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What’s the most efficient language? | ||
Tags: Synonyms | Translation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5061 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes  Speaks: Russian* | Message 25 of 44 03 March 2013 at 8:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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Videor - three syllables, I'm seen - two syllables.
Or we can just compare Latin words with FFrench words: calidum - chaud, aqua - eau and so on, they became much shorter because they lost all the unstressed syllables. Edited by Марк on 03 March 2013 at 8:34pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4849 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 26 of 44 03 March 2013 at 8:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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videor - six letters, I am seen - seven letters.
I am seen - three sillables, or even "I am being seen" - five syllables. visus/a sum -- j'ai été vu(e). French is not shorter here. Edited by Josquin on 03 March 2013 at 8:38pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5061 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 27 of 44 03 March 2013 at 8:41pm | IP Logged | ||
Letters do not matter here. All those languages are similar in there "shortness". 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4849 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 28 of 44 03 March 2013 at 8:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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Of course, there is nothing like "the shortest language" and the mere question is a bit ridiculous, but I think Classical Latin is in many ways more concise than other languages I know as far as the second part of the OP's question is concerned. Maybe agglutinative or isolating languages have other features which make them "short", but unfortunately I don't know any of those.
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| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6602 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 29 of 44 03 March 2013 at 9:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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That would be the use of cases instead of prepositions, with a variety of meanings. Finnish examples:
minusta - in my opinion jalan - on foot vedestä - from the water the case endings are added to the *stem* so that's shorter than full word+preposition. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| htdavidht Diglot Groupie United States Joined 4628 days ago 68 posts - 121 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: French | Message 30 of 44 03 March 2013 at 9:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think the question on who have more letters is not the best approach.
For example Japanese can say in 1 character 1 word, while other languages will need a lot more letters to do so. So what we do now? count numbers of traces to determine who have to draw more lines? We are working with a 26 letters on the alphabet to form words, more letters on the alphabet means less of them being needed to write down a word. So the shortest language is the one with the longest alphabet? The opposite of this can be for example the binary system of the computers, where they work with 1 and 0 to compose the whole of the text. so for example "a" in binary is "01100001" A person is able to write with less words as the vocabulary is bigger. Because we will be describing the object, until a word comes for it then it will shorter the number of words needed to use, but will add more content to the dictionary. For example in Spanish there is not a word for "table lamp", in other languages there is a word for this. So in Spanish have to use more words to describe the object, but at the same time there is not an extra dictionary entry for it. We consider the "shortest" language the one with the longest dictionary? Looking a text and it's translation is not too much of a help. Because it is a personal choice how long ones want to make a texts. If they charge per word, like in the old telegrams system, you can see how much someone can shorten an idea. This reminds me that some new media have their limitations, for example the 140 characters of twitter, or the need to shorten a text message on a phone, because the difficulty of production. For example: "I think that is funny" turns into "lol", yes I know lol stands for "laughing out laud" but people mostly use it when they wanna say they think something is funny. Another example: 143 means "I love you"... And so on, when there is limit of characters, or cost for using them, then we can really start to see how short a text can be to say something. Here is an article talking about how much you can say with 140 characters... if they where Japanese: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/09/how-mu ch-can-you-say-in-140-characters-a-lot-if-you-speak-japanese /245199/ Probably old latin looks shorter because it cost more to produce paper and ink and stuff, so they where just trying to save some money. Imagine how short is the message for the people who have to carve in stones! There is a text in Spanish considered "one of the shortest tales ever" titled "El Dinosaurio" uses 7 words that in theory contain a whole book worth of text. Here it is: "Cuando despertó, el dinosaurio todavía estaba allí." This is the translation wikipedia gives, notice it is 1 words longer to say the same :P ("When [s]he awoke, the dinosaur was still there.") So in conclusion, I think we need to address the question of what makes a language "shorter" than another, then we can go out and look for it, but it may not be the easiest one to learn, considering the size of the dictionary and the complexity and amount of characters on the alphabet. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Surtalnar Tetraglot Groupie Germany Joined 4401 days ago 52 posts - 67 votes Speaks: German*, Latin, English, Spanish Studies: Arabic (Written), Arabic (classical) | Message 31 of 44 03 March 2013 at 11:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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You made good points.
But when we compare modern European languages...and compare the bible or juristical texts..which would be the shortest by text length? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Hampie Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6664 days ago 625 posts - 1009 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Latin, German, Mandarin | Message 32 of 44 03 March 2013 at 11:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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To be frank, no, they did not try to be short just because they carved it in stone – they are not even certain that
those who carved knew what they "wrote". In Cuneiform words can be written in many, many, many ways and often varies within the same text. Although one might think that brevity would be good the shortest and simplest ways are not always the ones used (nor the most legible ones). It sometimes seems like the scribes fancied "showing off". Latin and Classical Chinese are very "short". Sumerian compared to akkadian is, too, very short. lu₂ e₃.gal in-du₃-a compared to a-wi-lum šu e₃.gal ib-nu-u. I think literary languages tend to be short and concise and evolve into formulaic nature of set expressions that, due to the collective cultural knowledge, can be short without causing troubles. Japanese, by the way, has a lot of long endings and unnecessary particles! Kambun definitely scores in a battle of shortness. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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