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> I scratch my head at a society that makes its members memorize such useless information. Such a weird perspective on language and on the agency of societies.

by delib 8y ago

> I scratch my head at a society that makes its members memorize such useless information. Such a weird perspective on language and on the agency of societies. There are tons of "useless" things in any language. For instance, why not get rid of all the tenses in English? Do we really need the past progressive? To make English spelling more "logical" (so people need to remember less useless information!), we should again look to Mark Twain: > Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld. (http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/twain.htm http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/twain.htm)

marcus_holmes 8y ago
I recently started learning Khmer (Cambodian). It's an awesome language. No tenses (all assumed from context... if something happened in the past, you say it happened "already", and there's a single modifier to all verbs to indicate they will happen). No genders, at all (there's no "he/she/they" problem). The numbering system is simple adn consistent, and it's applied to months and hours ("one month" is a measure of duration, "month one" is January). I reminds me of reading good code; simple, elegant, with no unnecessary cruft. It's given me a new perspective on (as you say) all the useless crap we have in English. Oh, and I started learning German, too. TFA made me laugh.
- therein 8y ago
  I wonder if Khmer speakers are missing out on anything by not having these concepts in their language.
  - marcus_holmes 8y ago
    It does rely a lot on context. If you don't share a context with your listener, it's easy to get confused. Given the cultural gap with the West, it can mean that you're fluent in Khmer, but still miss a lot of the meaning because you don't share the same cultural context. Essentially culture-wide in-jokes. But then, I had to explain British rhyming slang to my German gf the other day, and she thought it was crazy. I guess there's nothing that unusual about culture-wide in-jokes.
- InternetOfStuff 8y ago
  Khmer is sure to have its own oddities. I learned Thai, which shares Khmer's refreshing simplicity, like not having tenses. However, it has "classifiers", which are used when counting things. In English, you might say "Three children", in Thai you would say "Children three persons", where "person" happens to be the correct classifier for children. Makes sense in that case, but in general it's weird (and somewhat comedic): for instance airplanes and bamboo share the same classifier ("long hollow things"). There are about 80 classifiers, and part of learning the language is learning the correct classifier to go with each noun, much like learning genders in German. Same as with genders, if you get the classifier wrong, you'll still be understood, but considered uneducated (or badly in command of the language). BTW, and programmers will love this: this situation means that when counting things of disparate types, you need to typecast! Funny (to me, anyway) story: my wife was simultaneously telling off one of our sons, nicknamed "O", and one of our dogs, also nicknamed "O". Since they don't share the same classifier, she cast their classifier to the made-up-on-the-spot classifier "O" so it would both be factually and grammatically correct. Languages are funny.
  - marcus_holmes 8y ago
    Yeah, it's weird, Thai and Khmer are very similar, and share some words, but also very different. Khmer isn't tonal, and has really simplified grammar. They used to share an alphabet, too, but the Thai opted to simplify it (westernise it) while the Khmer opted to keep their original alphabet. Written Khmer is hard for us westerners to deal with because of this. They have lots of vowels and consonants that we don't have (I always struggle with the consonant between 'b' and 'p', because it doesn't seem like there should be any room for another consonant in there).
    - yorwba 8y ago
      Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Khmer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Khmer the language does seem to have some fun sounds. But English has a consonant between 'b' and 'p' ('pʰ' in IPA) as well. Just consider the difference between 'ban', 'span' and 'pan'. The 'p' in 'span' is not as forceful as the 'p' in 'pan', and they're actually different consonants.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >It's an awesome language An awesome language to learn easily or to express yourself with full capacity? Those could be different qualities...
  - marcus_holmes 8y ago
    To continue with my coding analogy... German is like Java (huge, sprawling, full of conceptsextendedwaypastthepointofsanity), English is like C++ (mashed together out of two different languages and made to work, mostly), Khmer is like Go (favouring simplicity over expressiveness).
    - vram22 8y ago
      I wonder Sanskrit would be positioned in that analogy - like Lisp, maybe? Heh. I admit to bias about it, as an Indian and one who likes the language.
konschubert 8y ago
You're attacking a straw man. Language is dynamic and cannot be controlled. Writing needs to be adapted to fit that. In English, the writing has become detached from the writing to the point where it is not possible to write a word upon hearing it the first time or to pronounce it upon reading it. This is unnecessary and could be fixed.
- jfk13 8y ago
  > This is unnecessary and could be fixed. Fixed how? By revising the orthography to accurately reflect pronunciation? (If so, whose?) Some English words have major variations in pronunciation in different regions (of the world, or indeed just of England). Should the revised spellings differ between regions?
  - konschubert 8y ago
    > By revising the orthography to accurately reflect pronunciation? Yes. That's a normal thing that most languages do every century or so. Of course you have to compromise between dialects, but that's doable. You could also start by just removing some of the worst insanities.
modernerd 8y ago
It's the “agency of societies” that helped English lose its gendered nouns. One theory is that Old English society found them useless because there was overlap between endings, causing noun ending inflection to “collapse” into a single neutral form, which started in the North of England and progressed to the South.[1] Societal changes are already influencing gendered nouns in Germany[2]. Some dialects of German (Niederdeutsch) also use de instead of der/die. I'm a British national living in Austria. I've spoken with Austrian natives about the difficulty of learning German noun genders who admit that it feels increasingly old fashioned to them. The local dialect here slurs some noun endings so it's almost ambiguous, just as Old English once did. There's no place for reinforcement of gender stereotypes via language (it is hard to find gender-neutral phrases in German - you are either a male programmer or a female one). Two languages that gender the same noun differently also have societies that use a different class of adjective (feminine vs masculine) for the word.[1] To me it seems entirely reasonable to call gendered nouns “useless”, and to see them as a burden on a language and a society. [1]: Lexicon Valley's episode on how English lost its genders is worth listening to: https://overcast.fm/+Noxtqh7oc https://overcast.fm/+Noxtqh7oc. Dave Wilton's analysis is also interesting: http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/comments/loss_of_gender_in_english/ http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/comments/loss_of_g... [2]: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/will-new-law-forever-change-german-language-180968289/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/will-new-law-for...
- woodpanel 8y ago
  > "I've spoken with Austrian natives [...] who admit that it feels increasingly old fashioned to them. " I can guarantee you, that your sample of Austrian natives is not representative of the majority of native speakers. Not even remotely. As a native speaker you will barely notice it, unless foreigners remind you of it. > "To me it seems entirely reasonable to call gendered nouns “useless”, and to see them as a burden on a language and a society." I can hardly imagine a force strong enough to change the way people speak to such a fundamental degree, as would be the removal of noun genders in German. Advocating such force comes with a stench: It may have more todo with projecting power over the people you interact with and less with interacting itself. Which is why proponents of gender-neutral language in German often fail to not come across as snobbish. Which is why the only people in German speaking countries that speak gender-neutral are politicians or ideologues in academia.
vram22 8y ago
>To make English spelling more "logical" (so people need to remember less useless information!), we should again look to Mark Twain: >> Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld. (http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/twain.htm http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/twain.htm) And we should also look to George Bernard Shaw. He proved that, in English, "fish" can be spelled "ghoti": gh (= f) as in "laugh" o (= i) as in "women" ti (= sh) as in "nation"
- bmn__ 8y ago
  https://www.zompist.com/spell.html https://www.zompist.com/spell.html "Whenever the subject comes up, someone is sure to bring up […] Shaw's ghoti-- a word which illustrates only Shaw's wiseacre ignorance. English spelling may be a nightmare, but it does have rules, and by those rules, ghoti can only be pronounced like goatee."

by delib 8y ago

marcus_holmes 8y ago

I recently started learning Khmer (Cambodian). It's an awesome language. No tenses (all assumed from context... if something happened in the past, you say it happened "already", and there's a single modifier to all verbs to indicate they will happen). No genders, at all (there's no "he/she/they" problem). The numbering system is simple adn consistent, and it's applied to months and hours ("one month" is a measure of duration, "month one" is January). I reminds me of reading good code; simple, elegant, with no unnecessary cruft. It's given me a new perspective on (as you say) all the useless crap we have in English. Oh, and I started learning German, too. TFA made me laugh.

therein 8y ago
I wonder if Khmer speakers are missing out on anything by not having these concepts in their language.
- marcus_holmes 8y ago
  It does rely a lot on context. If you don't share a context with your listener, it's easy to get confused. Given the cultural gap with the West, it can mean that you're fluent in Khmer, but still miss a lot of the meaning because you don't share the same cultural context. Essentially culture-wide in-jokes. But then, I had to explain British rhyming slang to my German gf the other day, and she thought it was crazy. I guess there's nothing that unusual about culture-wide in-jokes.
InternetOfStuff 8y ago
Khmer is sure to have its own oddities. I learned Thai, which shares Khmer's refreshing simplicity, like not having tenses. However, it has "classifiers", which are used when counting things. In English, you might say "Three children", in Thai you would say "Children three persons", where "person" happens to be the correct classifier for children. Makes sense in that case, but in general it's weird (and somewhat comedic): for instance airplanes and bamboo share the same classifier ("long hollow things"). There are about 80 classifiers, and part of learning the language is learning the correct classifier to go with each noun, much like learning genders in German. Same as with genders, if you get the classifier wrong, you'll still be understood, but considered uneducated (or badly in command of the language). BTW, and programmers will love this: this situation means that when counting things of disparate types, you need to typecast! Funny (to me, anyway) story: my wife was simultaneously telling off one of our sons, nicknamed "O", and one of our dogs, also nicknamed "O". Since they don't share the same classifier, she cast their classifier to the made-up-on-the-spot classifier "O" so it would both be factually and grammatically correct. Languages are funny.
- marcus_holmes 8y ago
  Yeah, it's weird, Thai and Khmer are very similar, and share some words, but also very different. Khmer isn't tonal, and has really simplified grammar. They used to share an alphabet, too, but the Thai opted to simplify it (westernise it) while the Khmer opted to keep their original alphabet. Written Khmer is hard for us westerners to deal with because of this. They have lots of vowels and consonants that we don't have (I always struggle with the consonant between 'b' and 'p', because it doesn't seem like there should be any room for another consonant in there).
  - yorwba 8y ago
    Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Khmer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Khmer the language does seem to have some fun sounds. But English has a consonant between 'b' and 'p' ('pʰ' in IPA) as well. Just consider the difference between 'ban', 'span' and 'pan'. The 'p' in 'span' is not as forceful as the 'p' in 'pan', and they're actually different consonants.
coldtea 8y ago
>It's an awesome language An awesome language to learn easily or to express yourself with full capacity? Those could be different qualities...
- marcus_holmes 8y ago
  To continue with my coding analogy... German is like Java (huge, sprawling, full of conceptsextendedwaypastthepointofsanity), English is like C++ (mashed together out of two different languages and made to work, mostly), Khmer is like Go (favouring simplicity over expressiveness).
  - vram22 8y ago
    I wonder Sanskrit would be positioned in that analogy - like Lisp, maybe? Heh. I admit to bias about it, as an Indian and one who likes the language.

konschubert 8y ago

You're attacking a straw man. Language is dynamic and cannot be controlled. Writing needs to be adapted to fit that. In English, the writing has become detached from the writing to the point where it is not possible to write a word upon hearing it the first time or to pronounce it upon reading it. This is unnecessary and could be fixed.

jfk13 8y ago
> This is unnecessary and could be fixed. Fixed how? By revising the orthography to accurately reflect pronunciation? (If so, whose?) Some English words have major variations in pronunciation in different regions (of the world, or indeed just of England). Should the revised spellings differ between regions?
- konschubert 8y ago
  > By revising the orthography to accurately reflect pronunciation? Yes. That's a normal thing that most languages do every century or so. Of course you have to compromise between dialects, but that's doable. You could also start by just removing some of the worst insanities.

modernerd 8y ago

It's the “agency of societies” that helped English lose its gendered nouns. One theory is that Old English society found them useless because there was overlap between endings, causing noun ending inflection to “collapse” into a single neutral form, which started in the North of England and progressed to the South.[1] Societal changes are already influencing gendered nouns in Germany[2]. Some dialects of German (Niederdeutsch) also use de instead of der/die. I'm a British national living in Austria. I've spoken with Austrian natives about the difficulty of learning German noun genders who admit that it feels increasingly old fashioned to them. The local dialect here slurs some noun endings so it's almost ambiguous, just as Old English once did. There's no place for reinforcement of gender stereotypes via language (it is hard to find gender-neutral phrases in German - you are either a male programmer or a female one). Two languages that gender the same noun differently also have societies that use a different class of adjective (feminine vs masculine) for the word.[1] To me it seems entirely reasonable to call gendered nouns “useless”, and to see them as a burden on a language and a society. [1]: Lexicon Valley's episode on how English lost its genders is worth listening to: https://overcast.fm/+Noxtqh7oc https://overcast.fm/+Noxtqh7oc. Dave Wilton's analysis is also interesting: http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/comments/loss_of_gender_in_english/ http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/comments/loss_of_g... [2]: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/will-new-law-forever-change-german-language-180968289/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/will-new-law-for...

woodpanel 8y ago
> "I've spoken with Austrian natives [...] who admit that it feels increasingly old fashioned to them. " I can guarantee you, that your sample of Austrian natives is not representative of the majority of native speakers. Not even remotely. As a native speaker you will barely notice it, unless foreigners remind you of it. > "To me it seems entirely reasonable to call gendered nouns “useless”, and to see them as a burden on a language and a society." I can hardly imagine a force strong enough to change the way people speak to such a fundamental degree, as would be the removal of noun genders in German. Advocating such force comes with a stench: It may have more todo with projecting power over the people you interact with and less with interacting itself. Which is why proponents of gender-neutral language in German often fail to not come across as snobbish. Which is why the only people in German speaking countries that speak gender-neutral are politicians or ideologues in academia.

vram22 8y ago

>To make English spelling more "logical" (so people need to remember less useless information!), we should again look to Mark Twain: >> Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld. (http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/twain.htm http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/twain.htm) And we should also look to George Bernard Shaw. He proved that, in English, "fish" can be spelled "ghoti": gh (= f) as in "laugh" o (= i) as in "women" ti (= sh) as in "nation"

bmn__ 8y ago
https://www.zompist.com/spell.html https://www.zompist.com/spell.html "Whenever the subject comes up, someone is sure to bring up […] Shaw's ghoti-- a word which illustrates only Shaw's wiseacre ignorance. English spelling may be a nightmare, but it does have rules, and by those rules, ghoti can only be pronounced like goatee."