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Genuinely curious about your last point (don't know much about the topic). Is english intrinsically better at this, or is it because of the presence of jargon?

Genuinely curious about your last point (don't know much about the topic). Is english intrinsically better at this, or is it because of the presence of jargon? Is it a studied phenomena, or is it something most people feel?

reaperducer 7y ago
I can see that being true. Many of the web sites I build are multi-lingual, and when designing for many languages, you have to take into consideration that certain languages take many more characters or words to express an idea than in English. Off the top of my head, I believe we factor in 15% more text space for Spanish. German is something like 60% more.
- kevingadd 7y ago
  When localizing software also it's a general rule of thumb that your on-screen UI spaces need to be something like 40% bigger than the English text that goes in them since the German equivalent is always going to be way bigger. It's common for it to turn out half-way through localization that some of your text doesn't fit anymore. (FWIW, this also happens when swapping from ideographic languages to English - western localizations of Japanese video games often end up with very small text as a result.)
airstrike 7y ago
English has an incredibly simple grammar, comparatively speaking. There are only three verb conjugations (if you don't count auxiliary verbs) and one gender. Even naming variables is easier!
FalconSensei 7y ago
In my opinion, jargon helps, but English is just easier to learn and shorter to communicate. My first language is Portuguese, and English was not so hard for me to learn. I studied a bit of French and it was ok, but not as easy as English. And this considering it should be a bit easier since Portuguese is my main language. Now I'm studying German and... it's way harder than English and French. At least, way more verbose and which more complex grammar rules and conjugations.
BiteCode_dev 7y ago
English is usually shorter than other latin-based languages. It's longer than ideogram based ones but you don't have to learn 100000 symbols to express yourself in it. It also has a very simple grammar compared to most languages. Take this sentence: "I would like not to go to school today" The french equivalent would be: "Je voudrais ne pas aller à l'école aujourd'hui." "would like" is a simple combination of two words, but in french you need to know the precise conjugation of it. "not" is actually expressed as 2 words with "ne pas", which can be positioned in several ways. Infinitive, like with "to go", is simple in english: just add "to". In french, each verb is different, like "aller". Then you got "the" in any circumstances in english, but the "l'", could also be "le, la, or les" depending of the word after it. A;so remember that each word is either feminine or masculine in french, even a stone or the sun. Then "à" and "école" got an accent. French has many of them, you need to know the right one, where to place it, how to pronunciation it and type it on the keyboard. Finally, "today" vs "aujourd'hui". I know which one is easier to type in a bug report. Not to say English doesn't have weird traps, but it's very, very relaxing compared to the rest. And much more efficient. Also describing a view of the country side with it feels a bit limiting. But I'm not Shakespear :)
- alcover 7y ago
  I painfully agree with you, as a French. So much so that I comment my code in English for brevity. Regarding "aujourd'hui", this monstrosity litterally means : "to the day of today".. Our dear language needs a reform, lest it will survive only as a roman dialect.
- zozbot234 7y ago
  What French really needs is a comprehensive spelling/grammar reform. In Haitian Creole, "ne pas aller à l'école aujourd'hui" is written simply "pa ale lekòl jodi"! And one can just write "mwen" instead of having to differentiate "je" and "moi". (There's also a marker word "ta" that's entirely isomorphic to the English "would" in that it introduces a conditional modality.) Not coincidentally, English is basically a creole language as well. That's why it's so incredibly simple.
- andrewzah 7y ago
  And then you have Korean. 오늘 학교에 가기 싫다 (I don’t want to go to school today) Hangeul is a syllabary so anyone can read it, just like Latin. It was specifically designed in response to peasants not being able to read Chinese hanzi. Things like the subject and topic can be and is omitted when it’s superfluous. (The above sentence omits the subject and subject particle. There is no topic here). English almost always needs to specify the subject, asides from very casual speech/slang. Korean, like english, doesn’t need to specify gender of nouns, and it also doesn’t need “a” or “the” markers. The location particle above could be dropped too. However Korean does have complex honorifics and formality conjugations, which typically get longer the more formal/polite it is. Above we have the plain or dictionary form, which is usually the shortest form as well.

reaperducer 7y ago

I can see that being true. Many of the web sites I build are multi-lingual, and when designing for many languages, you have to take into consideration that certain languages take many more characters or words to express an idea than in English. Off the top of my head, I believe we factor in 15% more text space for Spanish. German is something like 60% more.

kevingadd 7y ago
When localizing software also it's a general rule of thumb that your on-screen UI spaces need to be something like 40% bigger than the English text that goes in them since the German equivalent is always going to be way bigger. It's common for it to turn out half-way through localization that some of your text doesn't fit anymore. (FWIW, this also happens when swapping from ideographic languages to English - western localizations of Japanese video games often end up with very small text as a result.)

airstrike 7y ago

English has an incredibly simple grammar, comparatively speaking. There are only three verb conjugations (if you don't count auxiliary verbs) and one gender. Even naming variables is easier!

FalconSensei 7y ago

In my opinion, jargon helps, but English is just easier to learn and shorter to communicate. My first language is Portuguese, and English was not so hard for me to learn. I studied a bit of French and it was ok, but not as easy as English. And this considering it should be a bit easier since Portuguese is my main language. Now I'm studying German and... it's way harder than English and French. At least, way more verbose and which more complex grammar rules and conjugations.

BiteCode_dev 7y ago

English is usually shorter than other latin-based languages. It's longer than ideogram based ones but you don't have to learn 100000 symbols to express yourself in it. It also has a very simple grammar compared to most languages. Take this sentence: "I would like not to go to school today" The french equivalent would be: "Je voudrais ne pas aller à l'école aujourd'hui." "would like" is a simple combination of two words, but in french you need to know the precise conjugation of it. "not" is actually expressed as 2 words with "ne pas", which can be positioned in several ways. Infinitive, like with "to go", is simple in english: just add "to". In french, each verb is different, like "aller". Then you got "the" in any circumstances in english, but the "l'", could also be "le, la, or les" depending of the word after it. A;so remember that each word is either feminine or masculine in french, even a stone or the sun. Then "à" and "école" got an accent. French has many of them, you need to know the right one, where to place it, how to pronunciation it and type it on the keyboard. Finally, "today" vs "aujourd'hui". I know which one is easier to type in a bug report. Not to say English doesn't have weird traps, but it's very, very relaxing compared to the rest. And much more efficient. Also describing a view of the country side with it feels a bit limiting. But I'm not Shakespear :)

alcover 7y ago
I painfully agree with you, as a French. So much so that I comment my code in English for brevity. Regarding "aujourd'hui", this monstrosity litterally means : "to the day of today".. Our dear language needs a reform, lest it will survive only as a roman dialect.
zozbot234 7y ago
What French really needs is a comprehensive spelling/grammar reform. In Haitian Creole, "ne pas aller à l'école aujourd'hui" is written simply "pa ale lekòl jodi"! And one can just write "mwen" instead of having to differentiate "je" and "moi". (There's also a marker word "ta" that's entirely isomorphic to the English "would" in that it introduces a conditional modality.) Not coincidentally, English is basically a creole language as well. That's why it's so incredibly simple.
andrewzah 7y ago
And then you have Korean. 오늘 학교에 가기 싫다 (I don’t want to go to school today) Hangeul is a syllabary so anyone can read it, just like Latin. It was specifically designed in response to peasants not being able to read Chinese hanzi. Things like the subject and topic can be and is omitted when it’s superfluous. (The above sentence omits the subject and subject particle. There is no topic here). English almost always needs to specify the subject, asides from very casual speech/slang. Korean, like english, doesn’t need to specify gender of nouns, and it also doesn’t need “a” or “the” markers. The location particle above could be dropped too. However Korean does have complex honorifics and formality conjugations, which typically get longer the more formal/polite it is. Above we have the plain or dictionary form, which is usually the shortest form as well.