RogueRook Diglot Senior Member Germany N/A Joined 6825 days ago 174 posts - 177 votes 6 sounds Speaks: German*, English Studies: Hungarian, Turkish
| Message 25 of 143 29 November 2006 at 4:00pm | IP Logged |
I agree with those who champion Turkish. Crystal clear conjugation and declension patterns, virtually no exceptions ( okay some Aorist verbs). A lot of the modal nuances we use a plethora of unpredictable particles and modal verbs for are expressed by seperate conjugations in Turkish. There is a lot of elegance to this high degree of logic and systemization.
Hungarian is much less logical and also far less agglutinating and way more analytical.It has many more particles and since it has relative clauses just like English (but unlike Turkish) one has to deal with a lot of confusing conjuctions initiating them. Said conjuctions have to agree in case with the object of the relative clause. Hungarian has irregular verbs, too.
Turkish is the winner. Complicated but logical. It is futile to compare any Indo-European or Uralic language to it in search for a more logical language.
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onebir Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7156 days ago 487 posts - 503 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin
| Message 26 of 143 29 November 2006 at 4:20pm | IP Logged |
Turkish - complicated but logical
Indonesian - simple and logical
Which I guess is why I've studied both...
Chinese isn't particularly logical in some ways - eg measure words, impossibility (in the absence of inflection) of telling which part of speech a word is (or can be used as).
The writing system has an internal logic, but this much is better for describing for describing why a character is the way it is than predicting how something will be written. And one of its main strategies - using an existing character to represent a sound, combining this with a new radical to yield a new, similar sounding, character, has unfortunately been outdated in around 70% of cases (i think) by changes in pronounciation. On top of that, half the time the radical doesn't even make that much sense...
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Karakorum Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6562 days ago 201 posts - 232 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written)* Studies: French, German
| Message 27 of 143 30 November 2006 at 7:51pm | IP Logged |
Classical Arabic is probably the most logical language I've studied. I like the Semitic derivation patterns and the exception free grammar. French is hands down the most illogical language I've ever been exposed to.
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GoodSirJava Diglot Newbie United States down-with-big-brothe Joined 6702 days ago 21 posts - 25 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Japanese, Czech
| Message 28 of 143 30 November 2006 at 8:57pm | IP Logged |
I think that all languages are logical. Also, all you people who think that French is confusing should take a good long look at Navajo.
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griggsy Newbie United States Joined 6561 days ago 4 posts - 5 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 29 of 143 02 December 2006 at 3:34pm | IP Logged |
All languages depend on people to make them logical, it seems to me.The Scandinavian ones are easy to learn. I don't see how anyone can learn Chinese and such because of tones and script that looks formidable.
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luckyboy1300 Diglot Newbie Philippines Joined 6560 days ago 17 posts - 18 votes Speaks: Tagalog*, English Studies: Spanish, French, Japanese
| Message 30 of 143 02 December 2006 at 10:58pm | IP Logged |
well for me the most logical must be english, since most of it's grammar rules can be inferred through logic. and yeah, i think the romance languages are illogical in some aspects (like as we all know, noun gender, in which a table or a car can be masculine or feminine, etc.)
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Martien Heptaglot Senior Member Netherlands martienvanwanrooij.n Joined 7098 days ago 134 posts - 148 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, German, Spanish, Turkish, Italian, French Studies: Portuguese, Serbo-Croatian, Latin, Swedish, Arabic (Written)
| Message 31 of 143 03 December 2006 at 10:03am | IP Logged |
I read that Quechua is quite logical, although it is a rather complex agglutinative language, even the verb "to be" seems to be regular
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Wildfire Diglot Newbie Russian Federation Joined 6636 days ago 14 posts - 21 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: French
| Message 32 of 143 04 December 2006 at 1:10pm | IP Logged |
lol I've recalled a Russian joke about illogical languages.
Englishman: Our language is very difficult, its spelling isn't logical at all; e.g. we say "ai", but write "eye".
Frenchman: Our tongue is even more complex. We say "Bordo", but write "Bordeaux".
Russian: Nonsense. We say "Could you, please, repeat what you've just said as I haven't understood you?" ("Bud'te dobry, povtorite pozhalujsta to, chto vy tol'ko chto skazali, a to ja vas ne ponial"), but write "What?" ("Che?")
:D
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I find English grammar (unlike Russian) logical. For example, you can make an exact translation (English to Russian) of the sentence "I [love] her" ("Ya [liubliu] yeyo"), but you can't translate "I like her" the same way (it's possible to say "Ona mne nravitsia", but there's no verb in Russian that means "to like" and is suitable for using in a sentence "subject (I) - predicate (like) - supplement (her)).
However, English spelling isn't logical.
Among Slavic languages the most logical one is probably Bulgarian. It has phonetical spelling; as for grammar, idk how logical it is but at least it's simple. ^_^
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