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It always amazes me somewhat when people talk of languages like Polish as having complex words, because Indo–European languages generally have pretty simple wor

by bradrn 5y ago

It always amazes me somewhat when people talk of languages like Polish as having complex words, because Indo–European languages generally have pretty simple words compared to most languages outside Europe. Consider, for example, the average word from Yimas: planmaawkurampikacakapimpitɨprak ‘he got those two and hid them and lay them down inside’ Or Wichita: kiya꞉kíriwa꞉cʔárasarikitaʔahí꞉riks ‘by making many trips, he carried the large [quantity of] meat up into it’ These sorts of words, as far as I can tell, are the norm rather than the exception outside Europe. (Well, perhaps not that extreme, but certainly words like those Polish examples are pretty common.)

xxpor 5y ago
That just sounds like an agglutinative language, which is scary just because the words are long. But if you know the language, it's easy to figure out since you can see the individual words inside the big word. The cases in Slavic languages are much harder to deal with in real-time, IMO, since English speakers aren't used to thinking about all of those different aspects of the word.
- bradrn 5y ago
  > if you know the language, it's easy to figure out since you can see the individual words inside the big word This happens to be correct for those Yimas and Wichita examples I gave, but in many languages the relationship between the constituent parts and the word itself is extremely nontrivial, e.g. in Mohawk: tcioteriʻsioñʻhắtie né hotăskoñnioñniʻhătiḗne s-yo-ate-rihsy-u-hatye-∅ ne hro-at-askw-uny-∅-hatye-hne And in any case, most of the ‘individual words inside the big word’ aren’t ‘words’ at all but bound morphemes, in many cases with quite general semantics which are more along the lines of ‘someone caused this’ or ‘action done multiple times’ rather than anything more concrete.
xdennis 5y ago
My favourite word is in Nuxalk: clhp'xwlhtlhplhhskwts' . It has no vowels and it's pronounced [xɬpʼχʷɬtʰɬpʰɬːskʷʰt͡sʼ]. You can here it here[1]. It means "he had had in his possession a bunchberry plant". [1]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/x%C5%82p%CC%93x%CC%A3%CA%B7%C5%82t%C5%82p%C5%82%C5%82sk%CA%B7c%CC%93#Pronunciation https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/x%C5%82p%CC%93x%CC%A3%CA%B7%C...
Tainnor 5y ago
I think that cross-linguistically, these might be a bit extreme? Also, the languages are head-marking (meaning that grammatical relations are encoded on the verb) which is just one of multiple possible ways if encoding grammatical relations. That said, you're absolutely right that it is English that is the outlier here. I guess that many English speakers don't realize how much of an oddball English is as a language (even within European languages, which by themselves have a number of fairly oddball features). (I wish there was a "follow" feature here on HN, I really like reading your comments.)
- bradrn 5y ago
  > I think that cross-linguistically, these might be a bit extreme? You’re very probably right, though such ‘extreme’ examples are at least more representative of world languages than English is. Possibly more representative is something like, say, Jarawara: ee to-ka-haba ee-ke ahi, fare owa teme-ne ite jaa, Boniwa; Boniwa teme-ne ite jaa, ee to-wa-ke-bana-ka But that doesn’t emphasise my point nearly as well. > Also, the languages are head-marking … which is just one of multiple possible ways if encoding grammatical relations. Sure, but dependent-marking languages generally aren’t nearly as agglutinative as head-marking one, which again doesn’t illustrate my point too well. > I guess that many English speakers don't realize how much of an oddball English is as a language (even within European languages, which by themselves have a number of fairly oddball features). I personally like the list of Standard Average European features at https://risteq.net/languages/ https://risteq.net/languages/. And then English is highly isolating on top of that, which in and of itself is fairly uncommon (at least outside SE Asia and W Africa). Personally, I suspect that IE is no weirder than any other language families (TNG and Sino–Tibetan are at least as weird); people just tend to think of it as ‘average’ when it really isn’t. > (I wish there was a "follow" feature here on HN, I really like reading your comments.) Why, thank you! Honestly, I joined HN mostly to talk about programming, but there seem to have been lots of linguistics articles lately, so that’s what I’ve ended up talking about a lot. (There’s a fair bit of XKCD 386 about it, really.) But I post more regularly on linguistics here: https://www.verduria.org/ https://www.verduria.org/ (And IIRC I believe the lack of notifications is intentional, though I don’t know the details.)

by bradrn 5y ago

xxpor 5y ago

That just sounds like an agglutinative language, which is scary just because the words are long. But if you know the language, it's easy to figure out since you can see the individual words inside the big word. The cases in Slavic languages are much harder to deal with in real-time, IMO, since English speakers aren't used to thinking about all of those different aspects of the word.

bradrn 5y ago
> if you know the language, it's easy to figure out since you can see the individual words inside the big word This happens to be correct for those Yimas and Wichita examples I gave, but in many languages the relationship between the constituent parts and the word itself is extremely nontrivial, e.g. in Mohawk: tcioteriʻsioñʻhắtie né hotăskoñnioñniʻhătiḗne s-yo-ate-rihsy-u-hatye-∅ ne hro-at-askw-uny-∅-hatye-hne And in any case, most of the ‘individual words inside the big word’ aren’t ‘words’ at all but bound morphemes, in many cases with quite general semantics which are more along the lines of ‘someone caused this’ or ‘action done multiple times’ rather than anything more concrete.

xdennis 5y ago

My favourite word is in Nuxalk: clhp'xwlhtlhplhhskwts' . It has no vowels and it's pronounced [xɬpʼχʷɬtʰɬpʰɬːskʷʰt͡sʼ]. You can here it here[1]. It means "he had had in his possession a bunchberry plant". [1]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/x%C5%82p%CC%93x%CC%A3%CA%B7%C5%82t%C5%82p%C5%82%C5%82sk%CA%B7c%CC%93#Pronunciation https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/x%C5%82p%CC%93x%CC%A3%CA%B7%C...

Tainnor 5y ago

I think that cross-linguistically, these might be a bit extreme? Also, the languages are head-marking (meaning that grammatical relations are encoded on the verb) which is just one of multiple possible ways if encoding grammatical relations. That said, you're absolutely right that it is English that is the outlier here. I guess that many English speakers don't realize how much of an oddball English is as a language (even within European languages, which by themselves have a number of fairly oddball features). (I wish there was a "follow" feature here on HN, I really like reading your comments.)

bradrn 5y ago
> I think that cross-linguistically, these might be a bit extreme? You’re very probably right, though such ‘extreme’ examples are at least more representative of world languages than English is. Possibly more representative is something like, say, Jarawara: ee to-ka-haba ee-ke ahi, fare owa teme-ne ite jaa, Boniwa; Boniwa teme-ne ite jaa, ee to-wa-ke-bana-ka But that doesn’t emphasise my point nearly as well. > Also, the languages are head-marking … which is just one of multiple possible ways if encoding grammatical relations. Sure, but dependent-marking languages generally aren’t nearly as agglutinative as head-marking one, which again doesn’t illustrate my point too well. > I guess that many English speakers don't realize how much of an oddball English is as a language (even within European languages, which by themselves have a number of fairly oddball features). I personally like the list of Standard Average European features at https://risteq.net/languages/ https://risteq.net/languages/. And then English is highly isolating on top of that, which in and of itself is fairly uncommon (at least outside SE Asia and W Africa). Personally, I suspect that IE is no weirder than any other language families (TNG and Sino–Tibetan are at least as weird); people just tend to think of it as ‘average’ when it really isn’t. > (I wish there was a "follow" feature here on HN, I really like reading your comments.) Why, thank you! Honestly, I joined HN mostly to talk about programming, but there seem to have been lots of linguistics articles lately, so that’s what I’ve ended up talking about a lot. (There’s a fair bit of XKCD 386 about it, really.) But I post more regularly on linguistics here: https://www.verduria.org/ https://www.verduria.org/ (And IIRC I believe the lack of notifications is intentional, though I don’t know the details.)