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The last language you would want to learn | ||
Tags: Usefulness | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6051 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes  2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 233 of 346 22 June 2010 at 2:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
..as well as the slight differences in shades of meaning between all those synonyms that makes it expressive. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| j0nas Triglot Groupie Norway Joined 5543 days ago 46 posts - 70 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, German | Message 234 of 346 22 June 2010 at 6:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It's not the language itself, it's the user.
Hamsun, Dostoyevsky and Mann can outexpress (is this a word) any English writing author any day on the week. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Tally Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Israel Joined 5609 days ago 135 posts - 176 votes Speaks: English*, Modern Hebrew* Studies: French | Message 235 of 346 22 June 2010 at 6:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
Of course it's the user, it's like that in every language, some people use it to it's maximum potential and some don't. But it means the language has that potential in the first place. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5346 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 236 of 346 22 June 2010 at 6:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
That's really not something one could ascertain. Besides, what distinguishes some of those authors are their ideas, not their "expressiveness". 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Akao aka FailArtist Senior Member United States Joined 5337 days ago 315 posts - 347 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Toki Pona | Message 237 of 346 22 June 2010 at 9:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I don't mind if someone likes English, we all have our tastes in language, I just despise
English. It was fairly good starting out, Old English was alright, I just don't like New English due to the massive amounts of irregular pronunciations. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| apatch3 Diglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6186 days ago 80 posts - 99 votes Speaks: Pashto, English* Studies: Japanese, FrenchA2 | Message 238 of 346 22 June 2010 at 10:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
I agree completely, "expressiveness" isn't something that can be measured empirically, people usually find different languages to be more "expressive" and most of the time the language in question is their mother tongue. What I do know, is that English has a vast vocabulary. I grew up speaking it and yet every now and then I'll come across a word that leaves me utterly perplexed. I also know that the internet and the majority of today's literature happens to be in English, if English was an inexpressive language I highly doubt it would have picked up the way it has. *Poses victoriously* it says A2 next to my name yaaaaay (my first post after giving the DELF A2 today) I know this is completely unrelated to the topic but it feels so good XD. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| John Smith Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6043 days ago 396 posts - 542 votes Speaks: English*, Czech*, Spanish Studies: German | Message 239 of 346 23 June 2010 at 2:19am | IP Logged | |||||
You think that because you don't know how to use the language to express yourself clearly. English word order is very flexible. We use the passive!!!!!!! The boy saw the police officer The police officer was seen by the boy ^^ That's why the passive is used so often. Other languages like Spanish don't use it as often. What about the difference between The boy did see the police officer The boy saw the police officer ^^ I would like to see how over European languages express the difference I did do it I did it 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| chucknorrisman Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5449 days ago 321 posts - 435 votes Speaks: Korean*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, Mandarin, Lithuanian, French | Message 240 of 346 23 June 2010 at 2:19am | IP Logged | |||||
I'm not against borrowing from other languages. I criticized excessive borrowing and careless borrowing. English excessively borrowed from these languages, and that didn't really benefit the language, it just needlessly increased the word roots to learn. People could have just coined new words with existing word roots, and only borrow when necessary. Also, it borrowed carelessly without amending the spellings and that's one of the factors that caused the spelling to be so irregular. This is one of the problems that Korean also faces; it has excessively and carelessly borrowed from Chinese, and for an effective vocabulary acquisition you have to learn about 1,800 Chinese characters (and you know how tough that is). Making words with native Korean words and borrowing from Chinese only when absolutely necessary would not have caused this problem. Edited by chucknorrisman on 23 June 2010 at 2:20am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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