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The Unsuitability of English (2015)

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Re: The Unsuitability of English (2015)

#161

Post by kuschku »

shrewduser wrote: post #129

is this even an argument against english? i can't really find the point he harps on about chinese and japanese for a bit (both objectively worse at being a lingua franca in so many ways) and then talks about spelling and pronunciation which i think misses the point entirely as these can be easily fixed with a modified simple english. what language in widespread use is objectively better than english?

> what language in widespread use is objectively better than english?

For example, a good language should use lots of composita — you’d only know a small number of words, and be able to easily explain more complex words – each word is a description of its meaning.

You’d also want to have a way to use complex grammar, but be understandable.

English has nothing like these.

Re: The Unsuitability of English (2015)

#162

Post by Swizec »

danieltillett wrote: post #140
Swizec wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an established theory that language shapes your thoughts. If you only know one language, then you are confined to a single way of thinking. Another interesting phenomena is that you are more logical in a 2nd or 3rd language than you are in your mother tongue, where you are more emotional. This can be a useful superpower.

I have a personal hobby of trying to find one of these thoughts that only can be thought of in one language and not another and I have yet to find one. All modern languages seem to be able to be used to express all human thoughts that can be expressed with any language.

In english it is very common to say that you are a "mommy" or "daddy" of your pet. It sounds normal and acceptable.

In Slovenian it sounds like you're a mental patient who thinks they gave birth to a dog. So most people switch to English to express said sentiment since we imported it from US television.

Even though we have a direct translation for the word "mommy", all the submeanings do not directly translate. So we sometimes use them as separate different words.

Re: The Unsuitability of English (2015)

#163

Post by muddyrivers »

crazygringo wrote: post #136

Yes, English has irregular spelling. And phrasal verbs, the whole "to/-ing" thing[1], and "th" is hard for some people to pronounce. On the other hand, it doesn't have nouns that need to be remembered as masculine or feminine. Or a hundred+ unique regular verb conjugation endings. There are no subjunctive tenses (with one tiny exception). There are no tones. I could go on... Every language has its annoyances. And hon…

As a non-native speaker who started to regularly use English in my 20's, I find pronunciation is the hardest part. As mentioned in the article, "The fine distinctions of English vocalism are beyond many adult learners’ phonetic abilities, which is why some foreigners pronounce modal and model the same, or bird and bed the same, or seat and sit the same, and so on." Pronunciations in Spanish, Italian, Japanese, etc. are much easier to manage. Although most adult learners can never pronounce as good as native speakers, it is much closer in the latter cases.

I find another "undesirable feature" mentioned in the article, "absurdly large multilayer vocabulary", is quite nice in the sense that it helps learn other languages belonging to the same family, like German, French, Spanish, etc. For my untrained ears, English and German are more similar to each other than Mandarin (my native tongue) and many dialects in southern China.

Re: The Unsuitability of English (2015)

#164

Post by apricot »

deciplex wrote: post #141
crazygringo wrote: post #136

Yes, English has irregular spelling. And phrasal verbs, the whole "to/-ing" thing[1], and "th" is hard for some people to pronounce. On the other hand, it doesn't have nouns that need to be remembered as masculine or feminine. Or a hundred+ unique regular verb conjugation endings. There are no subjunctive tenses (with one tiny exception). There are no tones. I could go on... Every language has its annoyances. And hon…

Also cf "I like washing the dishes right after dinner" vs "I like to wash the dishes right after dinner."

And "I stopped smoking" vs. "I stopped to smoke".

Re: The Unsuitability of English (2015)

#165

Post by kuschku »

joolze wrote: post #84

This is absurd. First he complains about the fact that we use an alphabet. Does he even have experience with heiroglyphic languages like Chinese? Basically the Chinese dictionary is split into 200-something "families", so when you don't know what a word means, you get a dictionary, and you flip to a family, then you basically brute force your way through the family to find your word. Now he complains about the pronun…

> Now he complains about the pronunciation. Sorry, but that fucked up pronunciation is one of the main _strengths_ of English. English readily absorbs needed words from other languages. Some languages like French actively remove words from their language.

That pronunciation makes it hard to learn. Seriously, people always complain about gender of words being complex – english pronunciation and spelling is several times worse.

> The large vocabulary is undesirable? The large vocabulary, with extreme possible specificity, is what makes English so attractive for scientific application.

Wrong. Having a word for every topic is what makes english useful – but that doesn’t mean a large vocabulary.

If you build words piece by piece – say, "backyard-filled-with-children" (kindergarten) or "spirit-of-the-time" (Zeitgeist) or "joy-of-someone-else’s-pain" (Schadenfreude) they are easily understandable, people need a tiny vocabulary to understand even the most complex words or legal terms, and it’s easily writable, too.

> And complaining about grammar? English has one of the easiest grammars to learn and get started with, sure it will take a few decades to not make any mistakes, but for just getting going, it is remarkably easy. No genders (some languages have 5 or more genders for things, see czech), no conjugation.

LOL. Ever tried understanding all the different versions of time in English? Simple past, past progressive, present progressive, simple present, etc and your brain starts melting.

Re: The Unsuitability of English (2015)

#166

Post by vacri »

wolfgke wrote: post #60
danieltillett wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is because there is no official English.

At least the UN considers the British spelling as the official one: > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_languages_of_the_Unit...

British spelling is not the British accent. One estimate had the English accent changing about every 25 miles as you travel through Britain.

Have you seen Hot Fuzz? In it, the police visit a farmer with a strong West Country accent, and take an interpreter with them. All parties are speaking English in the scene, but the farmer's words are so strongly accented, the interpreter has to translate. That scene was based on a direct observation that the writers made while researching the film...

Re: The Unsuitability of English (2015)

#167

Post by piyush_soni »

On a side note, I've always had this question (Excuse me for the ignorance, English is my third language). I think most here would agree that there's just no rule in English on how a particular word would be pronounced (yes, there's a general layout, but the number of exceptions greatly outweigh them). So when a new word is added to the language, who decides how would it be pronounced, what its singular/plural form would be called and so on (no rules there as well)? Is it the one who added it, or some panel of 'experts' sitting at some University etc.? If it's the one who added it, does he/she give the list of all these in writing to the Oxford people (lest they might come up with their own conclusions)? The inconsistency in English baffles me.

Re: The Unsuitability of English (2015)

#168

Post by schoen »

singold wrote: post #131
tosseraccount wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most similar language to English, except for Frisian, is Dutch. Here's an admittedly imperfect graph showing this : https://alternativetransport.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/lex... . French, Spanish, Italian , Portugese and Romanians can often understand each other to a limited degree as all are modern mutations from Latin. English speakers might be a little surprised that,if they listen very carefully, can understand…

I have some English knowledge as a non native speaker, and dutch was like Chinese for me, until some said something similar to this. Not that I can speak or write anything but sometimes some isolated words make sense for me because of the English similarity

There are some somewhat systematic vowel correspondences -- easier for Dutch → German than for Dutch → English but maybe still interesting to know about. For example, as an English speaker who had studied German, written Dutch made a lot more sense for me when I learned that Dutch ui corresponds to German au (for example huis/Haus (Eng. house), uitgang/Ausgang (Eng. *outgoing)). Although so does ouw (bouw/Bau, bouwen/bauen, vrouw/Frau).

Re: The Unsuitability of English (2015)

#169

Post by username223 »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #154
beat wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English and Unix are both strong arguments that "good enough" is the best way to communicate, that being more rigid and formal and, well, consistent, is actually counterproductive.

English isn't elegant, but it is very expressive, with plenty of scope for nuance. But relatively rigid ("strongly typed"?) languages like Latin and ancient Greek were also very expressive, so I'm not sure that's a convincing argument. As for Unix - it's the Java of operating systems. I'd love to see the Haskell or the Lisp of operating systems, but we seem stuck around 1975 as far as OS research goes.

> As for Unix - it's the Java of operating systems.

What do you mean by this? IMHO Java's goal was ubiquitous mediocrity: a cross-platform VM for a language suitable for large teams of interchangeable workers. We had Lisp operating systems (and hardware) back in the day, and it didn't catch on.

Re: The Unsuitability of English (2015)

#170

Post by danieltillett »

Swizec wrote: post #162
danieltillett wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a personal hobby of trying to find one of these thoughts that only can be thought of in one language and not another and I have yet to find one. All modern languages seem to be able to be used to express all human thoughts that can be expressed with any language.

In english it is very common to say that you are a "mommy" or "daddy" of your pet. It sounds normal and acceptable. In Slovenian it sounds like you're a mental patient who thinks they gave birth to a dog. So most people switch to English to express said sentiment since we imported it from US television. Even though we have a direct translation for the word "mommy", all the submeanings do not directly translate. So we…

I have to say even in English you sound like you are unhinged if you say you are the mommy or daddy of a pet.

The concept here that is trying to be expressed is that you are the loving owner of the pet - loving like a parent is of a child. I am sure that this concept exists in Slovenian even if expressed using different words.

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