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Korean as a Concatenative, Stack-Oriented Language (2017)

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Re: Korean as a Concatenative, Stack-Oriented Language (2017)

#51

Post by creamyhorror »

famouswaffles wrote: post #35
okdood64 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English can be pretty much as efficient... It's up to the social context on how much you want to dress it up.

No it really can't. It's somewhat hard to explain without going hard into grammar but if someone tried complex communication in English, how you would in Korean, communication would break down very quickly. In Korean, Plural markers basically don't exist, Articles don't exist and possessive determiners are very few and only typically inserted when determining the meaning would be difficult otherwise. Strictly speakin…

Similar story in Japanese, which is also high-context and encodes less information explicitly. Listeners have to do more interpretation using context than in English, since sentences out of context can mean more things.

Re: Korean as a Concatenative, Stack-Oriented Language (2017)

#52

Post by wizofaus »

neom wrote: post #20
schwartzworld wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All these can be said as succinctly in English though. "one beer please" is enough to place an order, and the rest is just decorative. Does Korean not have more complex / ceremonial speech patterns?

How would would you say "where is the toilet?" more succinctly with the context up front in English? If someone came up to me in English and said "toilet where?" I'd presume they're either rude or English isn't their first language. There are formal and informal ways to say thing in Korean, for every day stuff it's often just a matter of changing the suffix, for some stuff it's a different word, for example 감사합니다 Kam…

"The toilet - where would I find it?"

But arguably putting the key information at the start of a sentence is not ideal as it gives the listener no time to context switch. If I ask a busy waiter in a restaurant "where would I find the toilet", they may well not fully hear the "where would... " but they'll know for sure what I've asked by the end of the request. Which is presumably why we often prefix statements with "excuse me, but..." and the like...I assume that must happen in Korean too.

Re: Korean as a Concatenative, Stack-Oriented Language (2017)

#53

Post by airstrike »

famouswaffles wrote: post #27
schwartzworld wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All these can be said as succinctly in English though. "one beer please" is enough to place an order, and the rest is just decorative. Does Korean not have more complex / ceremonial speech patterns?

Yeah....It gets a lot more sparse Strictly speaking 친구 있어요 ? means Friend Have ? And you would say exactly that for any of these English equivalents "Do they have friends ?" "Do you have a friend ?" "Do you have friends ?" "Does he have a friend ?" And so on. Plurality as a special marker doesn't really exist. Possessive and Article Determiners don't really exist either. Articles don't exist at all. Possessive marker…

> And you would say exactly that for any of these English equivalents

> "Do they have friends ?"

> "Do you have a friend ?"

> "Do you have friends ?"

> "Does he have a friend ?"

Seems like there's a lot of room for ambiguity, then

Re: Korean as a Concatenative, Stack-Oriented Language (2017)

#54

Post by yongjik »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #48
yongjik wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, and there's one really succinct way of expression that's not found in English: One can say something like 난 라면 - literally "I am ramen" (or something like that - it's a bit fuzzy because the "be" verb is omitted). It would be a ridiculous sentence by itself, but if your friend just asked "I'll have noodles, how about you?" then it's a perfectly fine response. Similarly you could even say 난 프랑스 ("I am France") if…

Isn't 난 just 나 (I) +‎ ㄴ ( topic marker )? So it seems like 난 라면 should be translated more or less as "As for me, ramen" and 난 프랑스 as "As for me, France".

You are absolutely correct - I oversimplified. On the other hand, nobody says "As for me, ramen" in English (it's not even shorter than "I'll have ramen"), so there's that.

Re: Korean as a Concatenative, Stack-Oriented Language (2017)

#57

Post by ssnistfajen »

boringuser2 wrote: post #47

Is there is a general obsession in every culture with fetishizing things perceived to be foreign or inscrutable, or is it just Western culture?

Yes, this occurs in every industrialized culture that is decently connected to the rest of the world. Anglophone cultures just do it in the most prominent and cringey way possible.

Re: Korean as a Concatenative, Stack-Oriented Language (2017)

#59

Post by yongjik »

hashmush wrote: post #44
yongjik wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Korean has a crapload of complex speech patterns (degree of politeness - that's sheer madness) but the nice(?) thing about it is that it all comes at the end. So you can start your sentence without even deciding if it's a statement or a question. E.g., 오늘 그 식당 열어요 Today that restaurant is open. 오늘 그 식당 열어요? Is that restaurant open today? 오늘 그 식당 열 것 같아요. I guess that restaurant is open today. 오늘 그 식당 열 것 같다고 들었어요. I…

> In fact, learning English as a native Korean speaker, one of the greatest difficulty was asking questions - you can't just start your sentence and make it a question later, you have to mentally pause, construct your question in your head, and then invert the first word! It took me years. This is quite interesting to hear, but I assume you mean that you always knew if you were going ask a question before you asked i…

In a sense, sure I guess my brain almost always knows whether I wanted a question or not - after all, native English speakers have no problem asking questions. However, it's hard to get used to it, when I've never done it before.

It's like a habit. Imagine you make coffee every morning - after a while it becomes second nature and you don't even think about what you're doing, you just get up and mindlessly start the coffee grinder. Once in a while your girlfriend visits, and she wants milk in the coffee, no problem, I'll pour some milk on her cup at the end.

And one day you have a different girlfriend, and she doesn't like coffee at all, so when she's visiting you have to make tea! So you just get up, start grinding the coffee, and half a minute later, "Oh damn, not again!" Even though making coffee and making tea take about the same effort, it just throws a wrench in your morning routine until you get used to it, which make take a long time.

> If not, there are plenty of ways to bail out of a statement midway through a sentence.

Sure you can also do it in English, but you can't do it as gloriously as in Korean, where you can start the same sentence and end up with:

한국어는 영어보다 더 효율적입니다. Korean is more efficient than English.

한국어는 영어보다 더 효율적...(read the room, oh no, bail out)...이라는 헛소리를 하는 사람이 다 있더라고요 하하하! => I found an idiot saying Korean is more efficient than English, ha ha!

Re: Korean as a Concatenative, Stack-Oriented Language (2017)

#60

Post by GauntletWizard »

wizofaus wrote: post #52
neom wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would would you say "where is the toilet?" more succinctly with the context up front in English? If someone came up to me in English and said "toilet where?" I'd presume they're either rude or English isn't their first language. There are formal and informal ways to say thing in Korean, for every day stuff it's often just a matter of changing the suffix, for some stuff it's a different word, for example 감사합니다 Kam…

"The toilet - where would I find it?" But arguably putting the key information at the start of a sentence is not ideal as it gives the listener no time to context switch. If I ask a busy waiter in a restaurant "where would I find the toilet", they may well not fully hear the "where would... " but they'll know for sure what I've asked by the end of the request. Which is presumably why we often prefix statements with "…

"The toilet, where is it?" is also grammatical in English, and with the right tone "The toilet is where?" gets the point across.
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