The Long Tail of the English Language • Hacker News Board

Re: The Long Tail of the English Language

#31

Post by madaxe_again » Thu, Jan 29, 2015, 5:21 PM UTC

CapitalistCartr wrote: post #5

I wonder how other languages compare to English. I know English is far from pure. "The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." -- James Nicoll

I like to shampoo my hair on my veranda in the jungle, then put on my cushy khaki pyjamas, while smoking a cheroot.

It's nirvana.

Re: The Long Tail of the English Language

#32

Post by laichzeit0 » Thu, Jan 29, 2015, 5:27 PM UTC

hellrich wrote: post #25

CapitalistCartr wrote: post #5

I wonder how other languages compare to English. I know English is far from pure. "The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." -- James Nicoll

What do you mean by "pure"? Lack of loanwoards? Lack of any linguistic changes (e.g., sound, meaning) for existing words? Lack of any innovation, i.e. no new words for new concepts/objects? You could try to find some of these things in languages spoken by rather isolated groups. Yet I don't think one should call such a language "pure", implying some kind or (moral) superiority.

Compared to Classical Latin for instance, I can sort of intuitively see how a "purity" comparison might make some sense. The grammar is more rich and precise, suffixes and prefixes attached to primitive roots are more regular in terms of meaning. Meaning is very decoupled from word order, which allows much richer possibilities for rhyme and prose. If the restored pronunciation is anything to go by, then the pronunciation is very regular. Then again I'm not a linguist.

I would say it's like arguing whether Python is more "pure" than Perl. They're both Turing complete, they express very similar concepts but I'd wager most people would concede that Python feels "purer".

Re: The Long Tail of the English Language

#33

Post by aristus » Thu, Jan 29, 2015, 5:48 PM UTC

madaxe_again wrote: post #29

Now I understand somewhat better why I often end up ceasing midway through discourse, as my colloquists often end up interjecting requesting definition of whatever neologism has just emanated from lexicon into conversation.... a random sampling of words that I have just today been asked to define either do not feature in this list at all, or are 90,000+ in terms of use. Brobdingnagian, deleterious, autodidact, loquac…

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.

3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.

5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

-- Orwell, "Politics and the English Language"

Re: The Long Tail of the English Language

#34

Post by delluminatus » Thu, Jan 29, 2015, 5:49 PM UTC

madaxe_again wrote: post #29

Now I understand somewhat better why I often end up ceasing midway through discourse, as my colloquists often end up interjecting requesting definition of whatever neologism has just emanated from lexicon into conversation.... a random sampling of words that I have just today been asked to define either do not feature in this list at all, or are 90,000+ in terms of use. Brobdingnagian, deleterious, autodidact, loquac…

Ah, another person who talks like a book. I also get that quite regularly. I have a bit of a personal rule, though, where I never use a more complicated word when a simpler one would work. After all, conversation is at heart a means of communication.

Although we might get a bit of a thrill from talking over people's heads, it doesn't really mean much of anything. And all it takes is one misuse -- for example, calling Brobdingnagian a neologism -- and we tear ourselves down more than we could hope to build ourselves up.

Re: The Long Tail of the English Language

#35

Post by qsymmachus » Thu, Jan 29, 2015, 5:50 PM UTC

madaxe_again wrote: post #29

Now I understand somewhat better why I often end up ceasing midway through discourse, as my colloquists often end up interjecting requesting definition of whatever neologism has just emanated from lexicon into conversation.... a random sampling of words that I have just today been asked to define either do not feature in this list at all, or are 90,000+ in terms of use. Brobdingnagian, deleterious, autodidact, loquac…

Poe's law is making it difficult to come up with an appropriate response to this.

Re: The Long Tail of the English Language

#36

Post by jloughry » Thu, Jan 29, 2015, 5:57 PM UTC

The most striking thing about Randall Munroe's "Up Goer Five" comic [1] was that the word "computer" is on the list, but "thousand" isn't.

    "(Explained using only the ten hundred words people use the most often)"

[1] http://www.xkcd.com/1133/

Re: The Long Tail of the English Language

#37

Post by yellowstuff » Thu, Jan 29, 2015, 6:01 PM UTC

I poked around in the neighborhood of "Tremulous" and saw a lot of obvious data errors: "ladiesand","manklnd", "confldentlal", "howdare", "monment". Other words don't seem particularly rare: "productively", "areolas", "combusts", "lazier".

Re: The Long Tail of the English Language

#38

Post by sib » Thu, Jan 29, 2015, 6:05 PM UTC

mode80 wrote: post #22

mrfusion wrote: post #9

So I'm wondering, if you just learned the 200 most popular words, you might get pretty far in learning a new language, no?

I took exactly this approach to learning passable German when I lived there a couple months. Unfortunately, most Germans would much rather practice their English on you than let you practice German on them. So I gave up and let them.

It's funny, I had exactly the same experience when I lived in Germany for six months and was studying German. I would just keep speaking German until they gave up :)

Re: The Long Tail of the English Language

#39

Post by madaxe_again » Thu, Jan 29, 2015, 6:10 PM UTC

delluminatus wrote: post #34

madaxe_again wrote: post #29

Now I understand somewhat better why I often end up ceasing midway through discourse, as my colloquists often end up interjecting requesting definition of whatever neologism has just emanated from lexicon into conversation.... a random sampling of words that I have just today been asked to define either do not feature in this list at all, or are 90,000+ in terms of use. Brobdingnagian, deleterious, autodidact, loquac…

Ah, another person who talks like a book. I also get that quite regularly. I have a bit of a personal rule, though, where I never use a more complicated word when a simpler one would work. After all, conversation is at heart a means of communication. Although we might get a bit of a thrill from talking over people's heads, it doesn't really mean much of anything. And all it takes is one misuse -- for example, calling…

Brobdingnagian is a neologism though. Swift quoined it scarcely two centuries ago, which is a ... Lilliputian (sorry)... amount of time in linguistic terms. I suppose it also depends on what you consider to be contemporaneous. I'm my case, this era, which opened with the enlightenment...

Agreed - never use a complicated word when a simple one will do - but you either have to turn verbose or lose nuance, as we're not talking synonyms, but words which have meanings distinct from some of their more commonplace counterparts.

No thrill, I just hate taking the colour out of language, and I like to share words far and wide, so they don't drift into oblivion, along with the thought and meaning behind them.

Re: The Long Tail of the English Language

#40

Post by CapitalistCartr » Thu, Jan 29, 2015, 6:12 PM UTC

hellrich wrote: post #25

CapitalistCartr wrote: post #5

I wonder how other languages compare to English. I know English is far from pure. "The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." -- James Nicoll

What do you mean by "pure"? Lack of loanwoards? Lack of any linguistic changes (e.g., sound, meaning) for existing words? Lack of any innovation, i.e. no new words for new concepts/objects? You could try to find some of these things in languages spoken by rather isolated groups. Yet I don't think one should call such a language "pure", implying some kind or (moral) superiority.

Language purity isn't related to moral superiority; it's a matter of the degree to which a language follows it's own rules and patterns, mostly how much of the vocabulary is native, i.e. how much of the vocabulary is "borrowed" from other languages. Since English is the result of a "forced merger" between a Germanic language (Old English) and a Latin one (Middle French) we are already screwed in that respect.