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Japanese explained to programmers

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Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#251

Post by pessimizer »

MrOwnPut wrote: post #249
ickoonite wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mother tongue is English. I studied Japanese to degree level so I feel at least moderately qualified to comment on it. English is grammatically fairly simple, having dispensed with much of the (redundant) complexity found in its European brethren (gender, case, almost all inflection). I would argue that that makes it fairly easy for beginners to develop a basic command of it. Its main problems are its unpredictabl…

English writing can have unpredictable spelling mostly due to imported foreign words (looking at you French!) or inclusion of Old English. imo that's better than having a whole other system like Katakana to import foreign words.

I feel like you just said that English has complicated spelling both because of its borrowed words and its native words. I think this could be shortened to "English has complicated spelling because of the spelling of its words." Or even "English has complicated spelling."

Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#252

Post by jacobmartin »

javier_e06 wrote: post #221

I once heard that Rails the aggregate object for Person is People. I went like, wow. In Spanish you say: "Baraja la baraja" .. shuffle the deck. Which makes sense (the object changes itself but the verb is the same as the noun" Is like Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

The rhetorical device here is called polyptoton.

It have noticed it usually sounds clunky in English, though it was a favorite of Latin and Greek authors. For instance, "Et lux perpetua luceat eis," is usually translated, "And may perpetual light shine upon them." But in Latin, the same root is in the subject and the verb. "And may perpetual light light them," is grammatical and (mostly) semantically equivalent in English. But it sounds clunky and looks like a typo :P

My uninformed supposition would be that it sounds clunky in English because English has less variation in word morphology, so the words are too similar when they have the same root.

Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#253

Post by MrOwnPut »

pessimizer wrote: post #251
MrOwnPut wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English writing can have unpredictable spelling mostly due to imported foreign words (looking at you French!) or inclusion of Old English. imo that's better than having a whole other system like Katakana to import foreign words.

I feel like you just said that English has complicated spelling both because of its borrowed words and its native words. I think this could be shortened to "English has complicated spelling because of the spelling of its words." Or even "English has complicated spelling."

GP said "unpredictable" spelling, not complex. And I said "Old English".

I was saying it's unpredictable if you include Old English spelling and words (which you don't in Simplified English).

The remaining unpredictable words are imported foreign words, usually French.

Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#254

Post by pessimizer »

arp242 wrote: post #235
atsuzaki wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learned both English and Japanese as third/fourth languages and English grammar does _not_ make sense compared to Asian languages that has comparatively very logical forms, usually with minimal modifiers that doesn't change the entire sentence structure. I frankly gave up with English grammar and just did whatever feels right.

> I frankly gave up with English grammar and just did whatever feels right. I think that's what most people do, including native speakers. Besides, there ain't no One True Correct™ English grammar in the first place. This is both what makes it a fun language but also vexing.

The best feature of English is that you can be pretty trash at it and make yourself understood. I've had great friends with terrible English.

Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#255

Post by kawera »

ickoonite wrote: post #36
capableweb wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Question: What are your mother tongue(s)? Similarly to people thinking less of the country they were born/raised, I tend to find that people always think their first language(s) are the less logical ones, maybe that fits in here as well. Some sort of bias it seems.

My mother tongue is English. I studied Japanese to degree level so I feel at least moderately qualified to comment on it. English is grammatically fairly simple, having dispensed with much of the (redundant) complexity found in its European brethren (gender, case, almost all inflection). I would argue that that makes it fairly easy for beginners to develop a basic command of it. Its main problems are its unpredictabl…

English phonological rules are generally pretty complex for non-natives.

Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#257

Post by pessimizer »

Adverblessly wrote: post #72
ezequiel-garzon wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what do get up/on/down/over have to do with each other? Thank you! It is heartening to hear this from a native speaker. Phrasal verbs are… a pain. “Burning up” pretty much is “burning down”? Oh, the list is long.

> “Burning up” pretty much is “burning down”? Except that if you are burning up, you have a fever, but if you are burning down, you might be planning on illegally collecting some insurance money :)

Houses that are burning up are also burning down, but people who are burning up are not also burning down.

Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#258

Post by discreteevent »

philsnow wrote: post #215
ickoonite wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mother tongue is English. I studied Japanese to degree level so I feel at least moderately qualified to comment on it. English is grammatically fairly simple, having dispensed with much of the (redundant) complexity found in its European brethren (gender, case, almost all inflection). I would argue that that makes it fairly easy for beginners to develop a basic command of it. Its main problems are its unpredictabl…

I've never heard the term "phrasal verb" but one similar case that doesn't use verbs pops up in my head all the time, "down {for,on,with}": - "I'm down for that", I am prepared and willing to do that - "I'm down on that", I don't like that practice - "I'm down with that", I do like that practice

That's American. English would be:

I'm up for that.

I'm not ok with that.

I'm ok with that.

Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#259

Post by stoppingin »

agalunar wrote: post #216
ickoonite wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mother tongue is English. I studied Japanese to degree level so I feel at least moderately qualified to comment on it. English is grammatically fairly simple, having dispensed with much of the (redundant) complexity found in its European brethren (gender, case, almost all inflection). I would argue that that makes it fairly easy for beginners to develop a basic command of it. Its main problems are its unpredictabl…

The English verb system can be devilishly difficult, my favorite example being this "conjugation" of watch : She must have had been being watched. = It must be the case that someone watched her for some duration of time prior to the current moment in the story (which is either a hypothetical story or narrative of the past).

That's a very fun example. However I'm a native English speaker, and I can't imagine actually writing a sentence like that. It's technically grammatically correct, but no one speaks like this. You would say "She must have been watched", alternatively "She had been watched".

Re: Japanese explained to programmers

#260

Post by mytailorisrich »

ickoonite wrote: post #77
makaren wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My native language is french and learned english at a young age. Saying that french spelling is nowhere near as bad as English is insane to me.

French is hard to encode but easy to decode. ai, aix, é, aient are all (more or less?) the same, so reading is fine, but working out which to write can be tough. French has bigger problems though. That keyboard for a start.

'ai' in Northern French is pronounced like è (and so tends to be considered the standard pronunciation). Southerners tend to pronounce everything like é.

Aix is also the name of several towns, in which case the 'x' is not silent.

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