Is there a "best" language?

[Michael]

Are there a set of criteria we could use to determine which language is the "best"?

Or are all languages equal?

- Many of my Japanese and Persian friends say they like to speak in English (even to other Japanese or Iranians) because it allows them to express ideas they either don't have or say things more directly that simply isn't possible in their native languages.
That's interesting.
- Of course I have also been told Arabic is the "perfect" language - the criteria, that's what the Qur'an is written in so it must be.
- I've been told Old English is the Lords language (and thus also Perfect) because that's what the KJV of the Bible was written in!
- I read once that 100 years ago Japanese and Chinese tried to get rid of their characters because they thought this may have been holding them back socially and developmentally, but the problem was they can read information just sooo much faster using them, without them they read comparably slower and so they had to keep them.



So, this all got me to thinking, is there a "best" language? Is it possible to rank languages? Perhaps by number of words? Perhaps by number of sounds, or in the case of Japanese by have a space for a lack of sound? How they are written?

I read there's a group of people in south E Africa that speak tonally + still use clicking noses, presumably a remnant from before we evolved vocal cords! Is theirs a MORE or LESS or NEITHER evolved language?

Do linguists ever attempt such endeavors? Are some languages more evolved than others?

Michael

[cosmictraveler]

Are there a set of criteria we could use to determine which language is the "best"?

No, and to try and do so would only show arrogance and foolishness.

[tim840]

I'm no expert, but I really like the English language. It is a very flexible and expressive language, which means its difficult to learn, but good for communicating with. The language has such a huge vocabulary, and can be manipulated easily to produce a variety of meanings and feelings. There are words for anything you could want to say.

I havent got a lot of experience with many languages - Im monolingual and learning Chinese - but Id say English is a pretty good language. (Also, you can invent words if you dont know how to say something and people will still know what you mean)

[cosmictraveler]

I'd think there's no real best language but only one that could be more useful and easily understood to everyone.

[CutsieMarie89]

(Also, you can invent words if you dont know how to say something and people will still know what you mean)

That's true. :D

[James R]

All human languages have a large amount of redundancy. For example, consider:

"Yu cn ndrstnd ths evn tho it lcks mny vwls."

So, having fewer sounds or words is unlikely to make a language "better". We like a certain amount of redundancy, so that if we miss the meaning the first time we can still probably pick it up later on.

[CheskiChips]

That has nothing to do with spoken language.

[Michael]

Is it possible to ask the question: Which is the BEST language and objectively answer it? Why do people think it's wrong to ask? Maybe it depends on which aspect.
- Perhaps Chinese can impart information the fastest.
- Perhaps English in the most prevalent.
etc...


Some languages may be superior in some aspects while others in others.


Think about this, is it normal to ask this question: Which computer language is the best to program in?

See the point?
Michael

[EntropyAlwaysWins]

There is no such thing as a "best" programming language although you could definitely make the argument that a given language was 'best' for a given application.
You can't really say that about human languages, I doubt most people would be capable of switching languages repeatedly mid conversation whenever the topic of discussion shifted.

[Michael]

good point

[EntropyAlwaysWins]

Thanks.
Random story that relates to this:
I have heard that in Belgium (and other multilingual countries) it is relatively common practice for people to have a conversation between 2 people that are speaking two different languages, i.e, each speaks their native tongue which the other understands but is not as competent at speaking.

[Michael]

interesting.

of course, I don't think there's a perfect language or a "best" language - it's just something I often here from certain types of people.

MII

[inzomnia]

Best? Imo, Japanese. For example:

年. 月. 日 = Year. Month. Date
１直 = 1st shift (working shift)
水洗 = water rinse
担当 = person in charge

Very efficient, or? :cool:

[inzomnia]

Something that I made few years ago:

*** 4th Year Annual Schedule of Engineering Control Department:
技術管理部門の***4期の年間計画
(*** = company's name)

技術管理 = engineering control/management

[inzomnia]

土木図

That very short text means: Civil drawing (図 = drawing/figure)

[darini]

I think the best language for a community is their own (otherwise they'd be speaking another one).

Anyway, as a non-native English speaker, I believe its flexibility helped it to become a lingua franca (perhaps Latin also had that feature, so it became the dominant language at its time - appart from the Roman Empire power etc.)

So, I wouldn't say "best" language, but languages that are more practical than others in some aspects.

cheers

[inzomnia]

I think the best language for a community is their own (otherwise they'd be speaking another one).




I have to say, that is true as well. My mother tongue (Indonesian) is the simplest language I've ever known (other language that I've learn is Sundanese, English, German, Spanish, French, Japanese, and now just starting to learn Arabic).

In Indonesian, unlike in some other languages, there is no tenses, no singular/plural rule, no article (like the, a, an), to mention few. For example:

In English:
1. I am going to go to school
2. Yesterday I went to school
3. Tomorrow I will go to school

In Indonesian:
1. Saya pergi ke sekolah
2. Kemarin saya pergi ke sekolah
3. Besok saya akan pergi ke sekolah

The verb (pergi = go) remains pergi.

Another example:
In English:
1. I have one car
2. She has one car


In Indonesian:
1. Saya punya satu mobil
2. Dia punya satu mobil


Another example:
In English:
1. I have one car
2. She has two cars


In Indonesian:
1. Saya punya satu mobil
2. Dia punya dua mobil

Another example:
In English: I - he - she
In Indonesian: Saya - dia - dia

Very simple, or? I am not sure though, whether simple means best :D

[Enmos]

English, not because of the language itself but just because its international function.

[inzomnia]

English, not because of the language itself but just because its international function.

Eventhough so, it isn't the most spoken language.
English: 510 millions speakers
Mandarin: 1120 millions speakers

I guess that's because the mandarin language is not worldwidely distributed like English.

[Enmos]

Eventhough so, it isn't the most spoken language.
English: 510 millions speakers
Mandarin: 1120 millions speakers

I guess that's because the mandarin language is not worldwidely distributed like English.

Why yes, internationally English is the most important language. Mandarin.. not so much :p

[Syzygys]

Are there a set of criteria we could use to determine which language is the "best"?

No. But we could talk about most practical, as a substitute for best. Although most practical doesn't necesserily mean most expressive.

For a language to be most practical I would say the characteristics are:

1. Not too many letters.
2. Easy to learn and write.
3. Pronounciation is the same as writing.
4. Lots of people speak it as mother tongue.
5. Grammar not too complex.

Artifical languages fail at #4 and #5, so I would advocate instead of creating a new language to pick an already existing one and simplifying it...

P.S.: I never understood why esperanto needed 3 genders for 3rd person. Completely useless...

[Fraggle Rocker]

I've been told Old English is the Lord's language (and thus also Perfect) because that's what the KJV of the Bible was written in!The King James translation of the Bible was in fact published in 1611, contemporary with Shakespeare. This is Modern English, the form of our language after the Great Vowel Shift that was complete in the mid-16th century. (E.g., long A changed from the cardinal A of Middle English--as in Spanish padre--to today's Modern English sound, closer to cardinal E). To be precise, we call this Early Modern English, but the transition to true Modern English was only a few decades off. We have no trouble reading Early Modern English, although we Americans might find it difficult to understand a native speaker, who linguists say sounded like what the British now call "lower class" dialect.

Old English (now usually called Anglo-Saxon) was the synthesis of Old German dialects brought over by the Angles, Saxons and Jutes when the Romans abandoned Britannia in the 5th century. It is the language in which "Beowulf" is written, with its elaborate inflections and pure proto-Germanic vocabulary, syntax and phonetics, and none of us could understand it without study. It persisted until roughly a hundred years after the Norman Invasion in 1066.

That's the boundary with Middle English, the result of the massive overlay of the Norman French occupiers. The grammar was vastly simplified, some of the German phonetic harshness was replaced by a bit of French softness, and thousands of French words were assimilated.

By the mid-1500s the conquerors and the conquered had merged into one people, English had replaced French as the language of government and academia with the concomitant development of a vocabulary and more-or-less standard orthography to serve those disciplines, and the Great Vowel Shift marked the transition to Modern English.I read once that 100 years ago Japanese and Chinese tried to get rid of their characters because they thought this may have been holding them back socially and developmentally, but the problem was they can read information just sooo much faster using them, without them they read comparably slower and so they had to keep them.It's been suggested quite recently that Chinese can actually read Chinese characters faster than we can read English in the Roman alphabet. But the real problem with a transition to phonetic writing in Chinese is that Chinese is not a single language. Mandarin and Cantonese, the two most widespread Chinese languages, use more-or-less the same words in more-or-less the same order, because of centuries of the leveling force of a common written language, but their pronunciation is vastly different and there is no convenient mapping from one to the other. For example, "five" is wu in Mandarin and ng in Cantonese. There is no way to write Chinese phonetically that would be understandable to all Chinese. This far surpasses the problem in English. The English of Dallas, Yorkshire and Mumbai are merely different dialects of the same language; The "Chinese" of Beijing, Hong Kong and Shanghai are three different languages.I read there's a group of people in south E Africa that speak tonally + still use clicking noses, presumably a remnant from before we evolved vocal cords!No, we've had vocal cords for millions of years. Dogs have vocal cords. All non-African languages are arguably descended from a single African language that was brought out by the one tribe who began the Homo sapiens diaspora 50,000 years ago, and it happened to develop in a way that lost those sounds.

It's been suggested that those phonemes would have been used by hunters, naturally occurring sounds that would not betray their presence to their prey. They're clearly somewhat difficult to form even for someone who learns them in infancy, so as our need for them abated we abandoned them. There is a powerful force to level phonetics. Look at all the languages which have only the five cardinal vowels, or the rarity of the English TH and Russian KH phonemes. Are some languages more evolved than others?It's tempting to say that the languages of the few remaining premodern tribes are "less advanced" than ours, but they serve the needs of their speakers. That's all any language can do. I'd suggest that the true measure of the modernity of a language is its ability to adapt to the changing environment of its speakers. By that measure, all languages satisfy the criterion. Some, like English, undergo a combination of a huge breakdown plus the wholesale borrowing of foreign words. Others, like Chinese, use their own syntactic flexibility and word-building facility to do it all from within.Is it possible to ask the question: Which is the BEST language and objectively answer it? Why do people think it's wrong to ask?Surely because it would be politically incorrect.
Perhaps Chinese can impart information the fastest.That's my own opinion. Based upon my own observation I'd say that it takes an average of seven syllables to express what takes ten in English (and probably twenty in Italian or Japanese). However, Chinese speakers don't use this advantage to speak quickly. They actually speak more slowly and achieve about the same information transfer rate as we do. As a result the language is easier for foreigners and students to follow, as opposed to other languages in which it's difficult to tell where one word ends and the next begins. What a boon for a civilization that constantly brings together non-native speakers!I have heard that in Belgium (and other multilingual countries) it is relatively common practice for people to have a conversation between 2 people that are speaking two different languages, i.e, each speaks their native tongue which the other understands but is not as competent at speaking.That's actually just the opposite of what's recommended. Each person should speak the language in which he's least fluent because with the slow speed and limited vocabulary, the other will be sure to understand it.In Indonesian, unlike in some other languages, there is no tenses, no singular/plural rule, no article (like the, a, an), to mention few.Chinese has none of these Stone Age leftovers either. It also doesn't have prepositions. All relationships are expressed using nouns and verbs.English: 510 million speakers; Mandarin: 1120 million speakersThis statistic does not accurately count India. All Indians except the most poorly educated speak English. They have to, because there is no single "native language of India." The closest any Indic language comes to that status is Hindi, and for political and cultural reasons it cannot be accepted as the nation's lingua franca. Indians speak English among themselves, which gives rise to the acknowledged dialect of Indian English. If only half of India's 1.1 billion people are counted as English speakers, which I think is a conservative estimate, that boosts English very close to Mandarin in the statistics.

[John99]

English is the best language. I am not a native of U.K but anyone can see this. Iow's, you would need to be pretty dense not to.

[Fraggle Rocker]

English is the best language. I am not a native of U.K but anyone can see this. Iow's, you would need to be pretty dense not to.That's a remarkable statement to make on the Linguistics board. English is hamstrung by a pitiful set of prepositions leftover from the Stone Age, with which we're supposed to express every conceivable relationship. Traditionally we circumvent that problem by creating new words from Latin and Greek roots... which everyone must then learn. We've recently begun struggling to get around that limitation by inventing strange new constructions like "cable-ready" and "fuel-efficient." Chinese has a much richer facility for expressing the nuances of relationships and is much more readily adaptable to new technologies and other advances in business or culture.

English has abitrary syntax rules that serve no purpose except to confuse foreigners. What's the difference between arriving at your destination "on time" and "in time?" What's the difference between "the air," "an air," and just plain "air?" Why do Americans say "in school" like the British, but we don't say "in hospital?"

People make fun of Chinese phonetics, but English phonetics is just as difficult for foreigners. And you can just about make the same criticism of our so-called "phonetic" writing system.

I'm a native American, although not British, and I'm generally not regarded as "dense." I much prefer Chinese.

[Syzygys]

For a language to be most practical I would say the characteristics are:

1. Not too many letters.
2. Easy to learn and write.
3. Pronounciation is the same as writing.
4. Lots of people speak it as mother tongue.
5. Grammar not too complex.

English actually pretty much fullfills these criterias, only problem is with #3. We should simplify the pronounciation, make it more logical and there you go....

[Michael]

This thread has some interesting posts :)

What about Native American languages? Have they been able to adapt to the modern world or do they usually loan words in English?

I was told Chinese have some difficulty moving their eyes so quickly across the page to read English. They are used to more info in less space. To read discombobulated must be a real shocker!

I wish I had a little more time, I'd like to put together a sort improved method of learning the Chinese characters. I think I could make a method whereby most people could teach themselves 2000 in 1.5 years. anyway....

Surely because it would be politically incorrect.yeah, but that doesn't bother me. I am happy to ask if certain groups have lower IQ, what intellectual differences exist between men and women, etc... political correctness be damned, where the Bible and Qur'an really came from, truth is what matters... to me :)

1. Not too many letters.
2. Easy to learn and write.
3. Pronounciation is the same as writing.
4. Lots of people speak it as mother tongue.
5. Grammar not too complex.

Hmmmm.... the thing is, Chinese misses many of these and is a great language.


inzomnia, I also like learning Japanese. It's a fun language :)


I think more Indians and Chinese speak English in India and China than all the "native" English speakers added up! Funny huh?

[Syzygys]

Hmmmm.... the thing is, Chinese misses many of these and is a great language.


So is Albanian! :)

What is the definition of "great" language? The OP was looking for the "best" language, whatever that is.

Yeah it takes 6+ year to learn to read Chinese, I say we pass on it as world language....
And I don't even want to imagine a Chinese typewriter....

[EntropyAlwaysWins]

5. Grammar not too complex.

Artifical languages fail at #4 and #5, so I would advocate instead of creating a new language to pick an already existing one and simplifying it...


What about Lojban? it has an incredibly simple grammar, very easy to learn.

That's actually just the opposite of what's recommended. Each person should speak the language in which he's least fluent because with the slow speed and limited vocabulary, the other will be sure to understand it.

Yeah that does make more sense.

[Fraggle Rocker]

For a language to be most practical I would say the characteristics are: 1. Not too many letters. 2. Easy to learn and write. 3. Pronounciation is the same as writing. . . .You're focusing too much on the written language. That can be changed. Korean and Vietnamese both gave up their Chinese characters and adopted phonetic alphabets. Many of the major European languages underwent orthographic reform in the 19th century, with of course the glaring exceptions of English and French, which need it the worst.

It's the language itself, its grammar, syntax, phonetics, word-building facility, etc., that are the keys to being "practical."I never understood why Esperanto needed 3 genders for 3rd person.I love Esperanto but it is SUCH a 19th-century relic. It has a suffix for nouns to make them feminine, but none for masculine! They're just assumed to be masculine, even occupations that were traditionally female such as "nurse." As for the pronouns, Zamenhof spoke Yiddish, German, English, Russian and Polish, and I think he was also fluent in Latin and ancient Greek, since he translated the Bible. They all have three genders so it was a paradigm he never questioned. (He also knew Hebrew but I'm not familiar with its handling of gender.) He was just as bad with other paradigms. Verbs have infinitive, present, past, future and conditional, as well as a rather silly array of present, past and future active and passive participles. Nouns and pronouns have an accusative case, and adjectives have to agree with their nouns in gender and number. He thought he was building a language with a simplified grammar, but that was only by the standards of Latin and Polish!

If he had bothered to study Chinese he might have had the revelation to reduce the number of parts of speech, in addition to doing away with all inflections, even plural. Now that would be some language. I'm always singing the praises of Chinese, but it has a prodigious array of micro-rules that only apply to small groups of words. E.g., numbers have to be followed by a "measure word" that differs depending on the category of noun. "Large flat objects" have their own special measure word.

[Syzygys]

What about Lojban? it has an incredibly simple grammar, very easy to learn.

How could I forget Lojban? I actually met all 5 people who speak it...

[Syzygys]

You're focusing too much on the written language. That can be changed. Korean and Vietnamese both gave up their Chinese characters and adopted phonetic alphabets.

I dunno, we do write, you know.

Good luck with persuading 1 billion Chinese to change their alphabet... I guess Americans will adopt the metric system before the Chinese write in letters, although who knows? They are practical...

[EntropyAlwaysWins]

How could I forget Lojban? I actually met all 5 people who speak it...

:D lol.

[draqon]

math is the best language. It can even define love properly, noone will be mad.

[EntropyAlwaysWins]

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/useless.jpg (http://xkcd.com/55/)

[draqon]

in other words, undefined...boundless infinite eternal Love

[Enmos]

Russian.

[CutsieMarie89]

I've just noticed that American English sounds very flat and lazy. I don't fluently speak another language, but my boyfriend was being a jerk last night and only speaking in Italian, and when he switched back to English it sounded really flat and lazy, it was kind of funny.

[Fraggle Rocker]

I've just noticed that American English sounds very flat and lazy. I don't fluently speak another language, but my boyfriend was being a jerk last night and only speaking in Italian, and when he switched back to English it sounded really flat and lazy, it was kind of funny.English is a more efficient language phonetically. It takes about ten syllables in English to say what takes fifteen or twenty syllables in Italian. So we speak more slowly. Chinese is even more efficient, with about seven syllables. As a result it is spoken even more slowly than English. That takes care of the "lazy" part.

As for the "flat" part, that's a matter of dialect. Standard American English doesn't have a lot of dynamic range (tone, volume, etc.), so it would sound "flat," compared to Standard Italian, which tends to have more. I think Sicilian Italian is even more dynamic.

RP ("Received Pronunciation" or what we call Oxford English or BBC English) is both a lot faster and a lot more dynamic than American, but it can hardly match Italian. For that you'd need something like Japanese or Russian. Southern American English is even slower than Standard but it may have a little more dynamics.

Chinese may be "lazier" than English but it makes Italian sound "flat" because tones are phonemic so it has a lot of tonal dynamics.

[John99]

All the times i have heard chinese people talk it was ver, very fast. written it looks like a horror show and is just a mess and not efficient at all.

Everyone seems to want or need to learn English and the need to be multilingual is almost comical.

[John99]

Additionally, accents will not change so there is no need to keep perpetuating this mistake for much longer.

[Fraggle Rocker]

All the times i have heard chinese people talk it was very, very fast.It just sounds that way because it's so different phonetically. Four adjacent syllables can have four different pitches. (In Mandarin; it could be twelve in Shanghai.) That rarely happens in English so it makes it sound like they're talking faster. I've studied Chinese and can carry on a rudimentary conversation. I can assure you that it's spoken more slowly than English, which makes it a dream for a foreign student. I can actually pick the words I know out of people's speech who aren't talking carefully for my benefit. Try that in Spanish or Czech!Written it looks like a horror show and is just a mess and not efficient at all.You must not be an artist because many people find Chinese characters beautiful. In fact calligraphy is considered an art in the Orient and they hang up beautifully painted quotes by professional artists on their walls like paintings. Again, it's one of those things that you get a new perspective on with a little study. There's a certain amount of logic to the composition of the characters, and the way the brush strokes flow is very graceful. As for efficiency, it's certainly not efficient to write by hand, but as far as I can tell computer software puts it on a par with English. And as I noted earlier, there is evidence that Chinese people read faster than we do.Everyone seems to want or need to learn English and the need to be multilingual is almost comical.This is the Linguistics subforum. We're all recoiling in horror and making the sign of the cross at you. Begone, evil spirit!

More seriously, each language comes with its own way of thinking, because our most important thoughts are almost all formed in words. The more different the language, the more different the thinking. Being multilingual is a tremendous advantage.

Just give the U.S. economy and culture a few more decades to collapse and see how many people still find it useful to learn English.

[inzomnia]

I love reading all your posts in this thread, Fraggle, thanks for the comprehensive review. :thumbsup:

[John99]

Fraggle, i am an artist. Finding chinese character beautiful is one thing but when they are all over a page its just a mess. I dont mean to offend anyone but lets forget about political correctness and think about the future of humanity.

This is the Linguistics subforum. We're all recoiling in horror and making the sign of the cross at you. Begone, evil spirit!

More seriously, each language comes with its own way of thinking, because our most important thoughts are almost all formed in words. The more different the language, the more different the thinking. Being multilingual is a tremendous advantage.

And if i was a bullshitter everyone would love me. What you say about different ways of thinking is very telling and i never thought of it that way but i think that is a major problem facing humans. We cannot think differently and expect to conquer challenges that willk arise in the future. We need to get on the same page and this is holding us back.

Pay no attention to the spelling because i am using a different browser and typing very fast.

[w1z4rd]

I speak four languages. English, Afrikaans, isiZulu and isiXhosa. English being my primary language, Afrikaans being that dutch hybrid we have here and Zulu and Xhosa being pretty similar (but not the same) bantu languages.

From what I have seen with languages, its pretty Darwinian. What makes English pretty powerful is its vast range of words and ways to express yourself. What it doesnt have it absorbs from other languages. Whats also helping it out has being the advent of the information age and how it is the primary language on the internet and on massive amounts of the worlds air and tv shows.

Take a country like Nigeria for example.. dozens of different languages are spoken there, but the only official language (it might have changed now under Islamic control) is/was English (or so the local Nigerians tell me).

In South Africa... with over a dozen official languages, the primary language is English. Even the President address`s the nation in English.

I guess right now its the most useful language to know and communicate in at the moment.

[Fraggle Rocker]

Fraggle, i am an artist. Finding chinese character beautiful is one thing but when they are all over a page its just a mess.Legions of people said the same thing about the paintings of Picasso, the writings of Faulkner and the music of Lennon and McCartney, all of which are now revered as milestones in the history of civilization. Don't set yourself up to be tallied with the people who were booing at the premiere of Ravel's "Bolero."I dont mean to offend anyone but lets forget about political correctness and think about the future of humanity.No one is seriously advocating logograms as the world standard for written communication, even if the unpredictable course of history elevates Chinese to the status of the Wal-Mart World Language. As I have opined consistently, based upon the "achievements" of the PRC government, it's inevitable that they will mandate the adoption of a phonetic writing system---either their own syllabary, which is derived from Chinese characters like Japanese kana; or the Pin-yin system used by the rest of the world, which is the Roman alphabet with diacritical marks and a few ambiguities such as the city name Xian: one syllable or two?

But before they can standardize written Chinese they have to standardize spoken Chinese. As of today something like one-third of the population do not speak Mandarin as their native tongue and about half of those people are not functionally fluent in it. Those people can read "written Chinese" because it's a fictitious language that only exists on paper, with thousands of logograms precisely transcribing more than 95% of the words of formal speech regardless of the way their pronunciations have diverged into disparate languages (not dialects) over the past three thousand years. They will not be able to read Mandarin words transcribed phonetically by any system, because they cannot understand those words when spoken.

Step One: The Mandarinization of the country. (The morality of this, from the standpoint of culture, even with the odd wrinkle that the various Chinese languages use largely identical vocabulary and syntax, is a topic for another thread.) Step Two: Conversion to a phonetic writing system.

Step One will be complete in two more generations. Step Two will probably take about the same amount of time.What you say about different ways of thinking is very telling and i never thought of it that way but i think that is a major problem facing humans. We cannot think differently and expect to conquer challenges that will arise in the future. We need to get on the same page and this is holding us back.You misunderstand me and the clue you missed was my emphasis of multilingualism as a goal at the individual level, not as a barrier to progress and harmony at the tribal level. When you learn a second language you learn a second way of thinking. This provides you with a significant second perspective for critically reviewing your own thoughts. Studying Chinese tremendously improved my writing (something at which I now earn a living). When I put together a sentence, a little critic in my head is organizing the same thought in Chinese syntax (even though it doesn't know all the words) and chiding, "Couldn't you straighten that out and eliminate all the meaningless words to make it clearer and give it more punch? Why specify the gender and number of all those people and the time at which all those actions take place, when there is no real constraint on them? Couldn't you describe those relationships a lot more precisely by not relying on that pathetic set of Stone Age prepositions?"What makes English pretty powerful is its vast range of words and ways to express yourself.It is at exactly the same level as Chinese on this.What it doesnt have it absorbs from other languages.Chinese accomplishes the same thing by having a more powerful word-building engine, like German only without the cumbersome need to respect grammatical rules within a compound word. English has been doing this on the sly by building compound words out of Latin and Greek roots (e.g. "television" comes from both languages). But lately we have started using more of our own wordstock, with an explosion of new compounds like cost-effective and industry-standard that don't require a Latin/Greek dictionary to decipher the first time you see them; we're doing it the Chinese way.Whats also helping it out has being the advent of the information age and how it is the primary language on the internet and on massive amounts of the worlds air and tv shows.As I said, that's an accident of history. French, Latin and Aramaic (as well as several others) were once the universal language of Western civilization and anyone who wanted to consort with it. Even after the nation of the language's origin lost prominence or actually disappeared (e.g. the Aramaeans), the language hung on for centuries through sheer inertia. Even if the sun finally sets on the Anglo-American Empire, English may continue to be the international language for a while, if only because of that mountain of software documentation.:) But if we've learned one thing from history, it's the aphorism, "This too shall pass."I guess right now its the most useful language to know and communicate in at the moment.And the winner of the World Language award will have nothing to do with how "good" a language it is.:)Take a country like Nigeria for example.. dozens of different languages are spoken there, but the only official language. . . . is/was English. In South Africa... with over a dozen official languages, the primary language is English. Even the President address`s the nation in English.The same is essentially true of India with its enormously larger population. While Hindi is also a language that is taught in virtually all schools and publications in Hindi probably outnumber all other Indian languages combined, it is still the language of one ethnic group and as such is rejected for both everyday and official discourse. Of course this leaves the country in the bizarre position of embracing the language of its only recently overthrown conquerors.

[John99]

FR,

Best thing to do is make some slight changes to English. I can think of a few ways to streamline and simplify it. Most obvious would be near elimination of punctuation from the written form. One example would be eliminating commma's or substituting them with the 'dash' as seen here-after the colon and before the period: -.

Then we need a new word for colon because it is now used to name a body part. These small changes would also allow keyboards and programs to be somewhat backwards compatible but by 2012 the keyboard will look different than the one we use today.

Enough changes and it can be re-named, which will be crucial.

[Fraggle Rocker]

Best thing to do is make some slight changes to English. I can think of a few ways to streamline and simplify it.I was about ready to tell you that English doesn't work that way, but I see you mean only the written language. Orthographic standards can be changed if they're adopted by the government, universities and the influential newspapers--in both the USA and the UK. Changes to the spoken language can only be made democratically.Most obvious would be near elimination of punctuation from the written form. One example would be eliminating commas or substituting them with the 'dash' as seen here-after the colon and before the period: -.But punctuation is not an arbitrary or obsolete convention. Most punctuation marks are transcriptions (although approximate and standardized) of actual phonetic (but not phonemic) elements in speech. Commas, periods, dashes, quotation marks, slashes, exclamation points, colons, semicolons, question marks, italics, etc., represent various specific pauses, length, pitch and volume of syllables, and static or dynamic combinations of them. In speech they impart meaning and/or help parse the sentence and the corresponding punctuation does the same thing. An exception is the period used after an abbreviation, which alerts us to the need to expand the abbreviation, although the Brits omit it in the most common and recognizable cases such as Mr and etc.

The apostrophe in the possessive (e.g., Mary's) could be eliminated with no misunderstanding, but there are very few others whose absence would not impair comprehension of a written sentence.Then we need a new word for colon because it is now used to name a body part.Both of those words go back a long way. Neither is a recent development and they've coexisted peacefully for centuries. The O in the name of the punctuation mark is Greek omega, a long O. The other one is omicron, the short O. Adolescents giggle over this coincidence as they giggle over so many things. Nobody else cares.Enough changes and it can be re-named, which will be crucial.What can be renamed? The English language? Just its name in English? Or are you also going to find a substitute for Italian inglese, Czech anglicky, Mandarin ying-wen, Hungarian angol, Japanese ei-go, etc.?

[tim840]

FR,

Best thing to do is make some slight changes to English. I can think of a few ways to streamline and simplify it. Most obvious would be near elimination of punctuation from the written form. One example would be eliminating commma's or substituting them with the 'dash' as seen here-after the colon and before the period: -.

Then we need a new word for colon because it is now used to name a body part. These small changes would also allow keyboards and programs to be somewhat backwards compatible but by 2012 the keyboard will look different than the one we use today.

Enough changes and it can be re-named, which will be crucial.

that sounds like a terrible idea... i love my punctuation marks. periods, apostrophes, commas, colons, semicolons, hyphins, elipses, all of them are unique and important - though i understand that you wouldnt appreciate this (note the misuse of your apostrophe in "comma's": apostrophes are for possessive forms, not pluralizations). But if you know how to use punctuation properly, it is a great tool.

What does sometimes confuse me, though, is placement of punctuation near quotations and parentheses; other than that, its just fine the way it is.

[draqon]

tim840...speaks the best language. Every time tim840 is around, my heart beats faster and faster because of the beauty in tim's words...so much passion...so much love...poetic and beautiful.

[tim840]

tim840...speaks the best language. Every time tim840 is around, my heart beats faster and faster because of the beauty in tim's words...so much passion...so much love...poetic and beautiful.

:huh: :wtf:

lol

[Enmos]

Is this Draq's coming out ? :confused:

[draqon]

Is this Draq's coming out ? :confused:

Enmos, is that you, sweety? :) I now see it...all along...Netherlands' language is the best language there is...

[Enmos]

Enmos, is that you, sweety? :) I now see it...all along...Netherlands' language is the best language there is...

Thanks babe ! :p

[draqon]

Thanks babe ! :p

huh? :bugeye: What kind of man do you think I am! :mad:

[Enmos]

huh? :bugeye: What kind of man do you think I am! :mad:

Draq queen ? :shrug:

[draqon]

Draq queen ? :shrug:

Im straight...

I was just complimenting the language of Netherlands. nothing more.

what did you think I was doing?!

what?!! :eek:

no way....

if I am thinking what I am thinking....

:eek:

no....

that just cannot be true....

[Enmos]

Whatever you say, honey bunny :D

[John99]

tim, thanks for pointing my mistakes out. You spelled 'hyphen' wrong.:)

[tim840]

aww dang... :( thank you for pointing out my mistakes :)

[Michael]

happy holidays :)

[LilyCao]

In English:
1. I am going to go to school
2. Yesterday I went to school
3. Tomorrow I will go to school

In Indonesian:
1. Saya pergi ke sekolah
2. Kemarin saya pergi ke sekolah
3. Besok saya akan pergi ke sekolah

The verb (pergi = go) remains pergi.

Another example:
In English:
1. I have one car
2. She has one car


In Indonesian:
1. Saya punya satu mobil
2. Dia punya satu mobil


Another example:
In English:
1. I have one car
2. She has two cars


In Indonesian:
1. Saya punya satu mobil
2. Dia punya dua mobil

Another example:
In English: I - he - she
In Indonesian: Saya - dia - dia


It is similar in Chinese.

[LilyCao]

To me, the best language is the one that I am not good at or haven't learnt yet.:D

[Fraggle Rocker]

It is similar in Chinese.Chinese is better. If the number of cars you have is not important to the discussion, you don't have to specify it. Wo you che, "I have (an unspecified number of) car/cars." If it is important, you just say the number, but you don't have to put an ending on the noun. Wo you yi-ge che, "I have one car," or Wo you si-ge che, "I have four car(s)." In any case, there's no inflected ending on the nouns.

Sure it's easy with car/cars, but not so easy with child/children, goose/geese, fish/fish, radius/radii, index/indices.

Same with verbs: no inflections to indicate tense. If the time the action takes place is important, you just say so, otherwise you leave it out. Wo chi tang, "I eat candy," probably just means that you're a candy lover as opposed to a meat-and-potatoes sort of person. If instead you put in the time words, Wo jin-tian wan-shang chi tang, "I (will) eat candy today night (tonight)," or Wo zuo-tian chi tang, "I eat (ate) candy yesterday," then you're talking about a specific event at a specific time.

Again, tense is easy with walk/walked, but not so easy with think/thought, make/made, see/saw/seen, eat/ate/eaten, drive/drove/driven. English is full of irregular inflections, including "strong verbs," and that makes it hard to learn.

[w1z4rd]

It is at exactly the same level as Chinese on this.

You think you can honestly compare a language as ungainly as Chinese with English? I mean.. just look at the alphabet differences. You need to be able to identify over 2000 different characters just to be able to read a newspaper.

I dont even wanna know what a chinese programming language looks like :(

[EntropyAlwaysWins]

Virtually every programming language I've ever heard of it based on English, or at least uses the English alphabet.
The only, possible, exceptions I can think of are those languages that are deliberately designed to be esoteric and hard to use, such as whitespace (http://compsoc.dur.ac.uk/whitespace/) or piet (http://www.dangermouse.net/esoteric/piet.html).

[Fraggle Rocker]

You think you can honestly compare a language as ungainly as Chinese with English? I mean.. just look at the alphabet differences. You need to be able to identify over 2000 different characters just to be able to read a newspaper.You people keep equating "Chinese" with the written language. Written languages are relatively easy to reform, especially in a totalitarian society. Both Korean and Vietnamese gave up Chinese characters and adopted phonetic alphabets. Once they complete the educational goal of getting everyone in China to speak Mandarin, so a phonetic script will be possible, the government will simply mandate the transition to an alphabet or a syllabary. The whole process will take about four generations, so come back in a hundred years.

This will leave English and French as written languages long overdue for an overhaul. Virtually every other European language reformed its spelling to conform to modern pronunciation within the past 150 years. We still use spelling conventions from 600 years ago, when long A was pronounced AH and long I was pronounced EE. And in French, OI is pronounced WAH, and the entire grammatical suffix -ENT is silent!

The vocabulary, grammar and syntax of a language contribute to its greatness or mediocrity. By those scores, Chinese is at least as good as English, and arguably far better. But in today's rapidly evolving civilization, adaptability is surely the most important measure and by that score Chinese leaves English in the dust. They were able to coin two-syllable compound words for automobile, television, petroleum and computer that are easy to learn and remember because they make sense intuitively.

Their professional and academic jargon isn't full of ungainly five-syllable words built capriciously from roots in a foreign language that only scholars understand.I dont even wanna know what a Chinese programming language looks likeYou're just being silly, or else you don't have any friends who work in I.T. Everybody uses the same programming languages.

[Billy T]

... Same with verbs: no inflections {in Chinese} to indicate tense. …
Again, tense is easy with walk/walked, but not so easy with think/thought, make/made, see/saw/seen, eat/ate/eaten, drive/drove/driven. English is full of irregular inflections, including "strong verbs," and that makes it hard to learn.Proper Portuguese is (it seems to me) even worse than English. - They have more tense inflections possible for the verbs. My Portuguese is terrible, but I make myself understood, by unconsciously being "Chinese." - I.e. liberal use of words like “tomorrow”, “last week,” rather than the correct inflection and often only the verb stem or the full infinitive.

These Chinese must think we are fools (to use inflections), but very intelligent ones to keep all those crazy inflected tense indicators attached to verb stem ends, especially a few hundred that are irregular.

[tim840]

You think you can honestly compare a language as ungainly as Chinese with English? I mean.. just look at the alphabet differences. You need to be able to identify over 2000 different characters just to be able to read a newspaper.

I dont even wanna know what a chinese programming language looks like :(

I've read that in China you need to be able to read 4,000 characters to get by every day, and in Taiwan you need to know 6,000.

[Fraggle Rocker]

I've read that in China you need to be able to read 4,000 characters to get by every day, and in Taiwan you need to know 6,000.In practice there's no difference. The PRC and the ROC disagree on everything and there are just two arbitrary definitions of "literacy." Someone who knows 5,000 characters is very well educated. Anything beyond that is real scholarship. My dictionary is "The Fenn Five Thousand" and no Chinese person I've ever shown it to could think of a word that wasn't in it. Only a Korean guy with a degree in philosophy who had read the original writings of people like Lao-zi.

A high school graduate who studied well should know 4,000. The PRC wants to be able to claim a high "literacy" rate for its communist educational system, so they lower it without even letting on. I think they count people who know 1,200, which is a fourth-grade education and covers a lot of people out in the boondocks who won't go much further.

Of course an interesting thing about literacy in the Chinese writing system is that it's incremental. If you know 1,200 characters you can read a lot of signs and labels, and that's pretty useful.

[John99]

My contention is not that one language is necessarilty better than another. i do believe that the simplification and universality of communication in a world that is more interactive would be an improvement.

More time can be spent trying to solve greater issues but then maybe not because how far can we conceivably take our civilization?

[temur]

To me, the best language is the one that I am not good at or haven't learnt yet.:D

You learned all but one language on Earth? just kidding

[Fraggle Rocker]

My contention is not that one language is necessarily better than another. I do believe that the simplification and universality of communication in a world that is more interactive would be an improvement.The problem with that is that it is a trade-off. If you simplify a language to make it easier for more people to understand, you lose nuances that enrich the communication--and therefore the thinking and the culture--of the original speakers. You do even more of that when you eliminate an entire language and require its speakers to adapt to a new one.

We may not notice this when the two languages are fairly closely related, e.g. Indo-European languages like English, Gaelic, Russian and Hindi. But what if they're not? In the Indo-European languages, we organize our entire thought pattern around subjects, verbs and objects, and it affects the way we view the world. Other languages have totally different structures, such as Japanese with its topic-observation syntax.

Could anyone but the Japanese have turned Zen into what it is today? Could anyone but anglophones have invented rock and roll?

[John99]

I understand that this may be the wrong place for a statement like that but it seems to me to be counterproductive to keep perpetuating all these different languages. I really dont see the purposes except for a linguist, historians or hobbyists etc.

If a new country were to be founded would you recommend they develop a new language or use an already established one where they can actually communicate with others. Consider all the languages no longer used by the general population such as Latin.

This is just an idea does not mean that it is going to happen.

[EntropyAlwaysWins]

If a new country were to be founded would you recommend they develop a new language or use an already established one where they can actually communicate with others. Consider all the languages no longer used by the general population such as Latin.

This is just an idea does not mean that it is going to happen.

Ignoring things such as what languages the people founding it spoke at the time, I would think the best language/s to have as the official one/s would be the most widespread one in the region allowing ease of communication with your neighbours and whatever language was most useful internationally for commerce, which at the moment would be English.

As far as I am aware this is actually the path many new/small countries take, their official languages are usually the native one/s + English + (sometimes) an important regional language.

[Fraggle Rocker]

I understand that this may be the wrong place for a statement like that but it seems to me to be counterproductive to keep perpetuating all these different languages. I really dont see the purposes except for a linguist, historians or hobbyists etc.See my post #72. Having a multiplicity of languages is a tremendous resource for humanity because each language guides its speakers into a different way of thinking. Every time a language becomes extinct we lose an irreplaceable portion of human culture. It would be a disaster if there were only one language. Culture would be stifled.

Read up on some of the languages of Africa, Australia or the New World, which are much different from ours. The difference is not merely "slight." They come with a whole different world view. We dare not lose that.If a new country were to be founded would you recommend they develop a new language or use an already established one where they can actually communicate with others.I speak Esperanto and I can attest to the fact that artificial languages, since they have no culture behind them, are rather sterile. A new country would probably adopt the language of the majority of its founders, that's how the USA ended up with English. Israel was an interesting exception, taking the language of their religious texts and ceremonies (Hebrew) instead of the one that most of them already knew and had a modest modern literary tradition (Yiddish). I suppose it would depend on the reason the country was being founded. If it was a bunch of Star Trek fans founding a colony on another planet, they'd probably pick Klingon.

[John99]

Good points.

Having a multiplicity of languages is a tremendous resource for humanity because each language guides its speakers into a different way of thinking.

I am not sure i agree with that though and i think it is actually more of a hindrance.

[tim840]

I think it is good to keep all the languages we have because they preserve culture, tradition, etc

[EntropyAlwaysWins]

Israel was an interesting exception, taking the language of their religious texts and ceremonies (Hebrew) instead of the one that most of them already knew and had a modest modern literary tradition (Yiddish).

Israel actually has 3 official languages; Hebrew, Arabic and English.

[LilyCao]

You learned all but one language on Earth? just kidding

Of course not. I meant to say that, the less I know about a language, the more I feel it mysterious and useful. :p

[Zephyr]

Languages adapt to the role they find themselves in. An international language like English which is used in everything from science to diplomacy will expand with new words to describe cutting edge concepts in those fields. Other languages will have to play catch up to find words for those same concepts.

Another language could have taken the same role, had history been different. Arabic was the lingua franca of the middle east a thousand years ago.

[w1z4rd]

You people keep equating "Chinese" with the written language. Written languages are relatively easy to reform, especially in a totalitarian society. Both Korean and Vietnamese gave up Chinese characters and adopted phonetic alphabets. Once they complete the educational goal of getting everyone in China to speak Mandarin, so a phonetic script will be possible, the government will simply mandate the transition to an alphabet or a syllabary. The whole process will take about four generations, so come back in a hundred years.

This will leave English and French as written languages long overdue for an overhaul. Virtually every other European language reformed its spelling to conform to modern pronunciation within the past 150 years. We still use spelling conventions from 600 years ago, when long A was pronounced AH and long I was pronounced EE. And in French, OI is pronounced WAH, and the entire grammatical suffix -ENT is silent!

The vocabulary, grammar and syntax of a language contribute to its greatness or mediocrity. By those scores, Chinese is at least as good as English, and arguably far better. But in today's rapidly evolving civilization, adaptability is surely the most important measure and by that score Chinese leaves English in the dust. They were able to coin two-syllable compound words for automobile, television, petroleum and computer that are easy to learn and remember because they make sense intuitively.

Their professional and academic jargon isn't full of ungainly five-syllable words built capriciously from roots in a foreign language that only scholars understand.

This makes sense. Would be interesting to see China make that transition. As well as for english to clean up some of its strangeness. Ghoti.


You're just being silly, or else you don't have any friends who work in I.T. Everybody uses the same programming languages.

I know a helleava lot about IT, and AFAIK 98% of them use english words. I also know there non-english ones.. like Chinese Basic... that didnt last very long.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_BASIC

[Billy T]

To w1z4rd:

Are you a pig or corn farmer? (You have: "Eat more pork" under your name.)

Pork is doing very well:

"... Hogs are getting a boost from improved demand for pork. On average, each American will eat 50.2 pounds of the meat in 2009, up 1.8 percent from 49.3 pounds in 2008, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates. Annual per capita beef consumption will decline 1 percent next year to 62.1 pounds, the agency said.

Retail U.S. pork prices reached $3.002 a pound in the third quarter, the highest since at least 1970, government data show. Ham prices averaged $2.466 a pound in November, up from $2.29 a year earlier, according to USDA.

Worldwide, pork consumption will reach 97.6 million metric tons in 2009, up 1.3percent from this year, the third-consecutive annual increase, USDA data show. Chinese consumption* may rise 2.9 percent to 46.2 million tons**, the agency said.

Hog farmers blame the six-year rally in energy costs and the policies of President George W. Bush for increasing prices of animal feed and forcing them to cut production even as demand rises. ..."

FROM: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aq7lkN0SRW9Y&refer=home

----------------
*The urban Chinese is "living high on the hog" now - and paying more than twice /Kg what he paid last year for pork. His total consumption is up 22% YoY. - Life in China is rapidly improving!

** That is probably "metric tons" (1000kg) or 46.2E9Kg or 1.0164E11 pounds. Dividing by 1.3E9 people, that is 78.2 pounds / person. Now 78.2/46.2 = 1.70 or the Chinese eat 70% more pork than Americans do. (but much less beef) I think they eat about twice as much pond fish as Americans do, and infinitely more of a lot of things like cat, dog, etc. - "If it moves, it is food for the pot" seems to be the rule.

I recently read, but find it a little hard believe, that they eat a billion chickens per day! Anyone have data on this? I am getting the impression that not only are very few hungry in China anymore, but they now have a moderately high protein diet. - Not too hard to understand why the CCP is very popular, except when it decides your farm is needed for a new city or will be flooded by a new dam.

[w1z4rd]

My family has farms, but we dont farm pigs.. were cattle and sheep farmers. Though I dont work on a farm at all.

[Billy T]

My family has farms, but we dont farm pigs.. were cattle and sheep farmers. … Do you know anything about the use of sheep in China? I don't, but it would seem to be a good small animal food source as can can cut the grass close to the ground. Likewise, Rabbit ought to do well in China, but so much of this is cultural, perhaps not. (I think they do have a year of the rabbit but as they eat 70% more pork than Americans do, and I am certain they have a year of the pig, it probably is no problem to eat the animal of the year.)

Sorry if off thread too much, but culture and language and food are related. Perhaps the terms for sheep and rabbit have bad "karma" or something in China, if they are not popular foods. I have long held the view that Americans eat very little horse, compared to the French, as we do not have a euphemistic word for horse meat. (We have "beef" for cow, Pork of pig, etc. but nothing for horse meat, but the French do and eat much more of it.)

[w1z4rd]

Do you know anything about the use of sheep in China? I don't, but it would seem to be a good small animal food source as can can cut the grass close to the ground. Likewise, Rabbit ought to do well in China, but so much of this is cultural, perhaps not. (I think they do have a year of the rabbit but as they eat 70% more pork than Americans do, and I am certain they have a year of the pig, it probably is no problem to eat the animal of the year.)

Sorry if off thread too much, but culture and language and food are related. Perhaps the terms for sheep and rabbit have bad "karma" or something in China, if they are not popular foods. I have long held the view that Americans eat very little horse, compared to the French, as we do not have a euphemistic word for horse meat. (We have "beef" for cow, Pork of pig, etc. but noting for horse meat, but the French do and eat much more of it.)
:m:

[EntropyAlwaysWins]

Sorry if off thread too much, but culture and language and food are related. Perhaps the terms for sheep and rabbit have bad "karma" or something in China, if they are not popular foods. I have long held the view that Americans eat very little horse, compared to the French, as we do not have a euphemistic word for horse meat. (We have "beef" for cow, Pork of pig, etc. but nothing for horse meat, but the French do and eat much more of it.)

It certainly could be a factor but its probably not the only one.

[Fraggle Rocker]

Having a multiplicity of languages is a tremendous resource for humanity because each language guides its speakers into a different way of thinking.I am not sure i agree with that though and i think it is actually more of a hindrance.People who have different styles of thinking bring different approaches to problems, which makes them easier to solve. Every manager knows that. We try very hard not to staff a difficult project with people from similar backgrounds, skills and interests. If you can get people who are actually from a different culture it's a real boon.

Of course this can work against you because people with different ways of thinking can end up with intractable disagreements. But it's a leader's job to make sure that doesn't happen by helping them find compromise. That's true for the leader of a business project, a church picnic, or an alliance of nations.Arabic was the lingua franca of the Middle East a thousand years ago.And Aramaic for more than a thousand years before that. Most of the Talmud and much of the Bible was originally written in Aramaic.I recently read, but find it a little hard believe, that [the Chinese] eat a billion chickens per day! Anyone have data on this?That's almost one chicken per person, which doesn't pass a reality test. Seed magazine (http://seedmagazine.com/news/2008/05/carnivores_like_us.php) says that even twenty years from now, China's per capita meat consumption is predicted to only be about 150 grams (six ounces) per day. They don't even expect Americans to eat a pound of meat a day (454gm) by then, despite what you might think after seeing a few TV commercials.I am getting the impression that not only are very few hungry in China anymore, but they now have a moderately high protein diet.When I was a kid in the 1950s, it was common for parents to admonish their children not to waste food, to "think of all the starving children in China." That was not hyperbole; something like a couple of million Chinese died of starvation. Today no one goes hungry in China. It's hard not to feel a little joy over their success, regardless of the political and human-rights issues raised along the way.I have long held the view that Americans eat very little horse, compared to the French, as we do not have a euphemistic word for horse meat. (We have "beef" for cow, "pork" for pig, etc. but nothing for horse meat, but the French do and eat much more of it.I don't think that quite explains it, since all our kitchen words for meat (beef, pork, veal, mutton, venison) are of French origin!

[tim840]

Do you know anything about the use of sheep in China? I don't, but it would seem to be a good small animal food source as can can cut the grass close to the ground. Likewise, Rabbit ought to do well in China, but so much of this is cultural, perhaps not. (I think they do have a year of the rabbit but as they eat 70% more pork than Americans do, and I am certain they have a year of the pig, it probably is no problem to eat the animal of the year.)

Sorry if off thread too much, but culture and language and food are related. Perhaps the terms for sheep and rabbit have bad "karma" or something in China, if they are not popular foods. I have long held the view that Americans eat very little horse, compared to the French, as we do not have a euphemistic word for horse meat. (We have "beef" for cow, Pork of pig, etc. but nothing for horse meat, but the French do and eat much more of it.)

Karma is an Indian thing... also the euphemisms are not important - we eat plenty of chicken, and just call it chicken - no substitutional name for it, and we eat even more chicken than we do pork. I think the reason we dont eat horse is that horses arent just stock animals: many people ride them or have them as pets, so they're thought of in a different way from the farm animals. Cows dont do anybody any good, they just stand around eating and such, but horses are useful animals... that is why we dont eat them.

[Billy T]

Karma is an Indian thing... also the euphemisms are not important - we eat plenty of chicken, and just call it chicken - no substitutional name for it, and we eat even more chicken than we do pork. I think the reason we dont eat horse is that horses arent just stock animals: many people ride them or have them as pets, so they're thought of in a different way from the farm animals. ...That is why karma was in quotes. I was only trying to express compactly the idea that some foods may be though to bring bad luck, etc. The Chinese, I think, are more superstitious than westerners. To be on thread: perhaps the "best language" is one that can freely borrow from others to compactly express an idea, as I did. In this regard, French is the WORST language. The French Academy sees to that - carefully trying to keep all foreign words out.

BTW, studies have shown that the Indian's not eating cows is very productive. (And that Americans eating so much beef is very costly. - Fortunately US per capita beef consumption is dropping.)* They provide, milk,** fertilizer and fuel from grass in place where the trees were cut down centuries ago. More manure used as fertilizer and less as fuel would be even more productive. This is possible with the introduction of cheap solar stoves. I do not know hard numbers, but bet about 1/3 of Indian meals are cooked with dried dung in rural areas. I wonder to they have separate words for what the cow expels and what they cook with? If not a solar stove, a "biodigestor" and cooking with its "natural gas" would help, I think.

Chickens, ducks, geese etc. are not mammals - Ok to eat without separate name for that reason, I think. Most horses are eaten, but by dogs, perhaps cats too, in canned dog food. Very few horses in the US are given a burial.

Here in Brazil many are many still used for transport. I had a farm* and a 4-wheel drive car (A Russian Lada). One day a horse was tied to my fence on the road side of the fence, near my gate. The next day it was still there, but dead. With some rope and the Lada, I dragged it about half a mile to where the road curved around a hill with steep fall off on one side. With help of my hired man, we pushed it over the side to slide down the hill far from all. A week later it was only bones - buzzards had a feast, I think.

I do not know who was the owner of the horse, but admired his "horse knowledge" and how cleverly he transferred the problem of a dying horse to someone (me) who could solve it.
-----
*My farm was a cattle farm. I thought about the social / economics of beef production a little. One thing that can be said for it is that cows do reduce the cost of transportation to market. (Beef has a much higher value /kg than most crops. This makes land far from customers more valuable. Alcohol from sugar Cain is doing some of this too and helping to industrialize rural areas. Cain cannot travel far economically, so Brazil has hundreds of local alcohol plants.)

**Well half do (give milk) and the other half make horns, which as the English name*** indicates, were good for controlling troops in battle or just getting your dog to come home, etc. Milk is such an obvious benefit, a source of protein that I forgot to mention it until Fraggle did. He mentioned it has about 9 times the meat value over the natural life of the cow. Religious prohibition of eating beef is probably the only way to keep cows form being stolen for food (rustling) in a poor land like India.

***How 'bout it FR: Do other languages also have this horn / horn association in meanings? Also, as I grew up in West Virginia, eating squirrel was a natural, but it shocked my Norwegian wife to find me cooking one when she returned from shopping. Does language play a role in this (For her it was the same a eating rat - perhaps the names are similar if they are thought to be closely related, etc.?)

[Fraggle Rocker]

Perhaps the "best language" is one that can freely borrow from others to compactly express an idea, as I did. In this regard, French is the WORST language. The French Academy sees to that - carefully trying to keep all foreign words out.But they're a bit schizophrenic about it. They don't have a problem with modern technical words built artificially from Latin and Greek roots like telephone and automobile. I think their main goal is to avoid the wholesale importation of English words, since they haven't gotten over the ascendence of English over French in international culture.

The Germans are more even-handed about it, trying their best to avoid even Latin and Greek. Since German is an analytic (word-building) language they do pretty well at coining their own words. "Telephone" is Fernsprecher, a perfect translation of our Greek-Latin hybrid "distance-speaker," and "automobile" is Kraftwagen, "powered wagon." (All German nouns are capitalized.) The Chinese do the same thing out of necessity, since the language's phonetic structure makes it impossible to assimilate foreign words in any recognizable form. "Telephone" is dian-hua, "electricity (lightning) speech," and "automobile" is qi-che, "powered vehicle."

Sometimes the resistance to foreign borrowings can be humorous. Italian nationalists once tried valiantly to fend off the invasion of the word hotello for "hotel," since it came from French, English and several other languages. They wanted to resurrect the old Italian word albergo. Their scholars had to set them straight and explain that "hotel" comes from the word hospitale for "guest room" in Latin, the ancestor of Italian and all of its "national" vocabulary. Albergo, as it turns out, was a word borrowed in the middle ages from German!BTW, studies have shown that the Indians not eating cows is very productive.Beef is one of the least resource-efficient sources of food, even compared to other mammal meat such as mutton, pork and goat. You get something like nine times the return on your investment in feed if you let a cow live a normal lifespan and collect the milk, than you do by slaughtering it when it reaches adulthood and eating the meat.Most horses are eaten, but by dogs, perhaps cats too, in canned dog food. Very few horses in the US are given a burial.Even just a few decades ago, horse carcasses were used in the manufacture of glue. (I think the primary material is in their hooves.) It was a staple joke on TV westerns in the 1950s, for a cowboy to tell his horse, "If you don't stop being so ornery, I'm going to drop you off at the glue factory."I do not know who was the owner of the horse, but admired his "horse knowledge" and how cleverly he transferred the problem of a dying horse to someone (me) who could solve it.I visited Bulgaria in 1973--a very poor country at that time, and horses were in common use. My friend told me that even if a horse were killed in a road accident and the meat was perfectly healthy, they would not eat it.

Dogs have a special place in our collective unconscious. They were the first animal that volunteered to be our companions without having to be "tamed"; most human cultures, and all of the prosperous ones, do not consider them food.

But it's hard to explain our disgust for horsemeat. The horse was not the first large domesticated animal; that was probably the sheep. They did not come to us voluntarily and to this day must be "broken" for domesticity; it was the goats and pigs who walked right into our lives, scavengers (like dogs) attracted by the bounty of perfectly edible garbage we leave on the ground. They were not the first animal we were able to use for riding and pulling carts, that was either the ox or the donkey, and in the New World the llama.

But even people who have never seen a live horse love horses in a way that no human being has ever loved a sheep, goat, ox, donkey or llama. It must be an archetype, I'll have to look it up in our Jungian material. (Today many people do keep pet pigs, who are both sweet and intelligent.)

We used to buy horsemeat to feed our cats. We had to drive way out into the remote, quasi-agricultural suburbs of Los Angeles, to a little nondescript shop that kept it in a freezer in the back room. It was like buying whiskey during Prohibition. We figured that when our cats went outside and the other cats smelled their breath, they would grovel in awe and say, "Wow, you guys are the best hunters. You killed a horse!"

[Billy T]

To Fraggle:

Thanks for reminding me of the life-time milk value - Nine times the meat value - That is impressive!

Is that really ~4.5 times? as half are males*, but they give horns? I bet by converting the milk into a valued cheese, much more value is possible. Cheese is also a fantastic volume reducer so saves on transport - important if the market is distant from the pasture.

Please see post 89 again as I have added two foot notes with questions for you.

P.S.
I recall reading a decade or two ago that the French Academy had tried to surpress Telephone, Laser, and Television and a few others with "good French words" they invented, but failed in the effort. In fact that is when I first learned that they do try to control the evolution of the language.

-----------------
*When I sold cows and bulls in Brazil it is of course by weight, but discounted 50% for the bulls and 55% for the cows (because there is more waste with the cow, I was told). Being a "Rich American" it was hard for me to negotiate good deals on the price, so I decided to mainly sell animals I rasied from birth (to have only the selling deal envolving big money).** I.e. I initially bought young female calves and sold full grown animals I had raised. (I had a big and modest younger bull in the field with my cows. The smaller was "back up" when the big guy had had enough fun.)

At my first sale I was also buying a few more young female calves.*** They suggested to just subtract the weight of the calves from that of the bulls I was selling to "keep it simple" instead of them paying me for my bulls and me paying them for my new calves, they would pay me on the weight difference.

It all happens very fast and in Portuguese (adding up numbers, etc.) at the weighing scale. I had weighed myself and my hired man at my farm and made them weigh us on their scale. (It was honest as is run by a third party. Net seller pays his small fee.) I was also careful to watch the scale and add the numbers with my hand calculator, but I was 15 minutes walk away from the scales with the new calves when I realized that I had a PhD and they were literate, but surely not dumb: Part of my bulls (weight equal to the calves I was buying) was effectively sold as if they were cows, earning them an extra 5% on that small part. That never happened again and after a few years my bulls for sale got lots of salt early on the morning of the sale etc. I was no longer a "green horn."

**Many do not deal in milk. They just buy young but nearly nearly grown steers and bulk them up for a couple of years. I did not sell milk either. - I just let the calves have it to grow faster.

*** The pasture was full of weeds when I bought it cheap but I trippled the carrying capacity with few thousand dollars in plowing and good seeds, so I got a very good price when I sold. Buyer had money he could not explain where it came from so officially it was sold cheap, with most paid "under the table."

[temur]

[...] But it's hard to explain our disgust for horsemeat. The horse was not the first large domesticated animal; that was probably the sheep. They did not come to us voluntarily and to this day must be "broken" for domesticity; it was the goats and pigs who walked right into our lives, scavengers (like dogs) attracted by the bounty of perfectly edible garbage we leave on the ground. They were not the first animal we were able to use for riding and pulling carts, that was either the ox or the donkey, and in the New World the llama.

But even people who have never seen a live horse love horses in a way that no human being has ever loved a sheep, goat, ox, donkey or llama [...]


In Mongolia horse meat is perfectly valid food. It tastes a bit different, and some would love and some would not eat horse meat because of this distinct taste.

[iceaura]

In a culture in which horses were so valuable and not available to the poor in herds (draft, transport, uniquely suited) a cultural disgust for eating them would have the same survival value in hard times a disgust for eating cows has in India, or pigs in the desert lands.

You get something like nine times the return on your investment in feed if you let a cow live a normal lifespan and collect the milk, than you do by slaughtering it when it reaches adulthood and eating the meat. There are a couple of complications. One is that cattle raised for meat can be ranged over large areas of marginal land. Another is that half the calves are male, and will give no milk, but already represent a large overhead investment.

So the most efficient arrangement is not milk all, but milk some and range or feed others for meat, the proportion depending on the circumstances.

Something similar operates with languages, I suspect. There is probably value in some of the apparent inefficiencies. Just as the Chinese are going to lose some fairly significant benefits when they switch to phonetic script - probably a net gain, but the losses will be real.

[Fraggle Rocker]

Well half do (give milk) and the other half make horns, which as the English name*** indicates, were good for controlling troops in battle or just getting your dog to come home, etc. Do other languages also have this horn / horn association in meanings?The horns we blow are called "horns" because the first ones were made by hollowing out animal horns. So it's not an "association in meanings," it's the same word for the same object. Latin cornu, Greek keras, this is an ancient word shared by all the Western Indo-European languages, and I don't know if the Eastern branch of the family has it too.

I also don't know whether other language families coined the word the same way. But making musical instruments out of horns goes back a long way, even before the arrival of Homo sapiens in Europe. A few years ago a flute was found in Germany carved from a mammoth tusk. It is 30,000 years old and therefore was made by Neanderthals.Also, as I grew up in West Virginia, eating squirrel was a natural, but it shocked my Norwegian wife to find me cooking one when she returned from shopping. Does language play a role in this (For her it was the same a eating rat - perhaps the names are similar if they are thought to be closely related, etc.?)Rats and squirrels are closely related: both species fall in the order of rodents.

The biochemical composition of rodent meat makes it an ideal source of human nutrition, and many species have been used as food over the millennia. Nonetheless it is not a popular food and is generally only something people fall back on during hard times. Since the Agricultural Revolution, the rodents most familiar to humans are the pests who steal our nuts, fruits and grain, scavenge our garbage or break into our pantries, and so they have come to be regarded as "vermin," a name that stands in opposition to "game" or "livestock."

The rare exceptions include the guinea pig, which was domesticated for food in South America more than four thousand years ago, and the capybara, the largest rodent species at 100lb (50kg) which was domesticated during historical times, also in South America. The North American beaver is the second-largest rodent. Its size (30lb/14kg), diet (tree bark), habitat (aquatic) and behavior (building dams) make it easy to not recognize as a rodent, and IIRC the Indians and the European pioneers trapped it for food. Capybaras are also large, herbivorous and aquatic, in addition to being rather docile, so it's doubtful that the South American Indians recognized them as related to vermin.

Guinea pigs and hamsters (another rodent) are popular pets. Chinchillas, which until recently were farmed for their fur, have recently entered the pet trade. And capybaras have begun to win the hearts of iconoclastic pet lovers with a yen for something huge and exotic, yet tractable. (Here's a sweet YouTube video. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KByrcdGz9Pw)) The common rat, being a social species and highly intelligent, makes a surprisingly good pet.

I rather like the idea of keeping pets that are not also food animals. I'd kind of like to have a pet pig, but I don't think I could maintain the cognitive dissonance required by pork being my favorite meat.

[Billy T]

... The biochemical composition of rodent meat makes it an ideal source of human nutrition, and many species have been used as food over the millennia. Nonetheless it is not a popular food and is generally only something people fall back on during hard times. ...I will not try to find it but more than a year ago in some thread, I extolled the virtues of rat as an economical protein source. They can live on boiled garbage. (BTW that is also used a pig food. - I think that strip of the NJ turnpike which smells of pig shit on hot summer day, is the destination of a lot of NYC / Trenton etc. restaurant waste.)

Rats require little space and need no illumination to find their food as chickens do need.* A typical basement could have them in cages 15 or more high.

Now let’s get to work on a suitable euphuistic name: How about: Bar-B-Bits or Ra-Bits or micket (if Disney does not make a legal fuss).

Food customs are every strange, but strong. Westerner will not eat chicken as pre-hatched embryos and for at least a month after hatching, but parts of the orient (Vietman, included, I think) like the crunchy young chicken bones and embryo eggs before the feathers developed.
--------------
*Unless my memory is failing me, the chicken’s "peck at grain on ground" response is both visually triggered and innate, not learned. If you put prism lenses over the eyes of a chicken, even very young ones, and spread cracked corn grains on the floor, not too densely, they will peck the floor at the prism shifted point and not get the grain. Chickens cannot discover the corn grain only one cm away from their retinal image’s projected location. They will starve to death and never learn to compensate.

Humans automatically learn to not only compensate in less than an hour** for small lateral shift of the image, but after wearing even “image inverting” glasses for a few days, begin to perceive the world correctly again. One guy after wearing inverting glasses for about two weeks easily rode his bicycle thru street traffic as if his retinal image were normal.

**For example, quickly and automatically reach for a glass of water on a table instead of knocking it over. (Some of this in humans is no doubt hand / eye loop servo control, at least initially. The chicken seems not to use that, but has what might be called a “ballistic peck” at the grain’s perceived location.)

[Rick]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cQ4hIG9w7c&feature=channel_page

Thought it'd be interesting in the context.

[tim840]

And capybaras have begun to win the hearts of iconoclastic pet lovers with a yen for something huge and exotic, yet tractable. (Here's a sweet YouTube video. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KByrcdGz9Pw))

o my gosh!! :) how cute!!!

[Rosnet]

Very efficient, or? :cool:



Very simple, or? I am not sure though, whether simple means best :D

Are you German, inzomnia?

[Rosnet]

Is there a "best" language?



Okay. Quick reply here, without too much thinking. I might make a better post later if I happen to think more on this.

I speak two languages very fluently and am moderately fluent in another. I'm also exposed to different languages quite regularly. And I'm learning many other languages. So, based on my experience with these...

Obviously, and as stated before, different languages are good at different things. And I think this is necessarily so. That is to say, these aspects must be mutually exclusive. For example, a very simple (easy to learn) language must necessarily be poorer aesthetically than languages with greater vocabularies, a wealth of idiomatic phrases, and more complex language. Just think of creoles vs. English, French, German, etc.

Or consider some language which has a vocabulary that is adequate to easily express very advanced concepts, and yet is smaller compared to, say, English. How? There are no two words which mean the same thing. [Injective mapping from Meanings to Words, hehe]. This language, too, would be aesthetically weaker. Take poetry for example. It would be much harder or sometimes impossible to find words to fit rhymes or metre.

Okay, I'm a bit busy now, will post later.

[Fraggle Rocker]

Take poetry for example. It would be much harder or sometimes impossible to find words to fit rhymes or metre.That's also a matter of phonetics. The phonetic simplicity of Japanese (consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel-etc. with only a small number of each of the two types of phonemes) makes it absurdly easy to find words that rhyme. English, with its free-for-all phonetics, makes it very difficult.

Many very common words have few rhymes. That's why paradigms like moon-soon-June-spoon-tune, love-dove-above-shove, ring-thing-sing-fling, work-jerk-shirk-clerk and mind-find-kind-bind are beaten to death in our poetry. Try finding a contextually useful rhyme for worse, forest, army, or a hundred words that would reasonably come up in a poem. There is no rhyme at all for orange!

Grammar also has an effect. Inflected languages tend to have entire families of words with the same ending. In Spanish, every verb has a couple of forms that end in -amos, -emos or -imos; a couple more in -aron or -eron; more in -aste or -iste; an entire series in -ia, -ias, -iamos, -iais, -ian; and a couple of other complete series like that. End a line of Spanish poetry with a verb, and the next line is easy. English has very few inflections, and none of them contain accented syllables so the poet must still find two words that rhyme on the accented syllable in their uninflected forms.

[Rosnet]

Yes, indeed. The next point I was going to talk about was rhymes in artificial languages, like Esperanto. It is easier to make rhymes in Esperanto than in English or even Spanish or Latin. This over-simplicity, however, also makes it less exciting.

[Fraggle Rocker]

Yes, indeed. The next point I was going to talk about was rhymes in artificial languages, like Esperanto. It is easier to make rhymes in Esperanto than in English or even Spanish or Latin. This over-simplicity, however, also makes it less exciting.Yes, some of the early Esperanto poems and song lyrics came across as really stupid because they were just making easy rhymes out of participles and immensely common analytical suffixes like -ulo, a person who has the condition expressed by the root adjective. Since then Esperanto poets established the convention that it's not allowable to build a rhyme that only involves an inflection or another suffix--or even a whole series of them, which isn't hard to do in Esperanto. The last syllable of the root word also has to rhyme, no matter how far back it falls in the compound.

Since the analytical nature of the language makes Esperanto's basic vocabulary very tiny, writing poems suddenly became hard work, but the results are more artistic. Its phonetic structure is rather like English, with a lot of tongue-twisting consonant clusters. It's hard to find two root words that rhyme.

[oldsweat]

There may not be a 'best language' but I regard it as likely that over time, the world will progress towards a universal language and which language that is will be determinedby economic rather than practical factors.
English is a great language with a massive vocabulary but with atrocious orthography. If we had the wit to resolve the problems which our bizarre orthography imposes, then English could be the language of the future but I doubt we have to wit.

[Orleander]

I'd have to go with American Sign Language (ASL) as being the best

[Fraggle Rocker]

I'd have to go with American Sign Language (ASL) as being the bestIt has a tremendous advantage: It's not limited to one species!