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Languages ranked based on irregularities? | ||
Tags: Foreign Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5533 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes  Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 9 of 29 09 June 2012 at 12:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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"Irregular" is a surprisingly subjective concept. French
textbooks claim that manger is irregular because it keeps the e in mangeons, when anything else would be deeply weird. Old Norse textbooks are like, "Sure, the vowel in the stem changes in certain persons in that tense. But it's completely regular if you remember the former proto-Norse conjugations and the following sound laws." 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Andrew C Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom naturalarabic.com Joined 5191 days ago 205 posts - 350 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written) | Message 10 of 29 09 June 2012 at 1:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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Arabic is almost certainly the most regular;
It's 100% phonetic. Letters have a one to one relationship to the sound. Spelling is a non issue as if you know how to say it, you know how to spell it. There are no irregular verbs. There are no complicated tenses (just present and past). It uses the triliteral root system common to all semitic languages, whereby nearly all words are made up of three consonant "roots" to which are added vowels/prefixes/suffixes in a very predictable manner. You can know just by looking at a word's shape whether is is a verb or a noun. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 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 11 of 29 09 June 2012 at 2:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hm, sounds like it's more regular than nearly all Indo-European languages indeed. I hope someone can compare Arabic, Japanese and *Chinese* in this regard. As a linguist I know how they work and given what's been said in this thread, I think we can definitely say these three are the most regular languages on the original list, each of them in its own unique way. Edited by Serpent on 09 June 2012 at 2:04pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| viedums Hexaglot Senior Member Thailand Joined 4667 days ago 327 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Latvian, English*, German, Mandarin, Thai, French Studies: Vietnamese | Message 12 of 29 09 June 2012 at 5:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yes, “irregularity” is something subjective, relative… I’m skeptical about the idea of ranking languages in toto on some hypothetical scale running from “totally regular” to “completely irregular.”
One feature of Chinese nouns that must be learned for each individual vocabulary item is the classifier or measure word (量詞) that goes with it. In one sense this is analogous to “a pint of beer” or “a bowl of rice,” but it can’t be left out – for “a book” you must say yī běn shū 一本書 or “one-volume-book” with the classifier běn. I have a mini-dictionary about 300 pages in length listing different classifiers. The meaning of these words is often quite opaque, they are simply something to be included in the noun phrase. For instance, if you want to count corpses, you should include the classifier 具jù, which is used only for this item. So, to a Western mind classifiers seem to be an arbitrary feature that adds significantly to learning time, like gender does for European languages. Yet others might argue that classifiers actually make Chinese more regular, since having them means that you don’t need to distinguish countable and uncountable nouns like in English – basically they make everything countable. Regular or irregular? It’s in the eye of the beholder. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| aquablue Senior Member United States Joined 6383 days ago 150 posts - 172 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 13 of 29 12 June 2012 at 12:34am | IP Logged | ||
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What makes Arabic so exceedingly difficult based on government rankings if it is so
regular? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sipes23 Diglot Senior Member United States pluteopleno.com/wprs Joined 4871 days ago 134 posts - 235 votes Speaks: English*, Latin Studies: Spanish, Ancient Greek, Persian | Message 14 of 29 12 June 2012 at 3:05am | IP Logged | ||
Phonology that is unfamiliar to Americans. Grammar that is unfamiliar. Lack of cognate words. A different writing system. Off the top of my head. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| aquablue Senior Member United States Joined 6383 days ago 150 posts - 172 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 15 of 29 12 June 2012 at 3:26am | IP Logged | ||
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Yes, but Russian would have similar issues and more irregularities and a harder grammar.
Why isn't Russian on the same difficulty level as Arabic. Edited by aquablue on 12 June 2012 at 3:26am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 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 16 of 29 12 June 2012 at 3:40am | IP Logged | ||
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The grammar is difficult, but not alien if you already have a knowledge of German or Latin. Russian has a lot of loan words from English and other European languages. There are cognates too though if you're not familiar with linguistics you might not see the similarity. Also, Arabic is diglossic while Russian practically doesn't have dialects.
And cyrillics ain't that difficult if you know the Latin and some Greek letters, while the Arabic writing system is, again, completely alien. And many real texts don't even mark the vowels. As far as I understand... 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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