Does anyone like the English Language?
Gerhard said: “Except it wouldn't be understood by all Chinese, it would have to be agreed on before hand, which could just as well be done by native English speakers by prearranging some system of their own.
In fact, we do have something kind of similar in English used to trick children, it's called Pig Latin.”
That is it, before play the game, the two player have to make sure what each meaning is. On the other hand you have to remember 64 different sentences before a show? Hope you have a good memory.
I am glade to know Pig Latin. But as I have said that the sentence “What is this” can hide 64 codes. How many codes could you hide in you “Pig Latin”? If your “Pig Latin” is a good information carrier, why you don’t use it in English and save your time or save your life?
If Cheng-Zhong Su's logic and attitude is indicative of Chinese culture I want nothing to do with it. Hopefully it is not.
Matthew said: “Plurals may not be necessary to a blank slate like a toddler, but to those of us who were raised with a speaking system that uses them they are quite necessary.”
Yesterday, I don’t want answer the post about ‘I like dog(s).’ because someone told something harmful to the discussion. After one day, I think we can talk about this.
In fact, it is an issue about two meaning shares one form. It is the form of verb to blame not the‘s’. Just think about what if I say, ‘Someone love dog(s).’ or ‘Someone look like dog(s)’? This phenomenon tells us that even have more than one million words; the English is still lacking adequate words.
Matthew said: “I may not see the usefulness of making a speck of dirt male or female as it seems like a pointless distinction to me, but a language isn't better or worse for it. Why change what doesn't need fixing?”
English may be good in grammatical gender compare with other language. But you could not say English doesn’t need fixing. First of all, you still didn’t answer the question about the vocabulary issue. Don’t you think the speaker of language A has just 30,000 words while the speaker of language B has more than one million words in mind would be equal? Secondly, you still haven’t answered the question about using plural in a scientific text that is add a ‘s’ will make confusion of children while without the ‘s’ every children can use and understand the text. Is our language only for the educated adult, it is irrelevant to children and illiteracy?
<<That is it, before play the game, the two player have to make sure what each meaning is. On the other hand you have to remember 64 different sentences before a show? Hope you have a good memory. >>
I have an idea for a method for 'expressing hidden meaning' in English, which is much better than yours. The meaning of the word will be determined by the length of stress of each syllable.
The smallest difference in the length of a sound a human can reliably detect is 0.2 seconds. So we will give a different meaning to each syllable depending on how long it is stressed, the lengths divided into .2 second chunks. We will take the maximum allowed length to be 1 second (acceptable in normal speech, if it were longer it might not be 'efficient enough) and the minimum to be 0.2 seconds (shorter than average, so we will increase the average efficiency). So each syllable has 5 different possible meanings as it could be 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8 or 1 second long.
So for the case of "what is this" we have 3 syllables, so by a simple combinatorial relationship we have 5^3=125 different combinations. Hence 125 possible meanings (trounces your measly 64 meanings). If we were to increase the number of syllable to 4 by saying "oh, what is this" we have 5^4=625 meanings, if we say "oh my, what is this" we have 5^5 =3125 meanings. And so on - beautiful exponential growth. If you have 8 syllables you can create 5^8=390625 meanings, that is more than there are words in the English language! So I could in theory express any word I want by varying the lengths of the syllables in the sentence "oh my goodness what could this be".
Now that's efficiency for you. Care for a game of cards?
<<Plurals may not be necessary to a blank slate like a toddler, but to those of us who were raised with a speaking system that uses them they are quite necessary.>>
But then the same is true of every aspect of any language.
<<I may not see the usefulness of making a speck of dirt male or female as it seems like a pointless distinction to me,>>
What part of "grammatical gender can give the noun a completely different meaning" do you fail to understand ? With grammatical gender a given noun can be, say, a house in the masculine form and a book in the feminine form. Surely in that case the distinction between the two meanings is not pointless.
The same goes for adjectives, which could be plural/singular or masculine/feminine/neutral and therefore give more information that they do in English. Just because English doesn't use them does not mean they're a "pointless distinction".
Cheng-Zhong Su gets villified for allegedly implying Chinese is the ultimate language, but you in fact do exactly the same, only with English instead of Chinese.
<<Why change what doesn't need fixing?>>
Why ask the question ?
Matthew said: “If Cheng-Zhong Su's logic and attitude is indicative of Chinese culture I want nothing to do with it. Hopefully it is not.”
I hope you are right. But can you explain some history phenomenon? Today, I just tell the detail of Neanderthalensis, they are a species around 130,000 years ago. They are stronger than the ancestor of human being, by the The Law of the Jungle at that time they should be the winner, but history tell us that they disappeared at the end. According archaeologist, the reason is that their vocal organ was degenerated. That is to say, they can’t utter as much sounds as we do. According the linguistic law, less sounds for a language means slower thinking speed and less memory. For this reason, although they are strong in physical body but they are weak in brain. Scientist believe that was the reason they disappeared and our ancestors survived.
Gerhard: You have a very good imagination but it won’t be realized. For if it could be realized, the Great Vowel Shift in English won’t be happened. For the English people had found a better solution to find more phonetic symbols.
Beside 0.4 second is too long for a phonetic symbol. The average symbols of human’s voice is just 0.25 second. It is in fact the length of a vowel. By one second we can send or receive four signals already. It is unnecessary to bother you pronounce a signal as long as more than one second. Remember, time is life.
But by the tone, the time didn’t changed, in fact every time when you utter a vowel, it should accompany with a tone. How many vowels have you used in this life means that how many tones you have used during this life too.
Boz: I didn’t say that the Chinese is the ultimate language. I have said at least twice that the Chinese language needs a reform too. What I am talking about is that there are some good properties that Chinese language has but English hasn’t. Further more, there are some good properties that English has while the Chinese hasn’t too. If the native English speaker insists that their language is the best, then I can tell them something that they don’t know.
Lol.
<<<It is unnecessary to bother you pronounce a signal as long as more than one second. Remember, time is life. >>
So you are claiming that we must constantly be talking and sending 'signals' in order to be effective? In that case, what are you doing writing on this message board, surely you are not speaking as you write (although it wouldn't surprise me...). Shouldn't you be hastily reciting as many words as possible? When you are sitting on the toilet or on the bus, are you reciting in a mad haste as many words as possible? When you are at a funeral, are you screaming forth a litany of words in order to not miss the slightest opportunity to capitalise on time, because time is life?!
Well, I must stop writing now because I am spending time, when I could be reciting signals and thus helping stave off the ever-imminent threat of a Neadertalesque decline of the human race. Because time is life!
Hi Cheng-Zhong Su
It looks like that you are trying to learn English & you are frustrated by the difficulties in learning. More better to say frustrated between the difference in English & Chinese. So you want to make it more like Chinese because it seems easy to you!
Especially your comment about the vocabulary made me laughing. Looks like you are learning new words each day & its f*****g you up. I know its really difficult dude. English Speakers don't have to "memorize" ten or twenty vocabulary words each day. They speak English & automatically pick on the words. No one knows all the words in the dictionary. You don't have to!
Don't worry Zhong, things will get easier for you once you have learned English better. You won't say this.
And yeah, I'm not an English Speaker. I'm from South Asia, so don't think that I'm biased. You seem to be bias rather than me.
I'm not against Chinese. For your informtion
Gerhard said: “So you are claiming that we must constantly be talking and sending 'signals' in order to be effective? In that case, what are you doing writing on this message board, surely you are not speaking as you write (although it wouldn't surprise me...). Shouldn't you be hastily reciting as many words as possible? When you are sitting on the toilet or on the bus, are you reciting in a mad haste as many words as possible? When you are at a funeral, are you screaming forth a litany of words in order to not miss the slightest opportunity to capitalise on time, because time is life?!
Well, I must stop writing now because I am spending time, when I could be reciting signals and thus helping stave off the ever-imminent threat of a Neadertalesque decline of the human race. Because time is life!”
The answer is very simple. We can create as much as we want writing symbols. But we can’t create sounds as we like. So the key issue is the number of sound (or short syllable). Until now, no matter what language you speak, the number can’t be more than 6,000. But it is easy to create millions writing symbols. Beside, even you write something, there is still a serial of sounds in your mind to direct the writing. When you are reading, you have to shift the writing symbol into sound for mind to accept it.
Usman said: “Hi Cheng-Zhong Su
It looks like that you are trying to learn English & you are frustrated by the difficulties in learning. More better to say frustrated between the difference in English & Chinese. So you want to make it more like Chinese because it seems easy to you!
Especially your comment about the vocabulary made me laughing. Looks like you are learning new words each day & its f*****g you up. I know its really difficult dude. English Speakers don't have to "memorize" ten or twenty vocabulary words each day. They speak English & automatically pick on the words. No one knows all the words in the dictionary. You don't have to!
Don't worry Zhong, things will get easier for you once you have learned English better. You won't say this.
And yeah, I'm not an English Speaker. I'm from South Asia, so don't think that I'm biased. You seem to be bias rather than me.
I'm not against Chinese. For your informtion”
I don’t know how you learn English, but every body learning a language should to know how many words he get each day or each month. It seemed English to be very easy to you. Without knowing the number of words, you can understand the language. You are really good luck boy (or girl).
Today, I’d like to give another example about the usage of sound. The story started from the inventor of alphabetic writing system that is Phoenician. We know it is a great invention for human civilization, but it was double edge sword too. We know any invention must start from simplification. This simplification lead the Phoenician only regarded consonants as information carrier but ignored vowels, so in their writing system only 22 letters for consonants. On the other hand, without vowel how can we pronounce even one sound? The answer is that their voice is exactly the same as ours. They have vowels too. The only different was that they regard Ma, Mi, Mu, Mai, Mo as the same sound as M. it was exactly the same that English speaker regard the four tone of Ma as the same Ma. In fact, human being of the world utters the same voice, only some language recognizes this signals while other language recognize other signals.
As Phoenician only recognized 22 phonetic signals as information carriers, according math, we know their communication speed was very slow and they had only small memory. It was the Greek recognizing vowel as information carriers. That is to say, with this recognition, suddenly the phonetic symbols increased 5 times. Their thinking speed and memory increased sharply. I believe it was the answer of why the Greek had such great imagination that in the ancient world, no one can match them.
About English, I was encouraged that many of the traditional ideas are gaining acceptance, in theory. The teachers still take great pride in knowing what grammer is, although most fluent speakers of English, native and non-native, have never heard of it. What disturbs me at is the fact that so many people, in learning English, are forced to ingest the very culture that I avoid in my native American dominated modern pop culture.
Who here would be prepared to record themselves talking about their lives and their countries in English, or interviewing others in English? If you feel your accent is too bad can you provide some interesting content in written English for someone to record. We could create a corpus of general English for English language learners to listen to and read that might distract some people from bad habits.