seriously, what i really want out of life is to study obscure tongues. is that so much to ask?

[schmerica]

This may in fact be the dorkiest poll ever to appear in my journal -- and that's counting all the times I made you guys tell me about how big Fraser's dick was and Ray Kowalski's favorite sexual activity.

[Poll #884355]

Comments

[pearl-o.livejournal.com]

They are TOTALLY different categories! They're all linguistics, but way different subdisciplines. Hittie and Sanskrit are both dead, dead, dead, only existing in written form (mmm, historical linguistics). The Eskimo-Aleut and Saami languages are still alive (though some are seriously moribund), so that's more descriptive. And I think pidgins must have existed as long as there's been trade, but they're not the sort of thing that would necessarily leave physical evidence.

(Notice I did not put morphology/morphosyntax on the list, because that goes with ALL of them!)