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Languages ranked based on irregularities? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Lugubert Heptaglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6655 days ago 186 posts - 235 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, Danish, Norwegian, EnglishC2, German, Dutch, French Studies: Mandarin, Hindi | Message 17 of 29 12 June 2012 at 11:27am | IP Logged | |||||
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I won’t try to make an absolute ranking, but here are a few thoughts on various languages.
It has been mentioned that it is rather impossible to define ”irregularities”. Hindi has a remarkably decent verb system re morphology: there are only some 6 “irregular” verbs, but they are regular too, in their own way. But the way verbs are piled on top of one another is irregular compared to other languages. You can encounter sentences that end in, I think, up to 10 different verbs. They make excellent sense in conveying fine shades of meaning, you can learn to interpret them, but it is sheer **** to learn to use. Good points on Chinese classifiers that are hard to guess, but there is a copout: if you don’t know if there’s a designated classifier for the noun you are using, like “one tail fish” it’s never wrong to use 个 ge like ”one piece fish”. Otherwise, Chinese morphology is even easier than Afrikaans (which beats most other languages for grammar simplicity). Arabic morphology has its irregularities. The verb ”to be” is as bad as in most any other language except Chinese. But the system is in many ways almost mathematically perfect. If you know that kataba means "he writes" and that rakiba is "riding" and that a raakib is a person who rides horse, you immediately understand that a kaatib is a person who writes, even if you haven’t seen the word before. (OK, slightly simplified.) Much the same principles for Bible Hebrew. A huge problem in Standard Arabic, as well as in Russian, is the numerals. Crazy stuff. It makes you dizzy trying to find out when a number should be inflected for masculine or feminine (in Arabic for some numbers the inverse of the noun gender is required, and in Russian which case to use fopr how many.) Native speakers of modern Arabic languages use as many censorable words as I do when trying to get the official numerals right. But I agree that, as far as I have understood it, Standard Arabic phonology vs. writing is almost as good as Finnish. But don’t forget that a camel جمل gamal in Egypt is a jamal in most other Arabic languages, and don’t get me started on emphatic consonants… Speaking of Russian, there’s one feature that is totally alien to most of us others. Irregular? I don’t think that is a Russian opinion, they probably regard it as totally logical and extremely useful. Many, perhaps a majority, of Russian verbs have two main appearances. Stolen form here,
I tried Japanese for one semester. One part of my failure was perhaps due to the cute Japanese tutors who seemed to have no linguistic training, but even then, I found almost no hard and fast rules in the prescribed or other books on verb usage. I got a feeling that a reoccurring rule was that a form sometimes might mean this and in other cases perhaps should be replaced by something looking quite differently. But the main obvious irregularity is the pronunciation of Chinese characters. A Chinese Chinese character rather seldom has more than one pronunciation, once you learn it. But in Japan, one reading is an exception. Mt Fuji is Fujiyama or Fujisan, which has lead many a person to think that the latter is a way of Japanese reverence to the mountain (-san can be a honorific). But yama and san are both accepted readings of the character 山 "mountain", always read shān in Chinese. If you’re brave, try this section.
Edited by Lugubert on 12 June 2012 at 11:30am 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jappy58 Bilingual Super Polyglot Senior Member United States Joined 4426 days ago 200 posts - 413 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Guarani*, Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Egyptian), Arabic (Maghribi), Arabic (Written), French, English, Persian, Quechua, Portuguese Studies: Modern Hebrew | Message 18 of 29 21 June 2012 at 6:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
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@Andrew C: I agree to a large extent, but some could argue that Arabic isn't "100% phonetic." In texts outside of the Qur'an and children's books, certain vowel sounds are not indicated in the writing. Although it doesn't always make a huge difference on one's comprehension of the text, it is important, in many cases, for speaking. Furthermore, some sounds may sound (to a beginner, especially) similar: for example the related "soft sounds" and "emphatic sounds" may be hard to tell apart in some cases. Once you get a hang of it, however, it truly is a little more phonetic.
Otherwise, Arabic is definitely very mathematical and very regular, though that's not to say that there are a few irregularities. @aquablue: sipes23 pointed out some of the reasons. Arabic vocabulary is very rich, and there are many synonyms for most words, and due to the writing style of Arabic, it is not uncommon to find three words with the same meaning in a single sentence. Furthermore, Arabic shares few cognates with English compared to some European languages. The grammar, although very regular for the most part, can be quite different from English, and for that reason, some find it difficult. Frankly, if a student takes his time and works consistently, grammar should not be as big of a deal as some make it out to be. Yes, MSA has lots of rules and plenty of concepts that may seem alien, but they're not fundamentally ridiculous. However, I agree with Lugubert about the numbers. In my opinion, the writing system of Arabic is one of the least difficult features of the language. Yes, each letter has different forms depending on where it's located in the word, but that's not as complicated as it seems. One could easily learn the script and get comfortable with it in less than two weeks. I've met some who made it in a few days. Of course, reading Arabic handwriting can be more difficult. Lastly, is perhaps the feature of Arabic that most students fear: the diglossia. MSA and the dialects have some notable differences between them, and there are also differences between the dialects. However, from experience, I've found that the similarities far outweigh the differences, especially between the Eastern dialects. It's not as bad as some make it out to be or think it is. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Al-Irelandi Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5323 days ago 111 posts - 177 votes Speaks: English* | Message 19 of 29 21 June 2012 at 10:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
Some interesting points you mentioned, noticed a few mistakes that perhaps slipped your mind. The following verbs you translated are past tense as opposed to non-past. They should be listed as: kataba = he wrote rakiba = he rode On another note, I am not entirely sure about what you meant when you said that the verb 'to be' in Arabic being problematic; in which way? 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jappy58 Bilingual Super Polyglot Senior Member United States Joined 4426 days ago 200 posts - 413 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Guarani*, Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Egyptian), Arabic (Maghribi), Arabic (Written), French, English, Persian, Quechua, Portuguese Studies: Modern Hebrew | Message 20 of 29 21 June 2012 at 11:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
I am also wondering about this. It may be because the verb "to be" is considered a hollow verb (such as "qaal" and "Taar" [to say and to fly, respectively]), so it doesn't follow the typical verb patterns. If this is the reason, however, I don't think it makes the verb a particular problem. Although one does need to learn the pattern very well, it's not difficult to get used to it. I personally have had little trouble with hollow verbs, much less "to be" specifically. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| clumsy Octoglot Senior Member Poland lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4966 days ago 1116 posts - 1367 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Mandarin, Italian, Vietnamese Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swedish Studies: Danish, Dari, Kirundi | Message 21 of 29 24 June 2012 at 11:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
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To elaborate:
I think ranking languages based on irregulatiries, isn't really so controversial, if you have a clear deffinition, if we go by the traditional one then you could say: Bungabunganese language is the most regular language ever, 'cause its 1000 verbs fall into 500 well defined verb classes, and there are no exceptions. 400 of those classes contain 1 verb. So to prevent such a classification we should make a definition that : the more verbs (or nouns) are similar to each other in conjugation the more regular the language. So, verb classes in Italian -are -ere and -ire already make Italian more irregular, though most people wouldn't say so (they would call such verbs regular). to that we must add universality of rules : the more rules are universal, the more regular the language - see Turkic vowel harmony. so ... that still makes Chinese most regular. I can think of one or two irregular verbs, that take irregular negative. 有 没有 可 叵 There are also infamous count words, but these... really you don't have to learn them with each new noun. But when we go to Japanese then ... count words are really irregular , Japanese don't like the number seven in Chinese so they use Japanese reading "nana" for it, but they don't seem worried to have whole unlucky month! so you cannot say 'nanagatsu'. reading of 9 is mostly kyuu, but with hours you use out of suddem 'ku' so kuji = 9h. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| michaelyus Diglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4353 days ago 53 posts - 87 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English* Studies: Italian, French, Cantonese, Korean, Catalan, Vietnamese, Lingala, Spanish Studies: Hokkien | Message 22 of 29 25 June 2012 at 12:27am | IP Logged | |||||
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Who sees 叵 as the negative of 可? Surely 不可 is the (perfectly regular) negative form of 可?
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| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4456 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 23 of 29 25 June 2012 at 1:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I find German pretty regular,
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| Lugubert Heptaglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6655 days ago 186 posts - 235 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Danish, Norwegian, EnglishC2, German, Dutch, French Studies: Mandarin, Hindi | Message 24 of 29 25 June 2012 at 2:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
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For morphology regularity, few languages could beat Afrikaans and Chinese.
As has been pointed out, I was wrong on كان irregularity. Don't know what I thought of. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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