The Unsuitability of English (2015) • Hacker News Board

Re: The Unsuitability of English (2015)

#41

Post by jonathankoren » Sun, Feb 21, 2016, 10:30 PM UTC

jes5199 wrote: post #17

vinay427 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

So many homophones and minimal distance tonal pairs! (Needless to say, puns and word play figure a lot into their humor.)

On the other hand, there's no conjugation, no gender, and no pluralizations. So there's that.

Re: The Unsuitability of English (2015)

#42

Post by ktRolster » Sun, Feb 21, 2016, 10:32 PM UTC

tokenadult wrote: post #30

This article from 23 November 2015 was followed up by a 3 December 2015 article by the same author (professor of linguistics Geoffrey Pullum) titled "English and Its Undeserved Good Luck," previously discussed on Hacker News.[1] The author is a renowned and very influential scholar of the English language, co-editor of the most authoritative grammar of the English language, the The Cambridge Grammar of the English La…

English is easier than many languages: it doesn't have gendered nouns or adjectives almost at all (thank goodness), it doesn't have noun declensions, it doesn't have many verb conjugations (hello Russian!). It's biggest pain is tricky spelling and a list of irregular verbs.

Re: The Unsuitability of English (2015)

#43

Post by jan_g » Sun, Feb 21, 2016, 10:33 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

    With a minimal grasp of it you can get across what you are trying to say.

Exactly this and in addition it's also relatively easy to understand other people speaking English. This is really a key strength of English language, i.e. low barrier to entry.

On the other hand, consider Danish language: similar grammar to English, also many almost same words, but one needs lots and lots of learning/practice to be able to speak to and understand other Danish speakers.

Re: The Unsuitability of English (2015)

#44

Post by danieltillett » Sun, Feb 21, 2016, 10:33 PM UTC

DrScump wrote: post #33

danieltillett wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

[1] should be: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_races_and_species_in_T... (general note: please use desktop rather than mobile-specific URLs wherever possible. In this case, the mobile fragment identifier gets mishandled on desktop browsers, going to the "Shaltanacs" section instead. The desktop URL with fragment identifier works on mobile and desktop alike.)

Interesting bug there for wiki. I just checked and the link is broken on mobile for the desktop version too.

Re: The Unsuitability of English (2015)

#45

Post by tankenmate » Sun, Feb 21, 2016, 10:34 PM UTC

atemerev wrote: post #36

English is bad, but not as bad as, say, French with its diphthongs and half letters silent. Or Hungarian with its 18 cases (lucky English speakers don't even know what a case is). Or Danish, which is totally and utterly unpronounceable. The best European language is, of course, Italian.

Actually modern English still has the remnants of declension (conjugation is to verb as declension is to noun); personal pronouns. I, me, mine; he, him, his; she, her, hers; it, it, its; we, us, ours; they, them, theirs.

You could argue that the genitive case (possessive) is also declension in English; i.e. 's, '.

Re: The Unsuitability of English (2015)

#46

Post by tankenmate » Sun, Feb 21, 2016, 10:37 PM UTC

ktRolster wrote: post #42

tokenadult wrote: post #30

This article from 23 November 2015 was followed up by a 3 December 2015 article by the same author (professor of linguistics Geoffrey Pullum) titled "English and Its Undeserved Good Luck," previously discussed on Hacker News.[1] The author is a renowned and very influential scholar of the English language, co-editor of the most authoritative grammar of the English language, the The Cambridge Grammar of the English La…

English is easier than many languages: it doesn't have gendered nouns or adjectives almost at all (thank goodness), it doesn't have noun declensions, it doesn't have many verb conjugations (hello Russian!). It's biggest pain is tricky spelling and a list of irregular verbs.

English still declines personal pronouns; I, me, mine; he, him, his; she, her, hers; it, it, its; we, us, ours; they, them, theirs.

Re: The Unsuitability of English (2015)

#47

Post by Spooky23 » Sun, Feb 21, 2016, 10:39 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 was on a conference call the other day with A gaggle people trying to fix a technical problem. We had a Brit, 4-5 accents/language competencies from India, a Chinese person, a heavily accented Vietnamese person, heavy Boston speaker, various NYC and "lunged idland" dialects and a Texan.

It was a nightmare, and we were separated by a common language. But somehow, we understood enough to get it done.

Re: The Unsuitability of English (2015)

#48

Post by meric » Sun, Feb 21, 2016, 10:41 PM UTC

tokenadult wrote: post #30

This article from 23 November 2015 was followed up by a 3 December 2015 article by the same author (professor of linguistics Geoffrey Pullum) titled "English and Its Undeserved Good Luck," previously discussed on Hacker News.[1] The author is a renowned and very influential scholar of the English language, co-editor of the most authoritative grammar of the English language, the The Cambridge Grammar of the English La…

I agree. I have Chinese parents, studied in Hong Kong until I was 9, and had Chinese classes every weekend until I was 18, and I can say my English is vastly more fluent than my Chinese in terms of writing, and only much more fluent in terms of speaking and listening to Mandarin. I've retained by fluent ability to listen to Cantonese and fluent enough to speak it, but I'd still say my English is better because I find it hard to crack jokes in Cantonese. I have heaps of advantages in learning Chinese and it is very hard for me.

It would be easier if I still lived there, of course.

Re: The Unsuitability of English (2015)

#49

Post by danieltillett » Sun, Feb 21, 2016, 10:42 PM UTC

jes5199 wrote: post #14

danieltillett wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is true, but given human nature it unlikely that people will both to go to the effort of learning a second or third language once there is an easier approach.

Re: The Unsuitability of English (2015)

#50

Post by mirimir » Sun, Feb 21, 2016, 10:43 PM UTC

jes5199 wrote: post #14

danieltillett wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In Firefox, the Perapera plugin is far easier.