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Why Navajo is one of the most difficult languages (2023)

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Re: Why Navajo is one of the most difficult languages (2023)

#21

Post by ViktorRay »

loufe wrote: post #15

"Most hopeful of all: while the number of Navajo speakers may be going down, the number of tribe members is increasing, rising from 300,000 in 2020 to over 390,000 in 2021" I'm sure they meant 2000...

No you are the one who is incorrect in this situation.

The article references a nytimes article for this data.

There was a surge in enrollment in the tribe during the pandemic due to the way aid benefits were set up.

(Of course to officially enroll in a tribe you have to prove you are a member of that tribe)

Re: Why Navajo is one of the most difficult languages (2023)

#22

Post by torstenvl »

cool_dude85 wrote: post #3

[flagged]

Agreed. Standard American English has, conservatively, 12 vowels—[a] [æ] [e] [i] [ɛ] [ɪ] [o] [ɑ] [u] [ʊ] [ʌ] [ə]— plus a couple diphthongs.

If they are using AI, it's not a good one. ChatGPT says: "English has about 14 to 20 vowel sounds, depending on the dialect. Standard American English typically has 14 distinct vowel sounds, while Received Pronunciation (RP) in British English has around 20. This variation occurs because different dialects have different vowel inventories."

Re: Why Navajo is one of the most difficult languages (2023)

#23

Post by [deleted] »

lolinder wrote: post #17

> Navajo also has a complex phenology [sic], featuring sounds that don’t exist in many other languages. It counts 33 consonants, including affricates and fricatives, and 12 vowels. (By comparison, the English alphabet has 21 and 5, respectively). Someone else clarified this [0] but got flagged to death for being a bit too harsh, but I do think it's worth mentioning because this is used mistakenly as a prominent examp…

[deleted]

Re: Why Navajo is one of the most difficult languages (2023)

#24

Post by ViktorRay »

lolinder wrote: post #17

> Navajo also has a complex phenology [sic], featuring sounds that don’t exist in many other languages. It counts 33 consonants, including affricates and fricatives, and 12 vowels. (By comparison, the English alphabet has 21 and 5, respectively). Someone else clarified this [0] but got flagged to death for being a bit too harsh, but I do think it's worth mentioning because this is used mistakenly as a prominent examp…

Excellent comment.

English is hard to learn also because the alphabet doesn’t convey this complexity. In other languages one can easily tell the precise pronunciation of a word just from how it was written because the alphabet of those languages contain all the consonants and vowels. This isn’t the case with English.

Sometimes I wonder about how unfortunate perhaps it may be that a language like English became the “default one” for the world. The language is so sloppy with accents and different pronunciations that people can use tiny differences to “other” people based on social status, geography, and so on.

Re: Why Navajo is one of the most difficult languages (2023)

#25

Post by brettp »

So many things wrong in this article it makes me doubt the rest of the (undeniably interesting) content.

- English does not have 5 vowels; depending on the variety that you speak and counting diphthongs it has about 20

- "phenology"?

- tonal languages, while challenging to learn for someone who doesn't speak one natively, are not that uncommon, and 4 tones (assuming they're counting correctly) isn't that many. Mandarin has 4. Cantonese has (depending on whom you ask) up to 9. There are American languages with 10-20

- English has 24 consonants by most counts (confusing the Latin alphabet with English phonology again), but there are African languages with famously many, many more than that

- "like Spanish, Navajo is a verb-centric language in which syntax centres on actions" - I'm not sure what that even means. Spanish, like Italian, is a pro-drop language which means you can drop the redundant pronoun if you want because the verb inflection tells you everything you need to know. Navajo is (depending again on who you ask) an agglutinative/fusional/polysynthetic language which, while weird to English speakers, is not that unusual (e.g. Turkish, Finnish)

Re: Why Navajo is one of the most difficult languages (2023)

#26

Post by shiroiushi »

ViktorRay wrote: post #24
lolinder wrote: post #17

> Navajo also has a complex phenology [sic], featuring sounds that don’t exist in many other languages. It counts 33 consonants, including affricates and fricatives, and 12 vowels. (By comparison, the English alphabet has 21 and 5, respectively). Someone else clarified this [0] but got flagged to death for being a bit too harsh, but I do think it's worth mentioning because this is used mistakenly as a prominent examp…

Excellent comment. English is hard to learn also because the alphabet doesn’t convey this complexity. In other languages one can easily tell the precise pronunciation of a word just from how it was written because the alphabet of those languages contain all the consonants and vowels. This isn’t the case with English. Sometimes I wonder about how unfortunate perhaps it may be that a language like English became the “d…

>Sometimes I wonder about how unfortunate perhaps it may be that a language like English became the “default one” for the world. The language is so sloppy with accents and different pronunciations that people can use tiny differences to “other” people based on social status, geography, and so on.

It arguably became the default international language of trade because it's so sloppy, and more precisely because the language is a mish-mash of other languages, readily borrowing words from everywhere, and this is why it seems so sloppy. Some other, highly regular language like German would never have become the international language of trade because those languages aren't sloppy, and so aren't very good for non-native speakers to use daily, and aren't products of a culture that got rich from trade.

As for tiny differences in pronunciations being used to discriminate against people, try learning German and moving to Germany and see how the natives treat you. You'll always be an outsider there, because you're never going to learn the language or pronunciation to that level as an adult, and the culture is known to be pretty insular. English-speaking cultures are generally far more welcoming to immigrants and people who don't speak the language like a native, and it's pretty easy to understand "broken English", which again is part of why it works so well for trade.

Re: Why Navajo is one of the most difficult languages (2023)

#27

Post by gavindean90 »

shiroiushi wrote: post #26
ViktorRay wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excellent comment. English is hard to learn also because the alphabet doesn’t convey this complexity. In other languages one can easily tell the precise pronunciation of a word just from how it was written because the alphabet of those languages contain all the consonants and vowels. This isn’t the case with English. Sometimes I wonder about how unfortunate perhaps it may be that a language like English became the “d…

>Sometimes I wonder about how unfortunate perhaps it may be that a language like English became the “default one” for the world. The language is so sloppy with accents and different pronunciations that people can use tiny differences to “other” people based on social status, geography, and so on. It arguably became the default international language of trade because it's so sloppy, and more precisely because the lang…

I always thought that the reason English is used in international trade is that English-speaking countries have huge economic interests, both historically and currently, and have always flat-out refused to speak anything else.

Re: Why Navajo is one of the most difficult languages (2023)

#28

Post by g15jv2dp »

shiroiushi wrote: post #26
ViktorRay wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excellent comment. English is hard to learn also because the alphabet doesn’t convey this complexity. In other languages one can easily tell the precise pronunciation of a word just from how it was written because the alphabet of those languages contain all the consonants and vowels. This isn’t the case with English. Sometimes I wonder about how unfortunate perhaps it may be that a language like English became the “d…

>Sometimes I wonder about how unfortunate perhaps it may be that a language like English became the “default one” for the world. The language is so sloppy with accents and different pronunciations that people can use tiny differences to “other” people based on social status, geography, and so on. It arguably became the default international language of trade because it's so sloppy, and more precisely because the lang…

English becoming the "international" language for the west has nothing to do with English as a language, and everything to do with geopolitics and economics.

As for being treated as an outsider, I actually moved and lived to the US for close to a year. I made tons of effort to try and speak good English. On the face of it, the locals were very appreciative - French accent is so romantic, am I right? In reality, they made absolutely zero effort to understand me when my pronunciation differed slightly from the correct one, on countless occasions. And believe me, I tried.

Re: Why Navajo is one of the most difficult languages (2023)

#29

Post by yongjik »

shiroiushi wrote: post #26
ViktorRay wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excellent comment. English is hard to learn also because the alphabet doesn’t convey this complexity. In other languages one can easily tell the precise pronunciation of a word just from how it was written because the alphabet of those languages contain all the consonants and vowels. This isn’t the case with English. Sometimes I wonder about how unfortunate perhaps it may be that a language like English became the “d…

>Sometimes I wonder about how unfortunate perhaps it may be that a language like English became the “default one” for the world. The language is so sloppy with accents and different pronunciations that people can use tiny differences to “other” people based on social status, geography, and so on. It arguably became the default international language of trade because it's so sloppy, and more precisely because the lang…

I think you reversed cause and effect. English became the world's lingua franca not because of its inherent quality, but because the British Empire once conquered the world, and then the United States took up the baton.

Basically the same reason why Latin America speaks Spanish and Portuguese. It's not because the languages were "better" in some way, but because it was conquered by speakers of those languages.

And a side effect of being a global language is that you will have to get used to everybody from India to Australia to Kenya speak your language. English speakers are expected to meet widely different dialects even at the most formal business meetings.

Re: Why Navajo is one of the most difficult languages (2023)

#30

Post by tyre »

gavindean90 wrote: post #27
shiroiushi wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Sometimes I wonder about how unfortunate perhaps it may be that a language like English became the “default one” for the world. The language is so sloppy with accents and different pronunciations that people can use tiny differences to “other” people based on social status, geography, and so on. It arguably became the default international language of trade because it's so sloppy, and more precisely because the lang…

I always thought that the reason English is used in international trade is that English-speaking countries have huge economic interests, both historically and currently, and have always flat-out refused to speak anything else.

Yes.

Spanish isn’t widespread in the Central and South Americas because of the language, nor Portuguese in Brazil.

It’s not a coincidence that stores on the Champs Élysées speak Mandarin. Languages are used because they’re useful.

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