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John McWhorter - The Language Hoax | ||
Tags: Linguistics | Book | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion | ( Topic Closed) |  |
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5764 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 33 of 69 11 June 2014 at 6:17pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I could, but I'd rather not. It reminds me of a Swedish friend who told me he memorized German nouns by imagining them with genitalia. Also, freshly toasted bread is a marvel. It's nice and soft and crispy and you can put things like cheese and peppers on it. And, it's an adventure, because we didn't use to own a toaster, so toasting bread was something for staying at friends' places overnight, for vacations at my grandma's place. Something special. But, yes, to come back to my point, while it may be true that I think of gendered nouns with a slight bias, all of those nouns have an actual meaning in actual real life contexts which to me seems to be much more important. And given the existence of words with three genders, chosen depending on dialect of the speaker or even the conversation partner (I'll copy your choice of article for Joghurt), and synonyms with two or three different genders I don't think that the imaginary genitalia of those words actually determine my world, even though they probably play a role in shaping it. Just as my *choice* of using them does. (If you use 'die Studierenden' frequently enough many people stop thinking about how wrong that sounds and that it should be 'die Studenten'. If you say 'die Studenten und Studentinnen' you don't get the same effect.) Edited by Bao on 11 June 2014 at 6:21pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Stolan Senior Member United States Joined 4030 days ago 274 posts - 368 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Thai, Lowland Scots Studies: Arabic (classical), Cantonese | Message 34 of 69 11 June 2014 at 6:21pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I didn't mean that Vietnamese is identical to Indonesian, but that they have more in common in their overall "telegraphic" quality as John McWhorter described Chinese. The grammar does not make people inferior, they are born speaking whatever language their parents spoke. Languages in that Sprachbund tend to heavily rely on pragmatics and discourse unlike outright stating some of the information which we do take for granted. Again, it has nothing to do with the fact they are analytical/isolating. I am not an expert on either of those languages but is it not so that non-native speakers of English tend to understand the grammar of the language with far more detail than native speaker? That they tend to use more constructions that are slowly dying out in English as well such as certain reflexive verbs. Okay, I admit I don't talk much about language learning, I am partial to discussing linguistic features as a whole. That COF guy reminds me too much of myself. I admit that, but he seems to have complaints similar to mine except flipped around. For example: he seems to hate the Chinese based on what I am looking at right now. He also thinks English is a pidgin. That it's not the direct ancestor of Old English too. Dear lord this must be like that whole horshoe theory that the further you go to one side the more you become like the other. Edited by Stolan on 11 June 2014 at 6:28pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5530 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 35 of 69 11 June 2014 at 7:25pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Just a friendly reminder: Calling other HTLAL users names is not acceptable. Please address their arguments, and refrain from insulting them personally. This is clearly explained in the forum rules.
As a handy rule of thumb, HTLAL is not a good forum for discussing whether certain languages are superior to others. If you actually speak two languages at a competent level—in the approximate neighborhood of C1, let's say—you might find that people would enjoy a nuanced comparison of two languages based on personal experience. But if you've only studied the typology of a language, or looked at interlinear translations in linguistic papers, then you risk a lot of rolled eyes if you start making authoritative pronouncements about the relative merit of different languages. Basically, HTLAL is full of people who can write, and write well, in some of the languages they study, and who have devoted hundreds or thousands of hours to them. If you start claiming that Japanese doesn't count, or that Vietnamese is inferior in some way, remember that at least some of your audience is perfectly capable of writing actual academic essays in those languages, and have in some cases spent thousands of hours speaking them with native speakers. Until you've spent a long time marinating in a language, it can be hard to see how certain linguistic interact with others, and how apparent holes can be filled in surprising ways. Typology and interlinear translations can be misleading if you haven't spent enough time observing the language in the wild. 13 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Luso Hexaglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6059 days ago 819 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, French, EnglishC2, GermanB1, Italian, Spanish Studies: Sanskrit, Arabic (classical) | Message 36 of 69 11 June 2014 at 10:51pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
And it's even more insulting to the native speakers of those languages. 10 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Stolan Senior Member United States Joined 4030 days ago 274 posts - 368 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Thai, Lowland Scots Studies: Arabic (classical), Cantonese | Message 37 of 69 12 June 2014 at 1:21am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Which is what the native English speaker faces frequently. All the horrible comments everywhere most notably on its lack of inflection. (The double standard is what gets to me, it's the double standards) I don't hate Vietnamese, It has been very innovative but I used it as an example of a certain type of sprachbund in Southeast Asia, in fact on the contrary, I tend to reserve harsher emotions to ones that are overly complicated and nightmarishly irregular. (Most conservative and ancient IE languages, and just a few NE Caucasian Languages are the only ones) Edited by Stolan on 12 June 2014 at 1:27am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Luso Hexaglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6059 days ago 819 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, French, EnglishC2, GermanB1, Italian, Spanish Studies: Sanskrit, Arabic (classical) | Message 38 of 69 12 June 2014 at 4:00am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Your mother language was not attacked here. Don't try to reverse things. EDIT: I also had something about the rest of your post, but I think it's not constructive anymore, so I suggest we leave it at that. Edited by Luso on 12 June 2014 at 4:35am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4907 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 39 of 69 12 June 2014 at 2:08pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Doesn't everybody do that? 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Duke100782 Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Philippines https://talktagalog.Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4486 days ago 172 posts - 240 votes Speaks: English*, Tagalog* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 40 of 69 12 June 2014 at 2:35pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Another man with his teacup too full. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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