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Are some languages more complex? Now/Then | ||
Tags: Linguistics | Grammar | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4666 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes  Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 25 of 29 25 October 2013 at 3:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Spoken Czech is much less redundant than written Czech,
in diglossic languages, the Higher variant tends to be more redundant, while the Lower variant tends to be more simplified compare: Swiss German (L) vs High German (H), spoken Czech (L), written Czech (H), spoken Finnish (L), written Finnish (H), spoken Arabic (L), modern standard Arabic (H), colloquial Tamil (L), formal Tamil (H)... Edited by Medulin on 25 October 2013 at 3:03pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6580 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 26 of 29 25 October 2013 at 5:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Interestingly, it's the other way around with the Chinese languages I know. Spoken Mandarin and Cantonese are more redundant than written Mandarin (written Cantonese tends to be very informal in style, thus closely matching the spoken language), which is still more redundant than Literary Sinitic. I'm guessing it's the same with other Chinese languages.
I'd guess Japanese and Korean, and maybe Vietnamese as well, being heavily influenced by Chinese written culture, have a similar phenomenon going on? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| 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 27 of 29 25 October 2013 at 6:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
Which features do you base this statement on? And which expressions of redundancy? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Papashaw Newbie Australia Joined 4101 days ago 28 posts - 32 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 28 of 29 26 October 2013 at 8:25am | IP Logged | |||||
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I remember a funny claim from the old antimoon forum that English was so simple that native speakers are spoiled
and could not learn other languages as easily. I saw another guy say the same thing in a youtube comment. English could do with a replacement for grammatical gender, perhaps a classifier system akin to Chinese? Something that should evolve to create poetic association with inanimate nouns. Modal particles are not developed as in German or Dutch, and discourse markers for peppering words are seen as bad English, perhaps that should be allowed to be instead of frowned on. Truth is I want English to grow some more complexities just so those native highly-inflected language speakers, even the ones on this forum, would just shut up on how poor and easy they think it is. English has a lot that can evolve but is not yet come. I even looked over an analysis of English by a Czech grammarian and saw just how much detail was available for use. Syntax would be a great starting point for evolution of new grammatical rules that express. Even German, which is more synthetic than English, looks to me to have more usage of different word orders for emphasis and purpose by regular speakers. It even seems to have specific grammar words for more kinds of things. They have more words for "why", still retain the equivalent of whence and whither, have modal particles (despite being more synthetic), and SOV and V2. The usage of prepositions is nearly equal, too. English needs to be evolved. Edited by Papashaw on 26 October 2013 at 3:28pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4666 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 29 of 29 26 October 2013 at 5:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
Common Czech is characterized by quite regular differences from the standard morphology and phonology. These variations are more or less common to all Common Czech dialects: é usually replaced by ý/í: malý město (small town), plamínek (little flame), lítat (to fly); ý (sometimes also í) replaced by ej: malej dům (small house), mlejn (mill), plejtvat (to waste), bejt (to be) – as a consequence of the loss of the difference in the pronunciation of y/ý and i/í in the 15th century; unified plural endings of adjectives: malý lidi (small people), malý ženy (small women), malý města (small towns) – stand.: malí lidé, malé ženy, malá města; unified instrumental ending -ma in plural: s těma dobrejma lidma, ženama, chlapama, městama (with the good people, women, guys, towns) – stand.: s těmi dobrými lidmi, ženami, chlapy, městy (in essence, this form resembles the form of the dual, which was once a productive form, but now is almost extinct, except a few examples; in Common Czech it can often be used indiscriminately, i.e. it can substitute a regular plural form, not just as it was once used); prothetic v- added to most words beginning o-: votevřít vokno (to open the window) – stand.: otevřít okno; but ovoce not *vovoce (fruit) omitting of the syllabic -l in the masculine ending of past tense verbs: řek (he said), moh (he could), pích (he pricked) – stand.: řekl, mohl, píchl. /Wiki/ 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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