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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

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
>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. First, the obligatory, any claim that a particular cultural element causes a particular language feature needs tremendous evidence; languages evolve on their own. Second, Japanese has very explicit subjects, they are what comes before the は or が particle. By convention, stating the subject in a sentence is optional and generally omitted if it could be understood from context. You could argue that this is an imprecision, but if you need the precision for something, then just state the subject. There is only a 1 syllable overhead for doing so (beyond the syllables in the subject itself). From a technical (read linguistic) standpoint you could argue that what is marked by は and が is not really "subjects", but something else ("topics"), which is technically correct[0]. One could also argue that Japanese does not have adjectives, which is also technically correct, but both of these say more about how the field of linguistics chooses to model and define terms than about Japanese itself. Third, Japanese has a very well defined grammar. Unlike English, it is largely not based on word order, but by particles that follow phrases to indicate what part of speech said phrase is (and yes, in my experience, this is very useful for poetry). Admittedly, colloquial Japanese sometimes omits these particles, but when they do so the sentences are arranged in very standard forms turning it into a word order based grammer. [0] Mostly. Sometimes は and が really do mark the subject.

gizmo686 11y ago

>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. First, the obligatory, any claim that a particular cultural element causes a particular language feature needs tremendous evidence; languages evolve on their own. Second, Japanese has very explicit subjects, they are what comes before the は or が particle. By convention, stating the subject in a sentence is optional and generally omitted if it could be understood from context. You could argue that this is an imprecision, but if you need the precision for something, then just state the subject. There is only a 1 syllable overhead for doing so (beyond the syllables in the subject itself). From a technical (read linguistic) standpoint you could argue that what is marked by は and が is not really "subjects", but something else ("topics"), which is technically correct[0]. One could also argue that Japanese does not have adjectives, which is also technically correct, but both of these say more about how the field of linguistics chooses to model and define terms than about Japanese itself. Third, Japanese has a very well defined grammar. Unlike English, it is largely not based on word order, but by particles that follow phrases to indicate what part of speech said phrase is (and yes, in my experience, this is very useful for poetry). Admittedly, colloquial Japanese sometimes omits these particles, but when they do so the sentences are arranged in very standard forms turning it into a word order based grammer. [0] Mostly. Sometimes は and が really do mark the subject.