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I love the English language. It is expressive, it is the language of great literature, and it is in no way „bullying“, no, it brings people all over the world t
by geff82 8y ago
I love the English language. It is expressive, it is the language of great literature, and it is in no way „bullying“, no, it brings people all over the world together. There would be no way to talk to a Chinese for me (German) if he had only learned Japanese because Japan is the neighbour and if I had only learned French or Polish because those are our big neighbours. No, English brings us all together, it makes me communicate with ordinary people without a translator anywhere on the planet. I do not care if everyone speaks English, German, Hindi or Esperanto. But if English has the noble power to bring people together, regardless of nation, religion or race, I applaud it, because this is just a wonderful use for this little language that was once only spoken on a medium sized Island in the Northern Sea.
Let‘s appreciate English, let us embrace it even a bit more, let us try to speak it better each day for a world of mutual understanding. Maybe English can be a driver for peace, at least to a certain degree.
- tbrock 8y agoIt’s also the lingua franca of tech. There isn’t any way to say “Linux Kernel Networking Subsystem” or “8-Way associative cache” in French or any other language without severe lingual contortions.
- chrisper 8y agoThen explain to me why the French are using Go, To etc. instead of TB and GB like everyone else?
- rhapsodic 8y ago>Then explain to me why the French are using Go, To etc. instead of TB and GB like everyone else? Probably because some French law mandates it.
- ralusek 8y agoThey haven't gotten over the whole "lingua Franca" thing.
- coldtea 8y agoWell, it will take the British and Americans a long time to go over the same thing as well when the time comes...
- michaelmrose 8y agoGet back to me in 20 years and we'll see how that went.
- coldtea 8y agoWho said it has to be in 20 years? It took a couple of centuries for the French.
- jgh 8y agoGigaoctet isn't exactly a severe linguistic contortion though.
- moolcool 8y agoThey actively avoid loan words from English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Académie_française#Anglicisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Académie_française#Anglicisms
- jgh 8y agoExcept weekend. They couldn't come up with a better word for that ;)
- enriquto 8y agoI use "fin de semaine" and people understands it perfectly.
- felipemnoa 8y agoWhich is almost the literal translation to weekend or "Week End". Pretty much the same phrase used in Spanish (fin de semana) and I suspect in other romance languages. P.D. Funnily enough, I looked up the translation for weekend in Latin and google gave me "volutpat vestibulum" and yet for Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian and Romanian I got a similar "Fin de Semana" phrase. I wonder why only the latin translation looks completely different? Here are the Translations for weekend for each Romance language and Latin: French - fin de semaine Spanish - fin de semana Romanian - sfârșit de săptămână Portuguese - final de semana Italian - fine settimana Latin - volutpat vestibulum Notice how only Latin looks completely different. I wonder if google translate is broken.
- l9k 8y agoOctet is actually a more precise word as it implies there are 8 bits (or people, or things...) Byte only represents a group of bits.
- PhasmaFelis 8y agoTechnically true, and there were some weird-ass byte sizes in the early decades of computing, but the 8-bit byte has been universal for, I think, around 40 years now?
- acchow 8y ago> “Linux Kernel Networking Subsystem” How do they say this in Japanese? In Chinese (Mandarin/Cantonese)?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- reustle 8y agoSomething like リニキス カーネル ネットワークイング サブシステム It's basically English pumped though a lossy algo. I hate katakana and hope it dies soon.
- nneonneo 8y agoI think that the proper term is "Linuxカーネルネットワークサブシステム" meaning "Linux Kernel Network Subsystem".
- snowpanda 8y agoWhat is katakana?
- nneonneo 8y agoJapanese uses three distinct character sets in writing: Hiragana (a syllabary), Katakana (another syllabary) and Kanji (Chinese characters). Hiragana and Kanji are usually used together to write native Japanese words, whereas Katakana is used almost exclusively for loanwords. Katakana syllables are either bare vowels, or consonant+vowel (with few exceptions), meaning that transliterated words must be contorted to fit the syllabary (the "lossy algo" referred to by the parent comment). So, something like "kernel" in English becomes kaa-ne-ru, and "subsystem" becomes "sa-bu-shi-su-te-mu".
- elgenie 8y agoKatakana [1] is one of the two syllabary writing systems in Japanese, with Hiragana [2] being the other. IIRC katakana is the one where every syllable starts with a consonant and ends with a vowel, so transliterated loan words with consecutive consonants end up growing vowels in the middle. They also have kanji (characters), and various romanization systems (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Japanese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Japanese). It's really amazingly inefficient. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katakana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katakana [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiragana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiragana
- lgessler 8y agoTangential: it's worth noting that this is a historical circumstance rather than something that has to do with French in itself. When a new domain arises that a language didn't previously have words for, like computing, "home-grown" (as opposed to borrowed) words can be more or less successful. Take the French Academy for example, whose attempts at purging French of English loanwords[1] has had mixed success. (And see also the Central Hindi Directorate[2].) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acad%C3%A9mie_fran%C3%A7aise#Anglicisms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acad%C3%A9mie_fran%C3%A7aise#A... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Hindi_Directorate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Hindi_Directorate
- greenhatman 8y agoWe learned a lot of Afrikaans tech words in computer science in high school in South Africa. It's pretty useless for me. I've never used any of it since, and have forgotten most of it.
- andriesm 8y agoFellow Afrikaansie here. There were some very novel Afrikaans words for computer terminology in that school computer science handbook... However none of it seems to be that useful or much used at all, and English accesses the latest tech and many major western tech hubs. I suspect this is the case for my languages, especially those spoken in very few countries or by smallish population groups, especially when the language speaking group is not Geographically close to other populations of a grammatically closely related language. I am busy studying Georgian because I am relocating to the eastern European country. However I remain doubtful that Georgian will be that useful for technical computer stuff, because it has only around 4 million speakers and is linguistically close to almost no other widely spoken language. I will find out soon, as my language skills and experience with the place collide.
- jcranmer 8y agoSystème de réseau de noyau Linux? Cache associatif de 8 sets? Those aren't severe linguistic contortions...
- tachyonbeam 8y agoYour Google translation is no good. Sets is an English word, and it would be associative (feminine form). That being said, the reason I, as a French speaker working in tech/research, prefer to discuss tech in English, is because: 1. There is always new terminology being invented in conferences or bleeding edge R&D. There is no official translation for most of these terms. You could translate them, but most people wouldn't be quite sure what you mean. 2. Anything I write in English is immediately accessible to 20x more people. Writing about tech in French means sacrificing most of my audience. English really is the lingua franca of tech. It doesn't bother me at all, even though it's not my native language. The world needs a lingua franca (of tech and everything else), and English fits the bill quite well. It's much less overcomplicated than many other languages. I make many more grammar mistakes in French, because French grammar is full of arbitrary nonsensical rules. No thanks.
- pyrale 8y ago> Sets is an English word "There is no word for entrepreneur in french" Seriously... "collection of things," mid-15c., from Old French sette "sequence," variant of secte "religious community," from Medieval Latin secta "retinue," from Latin secta "a following"
- jcranmer 8y agoI did not use Google translation. I went to the French Wikipedia articles, which used cache associatif. But even if you want to quibble word choice, the fact remains that there's no severe linguistic contortion. Sure, French doesn't permit chaining nouns in the same way that English does. But the de chains are still permitted, and aren't much more wordy.
- remram 8y ago"sets" is the English word you used
- rumianteolor 8y agoTranslation of "Linux Kernel Networking Subsystem" = Subsistema de red del núcleo de Linux. Translation of "8-way associative cache" = caché asociativa de 8-vías. I don't see severe lingual cortortions here.
- krylon 8y ago> núcleo I really like that word. I thought it was only used in IBM mainframe parlance.
- blattimwind 8y agoNetzwerksubsystem des Linux-Systemkerns achtfach assoziativer Zwischenspeicher This is of course cheating since these two languages are fairly close to each other (although Technical German tends to be more descriptive and somewhat more accurate than Technical English on average, at least that's my overall impression across a bunch of fields). Both also happen to have a full complement of technical and engineering terms for almost anything (including computers due to some parallel developments), though these are often not so related (esp. mechanical eng.)
- zerb 8y ago"Zwischenspeicher" is a magnificent word! Betweensaver. I love the Germanic way of nouncompounding. As an American who learned German in high school and have since only admired German from afar, that word sounds great and I love the way the meaning is derived.
- matt-snider 8y agoGerman just has a real knack for clarity and simplicity because of this composibility. Some examples I like: - Satzbau = Syntax: I always found it hard to remember what syntax meant. The German word, being the combination of "sentence" and "construction" requires no memorization - Teilchen = Particle: In German, "part" + domunitive ending - Jahrhundert, Jahrzehnt = century, decade: literally "year" + "hundred"/"ten" - Neugier = curiousity: "new" + "greed" I do wonder if this "composibility" is actually the norm for languages and English is just the odd one out. Having a large vocabulary from other languages (e.g. Latin) obscures the meaning of some word roots (e.g. particula - pars + diminutive, just like in German) so you have to just memorize it as one chunk. So perhaps the benefit of other languages like German is just their purity/consistency.
- zerb 8y agoI believe it's just that the etymologies in English are more obscure. They're still fascinating, but they come from foreign roots a lot of the time, so they're not as immediately obvious. Although, tangentially, even constructions that are just compounds of 2 English words or so slip past my notice. I can't think of any examples on the spot, but I've definitely gone decades without really parsing apart common English idioms or compound nouns until one day, when I finally notice "oh that's why we say that".
- sergioj97 8y agoIn Spanish we have also technical terms for those. I guess it's the same with most other languages. However it's true that there are some terms without a proper translation and it's obviously more international to use the English ones.
- coldtea 8y agoPerhaps you don't speak French? Both of these are very easy and not contrived.
- m-p-3 8y ago"Sous-système du noyau Linux" "Cache associative à 8 directions"
- andrepd 8y ago"Subsistema de rede do kernel do Linux" "Cache associativa (8-way)" or "Cache associativa por 8 vias" See, not so difficult. :^) It's just that, for standardization's sake, it's best to just communicate in English.
- progval 8y agoEasy: "Sous-système réseau du noyau Linux" and "cache associatif octodirectionnel". There are many other words much harder to translate than these ones, like "backslash", "hash map", "pipeline", "placeholder", ...
- gcb0 8y agoI thought that too. until I had to talk in english full time and realized how much was transliterated informally in conversations and how those terms were corrupted into the national language. what you call lingual contortion only seem odd (to me and you since you also mentioned a romance language) because romance languages were the trend setters at some point and now have very refined processes to change the language and be more permissive of foreign words creeping in, since they understand the power of allowing or not this to happen. but over time, they will officialize new words in the romance language just fine. english is no better or worse at this. case in point, every single "fancy" word in english cames from the roman dominion over the channel. it was fancy to talk like the emperor. and that is only one of the subtle aspects that rome knew how to play on the colonies cultural subjugation.
- njarboe 8y ago"roman dominion over the channel" Do you mean how the Normans conquered and ruled England after the invasion of 1066? Lots of foreign words come into a language when your rulers speak another language. Often the conquered populations are completely converted to the ruling people language.
- gcb0 8y agoyep. thats what I mean.
- dzhshnacct 8y agoactually even the english way is quite cumbersome languages like sanskrit and chinese which have built in word generators and preserved root meanings are much better and able to stand independently not surprisingly indians and chinese have been better able to resist westernization imo chinese is a very tech friendly language and has a good shot at becoming the lingua franca of tech in the near future currently the chinese focus on science and innovation is fake and forced but could turn real in the next generation
- dredmorbius 8y agoThe handicap for Chinese and Asian languages is charactersets and input. A finite phonetic alphabet is a tremendous technical advantage when keyboarding, and alternatives really haven't proved superior. (I'm entering this via soft-keyboard and stylus, painfully, with many typos. The fact that the interface could be trivially modified, but hasn't and isn't, and yet remains so deficient, doesn't speak well to prospects here.)
- dzhshnacct 8y agohey thats one of the things i've worked on see my first submission a few days ago on zh android ime with devanagari with zhuyin and alternatives chinese input is not a problem and this is going to even be less of a problem with voice input in future in fact the input problem only tightened the link chinese have to tech via their phones but pinyin needs to go away or chinese will lose their culture in the long term latinization is going to lead to christianization
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- pyrale 8y ago> Linux Kernel Networking Subsystem "module réseau du noyau Linux ?" https://www.irif.fr/~carton/Enseignement/Architecture/Cours/Virtual/linux.pdf https://www.irif.fr/~carton/Enseignement/Architecture/Cours/... > 8-Way associative cache "Cache 8-associatif" https://www.irif.fr/~carton/Enseignement/Architecture/Cours/Caches/ https://www.irif.fr/~carton/Enseignement/Architecture/Cours/... Just because you don't hear about it doesn't mean much it doesn't exist. If only, because we have to be able to teach it efficiently to people with no mastery of the english language.
- pvaldes 8y agoSubsistema de red de trabajo del núcleo de linux Caché asociativa de ocho vías.
- Pissompons 8y ago> it is the language of great literature The overall sentiment of your comment is good but I took issue with this particular statement. English is _a_ language of great literature. There's great literature written in basically all languages, you're just less likely to know unless you speak them.
- geff82 8y agoI agree of course that there are many languages in which great literature is produced. I just happen to find that books, be it fiction or non-fiction, written by English or American authors, have a very refined way of pleasing the reader.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- wozniacki 8y ago... written by English or American authors, have a very refined way of pleasing the reader. Perhaps you could elaborate on that by contrasting how other languages say German authors writing in German approach the reader. Are they more curt or write in a matter-of-fact manner? How about other non-English language authors? Please expand if you've had the good fortune of reading fiction / non-fiction in various languages.
- kaybe 8y agoI have the impression that basic German is quite technical. You can be poetic, even very poetic, but it is not easy. You can, however, easily describe the relation of one thing to another in detail. English has about 3 times the vocabulary compared to German. It is easier to use basic sentences compared to German, but the extended vocabulary is where the fun starts - so many beautiful words for poetic things. It is easy to write an uplifting motivation for any topic. However, I find English harder to use in a technical area. Some part of that may be gaps in my knowledge, but.. things have many names and names point at many things (what is 'gear', for example?), and I lack precise verbs. Just my impression..
- coldtea 8y ago>it is the language of great literature One language, of somewhat good literature.
- owenversteeg 8y agoDo you not think there is any English literature at all better than "somewhat good"? What language do you think does?
- tobr 8y agoOn the topic of English and speaking it better each day: the funny „upside down quotes” are an instant giveaway that you are German. It’s not really a correct typographic treatment of quotes in English (or almost any language except German, afaik).
- yorwba 8y agoIt's mostly a sign of typing English on a German keyboard that automatically produces „fancy quotes‟. They work similarly on Chinese or Japanese keyboards, but it's harder to accidentally use them to write English text with wrong 「fancy quotes」, because switching the layout is mandatory for those. Personally I do switch between German and English keyboards to type in those languages, but I guess most people don't bother.
- eftychis 8y agoCurious. How do you quantify expressiveness? English does not seem that expressive to me. English, German and Esperanto are way too related also to be making a comparison (which was kind of the criticism against Esperanto). Could you give a couple of examples? Also, I have to disagree with the statement that it is the language of great literature. I counter argue those would be French, German, Greek, Latin, Literary Chinese etc, depending on the period. I am not saying there is no great work in the English language, however your statement implies something different (the majority of great work in a period or style utilized that language).
- tomcam 8y ago> Could you give a couple of examples? Shakespeare, Vladimir Nabokov, Walt Whitman I believe that English has many problems, from crazy grammar rules to horrendously inconsistent spelling. But to say it is not expressive is absurd, and suggests that you haven’t read any great English literature. This is not to say that the cultures you mentioned and many other have not produce their own great literature, of course.
- eftychis 8y agoI meant examples of expressiveness over German. Edit: You were comparing English with other languages and implied it is more or as expressive as the majority of languages (or at least the ones you are familiar with). Thus my question.
- krylon 8y agoI cannot think of a a good example right now, but as a native German speaker, I do sometimes find myself wondering how to express a certain thought in German. English grammar feels more flexible to me than German, and English seems to be more suited for colorful idioms.
- geff82 8y agoFellow German here. From a grammatical standpoint German is a really flexible language while English isn‘t. I only recently found out about it during my Latin studies (selftaught) and comparing Latin to German and English. The problem with expressing a thought in German might be a side effect of the ubiquity of English in so many fields: we are just used to think in English terms that it becomes a second nature.
- foobarian 8y agoIt really doesn't matter which language it is, as long as it's not super hard to learn. The hard reality is, if you have N languages and speakers, to communicate without coordination either they have to each learn N-1 other languages or just 1 with O(1) coordination. The rest just happens naturally via network effects.
- twelvechairs 8y agoMaybe the greatest success and failing of English is that it has never undergone the rigour of standardisation of many other languages. While most other world languages have all at times had a central authority dictating what is right or wrong, English has a history of pluralism (particularly from American vs. British English, but also from other sides). This makes for difficulties (regional variation, different pronunciations, etc.) but I think easier to approach as an outsider, and also flexible to changing use over time.
- colechristensen 8y agoIt wouldn't, couldn't go through standardization like that. The article misses emphasizing or properly mention English's success started not in conquering but overcoming conquerors. It's hard to think of English as having a single source, as what remains of that gets very small as you go back in time. The language in England and thereabouts overcame several invasions. Roman, Viking, a couple of invasions you'd call French now, among others... they all left their mark, or more accurately the native population absorbed a sizable portion of the invaders' language and established and re-established the dominance of the English language in the area. If you take a beginners' course in French you'll probably get the line that English is 60% French, badly pronounced and it's true! (more or less) It would sure be hard to standardize something that has a habit of repeatedly bolting on large chunks of other languages, nevermind it's modern regional inconsistencies.
- emilfihlman 8y agoI love the Finnish language. It is expressive, it is the language of great literature, and it is in no way „bullying“, no, it brings people all over the world together. There would be no way to talk to a Chinese for me (Swede) if he had only learned Korean because Korea is the neighbour and if I had only learned German or France because those are our big neighbours. No, Finnish brings us all together, it makes me communicate with ordinary people without a translator anywhere on the planet. I do not care if everyone speaks Finnish, German, Hindi or Esperanto. But if Finnish has the noble power to bring people together, regardless of nation, religion or race, I applaud it, because this is just a wonderful use for this little language that was once only spoken on a medium sized country in the North. Let‘s appreciate Finnish, let us embrace it even a bit more, let us try to speak it better each day for a world of mutual understanding. Maybe Finnish can be a driver for peace, at least to a certain degree.
- tomsmeding 8y agoEnglish is in no way intrinsically special, but for some reason many people speak it nowadays. Not so for Finnish, even though it could very well be better suited to the purpose (I don't speak a word of Finnish myself). Most of the text you copied applies as well to Finnish as to English, but I doubt that "Finnish [...] makes me communicate with ordinary people without a translator anywhere on the planet." English also doesn't, but it comes a lot closer.
- sametmax 8y agoAgreed. As a french, I wish english were a mandatory official second language everywhere : forms, menus, schools, movies and signals. I get the emotional attachment to ones own language but making it easy for the entire humanity to communicate is a much more important goal. It trumps culture and history. It trumps nationalism. And why english ? Well i don't care. It could be anything really. But the only thing that is used by most people than english is chinese, and it's only use way more locally or contextually as english, while being more complex. English has very simple tenses, few symbols, not required accents and the industry and culture already use it massively all around the world. It's full of useless complexity and artifacts like all language, but it's there. Let's all add it to our toolbelt and be done with it.
- ivm 8y ago> expressive It always feels constraining for me when I want to convey an emotion. For example, in English one would say "soft kitty" but in Russian you have at least 10 options: мягкая (simple "soft"), мягонькая (diminutive "soft") + кошечка, киса, кисонька, кисуля, кисулечка. Depending on the choice, you can sound tender or childish or like an old lady. It's definitely not an exhaustive list of how you can call a cat, there are also funny augmentative options for male cats: кошак, котище, котяра, котофей. Spanish also feels amazing because of its extensive use of diminutives and augmentatives. But yes, English is the best language for technical or business purposes because it's so concise.