31–40 of 57 posts
Once I read that German is the language of science. I'm sorry HN people for not remembering exactly where, but it easy to find a ton of results about this on Google: http://bit.ly/1CewLMB
My, what a collection of old chestnuts. * All his bugs are features: malleability and adaptability are English's strengths. * Most languages proliferate their vocabulary to express all the needed shades of meaning, English uses Norman/German vocab to distinguish formality just as Japanese uses wago/kanji compounds. * Basic English's claim to a limited vocabulary only makes sense if you ignore the many implicit phrasa…
My understanding of this point was that he sees this as both a strength and a weakness. It's a feature for expressiveness, and a bug for interoperability.
Once I read that German is the language of science. I'm sorry HN people for not remembering exactly where, but it easy to find a ton of results about this on Google: http://bit.ly/1CewLMB
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademio_Internacia_de_la_Scien...
My, what a collection of old chestnuts. * All his bugs are features: malleability and adaptability are English's strengths. * Most languages proliferate their vocabulary to express all the needed shades of meaning, English uses Norman/German vocab to distinguish formality just as Japanese uses wago/kanji compounds. * Basic English's claim to a limited vocabulary only makes sense if you ignore the many implicit phrasa…
On-topic, one thing I see missing when I read articles detracting from English is the benefits of English. Like not having genders for non-gendered things. This article talks of ambiguity in English, but in turn an English student doesn't have to figure out whether a pair of scissors is male or female.
I understand the issues with English and well Latin is a great scientific language BUT... English is the most spoken language in the world. There are 4 times as many second language speakers for each native English speakers. I totally get the issues listed. I am a native English speakers with horrible Spanish skills and 4 years of ancient Hebrew and Greek studies. English just works as a language for people and it is…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_num...
Every language has its own trade-offs. It's totally true that English has crazy spelling, a huge vocabulary, and lots of ambiguous syntax. But it uses a simple alphabet, and doesn't have a centralized body making decisions about its direction, which also gives it flexibility.
So yes, maybe Spanish or German would have been a better choice. But that implies that there was a "choice" to be made. There wasn't.
It's definitely true that this has resulted in native English speakers having advantages over other people. But unless we decide to use an artificial language that is native to no one, there will always be some native-speaking group with an advantage. Fortunately, the diversity and flexibility of English are such that even if someone has an accent or stilted syntax, they're still (largely) accepted, and are able to get their points across.
So it's a little ironic that one of the author's chief complaints is partly a result of scientists trying to turn English into a scientific language in the first place.
"I am not trying to argue that we should now give up English for international or scientific communication, or try to replace it with this or that other language (except possibly in a limited way, e.g., see below on Basic English). I am not proposing to use Interlingua, Esperanto, Latin, Italian, Chinese, Russian, or anything else: I am maybe saying that we should have used Interlingua, Esperanto, Latin, Italian, Chi…
Nor does he address the creation of dialects, an odd omission given how much time he dedicates to analyzing the ways different speakers of english dialects may misunderstand himself. Italian, for example, is primarily spoken in Italy and almost nowhere else except by expat Italians. If Italian were to explode as an international language, you can be sure there would be regional dialects pop up that may misunderstand…
> "there is no such English word as costlily;" There isn't? I've certainly used it as such.
A few times in conversations I've found myself trying to force "friendlily" (friendly as an adverb) out of my mouth. Aside from me tripping on my tongue trying to pronounce it, the people around me understood what I was saying just fine.