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Languages: Why we must save dying tongues (2014)

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Re: Languages: Why we must save dying tongues (2014)

#221

Post by danieltillett »

derriz wrote: post #217
danieltillett wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes because so much of novel human knowledge is tied to science and technology. Sure there are millions of novels, movies, poems, etc in thousands of different languages, but the range of ideas contained within them is rather limited.

You know that English only became a lingua franca in the 20th century? Before that, hardly anything of scientific significance was expressed or published in English? The seminal works in physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology were written in German, Latin, etc

Yes of course. But since 1945 the vast majority of papers have been written in English. I think people forget how much science has grown over the last 75 years to the point where everything written pre-1945 is a small minority of the scientific literature.

Re: Languages: Why we must save dying tongues (2014)

#222

Post by danieltillett »

mablap wrote: post #216
danieltillett wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't write a modern scientific paper in classical Greek or Latin these days as the vocabulary just doesn't exist in these languages. Sure scientific papers borrow terms from other languages, but today you can really only write most papers in English - the required terminology and concepts are missing from most languages. There really is a world of ideas only accessible in English. As you rightly point out there…

You can't write a modern scientific paper in classical Greek or Latin You're comparing modern day English with languages that have died more than 1500 years ago. Your arguments are incoherent and suggest a serious lack of judgment.

I think it would be more productive to read what I have actually written rather than personally attack me.

Re: Languages: Why we must save dying tongues (2014)

#223

Post by danieltillett »

m00n wrote: post #204
danieltillett wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't know what languages I speak (other than English of course), but this is irrelevant. It is not if I can find a concept that can not be expressed in English, but if anyone I speak to can come up with one. Do you know of any?

To translate scientific literature is the easiest part of translation. In fact, a lot of papers don't even get translated because everyone can read them after learning 100-200 words from the respective language. I can tell you that most of my time goes by reading scientific papers in languages that are not my mother tongue. The question discussed in this thread is _not_: Would it be beneficial to have all scientific…

Do you really think you can understand the concepts in a scientific paper knowing just 200 words of the language they are written in?

Re: Languages: Why we must save dying tongues (2014)

#224

Post by danieltillett »

m00n wrote: post #203
danieltillett wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have yet to come across any concept in any human language that can’t be expressed in English. Sure in some languages some concept can be expressed more subtly or poetically, but the concept can be expressed provided the assumed knowledge is present. It is the lack of assumed cultural knowledge that prevents these Japanese expressions from making sense in English, not that they can’t be expressed in English in princ…

Some people act so self-entitled, it hurts. Just because you seem to neither have appreciation for beauty nor humanities, doesn't free you from acknowledging it in others. Your premise seems to be that all languages are 'Turing-equivalent': Given enough time+patience you can "explain" the meaning of every expression in every other language. To be honest, a book that wastes my time "explaining" concepts from the langu…

Please stop assuming who I am and what I think and most especially claiming I said things I have not said.

Re: Languages: Why we must save dying tongues (2014)

#225

Post by danieltillett »

gumby wrote: post #210
danieltillett wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know of one? I have been looking for one for years and nobody has been able to provide me one. Sure some terms can’t be easily translated into English (especially those that rely on assumed cultural knowledge), but none that I have found can’t be expressed in English. Your Lisp - C analogy is not a bad one (I would have used assembler as the base rather than C). Sure there are some languages that are able to s…

> Do you know of one? Of course, I use them all the time. I'll give you a couple of silly, yet profound examples. In German and Marathi there are different words for the droppings (crap) of different animals. In fact in German there's a book that teaches the kids different words. Unlike the highly developed squeamishness of the English language around body functions, you might use one of these words to describe somet…

All of these are examples of my claim which is that all concepts in other languages can be expressed in English. Sure you might have a specfic term for the droppings of cows in some language (we have the same thing in English not that it matters), but this concept can be translated into English. It might not be as poetic, or it might not have quite the same emotional association, but it is translatable.

The concepts that can't be translated are all highly technical concepts from the cutting edge of science and technology. These often lack the vocabulary in other languages to enable them to be expressed in that language because the limited number of people that understand them only communicate to each other about them in English. There are a very large number of these scientific concepts hence there are a large number of concepts that can only be expressed in English.

Re: Languages: Why we must save dying tongues (2014)

#226

Post by danieltillett »

viraptor wrote: post #205
danieltillett wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know of one? I have been looking for one for years and nobody has been able to provide me one. Sure some terms can’t be easily translated into English (especially those that rely on assumed cultural knowledge), but none that I have found can’t be expressed in English. Your Lisp - C analogy is not a bad one (I would have used assembler as the base rather than C). Sure there are some languages that are able to s…

I believe "expressed" is closer to "there's a concept everybody is familiar with and there's a specific feeling associated with that one word/expression that everyone understands without providing the definition of the word". Kind of like schadenfreude is now known to English speakers as schadenfreude. You can explain what it means, but there's no direct equivalent that's as easy to bring up. From my own experience,…

Schadenfreude as a concept existed in English long before the word appeared in English and I am sure Polish speakers feel disturbed at times even if they don't have a precise word for it. Human emotions and feelings are universal hence why they can all be expressed in all languages.

The concepts that can't be expressed in all languages are those that are abstract and technical. A nice simple example of this is in some Australian Aboriginal languages there are no words for numbers of objects higher than 3 (they just become many). It really is impossible to translate the number 14 into these languages as the corresponding concept just doesn't exist.

Re: Languages: Why we must save dying tongues (2014)

#227

Post by mablap »

danieltillett wrote: post #222
mablap wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't write a modern scientific paper in classical Greek or Latin You're comparing modern day English with languages that have died more than 1500 years ago. Your arguments are incoherent and suggest a serious lack of judgment.

I think it would be more productive to read what I have actually written rather than personally attack me.

I have read what you wrote - that is what upset me. You come up with ridiculous, blatantly false, unfounded claims and don't back them up. I understand it might be annoying to be called out like this, but letting this ignorance pass without calling it out is akin to agreeing with it. I still think you're wrong. But I'm not on a witch hunt, if this is what concerns you.

Re: Languages: Why we must save dying tongues (2014)

#228

Post by mablap »

kazinator wrote: post #220
mablap wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because it takes more time does not mean the process is fundamentally different.

Right, it's fundamentally different for other reasons. For one thing, no two "installations" of a natural language are identical. The natural language learning process isn't like loading a program into a machine, but a "reverse engineering": forming a refined set of hypotheses about what the rules are, from examples. Thus after years of learning, still no two competent, even native speakers will agree about all the f…

You're right of course, and this is precisely why preserving languages is important. They are loaded with knowledge, and passing around this knowledge is time consuming, hard, or sometimes unfeasible if not enough speakers still live :)

Re: Languages: Why we must save dying tongues (2014)

#229

Post by khedoros »

jugbandjames wrote: post #184
khedoros wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So a young nomadic Mongolian girl and I (UK, middle-age, male, working in craft/retail) don't represent different cultures because we can both speak English? I think the person you responded to went too far in their argument. I would've said that speakers of the same language can have very different culture, but that (in your example) the English-speaking Mongolian girl wouldn't be part of the same culture that she…

>Language doesn't dictate patterns of thought, but it certainly shapes them. What you're talking about is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, and it is not certain at all. It's highly contested. Language may have an effect on some cognitive processes (again, contested) but definitely not all. However, language does reflect the cumulative experience of a culture, whether modern speakers are aware of that experience or not. He…

> What you're talking about is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, and it is not certain at all.

Yes, I am. The weak variation of the hypothesis. Coming from a computing background, it's difficult to convince myself that it's the case that the structure of a language (whether artificial or natural) doesn't encourage or discourage specific ways to represent meaning.

Re: Languages: Why we must save dying tongues (2014)

#230

Post by danieltillett »

mablap wrote: post #227
danieltillett wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it would be more productive to read what I have actually written rather than personally attack me.

I have read what you wrote - that is what upset me. You come up with ridiculous, blatantly false, unfounded claims and don't back them up. I understand it might be annoying to be called out like this, but letting this ignorance pass without calling it out is akin to agreeing with it. I still think you're wrong. But I'm not on a witch hunt, if this is what concerns you.

I can't imagine why you would get upset about something so abstract. Let's have a civilised discussion about if highly technical concepts can be translated into languages other than English, not make personal attacks.
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