Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The weirdest languages

idibon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 45 posts

Re: The weirdest languages

#31

Post by mtts »

lmm wrote: post #3

I think we should have expected that Mandarin is weird but Cantonese is very normal - in the same way that Japan has a weird primary writing system, but its secondary writing system (Hiragana) is one of the most regular in the world. In fact the same reasoning could apply to Hindi - it's (or was until recently) a secondary language in India, with English as the language of government. Do other countries with two lang…

If Afrikaans is a non-weird language that would be because it's a creole (indiginous African and Dutch).

Don't know about Hindi, but since it's used as a lingua franca of sorts that might also be the reason behind its normalness.

Re: The weirdest languages

#32

Post by mtts »

b6 wrote: post #2

This is great. I'm really happy to learn about WALS. I've been interested in constructing a practical standard language for humans for a long time. This kind of survey of what works seems essential.

Just use Indonesian. It's very non-weird, both according to the article and according to my own experience.

Re: The weirdest languages

#33

Post by mtts »

Osmium wrote: post #12
A1kmm wrote: post #6

There are a few potential problems which limit the significance of this: 1. There is not a universal definition of what defines a language and what is simply a dialect or a regional variation; this applies especially on large continents where there can be greater variation in language features between geographically remote locations, but no clean boundary at which you can say people speak one or the other language. 2…

I would call these more "caveats" than "problems" -- anything with a title like "weirdest languages" is going to be incredibly subjective, and there will be no doubt no shortage of people who disagree with specific choices, but as long as the reasoning is clear it can still be interesting/useful. > This could explain the result for Hindi - it is a standard language that 'averages' a large number of other Indian langu…

Urdu, I'm told by someone who speaks the language, is Hindi written in Arabic script.

Re: The weirdest languages

#34

Post by tokenadult »

Definitive comments about Esperanto:

http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/

I see this was posted overnight in my time zone. Several of the earlier comments correctly point out that empirically, a language that has been acquired by many second-language speakers (for example, English) must not strike too many people as unlearnably "weird." Many widely spoken languages have undergone a process that linguists call "koineization" (after the spread of Koine Greek as a common language of the ancient eastern Mediterranean and Near East)

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/4167665?uid=3739736&ui...

http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/linguistics/staff/kerswill/pkpubs...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koin%C3%A9_language

in which the language simplifies some grammatical (and possibly phonological) features as it is spoken by more second-language speakers for trade or for use as a language of national administration in a multilingual region.

The United States is largely an English-speaking country, but only about one-fourth of Americans have ancestors who spoke English before arrival in North America. (Indeed, only one of my four grandparents, all of whom were born in the United States, grew up in an English-speaking household.) In other words, General American English is a koine language of second-language learners of English, so it is not surprising that it is spreading all over the world.

P.S. Feel free to visit my user profile here on HN to see more about my background in linguistics and language learning and teaching.

AFTER EDIT: Cantonese versus Mandarin as "dialects" or "languages" were mentioned in other comments. Cantonese is at least as different from Modern Standard Chinese (Mandarin) as German is from English. How you might write the conversation

"Does he know how to speak Mandarin?

"No, he doesn't."

他會說普通話嗎？

他不會。

in Modern Standard Chinese characters contrasts with how you would write

"Does he know how to speak Cantonese?

"No, he doesn't."

佢識唔識講廣東話？

佢唔識。

in the Chinese characters used to write Cantonese. As will readily appear even to readers who don't know Chinese characters, many more words than "Mandarin" and "Cantonese" differ between those sentences in Chinese characters.

Re: The weirdest languages

#35

Post by OvidNaso »

bad_user wrote: post #28
vorg wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moldovan is almost the same as Romanian, but written with the Cyrillic instead of the Latin alphabet.

This ceased to be when Moldova declared its independence, in early nineties, reverting the official language to the Latin alphabet. Saying that Moldavian is a dialect of Romanian is sort of an overstatement, because besides a couple of regional words and phrases imported from Russian, it's the same as literary Romanian in writing and when spoken we have the same accent used in the region of Romania that borders Moldo…

I think this is the exactly what he meant with regards to language definition being arbitrary and often politicized.

Re: The weirdest languages

#36

Post by bad_user »

OvidNaso wrote: post #35
bad_user wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This ceased to be when Moldova declared its independence, in early nineties, reverting the official language to the Latin alphabet. Saying that Moldavian is a dialect of Romanian is sort of an overstatement, because besides a couple of regional words and phrases imported from Russian, it's the same as literary Romanian in writing and when spoken we have the same accent used in the region of Romania that borders Moldo…

I think this is the exactly what he meant with regards to language definition being arbitrary and often politicized.

Oh, I realized that. I was just giving context.

Re: The weirdest languages

#37

Post by mtdewcmu »

tokenadult wrote: post #34

Definitive comments about Esperanto: http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/ I see this was posted overnight in my time zone. Several of the earlier comments correctly point out that empirically, a language that has been acquired by many second-language speakers (for example, English) must not strike too many people as unlearnably "weird." Many widely spoken languages have undergone a process that linguists call "k…

I read something about how English was simplified as a result of the Viking invasion of England in the middle ages. It sounds like koineization. English might be weird, but it seems to be weird in a way that makes it highly exportable, like a successful product.

Re: The weirdest languages

#38

Post by Osmium »

mtts wrote: post #33
Osmium wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would call these more "caveats" than "problems" -- anything with a title like "weirdest languages" is going to be incredibly subjective, and there will be no doubt no shortage of people who disagree with specific choices, but as long as the reasoning is clear it can still be interesting/useful. > This could explain the result for Hindi - it is a standard language that 'averages' a large number of other Indian langu…

Urdu, I'm told by someone who speaks the language, is Hindi written in Arabic script.

Could well be true! I'm not qualified to speak about that. Looking it up, seems like I mis-spoke when I said Urdu was Dravidian. But there are a lot of Indian languages that are (e.g. Kannada), so the overall point stands that the "averaging" comment is a bit misleading.

Incidentally, your comment led me to this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindi–Urdu_controversy which you may find interesting.

Re: The weirdest languages

#39

Post by SeanLuke »

I don't know where to start on this page's absurd notion that Cantonese is a non-"weird" language, but that Mandarin is weird. This must be some academic nonsense based on sounds and disregarding other critical language features.

Let's put aside the fact that Cantonese has among the most complex pronunciation systems in the world, with seven tones and both long and short versions of a number of sounds. This is a language which has four different communication modes. Here's how weird Cantonese is.

1. Cantonese speakers speak in Cantonese.

2. Cantonese speakers read and write in a totally different language, namely Modern Chinese, which for all intents and purposes is Mandarin.

3. Cantonese speakers read out loud in Modern Chinese (Mandarin), but pronounce each of the characters with radically different Cantonese sounds.

4. For purposes of comic book dialogue, etc., it is possible to read and write some Cantonese using various co-opted Chinese characters. But you can't pronounce all of Cantonese this way: many words have no written form whatsoever. This has resulted in a bizarre pidgin written form. For example, one very common word ("di1" -- "a few") is actually usually written as "D" rather than as a character. Other characters are impossible to write in current fonts, or are also used in Modern Chinese but for different words than in Cantonese, and so you see Latin letters like "o" and "a" next to them to suggest a different meaning.

Mandarin weird my foot.

Re: The weirdest languages

#40

Post by squeed »

mtdewcmu wrote: post #37
tokenadult wrote: post #34

Definitive comments about Esperanto: http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/ I see this was posted overnight in my time zone. Several of the earlier comments correctly point out that empirically, a language that has been acquired by many second-language speakers (for example, English) must not strike too many people as unlearnably "weird." Many widely spoken languages have undergone a process that linguists call "k…

I read something about how English was simplified as a result of the Viking invasion of England in the middle ages. It sounds like koineization. English might be weird, but it seems to be weird in a way that makes it highly exportable, like a successful product.

That's right. Old English has grammatical gender and noun cases (like modern German). Modern English retains case only for pronouns.

They were lost when the Danes invaded. The language was simplified to a mutually-understandable subset.

Post reply on HN