To all Lower Case People

[Jaba-who]

Japanese is even more complex

 

They use 4 written languages - kanji ( same as the Chinese) then hiragana which gives tense, conjunctive and broader meaning to the kanji then katakana for business names, words that have been borrowed from other languages etc and then often freely interspersed with english letters and Arabic ( english ) numerals.

 

All these are intermingled throughout written text.

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

...and we complain about the difficulties of learning to read our single language in a single script.

 

 

[IBob]

...and we complain about the difficulties of learning to read our single language in a single script.

I have heard, from a number of sources over the years, that English is an unusually complete and well developed language.

What i don't know was whether that was merely the opinion of the English, or the native English speaking....

 

Oddly enough, the most beautiful and precise use of English (as in selecting precisely the appropriate word from many shades of meaning) seems to come not from the English, but from the educated of India. In my view....)

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

So true, IBob. It's been said that the English language doesn't belong to the poms, but to the world.

 

 

[Yenn]

Using English you can say the most with least words. Just look at those multiple language instuction sheets.

 

Better still look at a foreigh language film. The speech goes "gabble gabble gabble gabble goes gabble gabble gabble gabble" and the text at the bottom of the screen says "No"

 

 

[red750]

Look at German. A whole sentence in one word 25 characters long. As bad as Welsh. Try Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch - that's the name of a town in Wales.

 

 

[M61A1]

Using English you can say the most with least words. Just look at those multiple language instuction sheets.Better still look at a foreigh language film. The speech goes "gabble gabble gabble gabble goes gabble gabble gabble gabble" and the text at the bottom of the screen says "No"[/QUOTI saw some Irish movie once, the accent was really thick, so they had subtitles.

You could clearly hear some Irish guy say "don't be daft you stupid c*nt". Subtitle says "don't be silly"

[IBob]

I don't disagree...and it is my native language too.

 

But I don't feel qualified to 'compare' languages.

 

I suspect many languages have both strengths and weaknesses....including English.

 

About all I do know about it is that it has a large vocabulary. But having said that, most of the world only uses a very small (and probably shrinking) subset of that.

 

 

[red750]

German words found on Google -

 

Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung - speed limit

 

Schweinefleisch - pork

 

Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz - a law referring to the correct labelling of beef

 

umweltverschmutzung - nearest translation is 'pollution'

 

 

[red750]

 

Brustwarzen (Breast warts)

 

 

[IBob]

[ATTACH=full]46649[/ATTACH]Brustwarzen (Breast warts)

Hmmm.....you've certainly got the bit between your teeth there, Red..........)

 

 

[red750]

Schwangerschaftverhütungsmittel - contraceptive

 

Literal translation - Pregnancy prevention remedy/means

 

 

[spacesailor]

We could always Change it!.

 

After the second world war the scientist invented a New language.

 

ESPERANTO

 

I hope I spelt it correctly.

 

PS I've never like my language after I was caned for three weeks for saying there's more spoken words than written words.

 

spacesailor

 

 

[Yenn]

Lanfair PG that is how the Welsh village is called. They had to extend the railway platform to accomodate the sign.

 

 

[Bruce Tuncks]

I like how German has a logic. The WW1 german airforce was the Fliegergruppen der kaiser reich, which even I can decide is the flying group of the king's realm.

 

And I like the only Chinese word I know of in English... gung-ho

 

 

[IBob]

[spacesailor]

An aside for my "new language" remark.

 

On 22 February 2012, Google Translate added Esperanto as its 64th language.[16] On 28 May 2015, the language learning platform Duolingo launched an Esperanto course for English speakers. As of 12 November 2016, over 600,000 users had signed up,[17][18][19] with approximately 30 users completing the course everyday.

 

The Polish-Jewish ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, Unua Libro, on 26 July 1887. The name of Esperanto derives from Doktoro Esperanto ("Esperanto" translates as "one who hopes"), the pseudonym under which Zamenhof published Unua Libro.[8]

 

Thanks to wikipedia.

 

spacesailor

 

 

[Phil Perry]

Esperanto was being hailed bigly some time ago in the almost distant past as a tongue which 'Everyone' would adopt in time. . .Oh well, they reckoned without the bloody mindedness of the English there did they not ? If you mentioned it to any one of todays school aged kids they would probably not know what you are talking about, without recourse to T'interweb. . .

 

I believe that having English as a first language can be an obstacle to learning other languages, since it has evolved to be very complex, particularly in it's duplication of different words meaning ostensibly the same thing, it's odd spellings and very complicated grammar. Other tongues can be quite simplistic by comparison. . . although, some varieties of the Inuit group of dialects ( so I am told ) have around 30 words all meaning 'Ice' But then I've always they were a real cool bunch. . .

 

I seem to 'Pick up' foreign languages reasonably quickly - well, if I'm going on vacation to a particular place, I read up a bit for a couple of weeks prior, and manage to get by. French was difficult for me initially, due to it's Genders and 'Backwards' grammar constructs. ie, "Oi Missis, I'm going to walk down to the town and get some bread" has to be altered to: "Down to La centre Ville I shall walk" (et sneak a bottle of vin under my coat, I also shall. . . ) I have not studied Esperanto to see if it suffers from Bakkardness also. . .

 

 

[PA.]

"Down to La centre Ville I shall walk"

Talk like a Jedi.

 

 

[Phil Perry]

The humourfarce is strong in this one it is . . .

 

 

[facthunter]

"Chat noir" is logical. It's first of all a cat and then qualified by being black in colour. It's not a colour that is a cat There's a fair bit of logic in it. Nev

 

 

[Neil_S]

If, like me, you had been forced to learn Latin at school you would have learnt every possible construct of language, and would know yer subjunctive from yer periphrastic.....

 

....and if you want logical, ordered stuff then you can't go past ze German. Time, manner, place. And the words - e.g Fernsehapparat is a television, literally a remote seeing apparatus! Gotta love it.

 

 

[facthunter]

To me German is often clumsy and sounds crook. An object can be a whole sentence? There must be a better way. Latin ?? Inspired... It could still be a living language. Nev

 

 

[Neil_S]

To me German is often clumsy and sounds crook. An object can be a whole sentence? There must be a better way. Latin ?? Inspired... It could still be a living language. Nev

Hi Nev,

 

I always found German easier to learn than other languages as it followed the "rules" more rigidly than others.

 

Latin taught me much more about English than any of the English Language classes at school - I had no idea what declensions, conjugations, moods, voices etc were until I learnt Latin. It has also enabled me to guess the meaning of a number of French, Italian and English words! I just remember disliking it at school, maybe because the Latin master was very strict!

 

Cheers, Neil

 

 

[dutchroll]

German language certainly is very strictly governed by rules, like just about everything else in German culture. However the grammar gets pretty complicated. There are literally 6 different ways to say "the" (der, die, das, den, dem, des) in accordance with 16 different rules and that's only starting with the basics!