisor? [:S]
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Re: New language discovered recently in Malaysia.

Post by Axiem »

Lambuzhao wrote: 03 Mar 2018 20:07 A dissertation advisor? [:S]
That's almost as good as a military, right?
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Re: New language discovered recently in Malaysia.

Post by Solarius »

Aslian languages are wildly underrated and underused in conlangs--they do some pretty interesting stuff with non-configurational morphology.
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Lambuzhao
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Re: New language discovered recently in Malaysia.

Post by Lambuzhao »

Axiem wrote: 03 Mar 2018 23:58
Lambuzhao wrote: 03 Mar 2018 20:07 A dissertation advisor? [:S]
That's almost as good as a military, right?
They have power to court-martial and execute your doctoral dissertation (and future academic career) at dawn,
so yeah. Pretty much the same. [B)]
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Re: New language discovered recently in Malaysia.

Post by qwed117 »

Salmoneus wrote: 02 Mar 2018 14:58 Hmm. The researchers should go to Glasgow; they'd find plenty of 'words, phonemes and grammatical structures' that aren't in English.

Seriously, though: Jedek and Jahai are very closely related. Jedek is spoken in an area adjacent to Jahai. Jedek speakers are not aware of forming a distinct group, and consider themselves the same as other Jahai/Menriq speakers. Jedek speakers can all understand standard Jahai. Jedek speakers can and do all speak standard Jahai when they want. There are only 280 speakers of Jedek, and only 1,000 speakers of Jahai.

Given close genealogical connection, geographic continuity, ethnic identity, diglossia and mutual intelligibility, why exactly is this considered a 'new language' suddenly, rather than a series of dialectical features that it seems is only used in code-switching any? Particular when the speaker sizes are so tiny, especially for Jedek, that we're basically talking about something less absolutely notable than, say, a couple of classes in one high school developing a bit of slang?
Humans and baboons are closely related, They live adjacent to each other in the African savannah. Baboons aren't aware of forming a distinct group. They just want to throw feces at us. Baboons can understand human signing and signals of aggression. Much like humans, they are willing to eat the faces of other primates

Seems like humanity should go and live in the savannah with the baboons.

There's obviously some reason call it a language. The reasoning you've given really isn't enough; Spanish and English are decently close and are spoken in a contiguous area throughout the United States. That doesn't make them dialects of the same language.

The article, of course, doesn't go too far into detail, but from what details I can garner, Jedek is not any closer to Jahai than Minriq or any similar Aslian language, and various grammatical and phonological differences exist between the two. It appears to look closer to something like Monic or even have strong Thai influences. It could be like Nihali, where there is a significant substratum, or possibly like Kusunda, where the language is thought to be in one family, and shown to be isolated as a time goes on.
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Re: New language discovered recently in Malaysia.

Post by Salmoneus »

qwed117 wrote: 25 Apr 2018 04:58
Salmoneus wrote: 02 Mar 2018 14:58 Hmm. The researchers should go to Glasgow; they'd find plenty of 'words, phonemes and grammatical structures' that aren't in English.

Seriously, though: Jedek and Jahai are very closely related. Jedek is spoken in an area adjacent to Jahai. Jedek speakers are not aware of forming a distinct group, and consider themselves the same as other Jahai/Menriq speakers. Jedek speakers can all understand standard Jahai. Jedek speakers can and do all speak standard Jahai when they want. There are only 280 speakers of Jedek, and only 1,000 speakers of Jahai.

Given close genealogical connection, geographic continuity, ethnic identity, diglossia and mutual intelligibility, why exactly is this considered a 'new language' suddenly, rather than a series of dialectical features that it seems is only used in code-switching any? Particular when the speaker sizes are so tiny, especially for Jedek, that we're basically talking about something less absolutely notable than, say, a couple of classes in one high school developing a bit of slang?
Humans and baboons are closely related, They live adjacent to each other in the African savannah. Baboons aren't aware of forming a distinct group. They just want to throw feces at us. Baboons can understand human signing and signals of aggression. Much like humans, they are willing to eat the faces of other primates

Seems like humanity should go and live in the savannah with the baboons.
Wow. Congratulations on finding a way to sound both ignorant and kind of racist. In this scenario, which group are the humans, and which are the baboons?
There's obviously some reason call it a language. The reasoning you've given really isn't enough; Spanish and English are decently close and are spoken in a contiguous area throughout the United States. That doesn't make them dialects of the same language.
No, Spanish and English are not close. Virtually no English speakers could understand spoken Spanish. Most Spanish speakers could not understand spoken English. Which is unsurprising, given that they're separated by probably around 6,000 years of language development.

In this case, none of the standard criteria for languagehood appear to be met. There is no distinct community of speakers (all Jedek speakers are also Jahai speakers). There's barely a significant community of speakers at all - as I pointed out, it has fewer speakers than you could get by introducing a code into a single school [we do not need a 'new language' to explain every time a couple of dozen people engage in wordplay]. There is mutual intelligibility (all Jedek speakers speak Jahai and most Jahai speakers understand Jedek). There is no physical or cultural separation of the speakers - Jedek speakers live next to Jahai speakers and believe themselves to be speaking Jahai. [and incidentally, let's note the imperialism here of barging in and defining for people what language they speak...] Instead, you just have a tiny number of people who, as well as speaking standard Jahai, also at times speak in a particular slang (clearly very closely related to Jahai) for code-switching purposes. The term for that isn't 'language', it's 'slang' or 'argot' or 'jargon' or 'code' or 'register' or the like.
The article, of course, doesn't go too far into detail, but from what details I can garner, Jedek is not any closer to Jahai than Minriq or any similar Aslian language
Jahai and Menriq/Minriq are already dialects/languages in a continuum spoken by the single Menriq community. And Jedek is closer to Jahai AIUI than to Batak, which is also extremely close to Jahai/Menriq. These are all language-forms within the small eastern branch of the northern aslian family, and there aren't any other language known in that family so yet, Jedek and Jahai are as closely related as possible.
and various grammatical and phonological differences exist between the two.
Also, between American and English...
It appears to look closer to something like Monic or even have strong Thai influences.
Everything is influenced by Thai, and Monic is the closest relative to all Aslian languages, but not a particularly close one. That said, even if Jedek were 100% of Monic origin, I still wouldn't consider it an independent language today (rather, a register or code found in one village, highly influenced by an extinct Monic substratum).

If I'm wrong, feel free to provide citations demonstrating this. But if all you want to do is charge in acting like I'm a moron and comparing the Jahai to shit-throwing baboons for shock value, don't bother.
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Lambuzhao
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Re: New language discovered recently in Malaysia.

Post by Lambuzhao »

I thought fecal tossing was limited to the Great Apes. I learned something today. :wat:

Also, this:
https://phys.org/news/2011-11-poop-thro ... gence.html

Sadly, fecal smearing in humans is not as praiseworthy.

:wat:
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Re: New language discovered recently in Malaysia.

Post by Creyeditor »

I think, new dialect/jargon/slang/etc discovered is still (good) news. Doesn't happen that often. Call it doculect if you like to [:)]
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Re: New language discovered recently in Malaysia.

Post by elemtilas »

Lambuzhao wrote: 25 Apr 2018 18:28 Also, this:
https://phys.org/news/2011-11-poop-thro ... gence.html

Sadly, fecal smearing in humans is not as praiseworthy.

:wat:
I don't know, my friend. I don't take it as much of a sign of much intelligence in a three year old human!

Now, bringing the kiddie potty full of odoriferous brown goodness out to show Mummy's friends what a good boy ickle bickle is, now that's intelligence! (Of a kind, to be sure!)
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