IE without genders

Maybe it's very subtle trolling - a master of the art.

Hey guys, I'm sorry I didn't get back to you earlier. Kiristave also known as Kiristav (try searching that on the Internet and you will find something about it) is spoken in the North of Goa, in Dadra n Nagar Haveli and also parts of Daman and Diu (which by the way is a former Portuguese-Dutch colony in India). These three places (Goa, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu are the single union territories of India; so they're like city-states).

Kiristav (I'll refer to it as kiristav from now on) is spoken by quite a lot of people. Many people who speak this dialect (which at some point will take on a status of a language; as it's completely unrelated to any other dialects or languages of India except perhaps in terms of loan words and some levels of syntax).

This is also spoken by many in parts of South India (as many Goans migrated to other regions such as Mangalore, Kerala)

I would also like to point out that this dialect and other dialects are not really called "dialects"...they are sister languages of konkani (konkani is the an indo-european language and it's a group in itself).

The following dialects are the strangest of the Konkan dialects (sister languages that belong to the Konkani family) that share a very heavy European - Middle Eastern influence)

Kiristav - (heavy portuguese and persian influence)
South Goa - Varli (with standard konkani, portuguse and hindi influence)
Daman - Kukna (strong portugese and dutch influence in grammar and vocab.)
Diu - Kukna and Nawaits (similar to the Damani kukna but you can say it's as different as Latvian and Lithuanian; Nawaits is most similar to kiristav)
Mangalore - Katkari (with a lot of Kannada influence)

Just a difference in how the dialects sound and my point here is to show why these dialects are not considered as dialects by linguists due to such major differences:

English - The doctor became famous due to his new invention in surgery.

Hindi - Doctor bahut famous ban gaya kyon ki unka naya invention surgery bahut badiya thi.

Kiristav - Mediqa/Doctor tornau sa famosa iz suo nove invensiao az sirurgya. (this sentence of course has several variations depending on the loan-word vocab. you use).

Diu Kukna - Docter veredat sa famose an sin nei erfenung en cirguria.

Nawaits - Mediqi tornat sa famose an sino nei invensia/erfenun en sirurgya.

Damani kukna - Doctor bekamet zer famose ver seyn nuere erfinung een cirurgia.

Katkari - Doctor venda sama bade aiza koiza tar surgery keli.

The reason it's hard to find info. on the net is because these three territories in India in particular, when through a lot of struggles in terms of their identity and language as it's neighboring States have had a lot of conflicts with these territories.

I hope this clears it up a bit. These are just some of the very strange languages spoken in India that really don't resemble much of the Indian languages. You would surprised that some dialects spoken in Daman and Diu have tons of Swedish words (due to the Swedish company that was set up in Daman back in 1920s). I don't know these 5 of these 6 dialects, but I just memorized 5 sentences of each dialect so that it would come in handy when explaining to others how different our language is.

You will further go nuts if you check out my post on this page:

http://www.antimoon.com/forum/t10967.htm

I forgot to add that due to the struggle they underwent, all these 3 territories today are in fact quite repressed which made them very close-knti communities (or city states/ union territories) and this is the reason why they're not yet ready to expose their culture, language and other aspects.

p.s. all the union territories in India are BEAUTIFUL!!!!!!!!

longa iz vivu GOA!!!!

Shrey,

Damani kukna - Doctor bekamet zer famose ver seyn nuere erfinung een cirurgia. = The doctor became famous due to his new invention in surgery.

This particular dilect reminds me of German.

seyn nuere erfinung een cirurgia = seiner neuen Erfindung in der Chirurgie

http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=knn

I found the Kiristav language listed on Ethnologue, it's listed as a dialect under the Konkani language group of India. It doesn't give much information though.

Der Doktor wurde wegen seiner neuen Erfindung in der Chirurgie berühmt.

guest 2

I know the complete translation in German is :
Der Doktor wurde wegen seiner neuen Erfindung in der Chirurgie berühmt........

I was just pointing out the close resemblance or morphology of the string of following words:

seyn nuere erfinung een cirurgia = seiner neuen Erfindung in der Chirurgie

seyn=seiner
nuere= neuen
erfinung=Erfindung
cirurgia= Chirurgie

I didn't include the whole sentence which looks to be in simple past tense, with the "bekamet" related to the simple past of bekommen (bekam). Though I could be completely wrong here :)

I didn't include "famosa" because it looked to be related to the Portuguese "famoso" which would make sencse :)

I just thought it was funny that an Indian langauge so heavily influenced by Dutch and Portuguese, as Shrey pointed out above, had such German characteristics in structure.

But I did find this link with a whole breakdown of the history of the langueages in this region.

http://www.indianetzone.com/7/konkani_language.htm

I would just like to repeat that only the Damani and Diu Kukna and Nawaits are heavily dutch influenced, whereas the rest are all influenced heavily by a mix of portuguese, persian (farsi), and konkani.

One of the posters mentioned that Krisa is the only Portuguese creole spoken in India. And yes, it is indeed (spoken in regions of Maharashtra). The Goan Konkani or Kiristav are not a form of Portuguese creole despite the fact that they use heavy loan-words from the former language. The word order, syntax, and structure is very different in that it's an agglutinative language like Turkish, Hungarian, Finnish, and the Dravidian group of languages and it shares a common feature with these languages in that it has 17 cases.

Another interesting bit of info. I found was that linguists claim that Finnish has it's origin from the Uralic as well as the Dravidian languages (which are spoken in South India). These languages are very similarly agglutinative and have almost 20 cases!!! Also after a bit of further research (and with two family members who are from Hyderabad), I found that Telugu, a central-south Dravidian language (spoken in the State of Andhra Pradesh) is known as the "Italian of the West" as every single word in the language ends with a vowel (similar to the Italian language; of course exception exist in Italian but in Telugu, apparently EVERY word ends in a vowel).

I'm really amazed by guest 2's translation of the words...the words look so alike!!!!.....wow it's only now that I've see why these languages are so heavily influenced by foreign languages.

The three union territories: Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Daman, and Diu + Goa comprise part of Western Europe. These 4 places have been heavily influenced by European culture (even today when you go to goa, you can get some of the best recheado and prawn balchao and goan sausages which is might not strike as being very Indian; the cuisine is heavily portuguese influenced). Furthermore, in parts of Diu, I've heard some dialects that are distantly faintly related to Swedish words (like tikka - think, oku - and, mur - mother, papa- father, entu - not, talure - speak etc.) My guess is this is due to the Swedish East indian company set up long before the British invaded India (perhaps around the same time when the Dutch were in India and then migrated to the Polynesian countries due to fierce competition by the Portuguese and British).

There are other State in India that have had a heavy British influence (especially the city of Bombay and Calcutta) and those that have had a heavy persian influence (the cities of Hyderabad and Delhi). There is also one other union territory in India, Pondicherry which was a former French colony. In fact the territory recognizes French as an official language (and the natives of the region speak Tamil and a form of French creole).

Also if you're interested, you can type in Konkani language in Wikipedia and there's a clear statement that the so-called dialects I've mentioned are not dialects but "sister" languages of the Konkani language (Konkani being the main group).

English and Afrikaans are probably the only two Indo-European languages with no grammatical gender that I can think og.

Thanks Adam!

I didn't know that Afrikaans has no grammatical genders.

Here are all the Indo-European languages without grammatical gender:

Afrikaans, Armenian, English, Persian (Farsi).

There are just four.

Like English (which is closely related), Afrikaans only has one definite article: die. This is used for all nouns, singular and plural.

The only indefinite article on Afrikaans in 'n.

Many people say that in English the words "he" (masculine), "she" (feminine) and "it" (neuter) is grammatical gender, that it still has three genders in its pronouns.

This, though, isn't true. They are just examples of NATURAL gender, and NOT grammatical gender.

This versions of the sentence would also be possible in German:

Der Doktor wurde sehr berühmt, seiner neuen Erfindung in der Chirurgie wegen.

Der Doktor wurde sehr berühmt wegen seiner neuen Erfindung in der Chirurgie.

In German, there is also the word ''famos'', but you can't apply it in that sentence.

guest Mon Jul 21, 2008 4:58 pm GMT, I know what you intended, I just liked to give the full information.

Thanks Adam!

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