4 ms·

Some languages are inherently less expressive than others. English is not very expressive and therefore a large number of words phrases and idioms don't have an

Some languages are inherently less expressive than others. English is not very expressive and therefore a large number of words phrases and idioms don't have an analogue that makes sense in english. Trying to reduce them to something that makes sense is like trying to explain a joke. It defeats the purpose. Anyone who speaks >1 languages is aware of this.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
goto11 7y ago
> Some languages are inherently less expressive than others. English is not very expressive... I call bullshit. Do you have any justification for this claim?
- ulfw 7y ago
  Do you have any justification for calling bullshit on him?
  - umanwizard 7y ago
    I’m not the OP, but the fact that out of the thousands of professional academic linguists, none has ever seriously proposed and defined an “expressiveness scale” suggests that we would need extraordinary evidence to accept an HN comment claiming to have done so.
  - goto11 7y ago
    I have never heard of any objective measure of "expressiveness" of human languages.
  - Avamander 7y ago
    The fact that information density across languages was measured and there was no significant difference[0]. How can a language be more expressive yet contain just as much information. [0]: https://www.science20.com/content/information_density_all_languages_communicate_at_the_same_rate https://www.science20.com/content/information_density_all_la...
- missosoup 7y ago
  Yeah I speak 3 languages and all 3 have mutually exclusive constructs that can't be translated while carrying over the 'true meaning'. English is by far the least expressive of the 3. A common example is slavic мат. A repertoire of profanities that simply have no English translation, no equivalent, not even a meaningful loose translation/explanation. The best you can do is find the nearest approximate meaningful English construct, but it's a bit like projecting 3d space onto a 2d plane. You fundamentally lose information. I'm not sure what you're calling bullshit on. The fact that not all languages 1:1 map to each other especially when some classes of languages have fundamentally different constructs like gendered variants of every word, or the fact that some languages are more or less expressive, or the fact that English falls to the side of the less expressive scale. All 3 of these statements are trivial to verify with a couple google searches without even being a multilingual speaker.
  - goto11 7y ago
    I'm calling bullshit on the claim that languages can be placed on a scale of expressiveness. You will first have to define expressiveness and then how to measure it.
  - jgwil2 7y ago
    This is an entirely subjective judgment on your part that you are advancing as though it were a matter of fact. Have you considered the possibility that you know English least well of your three languages, and that you are therefore better able to express yourself in the other two? Also, please provide a source for your "fact" that some languages are inherently more "expressive" than others (whatever that means).
    - missosoup 7y ago
      I provided a trivial and concrete example: мат. English is inherently incapable of expressing мат. And English being my strongest language, I'd say no, I don't think it's because I know it least well of the three. Perhaps this is just something that doesn't make sense to people who only know one language, but it self-evident to multilinguals. If you want a source, click TFA - a list of German expressions that don't exist in English. The discussion here on whether or not it's a great list, but no one disagrees there are phrases that don't exist in English.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

goto11 7y ago

> Some languages are inherently less expressive than others. English is not very expressive... I call bullshit. Do you have any justification for this claim?

ulfw 7y ago
Do you have any justification for calling bullshit on him?
- umanwizard 7y ago
  I’m not the OP, but the fact that out of the thousands of professional academic linguists, none has ever seriously proposed and defined an “expressiveness scale” suggests that we would need extraordinary evidence to accept an HN comment claiming to have done so.
- goto11 7y ago
  I have never heard of any objective measure of "expressiveness" of human languages.
- Avamander 7y ago
  The fact that information density across languages was measured and there was no significant difference[0]. How can a language be more expressive yet contain just as much information. [0]: https://www.science20.com/content/information_density_all_languages_communicate_at_the_same_rate https://www.science20.com/content/information_density_all_la...
missosoup 7y ago
Yeah I speak 3 languages and all 3 have mutually exclusive constructs that can't be translated while carrying over the 'true meaning'. English is by far the least expressive of the 3. A common example is slavic мат. A repertoire of profanities that simply have no English translation, no equivalent, not even a meaningful loose translation/explanation. The best you can do is find the nearest approximate meaningful English construct, but it's a bit like projecting 3d space onto a 2d plane. You fundamentally lose information. I'm not sure what you're calling bullshit on. The fact that not all languages 1:1 map to each other especially when some classes of languages have fundamentally different constructs like gendered variants of every word, or the fact that some languages are more or less expressive, or the fact that English falls to the side of the less expressive scale. All 3 of these statements are trivial to verify with a couple google searches without even being a multilingual speaker.
- goto11 7y ago
  I'm calling bullshit on the claim that languages can be placed on a scale of expressiveness. You will first have to define expressiveness and then how to measure it.
- jgwil2 7y ago
  This is an entirely subjective judgment on your part that you are advancing as though it were a matter of fact. Have you considered the possibility that you know English least well of your three languages, and that you are therefore better able to express yourself in the other two? Also, please provide a source for your "fact" that some languages are inherently more "expressive" than others (whatever that means).
  - missosoup 7y ago
    I provided a trivial and concrete example: мат. English is inherently incapable of expressing мат. And English being my strongest language, I'd say no, I don't think it's because I know it least well of the three. Perhaps this is just something that doesn't make sense to people who only know one language, but it self-evident to multilinguals. If you want a source, click TFA - a list of German expressions that don't exist in English. The discussion here on whether or not it's a great list, but no one disagrees there are phrases that don't exist in English.