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As a Thai, I’m somewhat proud to see that our gramma is quite simple, i.e. no tenses and genders, etc. These extra structures are superfluous if you think about

As a Thai, I’m somewhat proud to see that our gramma is quite simple, i.e. no tenses and genders, etc. These extra structures are superfluous if you think about it. This makes it easy for beginners to start forming simple sentences. However, the complexity gets pushed to the vocabulary. It tends to have different words that mean the same thing, but with differing levels of, say politeness. Not to mention a whole ton of slang and double meanings.

fifilura 3y ago
Good on you! For me the alphabet is the biggest hurdle. One time, many years ago, I ended up in a police station in Bangkok because of a robbery. They wanted my address but they didn't want to write it down in latin letters, so I had to pronounce my address and the woman wrote it in Thai script. I really wonder how they would ever use that address. I am pretty sure the swedish postal service would have an interesting time if they decided to mail me a document.
- tanvach 3y ago
  Working with the Thai government can be a bit of a pain - forms must be filled in Thai only. Agree with the characters. Although it’s not super hard to learn (my non-Thai wife learnt the characters pretty quickly), I wish we officially have something like pinyin. Fun fact: written Thai in Latin characters is unofficially called ‘karaoke’ [1]. [1] https://blogs.transparent.com/thai/how-to-readwrite-in-karaoke/ https://blogs.transparent.com/thai/how-to-readwrite-in-karao...
_a_a_a_ 3y ago
Knowing a Thai lady, I've got some idea of how it differs from English. Bit of an eye-opener. But I don't conclude that tense and gender are superfluous; far from it. In fact the tenses in English are extensive and extremely useful. If they're unnecessary then a whole lot of other things might be considered so as well. Perhaps we should just say there are differences in languages, and not judge those.
- eru 3y ago
  To a first approximation, all human languages need to express similar things. If you want to eg talk about the past or future, you can put the markers for the different times into your verbs (like English or German do with grammatical tenses) or you can put those markers into other parts of the sentence (like English or German also do). Eg in colloquial English you can say 'tomorrow I go to the market' and be well understood. Even if in print you would put it as 'tomorrow, I will go to the market'.
  - fsckboy 3y ago
    'tomorrow I go to the market' and 'tomorrow, I will go to the market' mean slightly different things in English. the first one is something like "I have it in my calendar" or "that's the plan" or "as is routine" the second one is a declaration of current intention, in some cases emphasizing your determination.
  - _a_a_a_ 3y ago
    Or as my Thai lady would say "tomorrow I go to shop". As I got a better understanding of why she spoke that way, because there weren't those structures in her native language, it made me do a lot of hard thinking about English and left me with a lot of unanswered questions, but tenses are useful. "l will be going to the barbers while I'm in town" – that's compact and informative and I'd like to know how a Thai speaker would render that. Incidentally redundancy serves a useful purpose of error detection and rectification, just as much in human speech as in RAM.
    - wdutch 3y ago
      I am familiar with a few south east asian languages and none would have any issue expressing "I will be going to the barbers while I'm in town" ... I think even in English if a second language speaker said "I go to barber while I in town", it's still possible to understand. Regarding redundancy, I so think that it's important and other languages have other ways of handling it. I know that Vietnamese for example very often doubles up the verbs for example for "help" it's common to say giúp đỡ together although both these words individually also mean help.
nopassrecover 3y ago
What a great observation! I find it interesting to your point how even the way we make sense of something like this brings its own contextual baggage. Even "complexity" as a word can be good ("more powerful, developed") or bad ("more fragile, inefficient, and complicated") depending who you ask in what context. Take this study: it seems to be exploring a hypothesis that societies that have more adult learners of a language tend to simplify that language to make it easier to learn. It seems quite interesting, and it gives us perspective on something we generally take for granted every day. It also seems to cast doubt on that original hypothesis. But if this same study was called a measure of grammatical complicatedness, with the "more complex" languages instead called more complicated, and the "less complex" languages instead labelled more efficient or streamlined, we'd likely interpret the information differently. So taking the summarised posted article. A quick glance reads to me as "some languages are more complex than others, and the hypothesis is that languages tend to reduce their complexity to allow non-native speakers to learn it". This to me, in the Western Enlightenment tradition of the march to progress where "the more something has been built upon and developed, and the more function and capability it has, the better it is" doesn't necessarily read as a positive thing at face value. But we could just as easily read it as language adapting and knocking down barriers to allow people to create connections and feel welcome in ways they were excluded from previously. Or as supporting international trade and being more efficient. Or as you've highlighted that perhaps they've altogether misunderstood the complexity of other languages by interpreting them in terms informed from their understanding of the complexity of their own native languages. Conservatives in the Burke/Tocqueville tradition (as a quick tangent, a tradition that in my view at its best is like programming aka Don't Reinvent the Wheel, Don't Rewrite from Scratch, Refactor Respectfully after Learning Why it Is How it Is, but at its worst and sadly most common comes across far more as a romanticised and overglorified appeal to return to a time of greater privilege, exploitation, and ill-gotten misused power) would probably bring in another angle arguing that if the hypothesis were true it demonstrates a decay of civilisation: that there used to be these "great" languages that we're losing/lost. I think you make the great point that there's so much subjectivity in this: that different languages can be useful in different ways without resorting to value comparisons. We could apply the same lenses to memes and/or emojis: some argue they're a sign everyone is getting dumber and less articulate in the Idiocracy tradition, while others argue they're exciting and creative new culture, or an expression of increased global connection, or something else altogether. Reflecting on English itself, we historically have seen a bit of both/and to the original hypothesis: a "simpler" more utility style of English that can selectively borrow on more "complex" words. The simpler English appears to have been used as much by locals who were not educated in the language of their new rulers as for any trade/migration reason, and accordingly has been heavily influenced by the older Saxon roots (an interesting outcome given oppressors, including the English, have at other times inhumanely erased the language of those they've conquered), contrasted with the French influence of upper-class conquering Normans whose words are usually considered in English more "complex" and perceived as more refined/intellectual by virtue of them being the language of power. Managementese is probably a modern incarnation of the same idea. Looking at this differently and taking the "language can be useful in different ways" point, English seems generally still more likely to lean on its Germanic roots in describing practical matters, and French roots in describing aesthetic ones. Indeed its ability to borrow on different traditions is in my view one of its great strengths. I'd probably argue the more language the merrier as long as we can all express what we want to express and understand each other, but there is probably a risk to entrenching stratification, whether it be of class or race or some other lens (i.e. everyone can speak a common English everyone understands, but the way in which it is spoken and the words selected reveal elements that can have social connotations, and those are often used by those in power as tools of status and judgement). American English seems to have some commonly explored lenses in media in which different styles of speech are heavily culturally and historically influenced and clearly reflect group membership (e.g. contrast Valley Girl English with African-American Vernacular English). We even see a similar idea across generations with slang. And then on the other hand there's the idea of "hidden transcripts" where an oppressed group inverts this model and develops and uses language and/or action (e.g. theatre, music) in a way to communicate in code without tipping off the oppressors (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_C._Scott#Domination_and_the_Arts_of_Resistance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_C._Scott#Domination_and_...). Fascinating space given how much we take it for granted!
ajuc 3y ago
> These extra structures are superfluous if you think about it If they were completely superfluous they wouldn't arise in the first place. You could argue they aren't worth it, but that's a separate argument. I'm Polish, my language has 3-5 genders (gender is a misnomer BTW, should be called "noun kinds" or "categories"), and while the complexity is hard on non-native speakers, it also allows for using lots of pronouns in shortened sentences without losing precision. If you say "book is on the table, burn it" - the "it" can mean "book" or "table". In Polish you say "book is on the table, burn her" if you want to burn the book and "book is on the table, burn him" if you want to burn the table, because book and table are different genders. You can see how useful it is by the fact English sailors often call ships "her". Not many other "hers" on the sea in the age of sail. I also think it's not an accident proto-indo-european (the language of people whose main thing was domesticating animals) had grammatical genders. It's nice to have that feature when you're mostly talking about cows and horses. Then there are other features, like regular multi-degree diminutives you can form from any noun. You ever wanted to say somebody invented "cute little abstracion" - in Polish you can create a diminutive from the noun "abstraction" if you ever need it. "Abstrakcyjka" or "abstrakcjunia" if you're curious. Same with any other noun, no matter if it makes sense or not. In English you have a word for "cute little dog" ("doggy") but not for "cute little dinosaur" or "cute little blue color", "cute little love" or "cute little death". In Polish "dinozaurek", "niebieski kolorek", "miłostka", "śmiertka". I like this feature very much, because it's pretty regular, not much overhead to learn, but it adds a lot of color and expresivity to the language. There's whole slangs where people speak only in diminutives (for example truck drivers for some reason :) ). Grammatical features like these are the best, because they are multiplicative - you have N nouns in your language, with small constant overhead you create 2xN new potential words. On the other hand there are features that provide very little to no value - usually historical baggage. Like the non-phonetic spelling in many languages. English is by far the worst here, but in Polish there's a few problems to fix as well.
- programmer_dude 3y ago
  Definitely not worth it.
  - 3y ago

fifilura 3y ago

Good on you! For me the alphabet is the biggest hurdle. One time, many years ago, I ended up in a police station in Bangkok because of a robbery. They wanted my address but they didn't want to write it down in latin letters, so I had to pronounce my address and the woman wrote it in Thai script. I really wonder how they would ever use that address. I am pretty sure the swedish postal service would have an interesting time if they decided to mail me a document.

tanvach 3y ago
Working with the Thai government can be a bit of a pain - forms must be filled in Thai only. Agree with the characters. Although it’s not super hard to learn (my non-Thai wife learnt the characters pretty quickly), I wish we officially have something like pinyin. Fun fact: written Thai in Latin characters is unofficially called ‘karaoke’ [1]. [1] https://blogs.transparent.com/thai/how-to-readwrite-in-karaoke/ https://blogs.transparent.com/thai/how-to-readwrite-in-karao...

_a_a_a_ 3y ago

Knowing a Thai lady, I've got some idea of how it differs from English. Bit of an eye-opener. But I don't conclude that tense and gender are superfluous; far from it. In fact the tenses in English are extensive and extremely useful. If they're unnecessary then a whole lot of other things might be considered so as well. Perhaps we should just say there are differences in languages, and not judge those.

eru 3y ago
To a first approximation, all human languages need to express similar things. If you want to eg talk about the past or future, you can put the markers for the different times into your verbs (like English or German do with grammatical tenses) or you can put those markers into other parts of the sentence (like English or German also do). Eg in colloquial English you can say 'tomorrow I go to the market' and be well understood. Even if in print you would put it as 'tomorrow, I will go to the market'.
- fsckboy 3y ago
  'tomorrow I go to the market' and 'tomorrow, I will go to the market' mean slightly different things in English. the first one is something like "I have it in my calendar" or "that's the plan" or "as is routine" the second one is a declaration of current intention, in some cases emphasizing your determination.
- _a_a_a_ 3y ago
  Or as my Thai lady would say "tomorrow I go to shop". As I got a better understanding of why she spoke that way, because there weren't those structures in her native language, it made me do a lot of hard thinking about English and left me with a lot of unanswered questions, but tenses are useful. "l will be going to the barbers while I'm in town" – that's compact and informative and I'd like to know how a Thai speaker would render that. Incidentally redundancy serves a useful purpose of error detection and rectification, just as much in human speech as in RAM.
  - wdutch 3y ago
    I am familiar with a few south east asian languages and none would have any issue expressing "I will be going to the barbers while I'm in town" ... I think even in English if a second language speaker said "I go to barber while I in town", it's still possible to understand. Regarding redundancy, I so think that it's important and other languages have other ways of handling it. I know that Vietnamese for example very often doubles up the verbs for example for "help" it's common to say giúp đỡ together although both these words individually also mean help.

nopassrecover 3y ago

What a great observation! I find it interesting to your point how even the way we make sense of something like this brings its own contextual baggage. Even "complexity" as a word can be good ("more powerful, developed") or bad ("more fragile, inefficient, and complicated") depending who you ask in what context. Take this study: it seems to be exploring a hypothesis that societies that have more adult learners of a language tend to simplify that language to make it easier to learn. It seems quite interesting, and it gives us perspective on something we generally take for granted every day. It also seems to cast doubt on that original hypothesis. But if this same study was called a measure of grammatical complicatedness, with the "more complex" languages instead called more complicated, and the "less complex" languages instead labelled more efficient or streamlined, we'd likely interpret the information differently. So taking the summarised posted article. A quick glance reads to me as "some languages are more complex than others, and the hypothesis is that languages tend to reduce their complexity to allow non-native speakers to learn it". This to me, in the Western Enlightenment tradition of the march to progress where "the more something has been built upon and developed, and the more function and capability it has, the better it is" doesn't necessarily read as a positive thing at face value. But we could just as easily read it as language adapting and knocking down barriers to allow people to create connections and feel welcome in ways they were excluded from previously. Or as supporting international trade and being more efficient. Or as you've highlighted that perhaps they've altogether misunderstood the complexity of other languages by interpreting them in terms informed from their understanding of the complexity of their own native languages. Conservatives in the Burke/Tocqueville tradition (as a quick tangent, a tradition that in my view at its best is like programming aka Don't Reinvent the Wheel, Don't Rewrite from Scratch, Refactor Respectfully after Learning Why it Is How it Is, but at its worst and sadly most common comes across far more as a romanticised and overglorified appeal to return to a time of greater privilege, exploitation, and ill-gotten misused power) would probably bring in another angle arguing that if the hypothesis were true it demonstrates a decay of civilisation: that there used to be these "great" languages that we're losing/lost. I think you make the great point that there's so much subjectivity in this: that different languages can be useful in different ways without resorting to value comparisons. We could apply the same lenses to memes and/or emojis: some argue they're a sign everyone is getting dumber and less articulate in the Idiocracy tradition, while others argue they're exciting and creative new culture, or an expression of increased global connection, or something else altogether. Reflecting on English itself, we historically have seen a bit of both/and to the original hypothesis: a "simpler" more utility style of English that can selectively borrow on more "complex" words. The simpler English appears to have been used as much by locals who were not educated in the language of their new rulers as for any trade/migration reason, and accordingly has been heavily influenced by the older Saxon roots (an interesting outcome given oppressors, including the English, have at other times inhumanely erased the language of those they've conquered), contrasted with the French influence of upper-class conquering Normans whose words are usually considered in English more "complex" and perceived as more refined/intellectual by virtue of them being the language of power. Managementese is probably a modern incarnation of the same idea. Looking at this differently and taking the "language can be useful in different ways" point, English seems generally still more likely to lean on its Germanic roots in describing practical matters, and French roots in describing aesthetic ones. Indeed its ability to borrow on different traditions is in my view one of its great strengths. I'd probably argue the more language the merrier as long as we can all express what we want to express and understand each other, but there is probably a risk to entrenching stratification, whether it be of class or race or some other lens (i.e. everyone can speak a common English everyone understands, but the way in which it is spoken and the words selected reveal elements that can have social connotations, and those are often used by those in power as tools of status and judgement). American English seems to have some commonly explored lenses in media in which different styles of speech are heavily culturally and historically influenced and clearly reflect group membership (e.g. contrast Valley Girl English with African-American Vernacular English). We even see a similar idea across generations with slang. And then on the other hand there's the idea of "hidden transcripts" where an oppressed group inverts this model and develops and uses language and/or action (e.g. theatre, music) in a way to communicate in code without tipping off the oppressors (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_C._Scott#Domination_and_the_Arts_of_Resistance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_C._Scott#Domination_and_...). Fascinating space given how much we take it for granted!

ajuc 3y ago

> These extra structures are superfluous if you think about it If they were completely superfluous they wouldn't arise in the first place. You could argue they aren't worth it, but that's a separate argument. I'm Polish, my language has 3-5 genders (gender is a misnomer BTW, should be called "noun kinds" or "categories"), and while the complexity is hard on non-native speakers, it also allows for using lots of pronouns in shortened sentences without losing precision. If you say "book is on the table, burn it" - the "it" can mean "book" or "table". In Polish you say "book is on the table, burn her" if you want to burn the book and "book is on the table, burn him" if you want to burn the table, because book and table are different genders. You can see how useful it is by the fact English sailors often call ships "her". Not many other "hers" on the sea in the age of sail. I also think it's not an accident proto-indo-european (the language of people whose main thing was domesticating animals) had grammatical genders. It's nice to have that feature when you're mostly talking about cows and horses. Then there are other features, like regular multi-degree diminutives you can form from any noun. You ever wanted to say somebody invented "cute little abstracion" - in Polish you can create a diminutive from the noun "abstraction" if you ever need it. "Abstrakcyjka" or "abstrakcjunia" if you're curious. Same with any other noun, no matter if it makes sense or not. In English you have a word for "cute little dog" ("doggy") but not for "cute little dinosaur" or "cute little blue color", "cute little love" or "cute little death". In Polish "dinozaurek", "niebieski kolorek", "miłostka", "śmiertka". I like this feature very much, because it's pretty regular, not much overhead to learn, but it adds a lot of color and expresivity to the language. There's whole slangs where people speak only in diminutives (for example truck drivers for some reason :) ). Grammatical features like these are the best, because they are multiplicative - you have N nouns in your language, with small constant overhead you create 2xN new potential words. On the other hand there are features that provide very little to no value - usually historical baggage. Like the non-phonetic spelling in many languages. English is by far the worst here, but in Polish there's a few problems to fix as well.

programmer_dude 3y ago
Definitely not worth it.
- 3y ago