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A difference between English and Mandarin | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| unityandoutside Diglot Groupie United States Joined 6015 days ago 94 posts - 149 votes  Speaks: English*, Russian Studies: Latin, Mandarin | Message 9 of 21 23 June 2011 at 11:40pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Although Ari makes good points that English word formation perhaps isn't so dense and
limited as the OP would suggest, I can't help but feel that there is quite a bit of validity to the point that English words aren't as easily understood by breaking them into components as Chinese or Russian words (I would hazard to say that they're also less easily dissected than Spanish, French, or German words, but my knowledge of those languages is cursory). Sure, you could list a root, and tons of theoretical words that could be constructed from it, but I am positive that if you took writing samples from the three languages, the density of words constructed from simpler morphemes would be drastically higher in Russian, and at least significantly higher in Chinese sentences. In Russian, about 85% of the new words I learn have immediately discernible relationships to words that I can think of off the top of my head. For a good portion of those I can think of three or four commonly used words that share a root. Furthermore, I'm constantly noticing more interrelationships in words that I already know but hadn't noticed the morphology of before. I also think that the fact that the majority of polymorphemic words in English are of ultimately foreign origin is quite significant. Not only does it mean that English learners are confronted with the dilemma of parallel words, one used in more colloquial contexts and one (sometimes two, one from Latin and one from Greek) used to build more advanced vocabulary, it also means that educated English vocabulary is less transparent to the uneducated than similar registers of vocabulary would be to an Educated Russian or Chinese person. Although it isn't the best example because it's very common, take the word "introduction." If you're a child or uneducated adult first encountering this word, unless you happen to be educated enough to know that this means "leading into" in latin, you would have no insight into the meaning of this word until you looked it up. Where as the Russian word "Введение," also literally meaning "leading into" but with morphemes understandable to every Russian six-year old, or the Chinese 前言, lit. "before text," also constructed from basic morphemes, suggest their meanings pretty straightforwardly to someone who understands nothing more than the basic vocabulary and mechanics of their own mother tongue. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| s0fist Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5047 days ago 260 posts - 445 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Sign Language, German, Spanish, French | Message 10 of 21 24 June 2011 at 3:25am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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While I think that in Russian word formation is larger, easier and more obvious (all case, gender, counter endings for example), it is infact very much in place in English as well, arguably on the same scale. A good example by Ari above. Mostly this is obscured in English possibly because word borrowing involved more languages more freely, happened so long ago and undergone more shifts and displacements that in Russian. So as an end result, most native speakers only unconsciously through time and usage come to know what various morphological structure mean such as psych-, -iatr-, -ic-, -al-, -ly, (with the exceptions of those X most common Latin and Greek root-words you learned for your various acronyms like ged, (l)sat, gre, mcat) while in Russian this is systematically taught (and just as systematically ignored by some) from grade school (albeit only to a basic level).
The main point is that these word-concept formative structures are largely invisible to a language learner, especially beginners, especially when we start talking about English-Mandarin transition. And possibly for a good reason - I don't know Mandarin, but I doubt you can shlep together two ideograms and obtain consistently and reliably the desired meaning as easily as 2x2 - can't do this in English or Russian either. But with practice and experience, the natural structure of any language becomes more apparent. Edited by s0fist on 24 June 2011 at 3:27am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6551 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 11 of 21 24 June 2011 at 3:33am | IP Logged | ||||||||
And unnamed HTAL members on Cannabis. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| unityandoutside Diglot Groupie United States Joined 6015 days ago 94 posts - 149 votes Speaks: English*, Russian Studies: Latin, Mandarin | Message 12 of 21 24 June 2011 at 6:27am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I certainly wasn't suggesting that languages with more transparent word formation allow
speakers to just throw words together any way they please. Obviously they are more or less beholden to use existing words when appropriate ones exist. I guess my question would be whether a Russian grade-schooler, if put to the task, would be able to understand the construction of words like одновреммено, столетие, or уменьшить. The English equivalents of these common words - simultaneously, century, and decrease - are without a doubt beyond the etymological understanding of most people without a special interest in words, maybe with the exception of century. This isn't to say that English is lacking in structure, but that the structure we do have involves more isolated morphemes, except in those cases when we've imported more complex words from other languages. In some cases we've imported so many that there are etymological connections within these classes of Romantic words, but what they often lack is links to less cerebral, everyday language. If we combine morphemes, it tends to happen above the level of words. Phrasal verbs are a good example of this. These exhibit similar traits to the forms of Russian verbs in that they often combine a preposition (which in Russian takes the form of a prefix) with a common verb to obtain a compound meaning. However, I don't think anyone would argue that this trend makes English vocabulary easier on learners. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| chirish Newbie China Joined 4910 days ago 9 posts - 14 votes Speaks: Mandarin* Studies: English | Message 13 of 21 24 June 2011 at 7:50am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I can give some explaination from the view of programming One of the common programming tasks is how to modelling/describing the objects (whatever can/cannot be seen, not only solid objects in the real world, but also feeling, behavior, etc) We need create different classes for different objects Each class may have different properties, and also different operations, according to the object it represents We can sort these objects into 4 big categories: noun, verb, adj, adv Then how to design the class architecture? The simpliest way to create independent class for each object For example, create ACock class to represent a cock, and ACock has a property of two feet, and it can fly, although the ability is weak. So it has an operation: Fly create AColorful class to represent adj:colorful. What's its properties and operations? Don't bother to think about it. It is simple, but very low efficient. If we look at English words, prefix and postfix are used very often. Can we try to use them in our model design? And what techniques on earth are they, in programming? We may summarize them into "Adaptor" and "Decorator", concepts in Design Pattern Generally speaking, an Adaptor class/object converts an object to a different kind of object, while Decorator converts it to an object of the same kind For example, an Border decorator creates a new document which has a border around the old one, and an AdaptorX may covert the data type which is system A's output, to a new data type that system B can read No matter Adaptor or Decorator, they provide an ability to create new classes easily, and understandable AdaptorFul class converts a noun to adj, and AdaptorLy converts an adj to adv, etc So we do not create a new AColorful class now, instead, use AdaptorFul(AColor), more meaningful Is it the end? So far we haven't made the best of the relationship of different objects On the other hand, we have a new powerful concept: inheritance, which is the main technique of Object Oriented Programming Usually, we first create a base class in general, then we create derived classed from base class to represent different but related objects For example, car, bus, truck, jeep, all refer to a road vehicle which can transport people or goods, using fuel Although the appearces are different, they have a lot of common properties and operations So we can create a base class ARoadVehicle to describe in general Then we define ACar, ABus, ATruck, AJeep derived from ARoadVehicle So if somebody gives me an ACar object, I know what it can do in general, although I haven't used ACar class before. I know ACar is a derived class ARoadVehicle, and I was familiar with it and also some other derived classes from it. The advantages? Easy to maintain/remember If we have tens or hundreds of different ARoadVehicles, it is not easy to maintain such a big class/vocabulary system. It is even difficult to identify if a class is a kind of ARoadVehicle Sometimes we need common concept to generalize programming/speaking Suppose a visitor is in a village, and asks some native people how to get to another place. Someone suggests finding/taking/waiting for a ARoadVehicle Why a specialized vehicle is not used? The advisor may not know if there is a bus at that moment. If no, he can wait for a car, or even a truck. And it is also posible that there is some kind of ARoadVehicle that the visitor never met, and the advisor makes it simple so that the visitor can undersand. Finally, the classes/words(many, if not most, especially nouns) are created in a hierachy, maybe not single rooted. Some examples in Chinese: 羊 is generalization of animals like sheep and goat. Then 绵羊:sheep,山羊:goat 鸡 is generalization of all animals like chicken. Then 公鸡:cock,母鸡:hen,小鸡:chick/chicken,野鸡:pheasant, 火鸡:turkey Yes, they are different, but can we make some extraction of them in the language, like what we did in the last 20 years in the field of programming? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 14 of 21 24 June 2011 at 8:00am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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It's quite obvious that word formation by combining the morphemes of the words used in the everyday language is less used compared to borrowing, in English as compared to many other languages. Thus, we can say that word formation is less obvious in English, but to say that it's less developed is, to me, quite another thing. The English language grows by 8,500 words a year, which makes any claim that English word formation is not developed seem hard to believe.
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| Lootrock Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5753 days ago 18 posts - 21 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Mandarin, Arabic (Egyptian), Russian | Message 15 of 21 24 June 2011 at 8:27am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I think in essence what you are saying is that in mandarin(and I agree) the words that form compounds are on such a rudimentary level that you need not go as far to understand in comparison to English which instead uses short morphemes that have links that are not so transparent(as has been mentioned) and I agree. English morphemes I feel have all been learned intuitively or explicitly in school by your average person. Considering the lack of clear links to everyday words; certain words would only have a vague meaning to an uneducated speaker. In mandarin, these words that form compounds are far more basic and rooted in everyday language that you don't have to break out a book on morphemes to figure out what certain words mean in their entirety; it's staring you in the face. Edited by Lootrock on 24 June 2011 at 8:57am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| s0fist Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5047 days ago 260 posts - 445 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Sign Language, German, Spanish, French | Message 16 of 21 24 June 2011 at 8:54am | IP Logged | ||||||||
My guess would be yes, the roots are obvious (of course most would already know the word, making it less effective).
I'm pretty sure more native English kids would know -ly as indicating an adverb, -ous for adjective ending, and might recognize the latin sim- from similar, century not too hard with cent(100 in a dollar) and -ury common in abstract words, de- for away and crease (maybe from crescendo). At least partial recognition is bound to happen, even if some don't already know the words.
Don't shoot yourself in the foot, is it growth from word formation or from borrowing and assimilation from other languages? Btw wasn't saying less developed, that's why I said it's on the same 'scale'-linguistically and not in any way hampered. @chirish very interesting example, but I'm pretty sure you lost most of the audience by your analogy, maybe that's why multiple inheritance isn't so popular. Btw Russian sign language is similar to Chinese in that OOP encapsulation and inheritance respect, except with gestures substituted in place of ideograms (although of course they can't compare in complexity). Unfortunately, we're not trapped in Delany's Babel-17, no language is going to be as logical as a programming language. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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