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Most "precise" language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion | ( Topic Closed) |  |
| caam_imt Triglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 4863 days ago 232 posts - 357 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2, Finnish Studies: German, Swedish | Message 9 of 19 24 April 2013 at 1:13am | IP Logged | ||
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@EuroLanguage: why do you deem cases unnecesary and archaic?
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| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5767 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 10 of 19 24 April 2013 at 1:33am | IP Logged | ||
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The main question is what you want to express. Some languages are more suited to expressing certain kinds of information than others. If you want to be very precise about social relationships, you probably shouldn't use English, for example. If you want to be precise about situational circumstances and whether volition was involved in somebody's actions, maybe languages that use a kind of ergative or tripartite alignment might be a better choice than those who don't. Using unique words for unique concepts can be precise, but so can be using word formation to come up with words for concepts that put them into a specific place between related words. But from what I could gather so far it seems that all languages can be used to deal with all the kinds of information you may want to express in any language, should the need arise. Edited by Bao on 24 April 2013 at 1:34am 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Homogenik Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4825 days ago 314 posts - 407 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Polish, Mandarin | Message 11 of 19 24 April 2013 at 4:57am | IP Logged | ||
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I think a language, any language, is as precise as the one who speaks or writes it masters it.
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| renaissancemedi Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Greece Joined 4359 days ago 941 posts - 1309 votes Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, EnglishC2 Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 12 of 19 24 April 2013 at 7:56am | IP Logged | ||
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I agree with Homogenik. I depends on the person. Of course I don't speak all languages, but I think it's safe to judge from my experience. For example, greek (full of conjugation and cases, and variations in word order) can be painfully precise, and we love to come up with definitions of everything. However, one can become extremely vague, saying words but commiting to nothing. Does that mean it's the language that's vague, or the person? And, isn't this true in every language?
Besides, what does "precise" precisely mean? I am sure there is a definition of what the word means that has nothing to do with each person's opinion. I believe that would have been Socrates' first responce to the op: "Can you define *precise*?". 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Hampie Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6660 days ago 625 posts - 1009 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Latin, German, Mandarin | Message 13 of 19 24 April 2013 at 1:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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I actually value languages more for what you do not have to tell, than what you have to tell. That aside, I think that
ikthuil is more precise than any other language there is – and it has cases, many of them.. The problem is that it takes an hour to formulate a sentence. http://www.ithkuil.net 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5010 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 14 of 19 24 April 2013 at 2:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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Latin.
Yes, in general a lot depends on the speaker etc. And if you define "preciseness" as rigidness of structure, than for example German will fill the expectations better. And I think the rigidness may even be an obstacle in pursuit of preciseness sometimes. But Latin gave us a vast majority of scientifical terminology, no matter some languages changed word endings (most important example being English) or used just the roots or just a part of the vocabulary. It is not just because of the history. Latin allows to put information of a whole sentence into two words. Latin uses conjugation and declination and therefore gives you freedom of syntax. You can construct the sentences the way you want, depending on your priorities both factual and emotional ones. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4534 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 15 of 19 24 April 2013 at 3:52pm | IP Logged | ||
I assume you mean by precise some sort of information theoretic notion, in the sense that signals (languages) that can be compressed more (because they contain a redundant and/or worthless information) are less precise. But case provides useful information and it's silly to say it's archaic. By what standards? Using archaic in this way for languages sounds a lot like the way some people call some animals more evolved than others, which is just nonsensical. The information provided by case is important, and if you replace case by strict word order you are not making a language more precise, you are just changing the nature of the code. You are not making the code more compressible. On the other hand I do believe gender provides no useful information. As far as I can see gender just refers to arbitrary noun classes. You could just as well call 'masculine', 'feminine' and 'neuter' in German, 'chocolate', 'strawberry', and 'vanilla' for all the sense that makes. So perhaps gender makes languages less precise, in the sense that if you stripped gender from a signal, no useful information would be lost. Of course, precision is not the only measure of a language. It quite possible you could have a imprecise, but very beautiful language on the one hand, and a very precise and ugly one on the other. Edited by patrickwilken on 24 April 2013 at 3:57pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5131 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 16 of 19 24 April 2013 at 4:05pm | IP Logged | ||
Well, but some languages have gender that's not used in the usual sex-oriented way. Ojibwe, for example has gender, but it's based on animacy/inanimacy. Taking that away, you'd lose a good deal of cultural information. R. == 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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