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Most logical languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6581 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 41 of 143 01 January 2007 at 4:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
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As previously stated, all languages are logical in some areas, and illogical in others (with the exception of constructed languages). I find Chinese to be beautifully practical in certain respects. The date system, for example. The days of the week are called week-one (Monday), week-two (Tuesday), and so on, except for Sunday, which is called week-sky. The months are the same. February is called second month, and so on. Wonderful and simple. When reading out a year, there are several variants (I think. I'm still at the beginner stage), but one is to simply read out the digits, and end with the word year. So 2007 is called two-zero-zero-seven-year (then there's of course the whole Chinese calendar thing, what with the year of the dog and all that, but that's not really the language, is it?). And addresses and dates always go in the order of large to small (country, province, city, street, number / year, month, date). Word formation can also be logical (sea thief = pirate, hand device = cell phone, etc.).
But then a lot of the rest of the language seems absolutely bananas for a Westerner, and some expressions just don't make sense anyway you look at them. I can get how "left-right" can mean "about" (it's five o'clock left-right), but how does "east-west" become "thing" (do you want to drink a little east-west?)? 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Maximus Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6748 days ago 417 posts - 427 votes Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Thai | Message 42 of 143 02 January 2007 at 7:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Wow Ari, that idea with the months and days of the week is so cool. With European languages like Romance languages, learning months doesn't seem an issue.
Eg/ January - Enero February - Febrero Ect... But with distant languages like Thai, it can be difficult to remember tedious month names. So that Chinese idea of days and months seems so awesome. Over the logic of left-right = about with respect to time, I can see logic in that. It could be the hand of the clock is either slightly to the left or right of the clock number, therefore shows an approximation, or about. Just a few thoughts! Edited by Maximus on 02 January 2007 at 7:27pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| hamiltonguyo Newbie Canada Joined 6698 days ago 21 posts - 21 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, Latin, French | Message 43 of 143 03 January 2007 at 1:55am | IP Logged | |||||
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In My Humble Opinion It would be Latin...
And It is not a hard language to learn, It is the easiest out of the ones i have tried. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6664 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 44 of 143 03 January 2007 at 6:49am | IP Logged | |||||
I beg to differ: in my experience it's one of the most illogical languages I've ever seen. What's logical about the gender system? There's no logical reason why 'sol' should be masculine and 'luna' should be feminine. And I don't see much logic in having 5 different declension classes (with an awful lot of exceptions) and 3 different verb conjugations (+ the many irregular verbs). Also, the declension system in Classical Latin is already kind of degenerate with many case endings being the same (i.e. puellae can be nominative plural or genitive singular) - no wonder it didn't survive.
May I ask how fluently you speak it? 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7155 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 45 of 143 03 January 2007 at 8:01am | IP Logged | |||||
May I be so bold as to disagree with your opinion. ;-) I guess when you compare Latin's structure and organization (i.e. cases, classes of verbs) with French and Italian (which have lost the cases, but retained classes of verbs), then Latin may indeed be the "easiest out of the ones" that you've tried. Take on Turkish and then see what will happen... :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Silvestris Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6563 days ago 131 posts - 136 votes Speaks: English*, Polish*, German | Message 46 of 143 03 January 2007 at 11:33am | IP Logged | |||||
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Will anyone be mad if I said I would rather try to make sense out of German cases than attempt to learn Latin?
Such an intimidating language! I truly admire anyone who has taken the time to become fluent in it. Edited by Silvestris on 03 January 2007 at 11:34am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6581 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 47 of 143 03 January 2007 at 3:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm thinking of taking on Latin after Mandarin, because I think it's the easiest of the Romance languages. This doesn't have anything to do with the cases or classes, though, but simply because with Latin it's enough to be able to read. You won't have to work on aural comprehension (something that took me huge amounts of time for French) or pronounciation, or even writing, as it's very unlikely that you'll need to write in Latin. Recognizing five different declentions is a piece of cake, whilst producing them would be quite a feat. Same with gender. No need to learn what gender a noun is, since that's not an obstacle for reading, only for speaking/writing. So the declentions and genders aren't really much trouble at all. Add to that the fact that huge amounts of vocabulary will be recognizeable for the speaker of a Romance language (or even English). Again, this doesn't help that much when you're trying to speak, but when you're reading, it's a huge boon.
And because of all this, I consider Latin to be a piece of cake, compared to the living languages. Not because of the language itself, but because of the way it's used (or rather, not used). (Sorry for the off-topic rant.) 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ethan Diglot Newbie United States lowter.com Joined 6542 days ago 12 posts - 13 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Swedish, Icelandic | Message 48 of 143 14 January 2007 at 11:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The most logical language is Esperanto.
However, as for natural languages I would say the most logically setup is probably Finnish. Hard, but everything is setup in a complex, but logical setup. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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