The Unsuitability of English (2015) • Hacker News Board

Re: The Unsuitability of English (2015)

#11

Post by carlob » Sun, Feb 21, 2016, 9:46 PM UTC

rvense wrote: post #3

This is utter rubbish. Nobody learns to speak any language as an adult without an accent. That has nothing to do with phonological complexity, that's just how we're wired. Spanish may be easy to describe on a blackboard, but don't tell me that people who learn Spanish as a second language later on don't have accents. And languages don't succeed because of linguistics, they succeed because of politics. As someone whos…

I don't think that it's a matter of accent. I cannot speak for Spanish, but adult Italian learners do have an accent, but being that in general written Italian is pretty much phonetic and we only have 7 distinct vowel sounds however you mangle it you can probably approximate it well enough to be understood.

Some things are really hard in Italian like the GL in aglio (garlic), but for example most Romans tend to turn it into a semiconsonant (like the first i in ieri). So basically you'll be understood.

Contrast that with French, that is also mostly phonetic but has a lot more vowels (around 17), that is also a language that is usually much harder to learn to speak as an adult (but it's not so bad if you just want to read. And maybe that is why everybody has this stereotype of the rude Parisian that never tries to understand a foreigner speaking French (though there might be more to the rudeness of Parisians).

Re: The Unsuitability of English (2015)

#12

Post by HelloMcFly » Sun, Feb 21, 2016, 9:46 PM UTC

Language is a tool to facilitate information exchange. It doesn't matter how "superior" one language is to another for any given reason, if a language provides limited opportunity to exchange information then it is not valuable. The incentives to learn English exist because the value of exchanging information in English is strong in the present-day sociopolitical context, and the malleability of the language played a large role in making that so as cultures and languages blended together in early day America. When translation becomes effortless and/or integrated into society in a near seamless fashion, the distinguishing value of information exchange in the spoken word will be diminished. I have no speculation on the long-term prospects of the written word.

This is a good time to say that I'm not an expert, just a speculating Internet guy who has read (and listened to) relevant information from time to time. If anyone finds this kind of conversation interesting I highly recommend checking out The Great Courses "Language A to Z" audiobook / audio lecture series. It's incredibly fascinating.

Re: The Unsuitability of English (2015)

#13

Post by Scarblac » Sun, Feb 21, 2016, 9:47 PM UTC

danieltillett wrote: post #5

The thing English has going for it (other than it is my native language) is it very easy to speak badly. With a minimal grasp of it you can get across what you are trying to say. I do agree about the insanity of English's spelling. Spelling reform is one of my lost causes that I think could be fixed by technology [1]. 1. http://www.cutspel.com

"There exists today a universal language that is spoken and understood almost everywhere: it is Broken English."

https://msuweb.montclair.edu/~kowalskil/casimir.html

Re: The Unsuitability of English (2015)

#14

Post by jes5199 » Sun, Feb 21, 2016, 9:49 PM UTC

danieltillett wrote: post #7

dasil003 wrote: post #4

This immediately reminds me of the lamentations around "Worse is Better" and how technically superior languages and standards tend not to win in the marketplace. Why hasn't Esperanto caught on? Because no one speaks it, and the ones who do don't have the influence to push it into the mainstream. English overtook French for the banal reason that more people saw more individual benefit of learning it over a long period…

We are going to have the technological equivalent of a Babel fish [1] soon, so we should expect that basically everyone will just learn their native language unless they like learning languages as a hobby. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_races_and_species_in_T...

But we don't actually know what having access to a babelfish does to language learning. It's easy to assume it would make learning a second language obsolete, but a counterproposal is that it makes the other language(s) more accessible to learn - for example, I've picked up enough Chinese characters to navigate a Chinese ecommerce site by using Google Translate until I started to recognize patterns myself

Re: The Unsuitability of English (2015)

#15

Post by ApplaudPumice » Sun, Feb 21, 2016, 9:50 PM UTC

rvense wrote: post #3

This is utter rubbish. Nobody learns to speak any language as an adult without an accent. That has nothing to do with phonological complexity, that's just how we're wired. Spanish may be easy to describe on a blackboard, but don't tell me that people who learn Spanish as a second language later on don't have accents. And languages don't succeed because of linguistics, they succeed because of politics. As someone whos…

In english words change meaning just by slightly changing accent.

Ship, sheep buy, by sheet, shit

Also english doesn't (compared to italian) is filled with exceptions.

Re: The Unsuitability of English (2015)

#16

Post by carlob » Sun, Feb 21, 2016, 9:50 PM UTC

danieltillett wrote: post #7

dasil003 wrote: post #4

This immediately reminds me of the lamentations around "Worse is Better" and how technically superior languages and standards tend not to win in the marketplace. Why hasn't Esperanto caught on? Because no one speaks it, and the ones who do don't have the influence to push it into the mainstream. English overtook French for the banal reason that more people saw more individual benefit of learning it over a long period…

We are going to have the technological equivalent of a Babel fish [1] soon, so we should expect that basically everyone will just learn their native language unless they like learning languages as a hobby. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_races_and_species_in_T...

I think that with global media we're much closer to having a generation where everybody at least understands English, than getting to the point where automatic translation is pleasant enough that you could read Anna Karenina translated by a machine and find it enjoyable.

But then again robots can make cars, yet some people still buy hand-made supercars. So probably translators will have to stick around to translate art.

Re: The Unsuitability of English (2015)

#17

Post by jes5199 » Sun, Feb 21, 2016, 9:51 PM UTC

vinay427 wrote: post #10

dasil003 wrote: post #4

This immediately reminds me of the lamentations around "Worse is Better" and how technically superior languages and standards tend not to win in the marketplace. Why hasn't Esperanto caught on? Because no one speaks it, and the ones who do don't have the influence to push it into the mainstream. English overtook French for the banal reason that more people saw more individual benefit of learning it over a long period…

From what I understand, spoken Chinese is not terribly difficult compared to something like English with its immense number of ambiguous and arcane grammatical structures. The most unique aspect is the use of tones, which at least often results in shorter words. Orthography is a different story, and could be aided by a phonetic script (see Finnish, Korean, or Cyrillic for instance).

yeah, Chinese is heavy on sounds and glyphs unfamiliar to Westerners, but is really light on syntax and grammer. So: high barrier to entry, but not that steep of a learning curve?

Re: The Unsuitability of English (2015)

#18

Post by moomin » Sun, Feb 21, 2016, 9:51 PM UTC

Mithaldu wrote: post #9

rvense wrote: post #3

This is utter rubbish. Nobody learns to speak any language as an adult without an accent. That has nothing to do with phonological complexity, that's just how we're wired. Spanish may be easy to describe on a blackboard, but don't tell me that people who learn Spanish as a second language later on don't have accents. And languages don't succeed because of linguistics, they succeed because of politics. As someone whos…

> Nobody learns to speak any language as an adult without an accent. Probably true, but not because of the vowels, but because of rhythms and consonants for languages other than english. Particularly vowels are divisive, and to take spanish as an example, consider this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5nGUb6DarQ Watch it with your mouse cursor off, and read the spanish bits, then sound them out, then check whe…

Well, strictly speaking everyone has an accent, including native speakers. But being able to pass for a native is perfectly possible; in fact my brother can do it in France, a country that is famous for spotting foreigners a mile off.

How did he do it? He spent several years there and really worked at it (he can also do a convincing range of British accents). His one regret is that he nailed it in a somewhat bucolic part of France, so the cool Parisiennes just assume he's a paysan.

Is it harder? Yes. Impossible? Far from it. Although I'll bet you elocution lessons would help (my brother hasn't done any).

Re: The Unsuitability of English (2015)

#19

Post by erdojo » Sun, Feb 21, 2016, 9:51 PM UTC

Trolls will say anything these days to get attention.

If reality is up, someone will claim down is better. If something is cool, someone will say it sucks.

I don't expect that English will become the global default language, but I do expect it will/is be a common backup.

Why? Trade agreements over the last 40 years have dramatically increased global business collaborations. American companies took the early initiative - not just in one market but many.

Smart foreigners knew early on that learning English was a way to make money, to work more easily with these companies who were investing mega bucks. English's pervasiveness had nothing to do with its suitability or superiority or any academic reasoning. It was a side effect.

Re: The Unsuitability of English (2015)

#20

Post by thinkpad20 » Sun, Feb 21, 2016, 9:52 PM UTC

danieltillett wrote: post #5

The thing English has going for it (other than it is my native language) is it very easy to speak badly. With a minimal grasp of it you can get across what you are trying to say. I do agree about the insanity of English's spelling. Spelling reform is one of my lost causes that I think could be fixed by technology [1]. 1. http://www.cutspel.com

I wonder if that's unique to English though. I'm sure there are some languages which are worse in that regard. I imagine it would be very difficult to understand poorly-pronounced Chinese for example. Japanese, which I speak pretty well, tends to use a lot of idioms, which means saying something by rote application of rules is less likely to produce a natural-sounding sentence than in English (as I judge anyway). English also lacks a gender system which might make it easier than some European languages.

That being said I'm sure there are languages which are better than English in terms of being able to be spoken "incorrectly".