4 ms·

My main beef is that English is, for lack of better words, imprecise. This leads to many examples of miscommunication that take so longer to unravel.

gcb0 11y ago
English is one of the few languages you can read a million books, known every single grammar rule, and still sound like a complete idiot when speaking a word to somebody else (even if you're right)
wodenokoto 11y ago
no it isn't and no it doesn't. All natural languages carry a large portion of ambiguity, to the extend that Steven Pinker even count ambiguity as a defining factor of natural language!
- newman314 11y ago
  One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I’ll never know. Try saying that in Japanese or Chinese. Not the same effect.
  - flatline 11y ago
    Chinese is more full of double (or more) meanings than any other language I've studied. Chinese literature and poetry are famous for playing on multiple meanings of a single character or sound.
    - beat 11y ago
      Even in my one year of Chinese, I learned a great appreciation for the ridiculous puns that can be made in Chinese. It's also remarkably concise. I think most computer programmers, if exposed to Chinese, would really admire its clarity and simplicity. It's like the Lisp of natural languages.
      - tim333 11y ago
        I wonder if English would be the c++. Large complicated mess, popular.
        beat 11y ago
        Egad, no! English is like Perl. It looks strange, but it's actually pretty simple and flexible, despite the ideas held in place with duct tape. Right->{}? C++ is absurdly obtuse and complicated, for no good reason. It's not simple or flexible at all. If it were a natural language, it would be dead already. Native speakers would have been conquered by another people who could actually understand each other relatively unambiguously. Like English speakers.
    - newman314 11y ago
      To be clear, I was referring to everyday conversational Chinese. The play of words with any sort of literature or poetry isn't the normal usage.
      - gohrt 11y ago
        Your original example was wordplay in literature.
  - PakG1 11y ago
    You raise an interesting question as to whether the language can be separated from the culture. I'd wager that there's a ton of imprecision in Asian languages due to culture where a lot of communication is unspoken and relies on context. Korean-Canadian working as a manager in China and finding that I don't know how to communicate with my team even after 1.5 years on the job. Part of it is that I suck at being a manager, but part of it is that my team expects me to be able to read their minds. Chinese people tell me that the normal thing is to say something and mean something else. If you separate language room the goal of communication and the context of culture, it's easy to analyze language differences the way you would analyze the difference between Python and Swift. But that analysis may not be so useful or applicable in day-to-day life.
  - wodenokoto 11y ago
    What is your point exactly? How does that joke in anyway counter the point that ambiguity is a prominent feature in all languages? do you honestly believe that because this joke doesn't translate, there can't possibly exist jokes based on double entendre or other ambiguities in the target language?
  - umanwizard 11y ago
    It's possible to construct ambiguous sentences in any language, including Mandarin. http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=9916 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=9916
- bshimmin 11y ago
  Is ambiguity in language always a bad thing? William Empson wrote in Seven Type of Ambiguity that "The machinations of ambiguity are among the very roots of poetry", and he seemed to know a thing or two.
bitL 11y ago
I speak 8 languages and can tell you it's the same in every single one of them...
- geomark 11y ago
  I speak a couple languages and also noticed imprecision in each of them. What is interesting is where in the languages the imprecision occurs. It often seems to be a reflection of cultural values. In some Asian languages there is great importance placed on age-based social status. So the English pronouns he/she are replaced by pronouns that reflect age rather than gender. So on the one hand they are less precise because they don't indicate gender but more precise because they indicate age. And the titles for family members have many gradations. For example the English word "uncle" - there are different words for father's older brother, father's younger brother, mother's older brother, mother's younger brother.
- m_mueller 11y ago
  I don't speak as many languages as you (chapeau btw.) but I do think there are differences in precision between languages. By far the most imprecise language I know, and I suspect this is by design (politeness), is Japanese. It basically has no subject and most of what we'd call grammar is derived from context. I suspect this language must be amazing for poetry, but I'm not good enough to be able to tell. The most precise language I know is German, although this is also my native tongue, so I could be biased here. German has most of the grammar of Latin (4 out of 5 cases) and together with always distinct subjects (no you singular/you plural confusion) and compound words (need a new word? go wild!) it allows for very succinct communication. Great for technical specs, essays etc. Describing feelings can get tough, on the other hand - anything that you can't define exactly tends to sound lazy. That's where the Romance languages with their Subjunctive have the upper hand... So my point is, IMO there are some profound differences in what languages are good at. All of them are able to communicate any piece of information, but how natural it will sound, depends on the language. Just like programming languages are usually Turing complete, yet (so far) have their strenghts and weaknesses depending on the field of application.
  - gizmo686 11y ago

gcb0 11y ago

English is one of the few languages you can read a million books, known every single grammar rule, and still sound like a complete idiot when speaking a word to somebody else (even if you're right)

wodenokoto 11y ago

no it isn't and no it doesn't. All natural languages carry a large portion of ambiguity, to the extend that Steven Pinker even count ambiguity as a defining factor of natural language!

newman314 11y ago
One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I’ll never know. Try saying that in Japanese or Chinese. Not the same effect.
- flatline 11y ago
  Chinese is more full of double (or more) meanings than any other language I've studied. Chinese literature and poetry are famous for playing on multiple meanings of a single character or sound.
  - beat 11y ago
    Even in my one year of Chinese, I learned a great appreciation for the ridiculous puns that can be made in Chinese. It's also remarkably concise. I think most computer programmers, if exposed to Chinese, would really admire its clarity and simplicity. It's like the Lisp of natural languages.
    - tim333 11y ago
      I wonder if English would be the c++. Large complicated mess, popular.
      - beat 11y ago
        Egad, no! English is like Perl. It looks strange, but it's actually pretty simple and flexible, despite the ideas held in place with duct tape. Right->{}? C++ is absurdly obtuse and complicated, for no good reason. It's not simple or flexible at all. If it were a natural language, it would be dead already. Native speakers would have been conquered by another people who could actually understand each other relatively unambiguously. Like English speakers.
  - newman314 11y ago
    To be clear, I was referring to everyday conversational Chinese. The play of words with any sort of literature or poetry isn't the normal usage.
    - gohrt 11y ago
      Your original example was wordplay in literature.
- PakG1 11y ago
  You raise an interesting question as to whether the language can be separated from the culture. I'd wager that there's a ton of imprecision in Asian languages due to culture where a lot of communication is unspoken and relies on context. Korean-Canadian working as a manager in China and finding that I don't know how to communicate with my team even after 1.5 years on the job. Part of it is that I suck at being a manager, but part of it is that my team expects me to be able to read their minds. Chinese people tell me that the normal thing is to say something and mean something else. If you separate language room the goal of communication and the context of culture, it's easy to analyze language differences the way you would analyze the difference between Python and Swift. But that analysis may not be so useful or applicable in day-to-day life.
- wodenokoto 11y ago
  What is your point exactly? How does that joke in anyway counter the point that ambiguity is a prominent feature in all languages? do you honestly believe that because this joke doesn't translate, there can't possibly exist jokes based on double entendre or other ambiguities in the target language?
- umanwizard 11y ago
  It's possible to construct ambiguous sentences in any language, including Mandarin. http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=9916 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=9916
bshimmin 11y ago
Is ambiguity in language always a bad thing? William Empson wrote in Seven Type of Ambiguity that "The machinations of ambiguity are among the very roots of poetry", and he seemed to know a thing or two.

bitL 11y ago

I speak 8 languages and can tell you it's the same in every single one of them...

geomark 11y ago
I speak a couple languages and also noticed imprecision in each of them. What is interesting is where in the languages the imprecision occurs. It often seems to be a reflection of cultural values. In some Asian languages there is great importance placed on age-based social status. So the English pronouns he/she are replaced by pronouns that reflect age rather than gender. So on the one hand they are less precise because they don't indicate gender but more precise because they indicate age. And the titles for family members have many gradations. For example the English word "uncle" - there are different words for father's older brother, father's younger brother, mother's older brother, mother's younger brother.
m_mueller 11y ago
I don't speak as many languages as you (chapeau btw.) but I do think there are differences in precision between languages. By far the most imprecise language I know, and I suspect this is by design (politeness), is Japanese. It basically has no subject and most of what we'd call grammar is derived from context. I suspect this language must be amazing for poetry, but I'm not good enough to be able to tell. The most precise language I know is German, although this is also my native tongue, so I could be biased here. German has most of the grammar of Latin (4 out of 5 cases) and together with always distinct subjects (no you singular/you plural confusion) and compound words (need a new word? go wild!) it allows for very succinct communication. Great for technical specs, essays etc. Describing feelings can get tough, on the other hand - anything that you can't define exactly tends to sound lazy. That's where the Romance languages with their Subjunctive have the upper hand... So my point is, IMO there are some profound differences in what languages are good at. All of them are able to communicate any piece of information, but how natural it will sound, depends on the language. Just like programming languages are usually Turing complete, yet (so far) have their strenghts and weaknesses depending on the field of application.
- gizmo686 11y ago