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English as the universal language

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minus273
Triglot
Senior Member
France
Joined 5766 days ago
288 posts - 346 votes 
Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French
Studies: Ancient Greek, Tibetan

 
 Message 145 of 206
15 November 2009 at 9:26pm | IP Logged 
Rikyu-san wrote:
minus273 wrote:
Rikyu-san wrote:
This makes me wonder. If evolution is progress, but languages seem to move in the other direction, then how on earth did Vedic Sanskrit enter the world stage thousands of years ago at a time where we were supposed to be much more "primitive" than we are today? Since Sanskrit has a complexity that is both beautiful and perfect, so systematic, mathematical it is called, from whence did it come?


Because there's some kind of circle. You see, when a language becomes "isolating", with quite immutable morphemes, the order of morphemes become important and eventually fixed. Then the morphemes, yore felt as independent words, become affixes, like in Turkish. Then, the affixes start to do nasty things on morpheme boundary, resulting to a perfect Greek/Sanskrit system. This system simplifies to an English or a Chinese, restarting the cycle.


That sounds interesting. Could you please elaborate on this point?


The verbal inflection. Taking the rGyalrong language (a language that I happen to be working on) as an example:

I - ŋa
I sleep - ŋa rmɐŋ

we two - ndʒo
we two sleep - ndʒo rmɐtʃ

we - jo
we sleep - jo rmɐj

thou - no
thou sleepest - no tərmɐn

you two - ndʒo
you two sleep - ndʒo tərmɐntʃ

y'all - ɲo
y'all sleep - ɲo tərmɐɲ

We have two sets of affixes here to the root rma ~ rmɐ "sleep". One is tə- = second person, one is the suffixes -ŋ -tʃ ... , which echos, save for "we two" the pronoun. It's not hard to imagine that they develop from independent pronouns losing their accents, which is what is happening now in French.

j'parle [ʃpaʁl] / j'aime
tu parles [ty̥paʁl] / t'aimes
il parle [ipaʁl] / il aime

If you want to emphasize/topicalize the subject pronoun, even if it's a fairly low degree of emphasis/topicity, you will have to say.
Moi j'parle français bien sûr.

In 600 years, it's quite probable that "moi" become the subject pronoun, and "j'parle" a part of the verbal paradigm.

Quote:
Please also answer this questions: What would it take for the world to develop a language like Sanskrit?


Nothing. Well, the evolution of languages is kinda natural. We can do something consciously, but not much.

Edited by minus273 on 15 November 2009 at 9:29pm
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Chung
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Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 146 of 206
15 November 2009 at 9:29pm | IP Logged 
Rikyu-san wrote:
Chung wrote:
Rikyu, I agree with the first part of your post, but I find the second part about evolution in language to be harder to see.

While some languages appear to "simplify" (or "decay" depending on your point of view), the path of development really is less clear-cut. Talking about "decay" in contemporary language reminds me of the age-old problem that somehow the ancient languages were "superior" to what is used today (perhaps it's a form of "linguistic ancestor worship"?)

Bulgarian and Macedonian have lost virtually the entire case system that was used in Proto-Slavonic. However the verbal conjugation patterns in Bulgarian and Macedonian have become more elaborate from their Proto-Slavonic antecedents, as they use constructions and moods that just aren't attested in the ancestral Slavonic language. In other words modern Bulgarian and Macedonian describe actions in more ways than what would be possible using the conjugation system that's been reconstructed for Proto-Slavonic. At the same time, no one talks about Bulgarian or Macedonian conjugation being "superior" to that of Proto-Slavonic.

According to linguists, it is probable that Old Chinese wasn't a tonal language but tones arose in order to maintain distinctions that were being lost when certain final consonants were disappearing in words. A linguist would not view this kind of development (i.e. the establishment of tones in Middle Chinese and their maintenance in Modern Chinese) as a form of "decay".


One of the problems with English is that the meaning of a sentence is becoming much more contextual. In order to understand a sentence, one need to refer to an ever sliding and unclear context. We can still communicate and understand each other, but English is no longer a language of precision. Of course, great ideas can be expressed and profound truths can be said in just a few words. But the ambiguity is harmful to our thinking. Unclear, imprecise and muddled thinking leads to problems.

Sanskrit was invented as a language of truth. It has unique characteristics that make it particularly suitable for this. English does not have the same power.

When languages change, should we not prefer changes that improved the languages?

I am looking forward to advance in my Chinese studies. The Chinese characters can be read at different levels - the ordinary person reads one level of meaning, the educated scholar, or someone with a special background, reads different levels of meaning. This means that the same text - written with the same characters - can be read in mulitple ways. I find this absolutely astonishing.

Only a language that makes clear, truthful and unambigous communication possible should be worthy of consideration as the world's primary lingua franca. Remember French was once the language of the diplomats and the international postal language exactly because of its precision, clarity and unambiguity.


It's interesting how you view English (at least the part of the meaning of its sentences being more reliant on context). It reminds me of how Chinese sentences work...
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minus273
Triglot
Senior Member
France
Joined 5766 days ago
288 posts - 346 votes 
Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French
Studies: Ancient Greek, Tibetan

 
 Message 147 of 206
15 November 2009 at 9:33pm | IP Logged 
And I believe that Rikyu-san has some misguided imaginations about Sanskrit. No, Sanskrit is not Lojban, not Ithkuil. A Sanskrit sentence isn't more clear than an English sentence. In fact, given the classical writers' preponderance on mammoth-sized compounds, it reads like dry postmodernist literary criticism essays.
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Rikyu-san
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Studies: German, French

 
 Message 148 of 206
15 November 2009 at 10:03pm | IP Logged 
I may have misguided ideas about both Sanskrit, Chinese and English, but one of the ironies of life is that I have no other choice at the moment but to communicate with people from other countries in English. I find that kind of funny in its own peculiar sort of Eddie Izzard-like way.

I am stubborn enough to keep my favourable view of Sanskrit, but my problem is that it will take me a heck of a long time to discover for my self to what extend I have been misguided. So wish me good luck! My goal is to be able to read and chant the classic texts and hopefully be able to experience an authentic interpretation of the text.

I am going to speak at a conference in London next month. And guess what, we are all going to communicate in English. Next year the conference may be held in Copenhagen... also in English. And that is OK.

But further down the road I hope to be able to have the choice whether I will be communicating in English or in another language. If I were ever to be invited to speak at a conference in China, I think it would be awesome if I could deliver my presentation in Mandarin - and perhaps play a little guqin piece, too.

Multi lingualism may in fact be the next logical or desirable step for all of us.
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minus273
Triglot
Senior Member
France
Joined 5766 days ago
288 posts - 346 votes 
Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French
Studies: Ancient Greek, Tibetan

 
 Message 149 of 206
15 November 2009 at 10:05pm | IP Logged 
Rikyu-san wrote:
But further down the road I hope to be able to have the choice whether I will be communicating in English or in another language. If I were ever to be invited to speak at a conference in China, I think it would be awesome if I could deliver my presentation in Mandarin - and perhaps play a little guqin piece, too.


Absolutely! The Chinese psychology terminology is cuuuute.
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egill
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United States
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Speaks: Mandarin, English*
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 Message 150 of 206
16 November 2009 at 12:25am | IP Logged 
Rikyu-san wrote:
Chung wrote:
Rikyu, I agree with the first part of your post, but I find the second part about evolution in language to be harder to see.

While some languages appear to "simplify" (or "decay" depending on your point of view), the path of development really is less clear-cut. Talking about "decay" in contemporary language reminds me of the age-old problem that somehow the ancient languages were "superior" to what is used today (perhaps it's a form of "linguistic ancestor worship"?)

Bulgarian and Macedonian have lost virtually the entire case system that was used in Proto-Slavonic. However the verbal conjugation patterns in Bulgarian and Macedonian have become more elaborate from their Proto-Slavonic antecedents, as they use constructions and moods that just aren't attested in the ancestral Slavonic language. In other words modern Bulgarian and Macedonian describe actions in more ways than what would be possible using the conjugation system that's been reconstructed for Proto-Slavonic. At the same time, no one talks about Bulgarian or Macedonian conjugation being "superior" to that of Proto-Slavonic.

According to linguists, it is probable that Old Chinese wasn't a tonal language but tones arose in order to maintain distinctions that were being lost when certain final consonants were disappearing in words. A linguist would not view this kind of development (i.e. the establishment of tones in Middle Chinese and their maintenance in Modern Chinese) as a form of "decay".


One of the problems with English is that the meaning of a sentence is becoming much more contextual. In order to understand a sentence, one need to refer to an ever sliding and unclear context. We can still communicate and understand each other, but English is no longer a language of precision. Of course, great ideas can be expressed and profound truths can be said in just a few words. But the ambiguity is harmful to our thinking. Unclear, imprecise and muddled thinking leads to problems.

Sanskrit was invented as a language of truth. It has unique characteristics that make it particularly suitable for this. English does not have the same power.

When languages change, should we not prefer changes that improved the languages?

I am looking forward to advance in my Chinese studies. The Chinese characters can be read at different levels - the ordinary person reads one level of meaning, the educated scholar, or someone with a special background, reads different levels of meaning. This means that the same text - written with the same characters - can be read in mulitple ways. I find this absolutely astonishing.

Only a language that makes clear, truthful and unambigous communication possible should be worthy of consideration as the world's primary lingua franca. Remember French was once the language of the diplomats and the international postal language exactly because of its precision, clarity and unambiguity.


Although I must say I agree with you on aesthetic grounds, that is, I personally find these languages you mention beautiful and intrinsically interesting, I must respectfully, but strongly disagree with the notion that they are, by sole virtue of their age, superior than modern languages which are in some vague way "decayed" or "corrupted".

For instance, I find it strange how you can disparage English for being ambiguous in one breath and then hold up Literary Chinese, which is just about as context sensitive as they come, as an example of "how things should be" in the very next.

That the same text can be read in different ways by people of varying levels of education, is further a sign of this ambiguity. Perhaps it is more common in Literary Chinese, but it is certainly not unique to it. An uneducated person reading Swift's A Modest Proposal in English may very well come to different conclusions than an educated one reading the same passage—written with the very same roman letters nonetheless.

Finally the very fact that we as a society, at least technologically, have advanced so much communicating through the medium of modern languages, says to me that whatever supposed ambiguity, imprecision, and muddledness of thought that may be present in them, can't have been all that bad!
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Rikyu-san
Diglot
Senior Member
Denmark
Joined 5529 days ago
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Speaks: Danish*, English
Studies: German, French

 
 Message 151 of 206
16 November 2009 at 12:06pm | IP Logged 
Egill, thank you for your post. I realize that what I have written does look like a contradiction, and as other posters have pointed this out (Chung, minus273), I have seen more clearly that this is the case. I haven't got a strong enough foundation in these language to argue my point any further (in terms of the ambiguity of the languages and which are more evolved/devolved than others) but will keep the question in mind as I move further along my language odyssey. So thank you for your counter arguments.
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Cainntear
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Scotland
linguafrankly.blogsp
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 Message 152 of 206
16 November 2009 at 3:56pm | IP Logged 
Rikyu-san wrote:
When languages change, should we not prefer changes that improved the languages?

We do.

When English lost its inflexions, it was to reduce redundancy and make the language easier and quicker for the user. On the other hand, Spanish started dropping its pronouns for the same reasons.

English is "better" because English pronouns are consistent across tenses, whereas Spanish has different endings in various tenses so it's "harder".

But on the other hand, Spanish is "better", because verb endings allow flexibility in word order that English can't support.

What is an improvement depends on what you personally value and if there was a universally "perfect" language, it would have evolved of its own accord and we'd all already speak it!


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