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Most logical languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6549 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 33 of 143 05 December 2006 at 1:32am | IP Logged | ||
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Debating which languages are logical is a little silly unless you're going to specify what you mean by "logical". Every language has its own logic, and every language has exceptions. Every language seems simple in some areas, and complex in others.
If we take "logical" to mean "systematically elegant", I vote for Japanese. For example, the phonetic system consists of syllables arranged on a grid of consonants and vowels: a-i-u-e-o ka-ki-ku-ke-ko sa-si-su-se-so ...and so on, forming a nice, logical grid. Every verb relies on one of these rows for its ending, and every syllable on that row provides a different conjugation. For example, take "maku", to plant a seed: maka (negative stem) maki (connective) maku (present tense) make (imperative) mako (volitional) "Hanasu", to speak, will be exactly the same but use the sa-row. You could hardly make it neater if you designed Japanese yourself. And then there's the "case" system. Put -ga on subjects, -o on direct objects, -ni on indirect objects, etc. It's almost like sentence diagramming come to life. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6378 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 34 of 143 06 December 2006 at 9:06am | IP Logged | ||
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| Wildfire Diglot Newbie Russian Federation Joined 6424 days ago 14 posts - 21 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: French | Message 35 of 143 06 December 2006 at 11:31am | IP Logged | ||
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yeh =p in fact it's probably like you said but in the original text of the joke it was stated the other way round Edited by Wildfire on 06 December 2006 at 11:35am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| solidsnake Diglot Senior Member China Joined 6822 days ago 469 posts - 488 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin | Message 36 of 143 06 December 2006 at 12:24pm | IP Logged | ||
hey, thanks for that lesson Haddock. That makes PERFECT sense. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6730 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 37 of 143 21 December 2006 at 3:52am | IP Logged | ||
I think Japanese grammar in itself is logical, much in the way Turkish is (as an agglutinating language). However, all the borrowings from Chinese create redundancies and confusion all over the place. For example, one character with four or five different pronunciations is not very logical. Not only does Japanese have some of the same illogical elements borrowed from Chinese, but it has them in addition to the native Japanese elements... the concept of "measure words" is difficult enough to begin with, but do I use 「ひとつ」 or 「一個」? I suspect that Japanese was a very logical, predictable language before the Chinese borrowings. And imagining this "proto-Japanese" has reminded me of a theory I had while studying in New Zealand. I noticed several cognates between Maori and Japanese, and also between Japanese and Hawaiian, which led me to believe that this "proto-Japanese" must have been related to the Polynesian languages. So perhaps the Polynesian languages have retained some of the logical construction we've noticed in Japanese. Does anyone know enough about any Polynesian languages to comment? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| SamD Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6440 days ago 823 posts - 987 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 38 of 143 21 December 2006 at 8:55am | IP Logged | ||
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This thread puts me in mind of an experience I had teaching English as a second language. I was teaching a grammar class and we had several lessons about past tenses: I went, I used to go, I have gone, I had gone, I did go. One of my Greek students objected to the number of different ways to express a past action and insisted that Greek was a much more logical language than English.
I suspect that when people say a language is "logical," they mean that it is either very regular or comes closest to the way they think or perhaps both. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Alas Oscuras Diglot Newbie Mexico Joined 6641 days ago 38 posts - 38 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: French, Japanese | Message 39 of 143 01 January 2007 at 3:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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[/QUOTE]
I think Japanese grammar in itself is logical, much in the way Turkish is (as an agglutinating language). However, all the borrowings from Chinese create redundancies and confusion all over the place. For example, one character with four or five different pronunciations is not very logical. Not only does Japanese have some of the same illogical elements borrowed from Chinese, but it has them in addition to the native Japanese elements... the concept of "measure words" is difficult enough to begin with, but do I use 「ひ とつ」 or 「一個」? I suspect that Japanese was a very logical, predictable language before the Chinese borrowings. And imagining this "proto-Japanese" has reminded me of a theory I had while studying in New Zealand. I noticed several cognates between Maori and Japanese, and also between Japanese and Hawaiian, which led me to believe that this "proto-Japanese" must have been related to the Polynesian languages. So perhaps the Polynesian languages have retained some of the logical construction we've noticed in Japanese. Does anyone know enough about any Polynesian languages to comment?[/QUOTE] Wow, what you say is so immensely interesting! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Alas Oscuras Diglot Newbie Mexico Joined 6641 days ago 38 posts - 38 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: French, Japanese | Message 40 of 143 01 January 2007 at 3:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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[/QUOTE]I suspect that Japanese was a very logical, predictable language before the Chinese borrowings. And imagining this "proto-Japanese" has reminded me of a theory I had while studying in New Zealand. I noticed several cognates between Maori and Japanese, and also between Japanese and Hawaiian, which led me to believe that this "proto-Japanese" must have been related to the Polynesian languages. So perhaps the Polynesian languages have retained some of the logical construction we've noticed in Japanese. Does anyone know enough about any Polynesian languages to comment?[/QUOTE] Wow, what you say is so immensely interesting! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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