complexity of languages
Adolfo <<<Do yo meant that with English and romace languages you can't express rich, complex ideas? Oh man, that hurts me. >>>
Some say that languages are not only made for communication but that they also have a big influence on the creation of thoughts and ideas - archaic languages like Greek or German are perhaps more apt to create philosphy than modern languages with simple and more analytic character.
Sorry, Sam II, German isn't an archaic language at all!
I must announce it is false that complex language is needed for complex though, for Freud spoke German, and his was most complex thought in history.
It is an interesting concept however, why languages simplify?
<<I must announce it is false that complex language is needed for complex though, for Freud spoke German, and his was most complex thought in history. >>
I thought German and Greek were considered "complex", for the purposes of this discussion. All that complex German grammar probably enabled his complex thoughts and ideas.
On the other hand, the simplicity of English probably helped Charles Darwin develop the simple but brilliant theory of natural selection and evolution. If we assume that Newton thought in English rather than Latin, his simple (but brilliant) theory of universal gravitation can again be attributed to the simple, analytic nature of the English language.
<<<On the other hand, the simplicity of English probably helped Charles Darwin develop the simple but brilliant theory of natural selection and evolution. >>>
Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection was a brilliant but oversimplistic resumee of already present theories. It has since then been falsified in many points by modern biological science.
Newton wrote his works in Latin, perhaps he had de ability to think in Latin too.
The question remains, why Indo-European languages became more and more simple (loss of synthetic character, loss of inflection etc.) during history. Why are ancient languages like Slavic, German, Greek and short-lived Latin so comlicated, while modern languages like Romance and English are relatively simple? Whould it not be more logical that the evolution of languages goes from simple to complicated? As it seems it is exactly the other way round. Are there other examples of such outside the Indo-European world?
Interesting postulate, Sam II. I suggest you to make a new thread for intense discussion.
Sam II, German isn't an ancient language. Even Greek and the slavic languages aren't ancient, they are still spoken. And what do you mean by ''short-lived'' Latin?
How can you claim that a language is complicated? For saying so, you at least need a ''complexity measure''. The most simple of this would be a text translated in all of the languages you like to measure. You will see that some of the translations are a little longer or shorter than others. But does this say something about how complicated a language really is? It may turn out that the shortest one is relatively complicated according to your notion of ''complicated'' while the longer ones may be relatively easy.
<<Sam II, German isn't an ancient language. Even Greek and the slavic languages aren't ancient, they are still spoken. >>
"ancient" means here old, archaic, existing since a long time.
<<<And what do you mean by ''short-lived'' Latin? >>
Latin language has disappeared as a spoken language somewhere between 400 and 800. Unlike e. g. Greek, which is still spoke today, Latin it is a dead language.
>>Latin language has disappeared as a spoken language somewhere between 400 and 800. Unlike e. g. Greek, which is still spoke today, Latin it is a dead language.<<
The thing though is that you cannot truly speak of Latin as being extinct; Latin is not extinct at all, actually, and has been quite successful as a language. The only thing is that its dialects have diverged sufficiently that it is hard to speak of it as being a single language today. Also, only the historical forms of Latin can be spoken of as "dead".
This is unlike Greek, which did break into some non-crossintelligible groups, but all of those other than what is thought of as modern Greek are now extinct or close to. Consequently, modern Greek can be more easily thought of as a direct successor to ancient Greek than Latin, even though the Romance languages are just as much modern Latin when you think about it.
<<This is unlike Greek, which did break into some non-crossintelligible groups, but all of those other than what is thought of as modern Greek are now extinct or close to. Consequently, modern Greek can be more easily thought of as a direct successor to ancient Greek than Latin, even though the Romance languages are just as much modern Latin when you think about it. >>
As you can read in Wikipedia, an "educated" speaker of the modern language can understand an ancient text. Koinē, the version of Greek used to write the New Testament and the Septuagint, is relatively easy to understand for modern speakers.
The same is absolutely NOT the case for Romance speakers in regard to Latin texts. This difference makes that Latin has to be considered as being a dead language and definitely extinct, while Ancient Greek can be considered as being still alive, even though not completely unaltered.
What about the geographical theory?
The Western languages are easier than the Eastern languages (from UK to Japan). If you start your travel in UK and you go to Japan, every language than you hear is more difficult.
1. Very easy: English, perhaps Spanish
2. Easy: French, Italian
3. Difficult: German, other Germanic languages
4. More difficult: Slavic languages, Russian, Ukranian, etc
5. Very difficult: Chinese, Korean, Japanese
Why? There is a theory about that?
>>As you can read in Wikipedia, an "educated" speaker of the modern language can understand an ancient text. Koinē, the version of Greek used to write the New Testament and the Septuagint, is relatively easy to understand for modern speakers.
The same is absolutely NOT the case for Romance speakers in regard to Latin texts. This difference makes that Latin has to be considered as being a dead language and definitely extinct, while Ancient Greek can be considered as being still alive, even though not completely unaltered.<<
Yes, there has been more language change between Vulgar Latin and the modern Romance languages than between ancient Greek and modern Greek, but the same underlying principle applies - language change is not language extinction. Similarly, for instance, Old English and Old Norse never went extinct even though they are not spoken today as no one *stopped* speaking them but rather they just changed over time. Even though most English-speakers today are completely unable to read Old English does not mean that Old English actually ever became extinct.
<< The Western languages are easier than the Eastern languages (from UK to Japan). If you start your travel in UK and you go to Japan, every language than you hear is more difficult. >>
Interesting theory, but I think it's mostly coincidence. You also ignore north and south: languages in Africa can be relatively easy (Swahili) or hard (most African languages), depending on the language. Arabic is also notoriously difficult.
Geography probably does have something to do with it, though. Almost all of the languages in Europe are Indo-European, whereas the East Asian languages are clearly not Indo-European at all. Basque is also not Indo-European, and it's usually considered difficult, even though it's spoken in Spain, which is almost as far west as you can get. There's also the "sprachbund" effect to consider: two languages that are geographically close to each other are likely to develop similaities even if they are not related. Some people think this is why Korean and Japanese are grammatically similar. But, on the other hand, neither Japanese nor Korean is similar to Chinese grammatically.
- Kef