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What are some heavily regular languages? | ||
Tags: Easiness | Choosing a Language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| gio_gogo Newbie United Kingdom Joined 3609 days ago 4 posts - 5 votes Speaks: English | Message 9 of 21 09 February 2015 at 1:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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About predictability and Chinese/Japanese, I once read this somewhere: "Japanese is complicated, but predictable. Chinese is simple, but unpredictable."
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| Stolan Senior Member United States Joined 4030 days ago 274 posts - 368 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Thai, Lowland Scots Studies: Arabic (classical), Cantonese | Message 10 of 21 10 February 2015 at 5:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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Does your definition of "Regular" include transparency in general? Because many regular languages may have very little transparency in their word formations making vocabulary harder to aquire.
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| thulé Triglot Newbie France Joined 3563 days ago 2 posts - 3 votes Speaks: French*, English, Arabic (classical) | Message 11 of 21 07 March 2015 at 2:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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Arabic is a reasonably regular language. There are no irregular verbs per se. Every verb fits a very clear pattern. I would say it is a rule based language, if you know all the rules you can't make mistakes. As opposed to a language like English, even if there are rules, there are so many exceptions in the end there is a lot of things you need to learn by heart if you want to be proficient.
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| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4666 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 12 of 21 07 March 2015 at 11:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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Assamese is very regular.
So is Tamil. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7203 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 13 of 21 08 March 2015 at 3:25am | IP Logged | ||
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I think Spanish is pretty regular. A small number of distinct vowels, phonetic spelling, gender fairly easy to discern for a romance language.
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| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4666 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 14 of 21 08 March 2015 at 9:51pm | IP Logged | ||
Not really, given that 40 % of verbs are not regular. DEFENDER and DEPENDER may look alike in the infinitive form, but their conjugation is nothing alike. defender -> (yo) defiendo depender -> (yo) dependo Both are considered ''regular'' verbs by most Spanish speakers. That's the problem with Spanish. What looks very regular to native speakers of Spanish, is exception to the exception to exception to the rule to language learners. Portuguese is much more regular and predictable than Spanish. Even in this particular case: defender => eu defendo depender => eu dependo Vocabulary-wise as well, Portuguese has only two major variants (Brazilian and Portuguese), as for Spanish, every single country has its own usage, not only colloquial usage (as well as idioms and slang) is different, but many times everyday/basic vocabulary is different too, for example '' Antes de salir a la ruta, cuidá tu auto'' is not heard in Spain or Mexico. So, you have to ''cover'' at least 4 variants (Spain+Mexico+Colombia+Argentina) if not more. Edited by Medulin on 08 March 2015 at 9:58pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 5057 days ago 361 posts - 921 votes Speaks: Portuguese, English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, French Studies: Mandarin, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Greek, Latin, Nepali, Modern Hebrew | Message 15 of 21 09 March 2015 at 1:41am | IP Logged | ||
Regional variation within a language is a separate thing from regularity. The question isn't about which language is more difficult overall. While it seems to be true that Spanish has more regional varieties than Portuguese, it's also important not to exaggerate the situation. The degree of political fragmentation in Spanish America vs. Portuguese America doesn't reliably reflect the dialectal variation. Not every country has a variety that is totally distinct from its neighbors; Brazilian Portuguese is probably more diverse than most or all of the individual Latin American Spanish countries, if not more diverse than the total. For example, the differences in second person pronoun across the Spanish speaking world have an analogue in the different regions of Brazil, in addition to being different in Portugal. Most people have the impression that Brazilian and European Portuguese are separated by a greater distance than the Spanish of any two countries. And then there are of course all the Portuguese speaking countries in Africa and Asia. Interesting point about the regularity, however; I wonder if it applies to other situations beyond the unpredictable diphthong vs. monophthong in Spanish verbs which is merged (or is it not split?) in Portuguese. Another place to compare the two languages might be in formation of augmentatives and diminutives, a somewhat regular process with lots of exceptions in both. There are also different patterns of derivation such as Spanish resolución/solución/evolución ~ resolver/solucionar/evolucionar versus Portuguese resolução/solução/evolução ~ resolver/solver OR solucionar/evoluir. I don't think either Spanish or Portuguese are particularly regular or irregular, as languages go. Within the Romance languages, there isn't one that's obviously the most regular to me--you would probably need to be more precise about what that means and actually tabulate features of the languages to be sure. For example, in something like Chinese where each noun goes with an unpredictable measure word, is that a massive irregularity, or is it simply an arbitrary lexical feature that one doesn't expect to be predictable, like the relationship between word sound and meaning? Is a language irregular for having unpredictable gender, if the gendered words behave completely predictably once their gender is assigned? 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4947 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 16 of 21 20 March 2015 at 9:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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Grammar and pronunciation-wise, Brazilian and European Portuguese are probably a bit more distant than the similar analogy in Spanish. Portuguese has a more complex pronunciation, more sounds, and more rules of liaison, so there is more room variation. Grammar is interesting how both varieties have taken a "color" of the continent they are spoken in.
Vocabulary-wise, there is likely more variation not only between European and American Spanish, but also within American Spanish than between Portuguese. The reason is that in Meso-America Spanish was greatly influenced by Aztec and Mayan languages, in the Caribbean by Afro-languages, in Western South America by Qechua, in the Gran Chaco by Guarani, in the southern Cone by Italian and a lesser extent French, German, and Afro-languages. Ask what the word for 'uncle/antie', 'bus', or 'strawberry/watermelon/avocado' is in each country, and you may end up with 10 different answers, and most not even remotely related. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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