Is English an inferior language?
"I just learned..."
If you really had learned, you would've put the source here.
Do you, Johnny, know any Chinese? I guess you don't. And even if you did, you would hardly know it as native speaker of Chinese. So how can you make any relevant comment on "the limitations of Chinese", which, as you probably know, isn't even a language but a language family, Standard Mandarin, with its countless different forms, being the biggest?
blanc Mon Sep 07, 2009 8:14 am GMT:
<< 'Simple grammar' would, in my opinion, make a language superior. For me a language should be practical and useable above all. This does not negate the possibility it could be colourful, expressive and express complex ideas, but I think some aspects of other languages, like the gender-nouns of France rather pointless. Some languages were prized for their poetic beauty - Sanskrit, for instance, and as a result never maintained their popularity. >>
What do you mean by simple grammar? Is there any language with a simple grammar? Does a simple grammar mean that the language is easy to speak or to understand? I don't think so. If you deal with languages, there's no ''superiority'' or ''inferiority'', they're just different. The ones resembling your mother tongue are more practical for you, the ones more deviating are not so practical, if you at all make the effort to learn them. In every language you can render yourself ''colorful'', ''expressive'' and even express complex ideas. (I've already seen a very expressive poem written in a programming language -- Forth -- and a joke written in a hardware description languages -- VHDL --. Of course, you need some background knowledge to understand the poem or the joke, as in every language. Ok, the joke was not a deliberate joke, the pupils just not really know what to do with their assignement, but it was a really good joke.)
A microprocessor is a really complex idea. You can express this complex idea with a language like VHDL. English is more complex as VHDL.
How can you claim that some aspects of others languages are pointless?
Do you know that languages? What do you mean by ''gender-nouns of France''? Maybe the fact that french nouns exhibit gender, as do the nouns of many languages?
Johnny Mon Sep 07, 2009 11:50 am GMT:
<< Also, along with Japanese, its writing system is far too complicated compared to that of most other languages in the world, unless they all switch to pinyin or romaji. >>
Most likely, many different concepts will be mapped to one and the same pinyin or romaji.
<< The only limitation in English is its irregular spelling, not its grammar. This limitation makes it hard for a learner to learn to read or pronounce English words in a consistent way, and makes it impossible to read any words you don't know, like place names, people's last names, new words that were made up like brand names. >>
''Irregular spelling'' is no limitation, but a benefit. It makes the written form of a language look unique and easier to read and to understand. Why do you think that writing must contain the pronunciation?
<<In every language you can render yourself ''colorful'', ''expressive''>>
So English is not more expressive than let's say binary code.
Yes! It's not the code which makes something colourful or expressive, but the meaning associated. Everything you can express in English is expressed with 26 letters (or, to be precise, in 52 letters) plus the numbers form zero to ten plus some punctuation and special characters, so it's a limited number of characters, and everyone can be rendered in binary as well.
<< The only limitation in English is its irregular spelling, not its grammar. >>
Is the grammar of English that easy?
Is English an inferior language?
It's an inferior question .
"Is English an inferior language?"
No. Next question please.
(And can you start asking serious ones for a change?)
<<Is the grammar of English that easy? >>
If we limit "grammar" to just morphology, isn't English one of the easiest languages on the planet? There are quantiattive measures of morphological complexity, and English is among the simplest of current IE languages.
How simple are English semantics and syntax? If they're no worse than other languages, then English would be among the simplest languages around, in overall complexity.
Grammar usually means morphology and syntax. I don't know if it also includes semantics. Morphology is usually considered much easier than syntax.
You're just fooling yourself with your kind of argumentation.
<<If you really had learned, you would've put the source here. >>
I started a thread in the other section, and Chinese people told me it's not possible to understand the lyrics of songs because of the tones and you have to guess, and stuff like that. It really seems limited, I didn't make that up.
You can use a lot of different intonation patterns in English to express an emotion or just to sing or just to act silly. The way you say a word like "great!" tells us if you are being sarcastic, disappointed, happy, euphoric, angry. How do you do that in Chinese if you can't change the tones?
I consider that to be a limitation in the entertainment industry and the arts (singing, acting).
And yes, English grammar is simple compared to many other western languages. I sing, you sing, he sings! A tall boy, a tall girl! It's all the same, no inflections, a bunch of tenses and a bunch of exceptions, and that's all.
As far as I heard, there's only a very limited number of syllables in Chinese. The tones multiply the amound of syllables by four. Of course, you can experess the different kinds of emotions with other means. I once read that Chinese people often draw their characters in the air during a conversation to be sure to get the right meaning of a word. So, IMHO, the problem is not the tones, but the limited set of syllables and the extrem isolating nature of that language.
It does not make sense to discuss which language is more expressive when only 10% of information is verbal. Body language gives more information than the words one pronounces, no matter the language.
>>I just learned that Chinese tones seem to be a big limitation to expressiveness in the arts. It's not a suitable language for singing, for example. Also, along with Japanese, its writing system is far too complicated compared to that of most other languages in the world, unless they all switch to pinyin or romaji.<<
You're now definitely turning almost all Chinese speakers (most probably all also happen to BE Chinese) against you. Chinese characters are useful and we aren't going to give them up anytime soon, because Chinese can't be Chinese without them.
I read dozens if not less discussions among us Chinese in Hong Kong/the mainland and abroad, and almost everybody came up with the idea that "yeah, very often when I argue with those foreigners, most of them say Chinese characters should be abolished or replaced by some sort of letters or something, since they are too difficult to learn, too troublesome, to complicated, far from useful... AND WITHOUT HAVING LEARNED IT AT ALL."
It follows that "I concur. Yeah, sad but true, they just don't understand us and our culture. Our Chinese is simple, short when written, and succinct."
I can introduce you to a few examples of such in the Chinese cyberspace. In fact, we also have quite a universal opinion that we can't use pinyin at all as the dominant script, because it, just, won't, work. This is a matter of fact, not that somebody forces us to have the same opinion. Just as how you won't (largely) disagree with English using Latin letters. Do you get it?