Languages: simplification or aggravation (Philological Room) Language Learning Forum

Languages: simplification or aggravation
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21 messages over 3 pages: 1 2 3

Марк
Senior Member
Russian Federation
Joined 5056 days ago
2096 posts - 2972 votes

Speaks: Russian*

Message 17 of 21

29 April 2012 at 11:49am | IP Logged

jeronz wrote:

I believe that old English is grammatically certainly far more complex
than Modern
English, I don't think anyone could argue with this if you have a passing familiarity
with it.

We used to have cases, proper conjugation, a far more elaborate pronoun system, plurals
were a nightmare - practically every word had its own irregular plural form, amongst
other complexities that have been lost and simplified. The further back you go with
English's story the more complex it becomes, just compare Old English with Proto-
Germanic and Proto-Germanic with Proto-Indo-European!

Perhaps only vocabulary wise the language is more complex with more synonyms and so-on
due to the influence of languages like French and Latin, and the way in which books
have the tendency to prevent words from falling completely out of the accepted part of
English.

As for languages changing between morphological types - isolating, agglutinative,
fusional etcetera I had thought this was more a hypothesis rather than something that
actually had linguistic evidence to support the view.

But you did not use to have articles, perfect and progressive tenses, many complex
constructions. It is much more difficult to master all this than to learn a word in
several forms.
4 persons have voted this message useful

FELlX
Diglot
Groupie
France
Joined 4770 days ago
94 posts - 149 votes

Speaks: French*, English

Message 18 of 21

29 April 2012 at 2:19pm | IP Logged

Марк wrote:

Languages are always simplified, but they can become more complex simulteniously as a
result of this simplification.

I totally agree. IMO, French has become illogical in many aspects (mostly orthography and pronunciation) because of many of these "simplifications" and has therefore become even more complex in fine.
3 persons have voted this message useful

LaughingChimp
Senior Member
Czech Republic
Joined 4699 days ago
346 posts - 594 votes

Speaks: Czech*

Message 19 of 21

30 April 2012 at 12:23am | IP Logged

FELlX wrote:

Марк wrote:

Languages are always simplified, but they can become more complex simulteniously as a
result of this simplification.

Spelling doesn't add complexity to the language. Any language could be spelled phonemically if the people chose to spell it phonemically.
2 persons have voted this message useful

FELlX
Diglot
Groupie
France
Joined 4770 days ago
94 posts - 149 votes

Speaks: French*, English

Message 20 of 21

30 April 2012 at 2:11pm | IP Logged

Who talked about spelling? :)

French spelling isn't consistent, that's what I am saying here. The language has evolved a lot, but every step forward it made left some irregularities behind. As a result you can have two verbs sharing the same Latin root:

- Appeler (which comes from appellare) - listen
- Interpeller (which comes from interpellare) - listen

Both words (excluding their prefix) are pronounced the same way, yet one of them seems to have been adapted to comply with French spelling rules (Appeler), but not the other which pronunciation is irregular. Many exceptions of this kind are due to incomplete reforms (in my opinion).

If you love exceptions, then you will love French :)

EDIT: There's also Épeler which is not from Latin, but which should logically follow the same rule as Appeler when you conjugate it. Well, it would follow it before, but it no longer does since the 1990 spelling reform. (Both are actually valid, but the post-1990 rule is supposed to be better than the former.)

Edited by FELlX on 30 April 2012 at 2:26pm
1 person has voted this message useful

LaughingChimp
Senior Member
Czech Republic
Joined 4699 days ago
346 posts - 594 votes

Speaks: Czech*

Message 21 of 21

30 April 2012 at 7:15pm | IP Logged

You did. What I'm saying is that the "complexity" is not inherent to the French language, French could be easily spelled as it's spoken. It's spelling is complicated only because its speakers choose to use this antiquated spelling.

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