Cyberball2073
80527
1190
33
Languages
Oct 7, 2023 10:59 PM
Cyberball2073
80527
1190
33
TorvicEsSanta
"we don't play mind games about whether or not we respect you," completely false
confanity
This garbage really ticks me off because it boils down to "English is fine because I'm used to it, while all the languages that I'm not used to must be stupid because I'm not used to them." I mean, let's be serious: there is no "worst" language because it all depends on your criteria and goals. That doesn't mean that to defend English, you need to shit on a bunch of rules you barely understand.
CliffCarter
The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.
James D. Nicoll
km3000
English spelling is inconsistent and unintuitive.
JainaSolo
Very true, I often look up the etymology of a word that is spelled strangely. Usually it’s quite interesting.
dunkum09
pedantic points: 1. spanish has a future tense which is just another conjugation of the existing word so you can use spanish future tense without adding any words (ser -> será vs. english be -> will be). and the substitute future literally translates as "going to [verb]" which has the same meaning in english. 2. that Arabic 2 person thing is a conjugation, not a tense.
confanity
The point of this post wasn't pedantry; it was bigotry. "Oh, no, Arabic has a rule that I barely understand; that must make it stupid."
Snooj
Words don't change meaning depending on tone? Sure, let me record that thought on a record and bow to you as I put a bow on it.
confanity
That's not "tone" per se; that's accent. English changes how much you emphasize a syllable, whereas Chinese changes the relative pitch of a sound.
FellaWithUmbrella
SexySexyChicken
Dated a Finnish girl for 4 years, all I managed to learn was “hey”, “how are you”, “I’m good”, “thank you”, “cheers”, “fuck”, “shit”, “cunt”, “I love you my darling” and “hamster”
VaultGirl69
I was looking for this one. Seems to be on the same difficulty level of the Chinese languages, just in a different way. Studying Finnish and working in IT, I looked up different ways to talk about who has a dog, as well a the way to talk about data vs datum. I have massive respect for bi-tri lingual people.
dicot
hey I'm struggling through learning finnish, where do you get this kind of nifty word web with meanings, please?!
Allrighty
I like where it just gives up and has "untranslatable"
DeadWhiteMale
The word for toilet derives from the word for visit?
hyjukilo
I dunno about you, but I only visit a toilet. I don't stay there.
digitalaaronscustoms
Makes sense when you think about the phrase "going to the bathroom"
iratedragonborn
English is easy to learn, that helped make it the lingua franca above french
MachineInterface
Always makes me laugh when people defend the "simplicity" of the English tense system - it might be *morphologically* simple (not a lot of conjugation) but it sure isn't *syntactically* simple: there's lots of different constructions with very specific meanings. Consider that for all of "he ate", "he has eaten", "he was eating", "he has been eating", a German will simply say "er hat gegessen" and call it a day.
Zahnradfee
We also have "er aß".
FormerlySable
I had to study Thai grammar in grad school. There are no tenses for verbs, plurals are determined by context, there are many levels of address depending on the social status and age of both speaker & listener, and even Thai linguists can’t decide what really governs the grammar at all.
Merinther
Um. A two-person TENSE? No.
confanity
Why, it's almost as if the people making these posts were ignorant assholes trying desperately to find reason to make fun of things they barely understood.
kahooki
MBTerrorKitten
Languages are just kluges upon kluges
0xBADA55
yep like “yeah.. fuck 😏” vs “ yeah ….. FUUUUUUUCK 😡”
Tassyr
But fuck is still fuck, is the point. It doesn't become "tomato." Which is the kind of bonkers word transformation you can do in some Asian languages.
BeerandCats
Bless your heart (words do change meaning based on tone)
Baggsy13
mistermixelpix
The definitions didn't change, just the intent. That is a world apart from languages where tone literally changes the entire definition.
flarflarf
yeah, right.
Sasurau
Yeah, nah.
nojustsayitdont
Wuz gunna sei.
raknor88
There also a difference in wording. Telling someone "to have a nice day" vs "enjoy the next 24 hours".
stryhf
Butt dial and booty call are very different meanings.
BrockEffingSamson
I have literally never heard anyone say that not condescendingly.
FlyingGiantElk
Yeah but bless always means bless, even if for some reason you intone it as bléss, blêss, or blëss.
keyblader1985
That's just called sarcasm. That's universal
Xt3rminat3
I don't know what you're insinuating BUDDY.
FarceMajeure
A sarcastic tone just flips the words to opposite meaning
Promethianfire
Heart (pitching down) means "heart." Heart (pitching up) also means heart. In tonal languages, changing the pitch could change "heart" to "tomato."
imwrongontheinternet
Or dad into potato
confanity
So? Spoken English has literally zero differentiation between "read and "reed," or "read and "red," so maybe a little more tone-distinction would help at times. :p
JohnLuckPikard
Or we could just not have words like those. It's probably my least favorite part of the language. I mean words that sound exactly the same.
confanity
Here's the thing, though: there don't seem to be many, if any, natural languages that do entirely without homophones, so clearly their formation must be something relatively deeply ingrained in human psychology.
Draenic
I dunno man "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" kinda makes this moot. Is each word pronounced differently? No. But there are three distinct "buffalo" in that sentence, making it grammatically correct simply for their placement in said sentence. And I almost feel like giving them different tones might make it clearer how the sentence works, but that would open a whole other can of worms. Point is, each of those words are pronounced identically.
SergeantTerryJeffords
Except nobody actually talks like that in the real world and if you were to read it, you would with a flat tone through the entire sentence or with a dynamic tone and the meaning would be the same both times, whereas the Mandarin poem that's just "shi" repeated with different intonation is completely normal in that language.
Draenic
That's not really the point of the sentence. The point is to show how confusing the English language can be. And that's actually the same point of that poem. It has 94 different characters, but they are all pronounced "shi". Written, you can understand what it means because each character is associated with a different core meaning, but it's almost incomprehensible when spoken because there are only 4 distinct syllables within modern Mandarin for the words.
Draenic
Oh, and I highly doubt people speak Mandarin like that "in the real world" either.
myotheralt
Lead is a soft metal, lead a team. Read a book, I read the red book.
Promethianfire
Homonyms =/ tonal language.
CopiedAndPasted
I’m guessing they mean, changing the pitch doesn’t make it an entirely new word, but prosody does play a big part in the pragmatic interpretation of any language
xellbe
Content and content is the example that comes to mind. Same word, different syllables get the emphasis.
CairoLen
That's stress, not tone. Tone is literally the pitch of the word. High tone "maa" has a different meaning from low tone "maa". Thai has 5 distinct tones.
xellbe
Ah yeah, fair point. Thank you for the information!
myotheralt
Read read, lead lead, potato potato, ... wait, not that one.
pseudokojo
Buffalo⁸
Badprenup
Tone != pronunciation
MBdub210
I don’t get the crack about future tense in Spanish. It IS easy. What one word are they talking about?!?
FlyingGiantElk
We used to have thee, thy, thou, and others like that in Middle English, and don’t even start with Old English. We do gender some objects, though they’re special cases like ships.
nclu
Right you are... sir
doggetofftheqcekmty
But at the end of the day, it's still "the ship". I know some people that refer to cars as masculine, and some that refer to them as feminine. Gendered objects are more tradition than requirement.
HoldThatTHOT
...and roombas, cuz he's a good boy who's hungry for floor numnums
FlyingGiantElk
That feels more like anthropomorphising objects than simply gendering them though.
HoldThatTHOT
Don't talk to me or my son Grimesius ever again
Tassyr
We used to yeah- but they got trimmed out is the point.
GuyGordon
It's not like they got trimmed with the intention of being more efficient. Linguistics shit just happens. For example, why are we always 'going' in everyday usage? "Are you going shopping?" "Well, I was going to, but now I'm not going."
darkhalfbreed
You know you arn't required to gender objects, we just do it to give more personification to the object. It's a personal preference not a language requirement
Homer1691
old english is effectively a different language though. If you try reading original Beowulf, you're gonna have a hard time. MIddle English is Old english with a ton of French mixed in after the Norman conquest; if you try to read Chaucer you can kinda puzzle your way through it. Thee, thy, thou are Elizabethan (Shakespearean) English, which is historically modern english, even if words and phrases arent used anymore. Almost any reasonably fluent english speaker can tackle shakespeare.
GlutenFreeCocaineWaffles
Linguistic gender ≠ human gender. They're two very distinct concepts and linquistic genders sometimes have nothing to do with male/female; there are languages with animate/inanimate genders, and Germanic languages also have a neuter gender. What it is an additional lexical category for nouns; the main reason it's called gender is because a lot of the languages that began receiving attention from early modern linguistics happen to contain actual female concepts/words in one category, and the >
Allrighty
I don't think the fault lies with early modern linguistics for this one, I'm pretty sure the ancient Greeks already knew the concept including the explicit division into masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns.
GlutenFreeCocaineWaffles
< male ones in another. This does not necessarily mean that a noun that's in the feminine gender is discretely associated only with women; it just happens to be in the same linquistic category. How much this is actually in play depends on the specific language/culture, e.g. semitic languages like Arabic tend to have a bit of a stronger association between the concept of human masculinity/femininity and their linguistic counterparts than Germanic ones.
MuonNeutrino
Missing the point of the complaint, I think. Whatever you call it, arbitrarily assigning nouns to these random categories is still dumb. What is the point of having to memorize this extra factoid for every word? It conveys no information, it doesn't aid understanding, it's just a hoop to jump through. If everything in german that wasn't *actually* gendered became 'das', nothing would be lost. In fact, something would be *gained*, because then 'der' and 'die' would actually convey a useful fact.
GlutenFreeCocaineWaffles
Watever yu cal it, arbitrarili asining leters to random silabels is stil dum. Wat is the point of having to spel unsed leters for evri word? It conveys no informatiun, it dosn' ade understanding, it's just a hup to jump thru. If evri leter in English words that wasn' *actuali* sed was remuved, nothing wuld be lost. In fact, sumthing wuld be *ganed*, becus speling wuld be simpler.
CedricDur
That nitpick works for every language in the world. Every one. There is not one that has some useless factoid we need to learn. To not have them we would need a computer created language instead of one that grew organically, and even then I wouldn't give it a generation before organic growth had corrupted that computer made perfect language.
drinkthederpentine
You've stumbled right into the point. Some have more, some have fewer. Fewer is better.
AtLeastImWearingUnderwear
Korean has a whole thing where words change depending on whether the person you're talking to is older than you or younger, outranks you at work or is subordinate, is related to you...
Blacktusk
Russian changes the verbs based on who is performing the action, and adjectives based on what is described. In some ways it is pleasantly concise and clear, but learning a pile of suffixes for everything is a pain.
confanity
"Russian changes the verbs based on who is performing the action" - So does English. Not as much as it used to, but we do have that third-person singular s as in "does," runs," etc.
Aquilarden
Thinking Arabic plurals are an entirely new word is a misunderstanding of how its root system works. That isn't to say it's super easy, just that there's a pattern.
confanity
This whole post is just some idiot ranting about how "I don't understand X and therefore it must be awful." At best it's blatantly ignorant; at worst it's the bigots trying to creep back into the culture with their garbage "jokes."
smartm07
Or it’s just someone pointing out that for every flaw English has, there is an equally awful flaw in these other languages, but they are usually considered “unique” instead of “flawed”. But for English, it’s always just a flaw.
BlindGardener
I mostly agree with you BUT: As an agender person fuck gendered languages without a genderless gender. They're going to have to budge, because I fucking won't.
confanity
How about instead of ranting online like the people in the post did, you go and study those languages and *make* them budge by inventing and popularizing a new way to express things?
Mcknizzle
Dude do you ever just relax and enjoy anything?
confanity
Yes, very often! But then some idiot comes along and tries to turn the fun of e.g. comparative linguistics into a stupid aggressive pissing contest, like they did in this post. And then some other idiot comes along and attacks me for suggesting that we should just enjoy things instead of *hating*.
Mcknizzle
They were having fun though. Everyone was. I can tell you’re very upset and worked up over the subject of linguistics. Can I suggest acquiring a chill pill and taking it?
42underscores
SalmySwims
confanity
Oh, wow, wait, you mean to say that even Spanish has tongue-twisters, like pretty much every other natural human language?
Wolf2Worrior
To be faiiirrrr, you would say it with more inflection to show what you mean.
Gogoglovitch
And every language has tongue twisters like that, some of them really quite amusing.
mafiacarstarter
Ihmislehma
Like Finnish Kokko (name) kokosi (built) koko (whole/the whole) kokon (midsommar fire). Kokko kokosi koko kokon. You can also add to it.
Ihmislehma
Kokko kokosi koko kokon. Kokosiko Kokko koko kokon? And so on xD
Gogoglovitch
Nice! I mostly know of Japanese ones, like 'Uraniwa ni wa niwa, niwa ni wa niwa niwatori ga iru.' ('In the back yard there are two, and in the front yard there are two, chickens.')
rrlyrae
"you" is formal. we dropped the informal "thou."
drinkthederpentine
Maybe is some historical sense, in practice you had not been formal in a very long time
harthram
What is the first one referring to? I don't have to add any additional words for future tense in Spanish
confanity
It's referring to how the poster is an ignorant bigot trying to "prove" that English is the best because they have only a few scraps of understanding about how other languages work.
languex
"English has pursued other languages down dark alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new verbs and adjectives."
stryhf
rowanww822000
So cringe this has the us flag on it
PowerPedant
Just because English has lost "though" doesn't mean it lacks levels of formality. Try addressing a judge by first name or as "dude"…
PowerPedant
*"thou". D'oh!
gabador
"thee" and "thou" were actually the informal, and "you" was the formal!
tirohtar
English has had a lot of these features in the past, specifically conjugation/declination and grammatical genders, but lost them over time due to the influence of foreign invaders learning the language and simplifying it - especially during the Danelaw period when vikings ruled large parts of England a lot if the grammar was lost. This is a standard feature of "creole" languages. The upside is that English is fairly easy to learn due to its rather simple grammar (though English somewhat 1/
tirohtar
Negates that advantage by having one of the worst spelling-to-pronunciation relationships of any European language, I'd argue worse than French - French is a mess, but it's at least somewhat consistent). The MAJOR downside is that English cannot construct complex sentences that are as precise in their meaning as in, for example, German - declination and conjugation enable you to make EXACT relationships between subjects and objects without having to use extraneous aid words or prepositions. 2/
tirohtar
A simple example: In German you can say 'Der Hund gibt der Katze den Wagen.' - in English, without prepositions, it would be 'The dog gives the cat the car'. The German sentence is completely clear thanks to declination, and you can move the parts around to stress different parts without changing meaning (as long as you keep the pronouns correct). But in English you have to use prepositions to make it clear: 'The dog gives the car to the cat', otherwise other meanings would be possible.
42underscores
ExecutiveProducerWolfDyck
https://www.npr.org/2008/01/06/17874931/bugs-bunny-the-trickster-american-style
VaultGirl69
I wonder sometimes what the massive effects of jokes and sarcasm have on language. Stone tablets are likely just as confusing as texting someone. No facial expression, tone, or body language. It would be great to know what sarcasms have been briefly popular throughout the ages of humanity.
Wirefish
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanabozho
tibris
.
ruint
so if knowyourmeme doesn't survive the apocalypse, world history is fucked?
IronCore
I have a great grandfather that was named Nimrod.
Vergenbuurg
Xcallion1
Hoppin down the ol bunny trail.
AlcoholicsAnonymousBYO
lol like the RAF claiming during ww2 that their pilots saw better at night because, carrots.* I still hear the carrots-good-for-eyesight myth, lastest just this week. *not top secret radar
definewelladjusted
As I understand, it was to get kids to eat more vegetables. Also, apparently carrots contain something that, were you to lack it, you would have worse night vision. In that limited sense, carrots could potentially 'improve' your night sight.
armagetz
It was deliberate misinformation to give Germans a plausible reason of why the RAF was so able to intercept night attacks because they didn’t want to reveal they had a functioning radar aerial.
Izdleve
So carrots have vitamin A which is good for eye health, but won't help you see in the dark. My understanding is people thought carrots helped eyes but it was more of an old wives tale than common knowledge like it is now. It was 100% war propaganda to hide military capabilities in WWII though. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/a-wwii-propaganda-campaign-popularized-the-myth-that-carrots-help-you-see-in-the-dark-28812484/
AlcoholicsAnonymousBYO
There was a carrot campaign, vague memories of propaganda posters prominently featuring carrots. But there was another propaganda effort, the one i referred to above : https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/a-wwii-propaganda-campaign-popularized-the-myth-that-carrots-help-you-see-in-the-dark-28812484/
LostCaterpillar
Wait, are you saying I should eat top secret radar to improve my vision?
TK421isAFK
No, eating top secret radar improves your hearing.
AlcoholicsAnonymousBYO
ai prompt - caterpillar eating radar .. what the heck was that imgur ai @ ?
ExecutiveProducerWolfDyck
@BotDrawA guy eating a radar
BotDrawA
@ExecutiveProducerWolfDyck Here's your (experimental extra) drawing of a "Colourful ice sculpture of a clear guy eating a radar, in a post-apocalyptic wasteland"
AlcoholicsAnonymousBYO
@BotDrawA caterpillar eating radar dish
BotDrawA
@ExecutiveProducerWolfDyck Here's your drawing of a "guy eating a radar"
annonymouse211
If you wanna get mad about a language let me introduce you to icelandic. They conjugate EVERYTHING. Literally like 16 versions of every noun. Even proper names decline. It is BANANAS.
symmetry7
Les bananes
xmaneds
verbs are conjugated. nouns are "declined".
Goblor
I'm icelandic i use English a lot because that shit is nuts to try to learn if you didn't grow up in it. I was raised in Denmark and moved here when I was 11. English is so easy compared to this language 🙄
Goblor
Many people think I'm slow or stupid because I have an icelandic name but I mess up certain words when I'm speaking it. I'm better at writing it. Since I don't have the part in my vocabulary that makes it sound "wrong" when I'm speaking
annonymouse211
Does Danish do that air through your molars thing? Like "stelpa" is actually kinda sorta like "stelshpa"? Bc I cannot get that whole thing to come naturally.
Goblor
I don't think so. I assume you're referring to certain (stelpa, mjòlk, etc) L's I have never really thought about how it's mouthed out 🤔
pixelsnader
But if everyone declines, that means you don't have to do it.
Churchofthesubgenius
I’ll raise you in Polish, Latin declination forms for EVERY word
m3chafone6
But have they ever kissed a girl?
nclu
Roommate in college was French, anytime someone said a word about how "awful" English was he'd get livid. "English is great, it's had so much influence by so many foriegners learning it. You have almost no conjugation and genders to worry about. Spelling can be wonky but speaking is a dream"
DraydanGuitar
Can confirm, us frenchies have genders for objects, silent letter up the wahzoo, letters that if u add one squiggly line on top or the bottom changes its intonnation completely, and don't get me started with our future-past tense
Goblor
Mad truth
Ecgwearth
Icelandic's not so bad (þó ég held það er fallegt tungumál, svá....), it has the same number of cases as German (though more declension patterns for those cases). No, no, if you want to enter Spreadsheet Hell: The Language, try Czech. It has 7 noun cases, 4 grammatical genders, and verbal aspect!
annonymouse211
þetta er mjög fallegt tungumál, það er rétt hjá þér :) But as an English speaker who learned things like Spanish and Italian first icelandic really does win the difficulty challenge. Czech seems less gorgeous to listen to, but I don't have as much exposure to that one.
Hayashima
I watched enough Mole in my childhood to know that Czech is nothing but too many consonants stringed together
mrsdowneyjr
Finnish too. But at least it's consistent and predictable unlike English
VodkaReindeer
This ruins spellcheck, because chances are that no matter what typo you make, it's also a word.
DorgEndo
English has consistent rules, with exceptions, and the rules are nonsense, but they are there
mrsdowneyjr
We have latin, Greek, German, and romance plutalizations. Box boxes, ox oxen etc and it's random
GlutenFreeCocaineWaffles
I can confirm this; when I was studying linguistics in college I tried Icelandic. Tried. That language is inflected to the point of absurdity. Almost EVERY noun and verb has its own unique set of inflections for gender/plural/tense/etc. So in English, we have the -s inflection for plural nouns, e.g. cats, dogs, houses, etc. Icelandic is more like catr, dogl, and houseglar. I am quite certain that the reason the entire country speaks fluent English is because nobody else can learn their language.
OlaphOfTheNorth
I went to high school with a guy who's a professor of linguistics at an ivy league school now and he was telling us shortly after taking his phd that he was one of like less than 1000 people who had learned icelandic without growing up there. this guy speaks 12 languages in modern and medieval dialects and icelandic was the hardest for him BY FAR, nobody else has a real shot
FetaForMoses
If you don’t learn that shit as the first thing you learn don’t bother.
FloodingWaters
As soon as a brain finds out there's a better way, it's like naah to icelandic. Tasty water tho
Zetor
As an Icelander, can confirm
GlutenFreeCocaineWaffles
You guys do honestly seem to be the happiest and nicest motherfuckers on this entire planet in my experience, so I'm honestly not complaining.
Zetor
Heh, I live in Norway, and they like making fun of Icelandic. "Icelandic is easy. Just add -URR to nouns! Norwegian: Hund, Icelandic: HundURR.... Norwegians are ok, IMHO"
wurth
Wait, what are the 16 versions of bananas?
Ecgwearth
that's actually a terrible but deeply funny example, most of the forms are identical (singular: banani, banana, banana, banana. Plural: bananar, banana, banönum, banana). If you feel like adding the definite suffixes on you'd get up to 16, but that's cheating? (bananinn, bananann, banananum, bananans, bananarnir, bananana, banönunum, banananna).
GuyGordon
I feel like there's a song in there somehow.
wurth
I am here for bananarnir. Thanks for the sauce, that was a fun read.
Forosnai
Fuck, I don't even care if it's not a plural, can we just MAKE it ours? I want to buy a bunch of bananarnir.
dffksh
bananarnir fyrir mælikvarða
L1ttl3J1m
"Bananana" sounds like you forgot when to stop spelling "banana"
Ecgwearth
DK 64 Voice - "OH, BANANANA"
RiskIt4ABiscuit
A lot of these are right in theory but wrong in practice.
confanity
A lot of these, to be blunt, sound like nothing more than a racist ranting about how "I don't understand X and therefore it must be dumb."
ReconfigureTheCitrus
I don't know about most of them, but the point about Japanese is correct, the words to say "I" or "you" can change drastically based on respect and formality, and that holds true for a lot of Japanese. It's almost like needing several languages to speak a single language, which in relation to the post does seem dumb, but also means there's the "Fuck you" tense effectively, which I personally enjoy knowing exists.
confanity
PS. Tense tells you whether something is in the past, present, future, etc.; it has nothing to do with social aspects of pronoun choice.
confanity
So. Um. I speak Japanese, and it's a lot more about self-expression and relationships than respect and formality - when pronouns are used at all. (They're often elided.) It's no more "like needing several languages" than *idiolects* are in any other language, including English - in which e.g. greeting someone with "Hello," "Hey," "What's up?," or "What's up, fucker!?!?!" can convey a huge amount about two people's relationship and the speaker's current mood.
ReconfigureTheCitrus
That's a better way of explaining it, and I thought I was using the word tense wrong there. When I used respect your use of relationships was the better word choice, same for formality being worse than self-expression. But there is still an aggressive version of I or You, and as far as I know (which isn't too much) a lot of other words like Eating, Looking, and Thinking all have more aggressive counterparts that don't change the described action unlike look vs scrutinize vs stare.
confanity
I like where you're going with this train of thought. The one caveat is that I wouldn't describe it necessarily as "aggression." For example, "ore" and "omae" aren't really "aggressive" pronouns; it's more that they imply a certain level of familiarity and relaxation. Using "ore" or "omae" in the wrong context is aggressive, yes, but so is e.g. using "[family-name]-san" to address someone with whom you're normally on a non-honorific level of intimacy. >>
confanity
[continued] >> Even often-hostile terms like "temee" could be used to show a deep level of camaraderie between friends. Context is king.