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"Economical" vs "Unconomical" Languages! | ||
Tags: Meaning of words | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Hashimi Senior Member Oman Joined 6258 days ago 362 posts - 529 votes  Speaks: Arabic (Written)* Studies: English, Japanese | Message 1 of 9 09 November 2014 at 11:37pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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In many languages, people try to assign meanings to every possible short word before moving to longer ones. I call them "economical languages". For example, if you know the Japanese phonology, almost any monosyllable you can think of has a meaning in that language ("sen", "kan", "ron", "bun" etc.) In Arabic, the vast majority of words are based on three-letter roots. This is why the majority of every possible three-letter words in Arabic have meanings. Because of this (and also for other reasons), Arabic translations are shorter than the English ones, and typing in Arabic is much faster (another reason is the omittance of short vowels). But "uneconomical" languages always intrigued me. Instead of using long Latin-based words like "aberration", "convergence", "spontaneous", why didn't the English people use the short "unused" words? There are many three-letters and four-letter words which sound like English words but do not mean anything. Examples of short non-existent words: bason shig doot thort blass clemen wadge scroof voat wigger klop farf winnage They look like English words but, unfortunately, they are meaningless! These three-letter words also are easy to pronounce and write because they are monosyllables: ack zel nam tej mon lev Some of these words sounds like other real English words (e.g. "lev, live"), but there are many homonyms in English like "aire, heir", "beat, beet", "cereal, serial", etc. So why these words are not used? In English there are "cop", "cod", "cog", "con", "cob", but NOT "cof"! why? There are "dad", "dab", "dam", but NOT "das" or "dar"! why? There are "fry", "dry", "cry", but NOT "sry" or "gry"! why? 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4046 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 2 of 9 10 November 2014 at 12:09am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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doot, clemen, scroof, klop, farf, winnage, ack, zel and nam sound much more like Dutch to me :)
maybe with farf written varf and ack written aak ;) Edited by tristano on 10 November 2014 at 12:10am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cabaire Senior Member Germany Joined 5598 days ago 725 posts - 1352 votes | Message 3 of 9 10 November 2014 at 12:14am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
I think it is no more than half the possible combinations: There are 28 letters, that makes 21952 combinations. Lisân al-'Arab, a really comprehensive dictionary, counts 9393 roots. If you fill them with one of the sixs vowels KVKVKV, you get 21952*6*6*6=4741632. You can double the second or the third consonant (KVK(K)VK(K)V, so we get 19 millions. Most of of these words are not used, so why has arabic suffixes and prefixes and makes longer words? It could first use one of those empty words! Edited by Cabaire on 10 November 2014 at 12:15am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| sillygoose1 Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4635 days ago 566 posts - 814 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: German, Latin | Message 4 of 9 10 November 2014 at 1:41am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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"Wigger" actually does happen to be a real word in English.
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| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7204 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 5 of 9 10 November 2014 at 2:02am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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And isn't "cof" what the doctor says when he puts his finger in your behind?
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| Via Diva Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation last.fm/user/viadivaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4233 days ago 1109 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German, Italian, French, Swedish, Esperanto, Czech, Greek | Message 6 of 9 10 November 2014 at 2:11am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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I don't have an experience of dealing with "economical" languages, but yep, sometimes I get that impression. But the language is about what people say, and if they didn't use all the bunch of short words thousand years ago it's not likely things will change by adding new short words, but by developing existing ones regardless of their length.
That also has to do with the language's structure. Short words are usually pronouns, prepositions, articles and other "serving" things, it's not so comfortable to mingle them. Russian is even worse that way, hehe. For example, here a few linguists are discussing the ways of converting Russian words to monosyllable (pure nonsense to me). But I can agree that sometimes Russian sentences look annoyingly longer than English ones. Also, changing the language for economy isn't good for anyone. It's not like there's nothing to be done (French spelling as a predictable example), but in order to actually save the language, not to separate it from where it came from, such changes just doesn't happen. (IMHO, I'm not a linguist) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| vell Newbie United States Joined 3792 days ago 17 posts - 44 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian | Message 7 of 9 10 November 2014 at 3:50am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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I've never read anything about there being a preference for short words in language
processing, but even if a preference like this did exist, what could be done about it? Words aren't added to natural languages by going through all possible 1 phoneme combinations and then two, etc. Phonotactic constraints will play a role. There's also the issue of phonetic representation vs orthographic: "Cof" and "klop" are English words spelled "cough" and "clop". 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Hashimi Senior Member Oman Joined 6258 days ago 362 posts - 529 votes Speaks: Arabic (Written)* Studies: English, Japanese | Message 8 of 9 10 November 2014 at 8:29am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||
They sound Dutch to you because they are unused in English, but there are similar words in English. There is "foot", so why there is no "doot"? "jam", no "nam" or "gam" "fart", no "farf" or "dart" ***
This calculation is wrong. Notice that when I talked about Japanese, I said: "if you know the Japanese phonology". As for Arabic, if you know its rules and phonology, you will find that the possible three-letter root combinations is much less than that. For example, سزق, غقخ, لرح, قغك, سحع, حعب, and thousands of similar roots are not possible in Arabic because it violates its phonology.
1. Taj Al-Arus dictionary has more roots. It counts 11645 (more than 53% of your possible and impossible combinations). 2. More than half = the majority! 3. A more realistic estimate of the possible Arabic roots (phonetically) is around 15000, so these dictionaries contains more than 70% of the possible Arabic roots.
I am talking about the roots. As you see above, the vast majority of possible Arabic roots have meanings. For example, the pattern CaaCiC in Arabic gives the meaning of the doer (e.g. kaatib = writer, qaatil = killer), so خابر khaabir should mean the one who deliver the news, but actually this word is unused because there is another word that gives the same meaning (مخبر). However, the root itself has a meaning as you see.
No. Arabic is not an agglutinative language that make longer words using suffixes and prefixes. The -fixes in Arabic are to express different grammatical categories such as tense and voice, not to make new longer words as the case in English or other languages, and most of these -fixes are used for the inflection of nouns and the conjugation of verbs, so new words are no longer than the old ones. Arabic makes new words using derivation (الاشتقاق). For example, the new verb فرمت (to format e.g. a PC) is no longer than the old verbs دحرج (to roll) or زلزل (to quake). The new word for computer حاسوب is no longer than the old words قاموس (dictionary) or فانوس (lamp). As you see, most new words are the same in length as the old ones: haanuus (root. fns) an old noun. hasuub (root. hsb) a new noun. daHraja (root. dHrj) an old verb farmata (root. frmt) a new verb. To send a file via Bluetooth, there is a new verb بلتث. Four letters only vs nine in English! ***
Why not? People always like to use short words or abbreviations. In everyday speech, do you say influenza or flu? brassiere or bra? gasoline or gas? telephone or phone? examination or exam? typographical error or typo? ***
So why there are "too - two", "hair - hare", "hole - whole", "mail - male", "piece - peace"? Homonyms are found in all languages, and many (if not most) of the "unused" words in English do not sound like other used words. (e.g. "gry" or "doot"). 1 person has voted this message useful |
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