Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet • Hacker News Board

Re: Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet

#391

Post by krylon » Sat, Jul 28, 2018, 7:36 AM UTC

Gigablah wrote: post #386

matz1 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>China may very well become the largest economy in the world, and there is no way that Chinese, as a multi-toned, symbolic language, will ever become the Lingua franca, as it is near impossible for most adults to learn, in contrast to English [2]. Is this true? I would think that english is just as hard to for chinese speaker to learn. Isn't all language has the same level difficulty? Is the preceived difficulty is m…

FWIW Chinese (Mandarin) is my native language and I still found it harder to learn than English. But that’s because I consumed mainly English media and pop culture growing up.

> English media and pop culture

That has a distinct advantage, though - I practically learned English by osmosis. I had to look up words very often in the beginning, but it felt so effortless and natural. (Native German speaker) DVDs helped a lot, because for US and British movies, they usually contain two audio tracks, the German translation and the original.

Re: Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet

#392

Post by rwnspace » Sat, Jul 28, 2018, 7:51 AM UTC

kaybe wrote: post #325

yorwba wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> English has about 3 times the vocabulary compared to German. According to which method of counting? Wikipedia says [1] that "One most recent 2016 study shows that 20-year-old English native speakers recognize on average 42,000 lemmas, ranging from 27,100 for the lowest 5% of the population to 51,700 lemmas for the highest 5%." and "For native speakers of German average absolute vocabulary sizes range from 5,900 lem…

Hm, that was supposed to be the total count, not for single speakers. Checking for myself my information seems to have been wrong. As we say here, I take everything back and claim the opposite.. That will teach me not to check my facts I hope.

Hm, I also seem to remember that German has a thinner dictionary. I suspect that lemmas in German are difficult to count, as there are so many compound words. Apart from the joy of teasing fellow Britons for their stupidity, I don't see why an average German adult should recognise 40% more lemmas when the languages are so related.

Re: Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet

#393

Post by blattimwind » Sat, Jul 28, 2018, 7:54 AM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #373

matt-snider wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

German just has a real knack for clarity and simplicity because of this composibility. Some examples I like: - Satzbau = Syntax: I always found it hard to remember what syntax meant. The German word, being the combination of "sentence" and "construction" requires no memorization - Teilchen = Particle: In German, "part" + domunitive ending - Jahrhundert, Jahrzehnt = century, decade: literally "year" + "hundred"/"ten"…

The English etymology is more indirect, but essentially means the same thing, by way of Latin and Greek: c. 1600, from French syntaxe (16c.) and directly from Late Latin syntaxis, from Greek syntaxis "a putting together or in order, arrangement, a grammatical construction," from stem of syntassein "put in order," from syn- "together" (see syn-) + tassein "arrange" (see tactics). https://www.etymonline.com/word/syntax…

> The English etymology is more indirect, but essentially means the same thing, by way of Latin and Greek:

... meaning you can't understand many terms if you only know English, because they are actually french/latin/greek. "Cache" is actually an example of this.

Re: Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet

#394

Post by pyrale » Sat, Jul 28, 2018, 7:56 AM UTC

tbrock wrote: post #116

geff82 wrote: post #99

I love the English language. It is expressive, it is the language of great literature, and it is in no way „bullying“, no, it brings people all over the world together. There would be no way to talk to a Chinese for me (German) if he had only learned Japanese because Japan is the neighbour and if I had only learned French or Polish because those are our big neighbours. No, English brings us all together, it makes me…

It’s also the lingua franca of tech. There isn’t any way to say “Linux Kernel Networking Subsystem” or “8-Way associative cache” in French or any other language without severe lingual contortions.

> Linux Kernel Networking Subsystem

"module réseau du noyau Linux ?" https://www.irif.fr/~carton/Enseignement/Architecture/Cours/...

> 8-Way associative cache

"Cache 8-associatif" https://www.irif.fr/~carton/Enseignement/Architecture/Cours/...

Just because you don't hear about it doesn't mean much it doesn't exist. If only, because we have to be able to teach it efficiently to people with no mastery of the english language.

Re: Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet

#395

Post by emilfihlman » Sat, Jul 28, 2018, 7:59 AM UTC

geff82 wrote: post #99

I love the English language. It is expressive, it is the language of great literature, and it is in no way „bullying“, no, it brings people all over the world together. There would be no way to talk to a Chinese for me (German) if he had only learned Japanese because Japan is the neighbour and if I had only learned French or Polish because those are our big neighbours. No, English brings us all together, it makes me…

I love the Finnish language. It is expressive, it is the language of great literature, and it is in no way „bullying“, no, it brings people all over the world together. There would be no way to talk to a Chinese for me (Swede) if he had only learned Korean because Korea is the neighbour and if I had only learned German or France because those are our big neighbours. No, Finnish brings us all together, it makes me communicate with ordinary people without a translator anywhere on the planet. I do not care if everyone speaks Finnish, German, Hindi or Esperanto. But if Finnish has the noble power to bring people together, regardless of nation, religion or race, I applaud it, because this is just a wonderful use for this little language that was once only spoken on a medium sized country in the North. Let‘s appreciate Finnish, let us embrace it even a bit more, let us try to speak it better each day for a world of mutual understanding. Maybe Finnish can be a driver for peace, at least to a certain degree.

Re: Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet

#396

Post by pyrale » Sat, Jul 28, 2018, 8:01 AM UTC

tachyonbeam wrote: post #362

jcranmer wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Système de réseau de noyau Linux? Cache associatif de 8 sets? Those aren't severe linguistic contortions...

Your Google translation is no good. Sets is an English word, and it would be associative (feminine form). That being said, the reason I, as a French speaker working in tech/research, prefer to discuss tech in English, is because: 1. There is always new terminology being invented in conferences or bleeding edge R&D. There is no official translation for most of these terms. You could translate them, but most people wou…

> Sets is an English word

"There is no word for entrepreneur in french"

Seriously...

"collection of things," mid-15c., from Old French sette "sequence," variant of secte "religious community," from Medieval Latin secta "retinue," from Latin secta "a following"

Re: Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet

#397

Post by gaius » Sat, Jul 28, 2018, 8:02 AM UTC

nyolfen wrote: post #368

doc_gunthrop wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely it helps that English borrows heavily from the Romance languages, among others.

some people are so earnest to cast aside or denigrate their culture in a display of cosmopolitan/xenophilic signaling.

some people are so earnest to cast aside or denigrate their culture in a display of cosmopolitan/xenophilic signaling

I literally cannot even conceive of a French or Arabic or Chinese or any other language community in the world feeling guilt that maybe their language is too popular and spoken by too many people.

Re: Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet

#398

Post by gabordemooij » Sat, Jul 28, 2018, 8:04 AM UTC

hitekker wrote: post #216

gabordemooij wrote: post #98

Citrine ( https://citrine-lang.org/ I am the author) tried to change this with respect to coding (it is a programming language that allows everyone to code in their own language and translate between parties). However, it has been ignored, ridiculed and hated (even death threats). So it has failed and I realize that (I continue to finish it until 0.9 though, because I cant stop in the middle - I am a very neurotic pe…

Is English your first language?

No, I'm Dutch. Our language has been affected deeply by English. People even make a lot of spelling mistakes because of English. For instance, our government building has a spelling mistake in the sign of their main building, it reads: 'Hoofd Gebouw' but this is wrong in Dutch, because it must be 'Hoofdgebouw' (without the space, but in English you write it as 2 words instead of one).

People don't know a lot of Dutch equivalents for English words either, they use 'body text' instead of 'broodtekst' and 'database' instead of 'databank'.

Code bases are a complete nightmare because managers 'want English as the main language' but we lack the English words for lots of (financial) Dutch concepts.

A lot Dutch people think they are really good in English, but we really aren't (sometimes native English speakers beg us to not try and speak English but use Dutch instead so they at least understand what is being said given their limited knowledge of the Dutch language).

Our limited knowledge of English leads to a lot of confusing code as well (i.e. they use the word 'childs' instead of 'children' in code that deals with tree structures). Also a lot of database names and tables are full of 'poor English' (user_project instead of 'participant') -- maybe due to a limited vocabulary (trying to describe a word with multiple words etc). There are many more examples. These are just my experiences.

edit: Due to the fact that English is not my native language my statements may sometimes a bit more rude than I intent. Sorry for that.

edit: Tried to clarify text, add some nuance.

Re: Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet

#399

Post by tomsmeding » Sat, Jul 28, 2018, 8:06 AM UTC

emilfihlman wrote: post #395

geff82 wrote: post #99

I love the English language. It is expressive, it is the language of great literature, and it is in no way „bullying“, no, it brings people all over the world together. There would be no way to talk to a Chinese for me (German) if he had only learned Japanese because Japan is the neighbour and if I had only learned French or Polish because those are our big neighbours. No, English brings us all together, it makes me…

I love the Finnish language. It is expressive, it is the language of great literature, and it is in no way „bullying“, no, it brings people all over the world together. There would be no way to talk to a Chinese for me (Swede) if he had only learned Korean because Korea is the neighbour and if I had only learned German or France because those are our big neighbours. No, Finnish brings us all together, it makes me com…

English is in no way intrinsically special, but for some reason many people speak it nowadays. Not so for Finnish, even though it could very well be better suited to the purpose (I don't speak a word of Finnish myself). Most of the text you copied applies as well to Finnish as to English, but I doubt that "Finnish [...] makes me communicate with ordinary people without a translator anywhere on the planet." English also doesn't, but it comes a lot closer.

Re: Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet

#400

Post by elgenie » Sat, Jul 28, 2018, 8:09 AM UTC

jcranmer wrote: post #330

snowpanda wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is katakana?

The Japanese first adapted writing from Chinese; this adapted system is called kanji and is highly similar to, and often homographic with, Chinese hanzi. However, Japanese and Chinese have very different phonological structure: Chinese is mostly comprised of monosyllabic words, whereas Japanese has lots of polysyllabic words. This makes it more difficult to do phonetic transcription in Japanese kanji than in Chinese…

> There's a reason why there's a plethora of transcriptions of "مُحمّد‎" after all.

There's a plethora of transcriptions into (more) phonetic alphabets because there are a plethora of regionalized pronunciations [1]. And there are a plethora of pronunciations because Arabic uses an impure abjad [2]. Since the vowels are not always, exactly or uniformly specified in writing, unspecified behavior leads to varying results in each compiler.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_(name)#Transliteratio... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abjad#Impure_abjads