4 ms·

What I referred to with 'rules of the language' was the national standard version of the language. Those are publicly well known and promoted by a majority body

What I referred to with 'rules of the language' was the national standard version of the language. Those are publicly well known and promoted by a majority body. I argue that these rules are much easier to learn than rules of dialects.

gugagore 9y ago
First of all, in numerous cases, the "national standard" (whatever that means) dialect is not the dialect spoken by the majority. Can you give an example of rules of "standard English" being easier to learn than some rule of non-standard English? Also note that English as far as I know doesn't even have an official codification of its rules and usage: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/List_of_language_regulators https://www.wikiwand.com/en/List_of_language_regulators
- flamedoge 9y ago
  I'll argue that Korean spoken in Seoul, South Korea is vastly different from one in Pyong Yang, North Korea, and arguably harder to learn because one can trace some of the phrasing to old way Korean was spoken which is a mix of Chinese-derived words with Korean. This is due to the language having been invented by King Sejong circa 400(?) years ago when most written language was Chinese in Korea. It's harder because you have to trace the origins of these words to Chinese characters and it's not just learning one language anymore--language rules and meanings cross over across regions and boundaries that exist or existed in the past.
  - lazyasciiart 9y ago
    The language was not "invented" at all, you may be misremembering the invention of the Korean alphabet by Sejong. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Korean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Korean
  - gugagore 9y ago
    I think you're mostly talking about orthography (writing), and not language itself. You might be saying that because of the different writing systems, the spoken language is different today, which seems plausible. In any case, no matter how "mixed" a language's history is, I bet that for its native speakers, it is acquired as one language and feels like one language. When people learn and acquire language, they don't have to trace any origins of any words. Anyway, we migrated from arguing about the claim "The rules of language are simple" to arguing that some language rules are simpler than other, which to me makes room for the claim that language is, generally speaking, complicated and its rules are complicated.
    - wolfgke 9y ago
      > I think you're mostly talking about orthography (writing), and not language itself. You might be saying that because of the different writing systems, the spoken language is different today, which seems plausible. In any case, no matter how "mixed" a language's history is, I bet that for its native speakers, it is acquired as one language and feels like one language. When people learn and acquire language, they don't have to trace any origins of any words. I don't know how native speakers of other languages think about this, but for German (my mother tongue) I don't think this is true. The reason is that in German loanwords often keep their spelling. So if you want to know how to pronounce a loanword you better have a good intuition from which language it might come from and how it is pronounced in this language. By some "language nerds" in Germany it is even considered as a sign of education to apply the correct rules of the source language to form the "correct number" instead of the "Germanized number" when declining the word. An example: The commonly used German word for "the courgette/zucchini" is "die Zucchini (singular)". And it is common usage to use "die Zucchinis" to form the plural. Language nerds will disagree: In Italian, from which this word is loaned "zucchini" is already the plural, so the "correct" German word for this vegetable has to be "die Zucchino" and "die Zucchini" must only be used to refer to the plural. And then even more hardcore language nerds will come and and point out that "zucchino" is male in Italian, so it is wrong to make it female in German, so "der Zucchino" is the "ultimately correct" German noun for this vegetable. I am really not kidding. OK, for more sane examples: You better know that "Giro" (as in "das Girokonto") or "das Cello" come from Italian - otherwise you will pronounce these German words wrongly. The same holds for "das Trottoir" (an old-fashioned German word for "the sidewalk"; the common German word is "der Bürgersteig") - you better know that this word comes from French and how French words are pronounced. I don't even want to start with English loanwords...

gugagore 9y ago

First of all, in numerous cases, the "national standard" (whatever that means) dialect is not the dialect spoken by the majority. Can you give an example of rules of "standard English" being easier to learn than some rule of non-standard English? Also note that English as far as I know doesn't even have an official codification of its rules and usage: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/List_of_language_regulators https://www.wikiwand.com/en/List_of_language_regulators

flamedoge 9y ago
I'll argue that Korean spoken in Seoul, South Korea is vastly different from one in Pyong Yang, North Korea, and arguably harder to learn because one can trace some of the phrasing to old way Korean was spoken which is a mix of Chinese-derived words with Korean. This is due to the language having been invented by King Sejong circa 400(?) years ago when most written language was Chinese in Korea. It's harder because you have to trace the origins of these words to Chinese characters and it's not just learning one language anymore--language rules and meanings cross over across regions and boundaries that exist or existed in the past.
- lazyasciiart 9y ago
  The language was not "invented" at all, you may be misremembering the invention of the Korean alphabet by Sejong. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Korean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Korean
- gugagore 9y ago
  I think you're mostly talking about orthography (writing), and not language itself. You might be saying that because of the different writing systems, the spoken language is different today, which seems plausible. In any case, no matter how "mixed" a language's history is, I bet that for its native speakers, it is acquired as one language and feels like one language. When people learn and acquire language, they don't have to trace any origins of any words. Anyway, we migrated from arguing about the claim "The rules of language are simple" to arguing that some language rules are simpler than other, which to me makes room for the claim that language is, generally speaking, complicated and its rules are complicated.
  - wolfgke 9y ago
    > I think you're mostly talking about orthography (writing), and not language itself. You might be saying that because of the different writing systems, the spoken language is different today, which seems plausible. In any case, no matter how "mixed" a language's history is, I bet that for its native speakers, it is acquired as one language and feels like one language. When people learn and acquire language, they don't have to trace any origins of any words. I don't know how native speakers of other languages think about this, but for German (my mother tongue) I don't think this is true. The reason is that in German loanwords often keep their spelling. So if you want to know how to pronounce a loanword you better have a good intuition from which language it might come from and how it is pronounced in this language. By some "language nerds" in Germany it is even considered as a sign of education to apply the correct rules of the source language to form the "correct number" instead of the "Germanized number" when declining the word. An example: The commonly used German word for "the courgette/zucchini" is "die Zucchini (singular)". And it is common usage to use "die Zucchinis" to form the plural. Language nerds will disagree: In Italian, from which this word is loaned "zucchini" is already the plural, so the "correct" German word for this vegetable has to be "die Zucchino" and "die Zucchini" must only be used to refer to the plural. And then even more hardcore language nerds will come and and point out that "zucchino" is male in Italian, so it is wrong to make it female in German, so "der Zucchino" is the "ultimately correct" German noun for this vegetable. I am really not kidding. OK, for more sane examples: You better know that "Giro" (as in "das Girokonto") or "das Cello" come from Italian - otherwise you will pronounce these German words wrongly. The same holds for "das Trottoir" (an old-fashioned German word for "the sidewalk"; the common German word is "der Bürgersteig") - you better know that this word comes from French and how French words are pronounced. I don't even want to start with English loanwords...