3 ms·

> Also, being fluent in a human language involves not only reading and writing, but also talking, which as you pointed out is a considerably more complex skill.

> Also, being fluent in a human language involves not only reading and writing, but also talking, which as you pointed out is a considerably more complex skill. I would push back slightly on this. I don't consider the ability to have a conversation in french to be a greater achievement than reading (and understanding) a latin text.

filleduchaos 7y ago
Are you bilingual?
- leetcrew 7y ago
  I wouldn't call myself bilingual, but I speak enough spanish to make myself understood by people who don't know any english. can you read latin?
  - filleduchaos 7y ago
    "Enough Spanish to make myself understood" doesn't really tell me much. There is a huge gap in command of a language between "I can order food or ask for directions on the street" and "I can drop into a conversation about today's news, no problem", and a huge gap in fluency between "My grammar/diction/pronunciation are incorrect but people can strain themselves to figure out what I mean" and "My speech is accented but clearly intelligible". The greater point is that reading and writing are actually both easier and simpler than listening and speaking[0], even though we tend to learn how to do the former after the latter; think of the difference in difficulty between building software that can process natural language from text vs. from speech, and realise that many of the same additional problems (such as the sheer ambiguity of sound versus letters and the ephemerality of real-time speech) apply to human brains as well as to software systems. In fact, as you develop beyond infancy, the ability of your brain to distinguish sounds that are not a part of your native language(s) rapidly atrophies in favour of optimising for the ones you heard on a daily basis as a baby[1]. > can you read latin? No, because I have next to zero interest in it. I am however familiar enough with [Ecclesiastical] Latin to recognise that it is largely overhyped in "difficulty" by monolingual English speakers for whom it is their first tangle with extensive conjugations and declensions - it's not much harder or more complex than the Romance languages it birthed[2], and is significantly less so than, say, modern Arabic or many of the Slavic languages. 0. Additionally reading and listening are relatively easier than writing and speaking respectively, due to the brain ingesting information more readily than it produces it. 1. There are about 800 distinct sounds used in all human speech, but the average language only uses ~40. By the time you're a year old, you've neurally committed to whatever handful of those sounds those around you have been making; you become hard-pressed indeed to even hear the difference between the remaining ~760 and the ones you already know. As a concrete example I've had personal experience with, in Hausa the sound written as `f` isn't pronounced labiodentally (upper teeth to bottom lip, the way it is in English) but rather bilabially (lips close together, not quite touching, and air forced between them at varying speeds depending on the word). People whose languages don't have that sound almost invariably interpret that sound as a `p`, an English `f`, or even an `h`. 2. As something of an aside, French is my third language (having been exposed to it since I was three or four years old) and I can attest to how much more difficult it is to speak/listen to it than to read it.
Pmop 7y ago
I had my first conversation in English recently, despise having been reading books and texting people using this language for a while; and yet, managed to express my ideas just fine. English pronunciation is a bit harder though, as what is written is oftentimes different from what is spoken, and you risk running in circles trying to find the correct pronunciation. My native language has a phonemic writing system.
take_a_breath 7y ago
==I don't consider the ability to have a conversation in french to be a greater achievement than reading (and understanding) a latin text.== Computers have a much easier time translating text than they do holding conversations. That might be an indication that one is more complex than the other.
- leetcrew 7y ago
  translating is not the same as reading and understanding. out of curiosity, I plugged catullus 16 into google translate. it did a decent job, but not much better than looking up each word one-by-one in a latin dictionary and picking the first english meaning.
- imtringued 7y ago
  Translation is far harder than holding conversations. It means that you must be fully aware of tiny cultural differences in the languages. Just because two words have the same dictionary definition doesn't mean they actually are equivalent. However, the quality of translation usually doesn't matter as much as the quality of a conversation precisely because a human wrote the original text and the recipient knows the target language and culture. >That might be an indication that one is more complex than the other. It just means that most of the work is done by the humans.
  - take_a_breath 7y ago
    You have to do the same thing when speaking. The addition of body language and tone, which text doesn’t have, make it more complex. If it was easier for computers to do it, they would. That humans do the work is further evidence it is more complex.

filleduchaos 7y ago

Are you bilingual?

leetcrew 7y ago
I wouldn't call myself bilingual, but I speak enough spanish to make myself understood by people who don't know any english. can you read latin?
- filleduchaos 7y ago
  "Enough Spanish to make myself understood" doesn't really tell me much. There is a huge gap in command of a language between "I can order food or ask for directions on the street" and "I can drop into a conversation about today's news, no problem", and a huge gap in fluency between "My grammar/diction/pronunciation are incorrect but people can strain themselves to figure out what I mean" and "My speech is accented but clearly intelligible". The greater point is that reading and writing are actually both easier and simpler than listening and speaking[0], even though we tend to learn how to do the former after the latter; think of the difference in difficulty between building software that can process natural language from text vs. from speech, and realise that many of the same additional problems (such as the sheer ambiguity of sound versus letters and the ephemerality of real-time speech) apply to human brains as well as to software systems. In fact, as you develop beyond infancy, the ability of your brain to distinguish sounds that are not a part of your native language(s) rapidly atrophies in favour of optimising for the ones you heard on a daily basis as a baby[1]. > can you read latin? No, because I have next to zero interest in it. I am however familiar enough with [Ecclesiastical] Latin to recognise that it is largely overhyped in "difficulty" by monolingual English speakers for whom it is their first tangle with extensive conjugations and declensions - it's not much harder or more complex than the Romance languages it birthed[2], and is significantly less so than, say, modern Arabic or many of the Slavic languages. 0. Additionally reading and listening are relatively easier than writing and speaking respectively, due to the brain ingesting information more readily than it produces it. 1. There are about 800 distinct sounds used in all human speech, but the average language only uses ~40. By the time you're a year old, you've neurally committed to whatever handful of those sounds those around you have been making; you become hard-pressed indeed to even hear the difference between the remaining ~760 and the ones you already know. As a concrete example I've had personal experience with, in Hausa the sound written as `f` isn't pronounced labiodentally (upper teeth to bottom lip, the way it is in English) but rather bilabially (lips close together, not quite touching, and air forced between them at varying speeds depending on the word). People whose languages don't have that sound almost invariably interpret that sound as a `p`, an English `f`, or even an `h`. 2. As something of an aside, French is my third language (having been exposed to it since I was three or four years old) and I can attest to how much more difficult it is to speak/listen to it than to read it.

Pmop 7y ago

I had my first conversation in English recently, despise having been reading books and texting people using this language for a while; and yet, managed to express my ideas just fine. English pronunciation is a bit harder though, as what is written is oftentimes different from what is spoken, and you risk running in circles trying to find the correct pronunciation. My native language has a phonemic writing system.

take_a_breath 7y ago

==I don't consider the ability to have a conversation in french to be a greater achievement than reading (and understanding) a latin text.== Computers have a much easier time translating text than they do holding conversations. That might be an indication that one is more complex than the other.

leetcrew 7y ago
translating is not the same as reading and understanding. out of curiosity, I plugged catullus 16 into google translate. it did a decent job, but not much better than looking up each word one-by-one in a latin dictionary and picking the first english meaning.
imtringued 7y ago
Translation is far harder than holding conversations. It means that you must be fully aware of tiny cultural differences in the languages. Just because two words have the same dictionary definition doesn't mean they actually are equivalent. However, the quality of translation usually doesn't matter as much as the quality of a conversation precisely because a human wrote the original text and the recipient knows the target language and culture. >That might be an indication that one is more complex than the other. It just means that most of the work is done by the humans.
- take_a_breath 7y ago
  You have to do the same thing when speaking. The addition of body language and tone, which text doesn’t have, make it more complex. If it was easier for computers to do it, they would. That humans do the work is further evidence it is more complex.