Why Arabic is Terrific • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Arabic is Terrific

#221

Post by adamzochowski » Mon, Aug 22, 2011, 1:34 PM UTC

peterbotond wrote: post #176

riffraff wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My knowledge of bantu languages is only what I read on wikipedia, so I am not qualified to answer, but it seems they orbitate around 20 :) As for cases: I am learning hungarian which is related to finnish and also has more than 20 cases. The problem, in my personal experience, is that learning such an agglutinative language is slightly harder than others because when you are learning you don't know all the suffixes a…

as a native hungarian speaker, let me wish you fun and many discoveries while learning this enormous grammer. hungarian is not related to finnish, rather to turkic languages. i am a native hungarian speaker, and i know hungarian grammar is logically closer to turkish than to finnish. the story how they became related is purely political, and references easily found on this subject and i do not intend to get into. in…

> hungarian is not related to finnish

"" The Uralic languages ( /jʊˈrælɨk/) (sometimes referred to as Uralian languages) constitute a language family of some three dozen languages spoken by approximately 25 million people. The healthiest Uralic languages in terms of the number of native speakers are Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, Mari and Udmurt. ""

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uralic_languages

Re: Why Arabic is Terrific

#222

Post by stan_rogers » Mon, Aug 22, 2011, 2:56 PM UTC

aclimatt wrote: post #85

cabalamat wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, English and French don't have a concept of "different characters for different places. Yes they do, at least the way handwriting is sometimes taught. For example, "s" in handwriting sometimes looks like a slash ("/") followed by a backwards "c".

I don't think you quite grasp the amount of variation there is in the Arabic alphabet relative to the Latin alphabet. Sure, there are few letters that look slightly different in cursive depending on how you write them, but they don't even compare to the fact that in Arabic, every single letter has a completely different form depending on whether it's written as an isolated, initial, middle, or final letter (four form…

Just a pedantic note: "cursive" merely means slanted. Italic text is cursive without being joined. The term for joined-up writing is "current" (from the French courant, meaning "running"), and is not always cursive (think of the girlish ball-and-stick upright style).

Re: Why Arabic is Terrific

#223

Post by bane » Mon, Aug 22, 2011, 3:11 PM UTC

szopa wrote: post #218

bane wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in the US as well. There are some isolated regional accents that are virtually unintelligible to people from other parts of the country. It's not perhaps quite as pronounced as in the British Isles, but it's definitely there. But everybody understands a midwestern accent (the kind used on national news broadcasts). For a while there was even a neutral American British accent used in major broadcasts and films...b…

That's sort of confusing. In a number of places I've read an explanation that what is described in the Wikipedia article as "Mid-Atlantic English" was in fact higher class New York English before WWII (one of its most characteristic features was a non-rhotic "r"). These sources also tend to use Franklin Delano Roosevelt as an example of this sort of accent. For example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_dialect#H…

It's sort of both.

You're right that it's a mostly defunct upper-class accent (see Kelsey Grammer for a modern example) taught at boarding schools.

But it was also specifically taught to thespians as a preferred accent for radio, television and film performance in the early part of the 20th century. Performers like Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn both performed in it even though it wasn't their regular accent.

In some stage acting schools it's still taught as a "neutral" accent for performance.

Re: Why Arabic is Terrific

#224

Post by idlewords » Mon, Aug 22, 2011, 4:33 PM UTC

donw wrote: post #189

Marginally on-topic, but I just looked at the tuition for the Monterey Institute. A summer program is $15k USD; a full semester is $16k USD. If you want to learn a language, and have a spare $15K and the time for intensive classes, you're far better off just booking a plane ticket, going to wherever it is, and hiring a private tutor. Let's say you wanted to learn Chinese. You can live very, very comfortably in Beijin…

I have no idea where you got those prices but they are not correct.

Re: Why Arabic is Terrific

#225

Post by peterbotond » Mon, Aug 22, 2011, 4:52 PM UTC

adamzochowski wrote: post #221

peterbotond wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as a native hungarian speaker, let me wish you fun and many discoveries while learning this enormous grammer. hungarian is not related to finnish, rather to turkic languages. i am a native hungarian speaker, and i know hungarian grammar is logically closer to turkish than to finnish. the story how they became related is purely political, and references easily found on this subject and i do not intend to get into. in…

> hungarian is not related to finnish "" The Uralic languages ( /jʊˈrælɨk/) (sometimes referred to as Uralian languages) constitute a language family of some three dozen languages spoken by approximately 25 million people. The healthiest Uralic languages in terms of the number of native speakers are Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, Mari and Udmurt. "" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uralic_languages

the referenced wiki article also mentions another point of view. the referenced article also does not mention the significant number of hungarian speakers in Canada.

i will not comment any further on this thread. my view is based on extensive research of turkish, finnish, hungarian, english, german, spanish, and russian grammers.

Re: Why Arabic is Terrific

#226

Post by w1ntermute » Mon, Aug 22, 2011, 10:11 PM UTC

angus77 wrote: post #178

w1ntermute wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No it's not. I studied Japanese as my fourth language for 1.5 years and went through pretty much exactly what the OP described. I've been studying Japanese as my fourth language for over 2 years, and I have to disagree with both you and the OP. If you didn't find Japanese to be very gramatically challenging or interesting, you unfortunately probably didn't get into any keigo, which contains grammar of a mindbogglin…

Keigo is obnoxiously complex, but the grammar itself follows regular patterns.

If you use Japanese in a realistic environment, you'll find that having broken plurals or a dual form is no more difficult than trying to shift between different levels of formality while in the middle of a business meeting that is already complicated by its content.

Re: Why Arabic is Terrific

#227

Post by w1ntermute » Mon, Aug 22, 2011, 10:32 PM UTC

mortenjorck wrote: post #184

blahedo wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a certain amount of misinformation in this post that I'd like to clear up: 1) In the 10th century, (Old) English and (Old) German were already somewhat divergent, and not really mutually intelligible, but closely related. 2) The same goes for Norman and French. While in the same language family, these were not quite the same language. 3) Have you read any Chaucer? I'm not sure I'd call Middle English "mostly…

Actually, isn't the concept of a kana-only character system how early, domestically-marketed microcomputers in Japan did in fact work? The only example I can think of is a home entertainment console, but the Nintendo Family Computer generally used kana with a few highly common kanji.

Yes, early computers in Japan used katakana only. They were half-width (normally they are written in a square box) so as to be compatible with the Latin alphabet. This is also how telegrams were sent, starting from when Japan began modernizing in 1868.

Re: Why Arabic is Terrific

#228

Post by idlewords » Tue, Aug 23, 2011, 2:03 AM UTC

idlewords wrote: post #224

donw wrote: post #189

Marginally on-topic, but I just looked at the tuition for the Monterey Institute. A summer program is $15k USD; a full semester is $16k USD. If you want to learn a language, and have a spare $15K and the time for intensive classes, you're far better off just booking a plane ticket, going to wherever it is, and hiring a private tutor. Let's say you wanted to learn Chinese. You can live very, very comfortably in Beijin…

I have no idea where you got those prices but they are not correct.

Heh, people can continue to downvote me but it won't change the fact that I paid about 3K for the SILP course.

Re: Why Arabic is Terrific

#229

Post by eru » Tue, Aug 23, 2011, 2:10 AM UTC

devijvers wrote: post #206

blahedo wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a certain amount of misinformation in this post that I'd like to clear up: 1) In the 10th century, (Old) English and (Old) German were already somewhat divergent, and not really mutually intelligible, but closely related. 2) The same goes for Norman and French. While in the same language family, these were not quite the same language. 3) Have you read any Chaucer? I'm not sure I'd call Middle English "mostly…

Be careful who you call a dictator. While Ataturk has been President of Turkey for 15 years (until his death in 1938) he encouraged a multi-party system. However, during his lifetime several parties were formed and again self-dissolved or dissolved after an uncovered assassination attempt on Ataturk. It's only in 1945 - after Ataturk's death - that the multi-party system in Turkey took off for real.

From what I can tell Ataturk was mostly a benevolent dictator.

(And like a good wine, he gets better with every passing year since his dead. When I was in Ankarka in 2008, they had pictures / flags of him on the high rise buildings covering five storeys.)

Re: Why Arabic is Terrific

#230

Post by eru » Tue, Aug 23, 2011, 2:19 AM UTC

chrisdone wrote: post #138

cletus wrote: post #104

I'm a native English speaker. I studied a little French and speak (and can read/write) some German (with limited vocabulary). For the English speaker, German grammar is painful enough (3 genders, agreement of nouns and adjectives by case, number and article, separable verbs, etc) but, based on what reading I've done, German is still "Latin lite". A friend of mine (also native English speaker) lives in Taiwan and has…

Interesting post and interesting linked article. One part strikes me as especially noteworthy: “Lieberman, Michel, and colleagues expect that some 15 of the 98 modern irregular verbs they studied -- although likely none of these top 10 -- will regularize in the next 500 years.” Now, is this based on previous evolution of verbs? Because the past thousand years have had a certain feasibility of communication, locally,…

On the other hand, prescription has a far bigger reach today than even thirty years ago. Trivial example: When everything you write gets spell checked automatically, new orthography develops slower.

Also immediate communication can slow down a language, and homogenize it. Radio and TV certainly brought the German dialects closer together.

It depends on the patterns of communication. The internet allows lots of small groups to interact with each other all over the world. That has a different effect than the few to many pattern you get with traditional mass media.

You might enjoy http://verben.texttheater.net/Englisch and if you know German, you might enjoy http://verben.texttheater.net/ even more. On the German version they are doing stuff like inane, ane, or overwhelmed, underwhelmed, whelmed.