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Most logical languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Mikael84 Bilingual Pentaglot Groupie Peru Joined 5293 days ago 76 posts - 116 votes  Speaks: French*, Finnish*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Arabic (classical), German, Russian | Message 81 of 143 11 October 2010 at 7:08pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Concerning plurals in Arabic I wouldn't agree with you that they are all irregular, kind of like German there are certain identifiable schemes and once you have been learning the language for a certain time you can even guess them right a lot of the time, but there are many many exceptions to the "rules". I guess that's my own definition of illogical, seemingly arbitrary exceptions that don't have any functional use. On second thought I agree by the way that the verbs I mentioned are not irregular. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| crafedog Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5811 days ago 166 posts - 337 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Korean, Tok Pisin, French | Message 82 of 143 21 October 2010 at 3:17am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I would agree that there are times when Korean can be very logical. It's normally very simple to understand the most important parts of the sentence without knowing too much of the language and the word order doesn't take too long (in simple levels). The biggest problem though is how Korean can be too precise with it's endings/circumstances. A simple example is the various uses of '!' (like 는데요, 군요, 거 든요 and one or two I might've forgotten). This crosses the line from logical to picky and makes some parts of speaking Korean so precise that it's like a mental gymnastics (but makes reading Korean much less ambiguous than reading English). Also the repeated use of meanings but with different endings (I've seen so many endings for so, because) for me harms the logic of the language because it's unnecessary. Spanish can be very logical at times. English is sometimes very simple compared to some languages (verb endings, no genders) but it's too inconsistent. Spanish is more consistent than English but certainly not perfect (sometimes adjectives change and many verbs are reflexive but some aren't). It doesn't surprise me that people say Turkish is logical as it is technically a constructed language (I don't know the extent of how much was constructed) and was predominantly constructed by the ruler Ataturk less than a century ago hence the logical nature of it. Edited by crafedog on 21 October 2010 at 3:18am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| plaidchuck Diglot Groupie United States facebook.com/plaidchRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5298 days ago 71 posts - 93 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 83 of 143 21 October 2010 at 4:53pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Seems to me at the end of the day what is "logical" all depends on your native language and culture. Now of course we could agree on concrete "operational definitions" on what is logical for a language and then systematticly analyze each one, but from a subjective viewpoint what is considered logical will depend largely on the person.
Of course there are common complaints about each language that most people share, such as spelling/pronunciation/pronouns in English. Personally what gives me the most problems with Spanish are the different past tenses and also the more fluid word order at times. Edited by plaidchuck on 23 October 2010 at 2:58am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Lucas Pentaglot Groupie Switzerland Joined 5160 days ago 85 posts - 130 votes Speaks: French*, English, German, Italian, Russian Studies: Mandarin | Message 84 of 143 21 October 2010 at 5:07pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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We should ask an alien...we are all biased here!
PS: "Logicalness" is not only about morphology...did people claiming here that mandarin is logical ever try to write and read that language? :) 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| clumsy Octoglot Senior Member Poland lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5171 days ago 1116 posts - 1367 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Mandarin, Italian, Vietnamese Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swedish Studies: Danish, Dari, Kirundi | Message 85 of 143 23 October 2010 at 3:53pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Korean alphabet is said to be the most logical one, but the Korean language... well it's certainly easy to learn, not many exceptions, but it has a lot of endings, which I find fascinating, but I would not call it logical.
however it seems there is such thing like different between if and only if (iff). 가면 숲을 마실거야 if will go then will drink alcoholic drink. 가야 술을 마실겨야. only if go then will drink. Korean grammar is really interesting, I am not sure i I used everything correctly here, but there are so many interesting grammatical points in Korean. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| John Smith Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6035 days ago 396 posts - 542 votes Speaks: English*, Czech*, Spanish Studies: German | Message 86 of 143 23 October 2010 at 4:24pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
You cannot guess them. The only reason you are right sometimes is due to the laws of chance. If I flipped a coin and asked you to guess whether it had landed on heads or tails your answer would be right 50% (not sure what the exact odds are) of the time due to the laws of chance. NOT because you have worked out some scheme that allows you to correctly predict the outcome of a coin toss. When you get a German plural right it's the same thing. Even someone with no knowledge of German would be able to guess some correctly if you told him how to form plurals in German and then showed him some singular nouns. Edited by John Smith on 23 October 2010 at 4:27pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| GREGORG4000 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5516 days ago 307 posts - 479 votes Speaks: English*, Finnish Studies: Japanese, Korean, Amharic, French | Message 87 of 143 23 October 2010 at 4:44pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Umm, that's called an educated guess. If you're familiar with the plurals of many German words, you can make guesses about the plurals of other words. I don't know what your definition of "guess" is, since this seems to be exactly what he's doing, and at no point he said "I am making extremely accurate guesses". 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| chucknorrisman Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5441 days ago 321 posts - 435 votes Speaks: Korean*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, Mandarin, Lithuanian, French | Message 88 of 143 24 October 2010 at 5:00am | IP Logged | ||||||||
You are right - thanks for reminding me of those. Just wondering, for people who know both Japanese and Korean, how does Japanese compare to Korean in that aspect? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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