3 ms·

For an extremely logical language, I would nominate Hebrew. The way that verbs are conjugated from three-letter roots and those same roots can become related no

by dhosek 4y ago

For an extremely logical language, I would nominate Hebrew. The way that verbs are conjugated from three-letter roots and those same roots can become related nouns with regular patterns of adding suffixes is just amazing. The Rabbinic tradition is that the original language before Babel was Hebrew and after my studies of the language in college, I can totally buy that.

Cyph0n 4y ago
Yep, either Hebrew or Arabic would be my choice. Both are relatively well-structured and have existed for a very long time. Arabic has the advantage of having a larger number of users/speakers.
- dhosek 4y ago
  Although, as I understand it, not all dialects of Arabic are mutually intelligible so, e.g., an Iraqi and a Moroccan might have difficulty understanding each other. The other challenge with Arabic is that the script is considerably more complicated since most letters have distinct initial, medial and final forms whereas Hebrew only has special final forms for three letters. That said, I know almost no Arabic so I can’t speak with much authority on its learnability.
mtalantikite 4y ago
Arabic, like all Semitic languages, has this feature as well and I agree it's amazing! There are a few examples on wikipedia for those that haven't encountered this before [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfix
maratc 4y ago
I second this motion. "The Complete Dictionary of Hebrew Language" has about 35,000 words in total. I bet that over a half of that aren't used, and would sound completely new to anyone except Hebrew linguists. Hebrew is a "tabular" language that can be represented as a (sparsely populated) table with the roots as rows and "morphemes" (construction patterns) as columns. If a word exists, it will be in its proper place at an appropriate row and column. Here's an example of a construction pattern for the category of "tools": maXXeXa The X denotes a place to put the root letters. Most of the roots are composed of three letters, and so there are three places. When you combine it with the root S.R.T which has a meaning of "ribbon" (and also, film), you get "maSReTa" — "a tool for making films" (video camera). If you combine it with the root Ts.L.M which has a meaning of "image", you get "maTsLeMa" — "a tool for making images" (still camera). Even if you never heard the word "maVReGa" but are able to separate it into the morpheme of "tools" and the root V.R.G (which has a meaning of clock-wise motion), you can use that to understand the word as "a tool for making clock-wise motion" — a screwdriver.
Koshkin 4y ago
At the other extreme, there's Yiddish, it is full of idioms and it's more fun for that!
ipv6ipv4 4y ago
Hebrew has the ridiculous feature of changing the sounds of those three letter roots in a such a way that they sound like _completely_ different words to someone who is not already fluent - e.g. kaf and khaf, bet and vet. The lack of vowels also trips up non-native speakers/readers.
- linux2647 4y ago
  I mean, that doesn’t sound too far off from what happens in Celtic languages like Welsh or Irish where the ending of one word mutates (softens) the beginning of the next word
- dhosek 4y ago
  The lack of (written) vowels is less of an issue than most people think as the vowels tend to come in predictable patterns. Likewise the differences of pronunciation for ב, פ and כ are again predictable. It’s not unlike how in Czech, a consonant in a cluster takes on the voiced/unvoiced quality of the following consonant so that kde is pronounced as if it were written gde. I really think that Hebrew is the most beginner-friendly language of all the languages that I’ve learned.

by dhosek 4y ago

Cyph0n 4y ago

Yep, either Hebrew or Arabic would be my choice. Both are relatively well-structured and have existed for a very long time. Arabic has the advantage of having a larger number of users/speakers.

dhosek 4y ago
Although, as I understand it, not all dialects of Arabic are mutually intelligible so, e.g., an Iraqi and a Moroccan might have difficulty understanding each other. The other challenge with Arabic is that the script is considerably more complicated since most letters have distinct initial, medial and final forms whereas Hebrew only has special final forms for three letters. That said, I know almost no Arabic so I can’t speak with much authority on its learnability.

mtalantikite 4y ago

Arabic, like all Semitic languages, has this feature as well and I agree it's amazing! There are a few examples on wikipedia for those that haven't encountered this before [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfix

maratc 4y ago

I second this motion. "The Complete Dictionary of Hebrew Language" has about 35,000 words in total. I bet that over a half of that aren't used, and would sound completely new to anyone except Hebrew linguists. Hebrew is a "tabular" language that can be represented as a (sparsely populated) table with the roots as rows and "morphemes" (construction patterns) as columns. If a word exists, it will be in its proper place at an appropriate row and column. Here's an example of a construction pattern for the category of "tools": maXXeXa The X denotes a place to put the root letters. Most of the roots are composed of three letters, and so there are three places. When you combine it with the root S.R.T which has a meaning of "ribbon" (and also, film), you get "maSReTa" — "a tool for making films" (video camera). If you combine it with the root Ts.L.M which has a meaning of "image", you get "maTsLeMa" — "a tool for making images" (still camera). Even if you never heard the word "maVReGa" but are able to separate it into the morpheme of "tools" and the root V.R.G (which has a meaning of clock-wise motion), you can use that to understand the word as "a tool for making clock-wise motion" — a screwdriver.

Koshkin 4y ago

At the other extreme, there's Yiddish, it is full of idioms and it's more fun for that!

ipv6ipv4 4y ago

Hebrew has the ridiculous feature of changing the sounds of those three letter roots in a such a way that they sound like _completely_ different words to someone who is not already fluent - e.g. kaf and khaf, bet and vet. The lack of vowels also trips up non-native speakers/readers.

linux2647 4y ago
I mean, that doesn’t sound too far off from what happens in Celtic languages like Welsh or Irish where the ending of one word mutates (softens) the beginning of the next word
dhosek 4y ago
The lack of (written) vowels is less of an issue than most people think as the vowels tend to come in predictable patterns. Likewise the differences of pronunciation for ב, פ and כ are again predictable. It’s not unlike how in Czech, a consonant in a cluster takes on the voiced/unvoiced quality of the following consonant so that kde is pronounced as if it were written gde. I really think that Hebrew is the most beginner-friendly language of all the languages that I’ve learned.