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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)

#111

Post by junon »

ryukafalz wrote: post #75
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. Thank you, you've answered a question I've had about different languages for years as a monolingual English speaker! I've always…

Yep. Take German for example. Any subordinate clause puts all verbs at the end in reverse order (SOV; it used to be all clauses but as with many languages it started to shift toward SVO).

    I like cats, because cats like me.
translates to

    Ich mag Katzen, weil Katzen mich mögen.
which directly translates to

    I like cats, because cats me like.
This is a simple example but gets sufficiently complex as the sentence does. All of the verbs get pushed to the end, which as an English speaker means you have to mentally construct the sentence first and know which verbs you need to use prior to using them.

It gets further complicated because verbs also change the tense of the sentence, which ultimately dictates which articles to use (der/die/das/den/des/etc. - all meaning "the" - or ein/einen/eine/eines/etc. - all meaning "a").

And yes, native speaking Germans screw it up all the time, too. Just like English speakers mess up "a" and "an", "me and my friends", "your/you're", etc.

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

#112

Post by dayjaby »

junon wrote: post #111
ryukafalz wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Thank you, you've answered a question I've had about different languages for years as a monolingual English speaker! I've always…

Yep. Take German for example. Any subordinate clause puts all verbs at the end in reverse order (SOV; it used to be all clauses but as with many languages it started to shift toward SVO). I like cats, because cats like me. translates to Ich mag Katzen, weil Katzen mich mögen. which directly translates to I like cats, because cats me like. This is a simple example but gets sufficiently complex as the sentence does. Al…

What makes you think that native German speakers screw it up "all the time"? I'm German and I did not encounter any of these mistakes in years, despite being a grammar nazi.

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

#113

Post by IIAOPSW »

yongjik wrote: post #99
IIAOPSW wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hold up, if information is being encoded on tone, and tonal marks aren't part of the written language, then you've at least somewhat bait and switched us. Its not literally one identical phrase for 4 situations. Its several slightly different phrases that happen to not have their difference transcribed within this writing system. The information is still there!

It's not tone - at least not in the same sense Chinese is a tonal language. Standard Korean does not have tones. Maybe a better term would be intonation: it's similar to how the same English sentence could have multiple meanings, e.g., " I certainly did not see him" vs. "I certainly did not see him ." GP's example sentence would have just two different way to say it, either a plain statement or a question. In either…

The great irony here is that the one time I truly started to understand Chinese tones was when it was explained in terms of how English speakers already subconsciously use tones. I think I get what you mean. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Like English, Korean uses tones as a channel for metadata, not as a direct part of the encoding set. You can annotate parts of the sentence with tones, such as marking something a question or highlighting certain information as important, but you can't wholesale change whats being said.

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

#114

Post by IIAOPSW »

yawaramin wrote: post #107
DiscourseFan wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone can argue that any language is efficient based on some ability to express a (relatively) complex idea in (relatively) few words. In Sanskrit, for instance, one can express entire metaphyiscal/philosophical systems in a single word, using compounds, and in philosophical commentaries this is actually quite frequent (which is what makes reading philosophy in Sanskrit so difficult, because everything is so condens…

Yeah but there is a difference between efficiency of theoretical concepts and efficiency of expressing practical tasks.

Define practical in an objective way that doesn't assume we both already agree with the dominant cultural values of the present

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

#115

Post by coffeeling »

kaladin-jasnah wrote: post #108
ARandomerDude wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some languages don’t even use word order as the primary mechanism for forming sentences. Latin and Ancient Greek are two examples. They are “inflected” meaning you change the word to show how it functions in a sentence. Pronouns in English still function this way a little (for example he = subject, him = object).

Are you describing case systems/declension here?

Seems so.

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

#117

Post by IIAOPSW »

threwaway35346 wrote: post #96
hashmush wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Working with many IT workers from Indian origin, their English always frustrated me in that when they ask questions they won't say it in the interrogative form. It was always in the declarative. "We are deploying the code, right?" versus "Are we deploying the code?" "This is Boolean, correct?" versus "Is this Boolean?" Is this cultural, or are they afraid to ask questions? It's almost as if by stating the question in…

English actually has this one backwards. Just think about the concept of a question mark. You're already specifying at the end of your sentences "the preceding was a question". Some languages have a literal spoken grammatical word that functions just like a question mark at the end of a sentence. In Chinese this word is "ma" (specific to yes/no questions). Also in Chinese, the way to pose a more general question mirrors the answer you are trying to get. You just substitute the information you don't have with the question words who/what/when/where/why. Eg "The bathroom is where?" "The bathroom is out back". When you stop and think about it, its actually kind of strange for English to pull the question words to the front, completely changing its sentence grammar for this one particular use case. I can't think of any other context where you can pull the verb to the front, violating the usual SVO ordering. English is weird, they aren't being timid (I think), you're projecting an interpretation of how they phrase things which actually has a simple linguistic explanation.

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

#118

Post by coffeeling »

remram wrote: post #90

Off-topic, but what is it with this site ending lines in the middle of words? Like "c (newline) an" or "bu (newline) t". This is really hard to read!

Expanding on the other answer, Koreans play Tetris with their letters, such that almost every "character" is a syllable-length block. eg. the food 떡볶이 tteok'bokk'i is written with three. You can just break a word anywhere because of how the script works. That's not the case with English.

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

#119

Post by mbar84 »

yongjik wrote: post #24
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?

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…

Can you say, if this makes it more difficult to tell jokes?

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

#120

Post by coffeeling »

IIAOPSW wrote: post #113
yongjik wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not tone - at least not in the same sense Chinese is a tonal language. Standard Korean does not have tones. Maybe a better term would be intonation: it's similar to how the same English sentence could have multiple meanings, e.g., " I certainly did not see him" vs. "I certainly did not see him ." GP's example sentence would have just two different way to say it, either a plain statement or a question. In either…

The great irony here is that the one time I truly started to understand Chinese tones was when it was explained in terms of how English speakers already subconsciously use tones. I think I get what you mean. Correct me if I'm wrong. Like English, Korean uses tones as a channel for metadata, not as a direct part of the encoding set. You can annotate parts of the sentence with tones, such as marking something a questio…

Yes. Older forms of Korean were either tonal or had a pitch accent like Japanese or Swedish, and the original form of hangeul included accent marks. Some dialects of Korean still have a pitch accent.
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