6 ms·

John McWhorter has argued a few times on the Lexicon Valley podcast that although English has many problems (especially spelling), it's not a terrible lingua fr

by gxqoz 6y ago

John McWhorter has argued a few times on the Lexicon Valley podcast that although English has many problems (especially spelling), it's not a terrible lingua franca. Many complexities from other languages do not exist in it. Obviously, any artificial language is going to be much simpler. But these have never caught on for a variety of reasons.

keiferski 6y ago
English is a great lingua franca IMO because of its inherent decentralization and willingness to accept new words. There is no academy regulating its use, as is the case with French and Spanish.
- soldehierro 6y ago
  In the case of Spanish, I can't speak for French, having an academy (the RAE in this case) regulating the language sounds like a problem on paper, but really isn't a problem in practice. The RAE accepts Americanisms and treats American Spanish just as it would European Spanish (referring to the continent(s), not the country) and encourages lingusitic diversity. Anglicisms are only discouraged when an acceptable Spanish alternative is in WIDE use (but never prohibited, as can be evidenced by the sheer quantity of anglicisms in the Spanish language.) Spanish is very willing to accept new words, and as diverse as English in terms of decentralization. Grammar doesn't make or break a lingua franca, number of speakers does, which is where English really shines. So what does the RAE do you ask? They write grammars and compile dictionaries, describe phonology and answer people's questions on Twitter. Just like what Merriam Webster or Oxford would do, but the RAE has official backing and creates consensus among the hispanophone countries. English is a regulated language, just not officially regulated.
  - vidarh 6y ago
    Similarly in Norway the authority in charge often proposes Norwegian alternatives to Anglicisms, but they'll yield if an import becomes dominant, and will even reverse official reforms if they fail to gain traction.
  - orwin 6y ago
    I which french academy was this tolerant.
    - Bayart 6y ago
      The problem of the French Academy isn't that it's intolerant, there are linguistic bodies in Europe that are far more conservative, it's that it's too slow and simply cannot keep up.
  - kube-system 6y ago
    I'd say it's more accurate to describe Webster and Oxford as documenting established usage, rather than being informal regulators. They generally view their role as being purely observers and not as active influencers of the language. Some other language authorities do not take a usage-evidence-based approach to defining their dictionaries, and take into account cultural or historical concerns.
  - yongjik 6y ago
    Oh how I envy you. Here in Korea we are stuck with the tax-funded imbeciles of National Institute of Korean Language, whose hobby is saying "ALL you Koreans are using the Korean language wrong!" with a straight face at every occasion.
- Koshkin 6y ago
  To be honest, I still wish it were Spanish, which is easier to learn/read and pronunciation of which is somehow easier for most people (except for native English speakers, as I've noticed).
  - GlennS 6y ago
    Surely it will be a Romance/Germanic split? So Spanish is easier for speakers of French, Portuguese, Italian and Romanian, and English for speakers of Dutch, German, Swedish, Norwegian and Danish?
    - Koshkin 6y ago
      Not sure about those others but the Germans that I know struggle with English just like everybody else. (Despite common roots German and English are very different, and, in fact, I find the written Spanish and even French to be quite close to English, and rather easy to understand if you know English and learn a few words that are different or spelled differently; not so with German.)
    - Tor3 6y ago
      What I've noticed while working on most continents is that when people learn just a little English, they can communicate better than I can if I try to learn their language. The reason is, I think, that English grammar is, in a way, so redundant that even if the speaker use wrong grammar all the time the meaning often doesn't change. You can say "I is", which is wrong, but there's no problem with understanding (at least not for non-native English speakers who are so used to hear all kinds of wrong grammar). But make a single mistake in a Romance language like Italian, and suddenly your sentence "I'm stupid" now means "You're stupid". The grammar matters. In English the grammar, for the most part (not for everything, of course) is about correctness more than meaning - which is why the language is so robust, which is one reason it works as a lingua franca: A little English knowledge goes a long way.
- Kranar 6y ago
  All languages are decentralized regardless of regulation by official government bodies. The role of regulation is mostly a legal role employed by countries that use a civil legal system. Most English speaking countries use a common law legal system and so interpretation of words is fairly fluid and subject to interpretation by the courts. Civil law does not have this kind of flexibility and room for interpretation, so courts will make use of regulatory bodies to uniformly interpret language. This is why almost all countries with a civil law system have a regulatory body, while countries with a common law system do not.
uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh 6y ago
Imagine the github issue tracker for the synthetic lingua franca. "Cannot express...", "ambiguity in..."
anticristi 6y ago
I don't know John McWhorter, but is this the "second languages are hard" argument? I tend to get annoyed when people compare the relative difficulty of learning a language they spoke 1636518 hours vs ... 18 hours.
- gxqoz 6y ago
  McWhorter is a linguist (as well as a political commentator). His argument isn't that English is easier because people already speak it natively. Instead, English lost a lot of its complexity (especially around suffixes) during the Viking invasions when it was taken up by adult speakers. This doesn't mean that learning the language is easy--no language really is. And English has some things that make it harder to master, especially its very large vocabulary. Some of it is covered in this recent episode: https://slate.com/podcasts/lexicon-valley/2021/03/english-language-not-normal https://slate.com/podcasts/lexicon-valley/2021/03/english-la...
  - ajuc 6y ago
    > especially its very large vocabulary Vocabulary isn't a problem IMHO. The fact that I have to learn each word twice (how to write it and how to say it) - is. I was learning German for 3 years at school. After the first month I had no problems with pronunciation. Now after almost 2 decades of not using it I can still pronounce any German word I see. I've been learning English since I was 10 or so. I'm 36 now. I still have many English words I know (and use correctly in writing) that I'm not sure how to pronounce.
    - mason55 6y ago
      > I still have many English words I know (and use correctly in writing) that I'm not sure how to pronounce. Do you mind sharing some examples? As a native English speaker, I'm so curious! Do you think that if you heard them without seeing the word you'd realize what the written form was? Or might there be words where you know the written form and the spoken form and don't realize it's the same word?

by gxqoz 6y ago

keiferski 6y ago

English is a great lingua franca IMO because of its inherent decentralization and willingness to accept new words. There is no academy regulating its use, as is the case with French and Spanish.

soldehierro 6y ago
In the case of Spanish, I can't speak for French, having an academy (the RAE in this case) regulating the language sounds like a problem on paper, but really isn't a problem in practice. The RAE accepts Americanisms and treats American Spanish just as it would European Spanish (referring to the continent(s), not the country) and encourages lingusitic diversity. Anglicisms are only discouraged when an acceptable Spanish alternative is in WIDE use (but never prohibited, as can be evidenced by the sheer quantity of anglicisms in the Spanish language.) Spanish is very willing to accept new words, and as diverse as English in terms of decentralization. Grammar doesn't make or break a lingua franca, number of speakers does, which is where English really shines. So what does the RAE do you ask? They write grammars and compile dictionaries, describe phonology and answer people's questions on Twitter. Just like what Merriam Webster or Oxford would do, but the RAE has official backing and creates consensus among the hispanophone countries. English is a regulated language, just not officially regulated.
- vidarh 6y ago
  Similarly in Norway the authority in charge often proposes Norwegian alternatives to Anglicisms, but they'll yield if an import becomes dominant, and will even reverse official reforms if they fail to gain traction.
- orwin 6y ago
  I which french academy was this tolerant.
  - Bayart 6y ago
    The problem of the French Academy isn't that it's intolerant, there are linguistic bodies in Europe that are far more conservative, it's that it's too slow and simply cannot keep up.
- kube-system 6y ago
  I'd say it's more accurate to describe Webster and Oxford as documenting established usage, rather than being informal regulators. They generally view their role as being purely observers and not as active influencers of the language. Some other language authorities do not take a usage-evidence-based approach to defining their dictionaries, and take into account cultural or historical concerns.
- yongjik 6y ago
  Oh how I envy you. Here in Korea we are stuck with the tax-funded imbeciles of National Institute of Korean Language, whose hobby is saying "ALL you Koreans are using the Korean language wrong!" with a straight face at every occasion.
Koshkin 6y ago
To be honest, I still wish it were Spanish, which is easier to learn/read and pronunciation of which is somehow easier for most people (except for native English speakers, as I've noticed).
- GlennS 6y ago
  Surely it will be a Romance/Germanic split? So Spanish is easier for speakers of French, Portuguese, Italian and Romanian, and English for speakers of Dutch, German, Swedish, Norwegian and Danish?
  - Koshkin 6y ago
    Not sure about those others but the Germans that I know struggle with English just like everybody else. (Despite common roots German and English are very different, and, in fact, I find the written Spanish and even French to be quite close to English, and rather easy to understand if you know English and learn a few words that are different or spelled differently; not so with German.)
  - Tor3 6y ago
    What I've noticed while working on most continents is that when people learn just a little English, they can communicate better than I can if I try to learn their language. The reason is, I think, that English grammar is, in a way, so redundant that even if the speaker use wrong grammar all the time the meaning often doesn't change. You can say "I is", which is wrong, but there's no problem with understanding (at least not for non-native English speakers who are so used to hear all kinds of wrong grammar). But make a single mistake in a Romance language like Italian, and suddenly your sentence "I'm stupid" now means "You're stupid". The grammar matters. In English the grammar, for the most part (not for everything, of course) is about correctness more than meaning - which is why the language is so robust, which is one reason it works as a lingua franca: A little English knowledge goes a long way.
Kranar 6y ago
All languages are decentralized regardless of regulation by official government bodies. The role of regulation is mostly a legal role employed by countries that use a civil legal system. Most English speaking countries use a common law legal system and so interpretation of words is fairly fluid and subject to interpretation by the courts. Civil law does not have this kind of flexibility and room for interpretation, so courts will make use of regulatory bodies to uniformly interpret language. This is why almost all countries with a civil law system have a regulatory body, while countries with a common law system do not.

uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh 6y ago

Imagine the github issue tracker for the synthetic lingua franca. "Cannot express...", "ambiguity in..."

anticristi 6y ago

I don't know John McWhorter, but is this the "second languages are hard" argument? I tend to get annoyed when people compare the relative difficulty of learning a language they spoke 1636518 hours vs ... 18 hours.

gxqoz 6y ago
McWhorter is a linguist (as well as a political commentator). His argument isn't that English is easier because people already speak it natively. Instead, English lost a lot of its complexity (especially around suffixes) during the Viking invasions when it was taken up by adult speakers. This doesn't mean that learning the language is easy--no language really is. And English has some things that make it harder to master, especially its very large vocabulary. Some of it is covered in this recent episode: https://slate.com/podcasts/lexicon-valley/2021/03/english-language-not-normal https://slate.com/podcasts/lexicon-valley/2021/03/english-la...
- ajuc 6y ago
  > especially its very large vocabulary Vocabulary isn't a problem IMHO. The fact that I have to learn each word twice (how to write it and how to say it) - is. I was learning German for 3 years at school. After the first month I had no problems with pronunciation. Now after almost 2 decades of not using it I can still pronounce any German word I see. I've been learning English since I was 10 or so. I'm 36 now. I still have many English words I know (and use correctly in writing) that I'm not sure how to pronounce.
  - mason55 6y ago
    > I still have many English words I know (and use correctly in writing) that I'm not sure how to pronounce. Do you mind sharing some examples? As a native English speaker, I'm so curious! Do you think that if you heard them without seeing the word you'd realize what the written form was? Or might there be words where you know the written form and the spoken form and don't realize it's the same word?