Most inefficient languages? (Specific Languages) Language Learning Forum

Most inefficient languages?
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Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages	( Topic Closed)

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audiolang
Diglot
Senior Member
Romania
Joined 6322 days ago
108 posts - 109 votes

2 sounds
Speaks: Romanian*, English

Message 17 of 69

19 September 2007 at 8:29am | IP Logged

The romance languages need to adapt a logical number system?
If you continue to generalize and make false assumptions you will surely be seen as an ignorant. The Romanian number system is perfectly logical, for English people at least.
Well ,languages are ineffective... for people who can't use it properly.
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Marc Frisch
Heptaglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 6667 days ago
1001 posts - 1169 votes

Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian
Studies: Persian, Tamil

Message 18 of 69

19 September 2007 at 8:41am | IP Logged

Well, not all French speakers say soixante-dix, quatre-vingt, and quatre-vingt-dix. In some places, you'll also hear septante, octante (or huitante), and nonante (for example in Switzerland and Belgium).
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lloydkirk
Diglot
Senior Member
United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 6415 days ago
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Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Russian

Message 19 of 69

19 September 2007 at 9:25am | IP Logged

Darobat wrote:

Just, no. There is no such thing as a language being better than another, more evolved or even simpler. All languages are different, and that's about it. People say Russian is a difficult language with six cases, a "different" alphabet and some difficult sounds, but there are millions of people who get along just fine in Russian every day.

Languages are not crafted specifically to ease the learning process for prospective students. To a native speaker of Mandarin, their written language is just that: how they write the language. Suggesting Mandarin adopt the Latin alphabet is about as logical as suggesting we start writing English in a modified version of the Japanese kana. It's not how we write our language, and likewise, the Latin alphabet is not how Mandarin is written. The literacy rate in China is nearly 95% (this various source to source but it's pretty high in all of them), so obviously there is nothing wrong with the way they write. People everywhere look at the "chicken scratches" and learn about everything from the weather to astrophysics every day, so why should they need to change? Their writing system successfully accomplishes the task of conveying meaning. Similarly, a child who grew up speaking a romance language with a "difficult number system" doesn't seem to have any difficulty using numbers, so why do they need to change? Again, language is not designed to be easy for a foreigner to learn; it's simply there as a means of communicating. All languages do this differently, but none are wrong, inefficient, or in any other way inferior.

You seem to be under the impression that some things are inherently easier to learn, but this is simply not true. I'm sure you've heard learners of English completely butcher the language, despite the fact that it is supposedly an easy language. It isn't. No language is easy or difficult per se, but rather all languages are different. We encounter difficulty in learning a language when it has features that are significantly different from those in languages we are familiar with. So even though we may find some things unnecessarily difficult, they are not less efficient.

And language does not only evolve to become simpler; it tends to get more complex just as often. Just look at the evolution of English’s pronunciation. At one point in the past, English had a more or less one-to-one correspondence between what is written and what is spoken, but that’s clearly no longer the case. And English’s grammar isn’t only getting “simpler” either. Some time back, English lost the second person plural pronoun, simplifying the language a bit. But guess what! It’s coming back in the form of “y’all”. Features are constantly being destroyed, simplifying the language, but new features are appearing all the time as well. A centaury ago (probably less), English didn’t have this weird word “gonna” that could be used to mean “going to” but only in specific contexts (i.e., “I’m gonna eat lunch” is fine, but *“I’m gonna the store” isn’t). There is no linear progression that languages follow bringing them from more complex to less complex.

So to answer your question, no language needs to change. All languages in their current state are able to accomplish the only task they have: to communicate. They may achieve this in radically different ways, but in the end they all do successfully accomplish their task. Why fix something that isn’t broken?

The literacy rate in China is nowhere near 95% and studies show that chinese kids take significantly longer to learn the written language than their european counterparts. No natural languages are perfect and yes english has it's complexities but it is a far simpler language today than it used to be. That fact cannot be denied.

fredomirek wrote:

Why simplify ANY language? If there are still people who use it in their daily lives efficiently and without any problems, I believe there's no need to reduce their grammar and so on. You sound like some anti-linguistic guys who don't like foreign languages and just would like to speak several without learning them. I, personally, like A LOT different scripts (Thai, Japanese), numerous tenses which don't exist in my native language (English) etc. And that's why I want to learn these languages! Because they're different, seem difficult to ME, are some kind of a challenge and because simplifying various languages would be like reducing many further aspects of my biggest hobby and passion. I really don't think that such dicussions make any sense (like this one, and the one about getting rid of all Chinese charactes in this language).

Have a nice day, and learn a few new words instead of discussing about simplyfing them :)

I have no problems with foreign scripts as long as they have an alphabet and not 3,000 children's drawings. I learn new words every day in foreign languages and my native one. May I suggest you do the same? Perhaps, you could learn to spell simplifying instead of "simplyfing", characters instead of "charactes" and discussions instead of "dicussions". I might also add that your passions and hobbies have little to do with this thread.

audiolang wrote:

How am I generalizing? I was critical of a quality that most romance languages possess. I'm not familiar with Romanian though I have heard that it has greatly distanced itself from it's sister romance languages. Perhaps, it's number system differs from french, Spanish and italian. Considering that logic is a subjective concept it is impossible for me to make a false assumption in this regard. In my case, I do indeed find it illogical. You say Romanian is logical for english people, yet you are neither an englishman nor know every english speaker. Who is generalizing now? In the future, you might try to avoid throwing around the word ignorant. It does have the tendency to backfire...
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apparition
Octoglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6652 days ago
600 posts - 667 votes

Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), French, Arabic (Iraqi), Portuguese, German, Italian, Spanish
Studies: Pashto

Message 20 of 69

19 September 2007 at 10:09am | IP Logged

Let's keep it civil, people!

I don't think lloydkirk is saying that languages with peculiarities are inherently BAD, just inefficient in areas.

Many things invented by humans are inefficient, whereas nature seems to weed out inefficiency ruthlessly. If I recall correctly, while Mao didn't succeed in latinizing Chinese, they did turn to the simplified system in order to increase literacy. I believe it worked, to some extent, as well.

In any case, let's keep the discussion philosophical, shall we?
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Hencke
Tetraglot
Moderator
Spain
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Studies: Mandarin
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Message 21 of 69

19 September 2007 at 10:32am | IP Logged

lloydkirk wrote:

justinwilliams wrote:

What do you mean by logical number system?

For starters creating a word for 70,80 and 90 instead of saying soixant-dix, quatre-vingt and quatre vingt dix. Reading/writing out dates like 3489 BC is annoying in the least.

If it is French you mean to pick on why don't you say so. Now you generalised to all romance languages, most of which have none of those peculiarities and are just as "logical" on this point as English.

Finnish is a good candidate though if you seek complications in this department:

Let's take a simple number such as twenty eight = kaksi-kymmentä-kahdeksan (literally two-tens-eight, though not hyphenated in real life, I just added them to highlight the different parts). So far so good.

Now comes the interesting part. Let's say you want to say "on the 28th day of the month". Now, there are no separate words for "on the" and "-th", you expressed these with case endings instead. But what is really weird is you have to put the endings for "on the" and "-th" on each of the parts, ending up with.

kahdentena-kymmenentenä-kahdeksantena päivänä,
or, as in real life, with no hyphens:
kahdentenakymmenentenäkahdeksantena päivänä = on the 28th day

A whopping fourteen syllables, where English gets by with five "on the twenty eighth"

The same principle applies, at least in theory, even for larger numbers, say 8.789: kahdeksantenatuhantenaseitsemäntenäsadantenakahdeksantenak ymmenentenäyhdeksäntenä **

Beat that for complication ;o).

** That space is not meant to be there. This web interface just seems to think it's necessary and sticks it in.

Edited by Hencke on 19 September 2007 at 10:39am
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burntgorilla
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 6446 days ago
202 posts - 206 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Danish

Message 22 of 69

19 September 2007 at 10:40am | IP Logged

lloydkirk wrote:

Neither Spanish nor Italian have the same counting system as French. Portuguese doesn't either.
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joan.carles
Bilingual Pentaglot
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 6335 days ago
332 posts - 342 votes

Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan*, French, English^C1, English^C2, Mandarin
Studies: Hungarian, Russian, Georgian

Message 23 of 69

19 September 2007 at 11:18am | IP Logged

lloydkirk wrote:

Perhaps, it's number system differs from french, Spanish and italian.

It has already been said by Burntgorilla, I'll add Catalan and Rumantsch, but based on the assumptions you lloydkirk make on such already well known languages, I would recommend first to know these languages more thoroughly before saying that they should be modified or simplified. If you don't like languages that use childish scripts you have a very easy solution, just don't learn them instead of saying that they should be changed.

To me, an inefficient language would be one that made communication difficult to its speakers, or that acquiring the language by its learners (and with learners I mean the kids that grow immersed in these languages, ie, the natural users of these languages) proved to be an impossible or extremely difficult task compared to the rest of languages. Languages were not made for foreign speakers. If foreigners don't like this or that feature of a language, that's not a native speakers' problem to put it clearly.

Edited by joan.carles on 19 September 2007 at 11:19am
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reltuk
Groupie
United States
Joined 6818 days ago
75 posts - 110 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, French

Message 24 of 69

19 September 2007 at 12:37pm | IP Logged

lloydkirk wrote:

Your argument is implicitly rooted in metrics that are shaded by your experience and your personal values. You have constructed arbitrary utility functions and set them up as the pragmatic optimization goals of a language. If you want to argue this line, which is, by its nature, highly controversial, you should set about doing it in a more explicit and honest way. You will need to lay down your premises, which it is likely many people will disagree with, and then you can lay down the logical conclusions of those premises. When many people decide to reject your premises, don't be surprised: if they look obvious to you, it's because you're trapped in your own world view and are looking at the issue a bit myopically.

lloydkirk wrote:

I am at a loss to see how this contributes to the conversation. There is no need to attack someone's spelling in this venue, as it has absolutely no bearing on the veracity of their claims. Might I suggest that you actually address what people say, in the future, as opposed to focusing on how they say it. Unless their meaning is unclear, there should be no need to bring their command of the rhetorical, grammatical, lexicographical or orthographic devices of English into question. Given your seeming bias for communicative pragmatism in language use, this precept should align nicely with your stated priorities.

Thanks!

Edited by reltuk on 19 September 2007 at 1:03pm

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