6 ms·

It would be equally interesting if you could find one who disagrees with the statement, so they can tell us about other languages that are more irregular and in

It would be equally interesting if you could find one who disagrees with the statement, so they can tell us about other languages that are more irregular and in what ways.

umanwizard 9y ago
The problem is that "more irregular" is not well-defined. Language works[1] in stacked layers a bit like the OSI model. * Raw sound is interpreted as phonetic units * These are then reinterpreted as phonemes according to phonological rules. For example, you perceive "butter" as being pronounced "b - uh - t - r", but, in American English at least, that "t" is pronounced more like a Spanish "r" than anything you would recognize in isolation as a "t". * Phonemes are organized into morphemes (units of meaning, e.g. "happier" has two morphemes, "happy" and "er"). * Morphemes are combined into words according to morphological rules. * Words are combined into sentences (or other types of utterance) according to syntax. Popularly when people say "grammar" they mean morphology + syntax. You could talk about "regularity" or "irregularity" completely separately for any of these layers and even then you would have to carefully define what you meant and how to measure it. And it's not clear that English is particularly bad in any of them. The phonology example I gave might sound weird but all languages have stuff like this and English is far from being the most confusing[2]. For morphology you could propose a standard like "frequency of verbs with irregular conjugation" (or nouns with an irregular declension) and point to the prevalence of verbs like "sing/sang/sung" in English, but these are not English specific; most Germanic languages have roughly the same set of these "strong" verbs. (In Icelandic, "to sing" = "syngja" but "he sung" = "hann söng", rather than something like "hann syngði" which you would expect regularly and which doesn't actually exist[3]). For syntax I don't have a clue how you would even begin to measure regularity or irregularity. Another thing "irregular" could refer to is the writing system. But first of all, writing and [spoken] language are kinda separate things (and a huge chunk of languages have no writing system at all). We could start writing English with a totally different alphabet tomorrow and it would still be recognizable as English and not fundamentally different. This has actually happened to several languages in the past; for example, Korean was written with Chinese characters and now it is written with the totally unrelated Korean alphabet, but it's still Korean either way. Serbs today may write Serbian with either the Cyrillic or the Latin alphabet, but either way, it's still Serbian. But even if we accept for the sake of argument that talking about writing systems is meaningful, English is still far from the most irregular. In Japanese for example, it is basically completely impossible to even begin to predict how to write a word if all you know is its pronunciation. And then there is diglossia: people in Egypt, for example, would believe that what they are speaking and what they're writing are both "the Arabic language", but the written form and the spoken form are so dramatically different in every way that from an objective perspective they are separate languages, a bit like how during the Middle Ages people spoke French, Spanish, etc. but wrote in Latin. [1]: this is all a rough oversimplification [2]: This Quora answer is pretty interesting: https://www.quora.com/Which-language-has-the-most-complex-phonology/answer/Brian-Collins-56 https://www.quora.com/Which-language-has-the-most-complex-ph... [3]: I think, anyway. But I don't really know Icelandic so someone can feel free to correct me.
- smcl 9y ago
  "In Japanese for example, it is basically completely impossible to even begin to predict how to write a word if all you know is its pronunciation" Do you mean using the Kanji characters, or is there something else (other than the silent "u" that hides) that would trip you up when trying to write something in the hiragana or katakana letters?
  - umanwizard 9y ago
    I'm referring to kanji, which is what most words are written with.
    - smcl 9y ago
      Kanji you are right, but I’m not sure most words are written with it (happy to be corrected, I only did a tiny bit of Japanese study and was only in Japan for a week or so). Plus it is possible to write a word using either of the other two alphabets even if you don’t know the kanji. Mandarin, Cantonese and likely other Chinese languages are maybe a better example. I don’t think they have a phonetic system that you could fall back on
      - umanwizard 9y ago
        You could in principle write anything you want in any script you want. But if you write a word that is typically written in kanji in hiragana instead, you are not writing according to standard Japanese writing conventions. This is a non sequitur, it is like saying "Chinese writing is not irregular because you could always just write everything in Cyrillic"
        smcl 9y ago
        Well not really - if a Japanese speaker write a word to another Japanese speaker they could conceivably write the word out through either of these alphabets - they're mutually understood and they are able to perfectly (iirc) represent all of the words used in the language. I don't think anyone would suggest that it's possible to do this with Chinese and Cyrillic characters. I actually think you'd be the first to suggest this is the same thing. I'm really confused why you'd say this.
kmm 9y ago
Russian stress is unpredictable, not even per word, but among different inflections of the word. That holds for both nouns and verbs. For the nouns there's an attempt at classification that uses both numbers and letters[0] and even then, a lot of commonly used words fall out of it. English, on the other hand, only has half a dozen umlauted plurals (foot-feet, tooth-teeth, ..), a tendency to keep some plurals invariant (one fish, two fish), and just one suppletive plural (person-people) The verb has many forms, some of which like the past passive participle, are unpredictable especially with regard to stress. This compared to English, which has the simplest non-trivial conjugation you can imagine (just add an -s), and about hundred verb roots that are semi-irregular (semi- because there's a lot of patterns) 0: https://ru.wiktionary.org/wiki/Викисловарь:Использование_словаря_Зализняка https://ru.wiktionary.org/wiki/Викисловарь:Использование_сло... And that's not even mentioning things like genders, which in most languages follow no rules at all, which makes them all "irregular". English closest cousin, Dutch, has 3 genders which for are completely random for all but compound words and derivations. The claim that English would be the most irregular language in the world boggles my mind. What even is irregular about English? How can you even make such a claim without deep knowledge of many languages from many different language families.
- jasode 9y ago
  >What even is irregular about English? I'm guessing it comes both the inconsistent pronunciation and irregular verbs. People then assume non-English languages have more consistency and regularity. It's a non-rigorous intuition that English is messier than every other language. There are several poems that poke fun at it. It would be interesting to see equivalent "meta" poems about Russian, Spanish, etc. (1) irregular pronunciation: http://www.wordhord.com/humor/english-pronunciation-poems/ http://www.wordhord.com/humor/english-pronunciation-poems/ (2) irregular verb tenses: Tense Times With Verbs by Richard Lederer[1] The verbs in English are a fright. How can we learn to read and write? Today we speak, but first we spoke; Some faucets leak, but never loke. Today we write, but first we wrote; We bite our tongues, but never bote. Each day I teach, for years I taught, And preachers preach, but never praught. This tale I tell; this tale I told; I smell the flowers, but never smold. If knights still slay, as once they slew, Then do we play, as once we plew? If I still do as once I did, Then do cows moo, as they once mid? I love to win, and games I’ve won; I seldom sin, and never son. I hate to lose, and games I lost; I didn’t choose, and never chost. I love to sing, and songs I sang; I fling a ball, but never flang. I strike that ball, that ball I struck; This poem I like, but never luck. I take a break, a break I took; I bake a cake, but never book. I eat that cake, that cake I ate; I beat an egg, but never bate. I often swim, as I once swam; I skim some milk, but never skam. I fly a kite that I once flew; I tie a knot, but never tew. I see the truth, the truth I saw; I flee from falsehood, never flaw. I stand for truth, as I once stood; I land a fish, but never lood. About these verbs I sit and think. These verbs don’t fit. They seem to wink At me, who sat for years and thought Of verbs that never fat or wrought. [1] https://www.ncra.org/files/MCMS/2ED22AD5-E440-4ECB-B7B4-97011F0363AB.pdf https://www.ncra.org/files/MCMS/2ED22AD5-E440-4ECB-B7B4-9701...
mannykannot 9y ago
How about the examples of Ket, from TFA?

It would be equally interesting if you could find one who disagrees with the statement, so they can tell us about other languages that are more irregular and in what ways.

umanwizard 9y ago

The problem is that "more irregular" is not well-defined. Language works[1] in stacked layers a bit like the OSI model. * Raw sound is interpreted as phonetic units * These are then reinterpreted as phonemes according to phonological rules. For example, you perceive "butter" as being pronounced "b - uh - t - r", but, in American English at least, that "t" is pronounced more like a Spanish "r" than anything you would recognize in isolation as a "t". * Phonemes are organized into morphemes (units of meaning, e.g. "happier" has two morphemes, "happy" and "er"). * Morphemes are combined into words according to morphological rules. * Words are combined into sentences (or other types of utterance) according to syntax. Popularly when people say "grammar" they mean morphology + syntax. You could talk about "regularity" or "irregularity" completely separately for any of these layers and even then you would have to carefully define what you meant and how to measure it. And it's not clear that English is particularly bad in any of them. The phonology example I gave might sound weird but all languages have stuff like this and English is far from being the most confusing[2]. For morphology you could propose a standard like "frequency of verbs with irregular conjugation" (or nouns with an irregular declension) and point to the prevalence of verbs like "sing/sang/sung" in English, but these are not English specific; most Germanic languages have roughly the same set of these "strong" verbs. (In Icelandic, "to sing" = "syngja" but "he sung" = "hann söng", rather than something like "hann syngði" which you would expect regularly and which doesn't actually exist[3]). For syntax I don't have a clue how you would even begin to measure regularity or irregularity. Another thing "irregular" could refer to is the writing system. But first of all, writing and [spoken] language are kinda separate things (and a huge chunk of languages have no writing system at all). We could start writing English with a totally different alphabet tomorrow and it would still be recognizable as English and not fundamentally different. This has actually happened to several languages in the past; for example, Korean was written with Chinese characters and now it is written with the totally unrelated Korean alphabet, but it's still Korean either way. Serbs today may write Serbian with either the Cyrillic or the Latin alphabet, but either way, it's still Serbian. But even if we accept for the sake of argument that talking about writing systems is meaningful, English is still far from the most irregular. In Japanese for example, it is basically completely impossible to even begin to predict how to write a word if all you know is its pronunciation. And then there is diglossia: people in Egypt, for example, would believe that what they are speaking and what they're writing are both "the Arabic language", but the written form and the spoken form are so dramatically different in every way that from an objective perspective they are separate languages, a bit like how during the Middle Ages people spoke French, Spanish, etc. but wrote in Latin. [1]: this is all a rough oversimplification [2]: This Quora answer is pretty interesting: https://www.quora.com/Which-language-has-the-most-complex-phonology/answer/Brian-Collins-56 https://www.quora.com/Which-language-has-the-most-complex-ph... [3]: I think, anyway. But I don't really know Icelandic so someone can feel free to correct me.

smcl 9y ago
"In Japanese for example, it is basically completely impossible to even begin to predict how to write a word if all you know is its pronunciation" Do you mean using the Kanji characters, or is there something else (other than the silent "u" that hides) that would trip you up when trying to write something in the hiragana or katakana letters?
- umanwizard 9y ago
  I'm referring to kanji, which is what most words are written with.
  - smcl 9y ago
    Kanji you are right, but I’m not sure most words are written with it (happy to be corrected, I only did a tiny bit of Japanese study and was only in Japan for a week or so). Plus it is possible to write a word using either of the other two alphabets even if you don’t know the kanji. Mandarin, Cantonese and likely other Chinese languages are maybe a better example. I don’t think they have a phonetic system that you could fall back on
    - umanwizard 9y ago
      You could in principle write anything you want in any script you want. But if you write a word that is typically written in kanji in hiragana instead, you are not writing according to standard Japanese writing conventions. This is a non sequitur, it is like saying "Chinese writing is not irregular because you could always just write everything in Cyrillic"
      - smcl 9y ago
        Well not really - if a Japanese speaker write a word to another Japanese speaker they could conceivably write the word out through either of these alphabets - they're mutually understood and they are able to perfectly (iirc) represent all of the words used in the language. I don't think anyone would suggest that it's possible to do this with Chinese and Cyrillic characters. I actually think you'd be the first to suggest this is the same thing. I'm really confused why you'd say this.

kmm 9y ago

Russian stress is unpredictable, not even per word, but among different inflections of the word. That holds for both nouns and verbs. For the nouns there's an attempt at classification that uses both numbers and letters[0] and even then, a lot of commonly used words fall out of it. English, on the other hand, only has half a dozen umlauted plurals (foot-feet, tooth-teeth, ..), a tendency to keep some plurals invariant (one fish, two fish), and just one suppletive plural (person-people) The verb has many forms, some of which like the past passive participle, are unpredictable especially with regard to stress. This compared to English, which has the simplest non-trivial conjugation you can imagine (just add an -s), and about hundred verb roots that are semi-irregular (semi- because there's a lot of patterns) 0: https://ru.wiktionary.org/wiki/Викисловарь:Использование_словаря_Зализняка https://ru.wiktionary.org/wiki/Викисловарь:Использование_сло... And that's not even mentioning things like genders, which in most languages follow no rules at all, which makes them all "irregular". English closest cousin, Dutch, has 3 genders which for are completely random for all but compound words and derivations. The claim that English would be the most irregular language in the world boggles my mind. What even is irregular about English? How can you even make such a claim without deep knowledge of many languages from many different language families.

jasode 9y ago
>What even is irregular about English? I'm guessing it comes both the inconsistent pronunciation and irregular verbs. People then assume non-English languages have more consistency and regularity. It's a non-rigorous intuition that English is messier than every other language. There are several poems that poke fun at it. It would be interesting to see equivalent "meta" poems about Russian, Spanish, etc. (1) irregular pronunciation: http://www.wordhord.com/humor/english-pronunciation-poems/ http://www.wordhord.com/humor/english-pronunciation-poems/ (2) irregular verb tenses: Tense Times With Verbs by Richard Lederer[1] The verbs in English are a fright. How can we learn to read and write? Today we speak, but first we spoke; Some faucets leak, but never loke. Today we write, but first we wrote; We bite our tongues, but never bote. Each day I teach, for years I taught, And preachers preach, but never praught. This tale I tell; this tale I told; I smell the flowers, but never smold. If knights still slay, as once they slew, Then do we play, as once we plew? If I still do as once I did, Then do cows moo, as they once mid? I love to win, and games I’ve won; I seldom sin, and never son. I hate to lose, and games I lost; I didn’t choose, and never chost. I love to sing, and songs I sang; I fling a ball, but never flang. I strike that ball, that ball I struck; This poem I like, but never luck. I take a break, a break I took; I bake a cake, but never book. I eat that cake, that cake I ate; I beat an egg, but never bate. I often swim, as I once swam; I skim some milk, but never skam. I fly a kite that I once flew; I tie a knot, but never tew. I see the truth, the truth I saw; I flee from falsehood, never flaw. I stand for truth, as I once stood; I land a fish, but never lood. About these verbs I sit and think. These verbs don’t fit. They seem to wink At me, who sat for years and thought Of verbs that never fat or wrought. [1] https://www.ncra.org/files/MCMS/2ED22AD5-E440-4ECB-B7B4-97011F0363AB.pdf https://www.ncra.org/files/MCMS/2ED22AD5-E440-4ECB-B7B4-9701...

mannykannot 9y ago

How about the examples of Ket, from TFA?