6 ms·

Despite appearance, German is very illogical language full of idioms and exceptions one has to master. Also, even natives usually don't master the full extent o

by bitL 8y ago

Despite appearance, German is very illogical language full of idioms and exceptions one has to master. Also, even natives usually don't master the full extent of language and the overbearing nature of language with its need for precise use of words/formulations specific to a given situation often leads to strong reliance on syntax/appearance of complexity. You can see it in typical German philosophy, where the language gets in the way in order to satisfy its constraints, often missing the point, being trapped in its structures, unable to formulate way out due to structural constraints inherent in the language; being overly rational and weakly emotional, suppressing a whole dimension of humaneness. Thanks, but no thanks!

KeyboardFire 8y ago
The idea that language limits or constrains the way people think (the stronger side of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis) is now largely discredited by the majority of linguists.
- louisswiss 8y ago
  I've long thought it a real possibility that people are constrained (in certain areas) by their language. No expert and not disagreeing with you, but I'd be very interested to read any literature you can recommend on the subject.
  - escherplex 8y ago
    For an introduction see: Linguistic relativity URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
- bitL 8y ago
  I speak 8 languages from many separate groups (Germanic, Romance, Slavic, Sino-Tibetan, Japanese), and my impression is that languages truly put constraints on one's ability to formulate thoughts. Of course, mentalese, the unspoken one, is different, independent, but it's rare people retain it to their older age and by then prevailing cultural/linguistic currents shape their thoughts. Sapir-Whorf might be discredited as general hypothesis, but it might correspond to 95% practical state statistically-wise.
  - andrewem 8y ago
    Would you please give some examples where you've found "that languages truly put constraints on one's ability to formulate thoughts"?
    - hoppelhase 8y ago
      I don't know what he is referring to. But one interesting things is that there is a language where you can express that someone is doing something without including the time when he is doing it. This is not possible in the languages I know of (De/En/Fr). I can imagine that this ability makes different thoughts possible. When looking at programming languages, it is indeed the case that your "lingua franca" limits the imagination of what software architectures are possible to solve the problem.
    - bitL 8y ago
      For a really eccentric example see: https://aymara.org/biblio/html/igr/igr3.html https://aymara.org/biblio/html/igr/igr3.html Or just use of 無 in (ancient) Chinese for a simple example (in the sense of "unasking the question").
- err4nt 8y ago
  Yet we have a wide variety of programming languages, and switch between them as the need arises for a better fit to the problem domain we're working in. With the wide variety of things like number systems in different languages, wouldn't it make sense that using some languages might be better for mathematical communication, and others maybe not offer the precision required to communicate everything necessary? It would make sense to me if some languages were better for talking about navigation, or weather than others. Or some were better with numbers, or parts of anatomy, etc.
  - CamouflagedKiwi 8y ago
    That's a softer form of it which is fairly obviously true; a language with no words for weather will obviously limit discussion of the weather forecast. That's a bit different to whether it limits your ability to think about those things though.
    - err4nt 8y ago
      Do you speak more than one natural language? I am an anglophone but took most of my schooling in french. Though I work in english now, I can remember distinctly 'thinking in English' and 'thinking in French' and depending on the problem I was wrestling with, the constructs of the language you frame your thinking in absolutely can give you an advantage or disadvantage. I always thought it was remarkable how much human thought was imprisoned by language, and it really makes me wonder what a human 'without language' would be capable of thinking.
      - CamouflagedKiwi 8y ago
        One other than my native tongue, but not nearly fluently. To clarify, I don't disagree with what you're saying; I'm not a linguist but from what I know there certainly seems to be some truth in the weaker forms of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (that language affects how you think), but the strong form (that language controls how you think) seems fairly well disproven these days.
    - anoncake 8y ago
sarabande 8y ago
I think this conflates typically verbose academic/philosophical writing with German itself. Many great old philosophers came out of Germany, in a time where writing obtusely to make a point was in vogue (in English, too, not just German), so this may add to the perception of German philosophy needing to be contorted. I've read refreshingly concise modern works in both and English and German and can assure you that style is the writer's fault, not the language's.
- TomMarius 8y ago
  Could you share an example? I'd like to read something while learning German.
  - sarabande 8y ago
    I can't say I really found use out of the book I'm about to mention, but Michael Bordt writes a lot of philosophy/self-help books in a concise German style. For example, "Die Kunst, die Eltern zu enttäuschen: Vom Mut zum selbstbestimmten Leben."
Koshkin 8y ago
Yet, the greatest philosophers after the Greeks were all German-speaking (Hegel, Kant, Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche, Mach...). Also, physicists, mathematicians.
- louisswiss 8y ago
  'The greatest' ? Slight exaggeration.
- bitL 8y ago
  Some people blame the tragedy of 20th century on prevailing idealistic trends in German philosophy, including the ones you mentioned.
  - yesenadam 8y ago
    Santayana's Egotism in German Philosophy is an admirable and very readable history and diagnosis of that story, from Leibniz to the late 19th C. He has a gorgeous style and lovely understated sense of humour. And virtually explains the Nazis, although published in 1915.
- tomjakubowski 8y ago
  In the meantime, weren't there some very important European scientists, mathematicians, philosophers, etc who wrote almost entirely in Latin?
- gweinberg 8y ago
  There were certainly plenty of great German speaking physicists and mathematicians. But those philosophers all sucked.
- yongjik 8y ago
  Well, on the other hand, the greatest musician after the Greeks composed the majority of his greatest creations only after he stopped hearing German.
  - poulsbohemian 8y ago
dschuler 8y ago
I've always felt quite a bit of emotion contained in German, in a way that falls flat for me in English. Most American English writing has this simple form like "Fact. Fact. Fact. The end.". So much for emotional impact or nuance, but this could be a difference felt for your native language vs others acquired later on.
whatshisface 8y ago
>You can see it in typical German philosophy, where the language gets in the way in order to satisfy its constraints, often missing the point, being trapped in its structures, unable to formulate way out due to structural constraints inherent in the language To be fair that could describe a lot of philosophy in just about every language.
beerlord 8y ago
Fascinating. If you were to pick an optimal global language - which would it be?
- rurban 8y ago
  Korean certainly. Very well modernized, from the already simple chinese language (not the writing, just the spoken language), transported into simple and regular syllables. Extremely easy to learn for foreigners or aliens from other planets. The shape of the letters mimic how you speak them, the three major families - | or O. horizontal, vertical or round, like in chinese earth-water paintings. It's much more regular than separating vowels and consonants into single letters.
  - Koshkin 8y ago
    A good language is not necessarily one that is easy to learn. The difficulty may be due, for example, to a fine-grained vocabulary, the power to concisely express nuances, or the rich cultural background. Classical Greek, for example, is not the easiest language to learn from scratch, but it is no doubt one of the most subtle and expressive languages known to the mankind.

by bitL 8y ago

KeyboardFire 8y ago

The idea that language limits or constrains the way people think (the stronger side of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis) is now largely discredited by the majority of linguists.

louisswiss 8y ago
I've long thought it a real possibility that people are constrained (in certain areas) by their language. No expert and not disagreeing with you, but I'd be very interested to read any literature you can recommend on the subject.
- escherplex 8y ago
  For an introduction see: Linguistic relativity URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
bitL 8y ago
I speak 8 languages from many separate groups (Germanic, Romance, Slavic, Sino-Tibetan, Japanese), and my impression is that languages truly put constraints on one's ability to formulate thoughts. Of course, mentalese, the unspoken one, is different, independent, but it's rare people retain it to their older age and by then prevailing cultural/linguistic currents shape their thoughts. Sapir-Whorf might be discredited as general hypothesis, but it might correspond to 95% practical state statistically-wise.
- andrewem 8y ago
  Would you please give some examples where you've found "that languages truly put constraints on one's ability to formulate thoughts"?
  - hoppelhase 8y ago
    I don't know what he is referring to. But one interesting things is that there is a language where you can express that someone is doing something without including the time when he is doing it. This is not possible in the languages I know of (De/En/Fr). I can imagine that this ability makes different thoughts possible. When looking at programming languages, it is indeed the case that your "lingua franca" limits the imagination of what software architectures are possible to solve the problem.
  - bitL 8y ago
    For a really eccentric example see: https://aymara.org/biblio/html/igr/igr3.html https://aymara.org/biblio/html/igr/igr3.html Or just use of 無 in (ancient) Chinese for a simple example (in the sense of "unasking the question").
err4nt 8y ago
Yet we have a wide variety of programming languages, and switch between them as the need arises for a better fit to the problem domain we're working in. With the wide variety of things like number systems in different languages, wouldn't it make sense that using some languages might be better for mathematical communication, and others maybe not offer the precision required to communicate everything necessary? It would make sense to me if some languages were better for talking about navigation, or weather than others. Or some were better with numbers, or parts of anatomy, etc.
- CamouflagedKiwi 8y ago
  That's a softer form of it which is fairly obviously true; a language with no words for weather will obviously limit discussion of the weather forecast. That's a bit different to whether it limits your ability to think about those things though.
  - err4nt 8y ago
    Do you speak more than one natural language? I am an anglophone but took most of my schooling in french. Though I work in english now, I can remember distinctly 'thinking in English' and 'thinking in French' and depending on the problem I was wrestling with, the constructs of the language you frame your thinking in absolutely can give you an advantage or disadvantage. I always thought it was remarkable how much human thought was imprisoned by language, and it really makes me wonder what a human 'without language' would be capable of thinking.
    - CamouflagedKiwi 8y ago
      One other than my native tongue, but not nearly fluently. To clarify, I don't disagree with what you're saying; I'm not a linguist but from what I know there certainly seems to be some truth in the weaker forms of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (that language affects how you think), but the strong form (that language controls how you think) seems fairly well disproven these days.
  - anoncake 8y ago

sarabande 8y ago

I think this conflates typically verbose academic/philosophical writing with German itself. Many great old philosophers came out of Germany, in a time where writing obtusely to make a point was in vogue (in English, too, not just German), so this may add to the perception of German philosophy needing to be contorted. I've read refreshingly concise modern works in both and English and German and can assure you that style is the writer's fault, not the language's.

TomMarius 8y ago
Could you share an example? I'd like to read something while learning German.
- sarabande 8y ago
  I can't say I really found use out of the book I'm about to mention, but Michael Bordt writes a lot of philosophy/self-help books in a concise German style. For example, "Die Kunst, die Eltern zu enttäuschen: Vom Mut zum selbstbestimmten Leben."

Koshkin 8y ago

Yet, the greatest philosophers after the Greeks were all German-speaking (Hegel, Kant, Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche, Mach...). Also, physicists, mathematicians.

louisswiss 8y ago
'The greatest' ? Slight exaggeration.
bitL 8y ago
Some people blame the tragedy of 20th century on prevailing idealistic trends in German philosophy, including the ones you mentioned.
- yesenadam 8y ago
  Santayana's Egotism in German Philosophy is an admirable and very readable history and diagnosis of that story, from Leibniz to the late 19th C. He has a gorgeous style and lovely understated sense of humour. And virtually explains the Nazis, although published in 1915.
tomjakubowski 8y ago
In the meantime, weren't there some very important European scientists, mathematicians, philosophers, etc who wrote almost entirely in Latin?
gweinberg 8y ago
There were certainly plenty of great German speaking physicists and mathematicians. But those philosophers all sucked.
yongjik 8y ago
Well, on the other hand, the greatest musician after the Greeks composed the majority of his greatest creations only after he stopped hearing German.
- poulsbohemian 8y ago

dschuler 8y ago

I've always felt quite a bit of emotion contained in German, in a way that falls flat for me in English. Most American English writing has this simple form like "Fact. Fact. Fact. The end.". So much for emotional impact or nuance, but this could be a difference felt for your native language vs others acquired later on.

whatshisface 8y ago

>You can see it in typical German philosophy, where the language gets in the way in order to satisfy its constraints, often missing the point, being trapped in its structures, unable to formulate way out due to structural constraints inherent in the language To be fair that could describe a lot of philosophy in just about every language.

beerlord 8y ago

Fascinating. If you were to pick an optimal global language - which would it be?

rurban 8y ago
Korean certainly. Very well modernized, from the already simple chinese language (not the writing, just the spoken language), transported into simple and regular syllables. Extremely easy to learn for foreigners or aliens from other planets. The shape of the letters mimic how you speak them, the three major families - | or O. horizontal, vertical or round, like in chinese earth-water paintings. It's much more regular than separating vowels and consonants into single letters.
- Koshkin 8y ago
  A good language is not necessarily one that is easy to learn. The difficulty may be due, for example, to a fine-grained vocabulary, the power to concisely express nuances, or the rich cultural background. Classical Greek, for example, is not the easiest language to learn from scratch, but it is no doubt one of the most subtle and expressive languages known to the mankind.