4 ms·

Yes, latin crams more meaning into each word (gender, tense ect) but that doesnt make it superior, rather different. English is generally short than french, bu

Yes, latin crams more meaning into each word (gender, tense ect) but that doesnt make it superior, rather different. English is generally short than french, but french remains the more exacting and clear language for communicating specific ideas.

lgeorget 3y ago
[citation needed]?!
OtomotO 3y ago
Nitpick: it's etc for et cetera
- sandworm101 3y ago
  And sentences generally end with periods, or release from confinement.
- masswerk 3y ago
  It's "&c" – Latin ligatures are important, especially in a thread like this! ;-)
  - r0b1n 3y ago
    …
- vgalin 3y ago
  For further nitpicking: "etc." shall also end with '.' as it is the abbreviated form of "et cetera/caetera". Also, when used in an enumeration, it shall be preceded by a comma. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Et_cetera https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Et_cetera
stinos 3y ago
One could also say that French is 'rather different', not better or more clear. Let alone superior (though I do not know where that claim came from).
- anbende 3y ago
  If we’re talking about clarity I think there’s some merit to the claim. It has tense markers that English lacks which buys you information in the conjugation about tense, gender and speaker. And unlike other Latin languages you aren’t able to drop the subject and just rely on the verb to convey it which forces clarity one could argue. You get the best of both worlds for clarity though the worst of both worlds for conjugation complexity and overall verboseness. At least that’s my attempt to defend the GP’s statement.
  - School-Cotton 3y ago
    > It has tense markers that English lacks English has (at least) four constructs to talk about the past: "he went", "he was going", "he has gone", and "he used to go". All four mean something clearly different. French meanwhile only has "il allait" and "il est allé" (and, technically "il alla" though nowadays that is basically only used in writing and its meaning is not clearly distinguishable from that of "il est allé"). It's easy to find examples of distinctions made by French that English doesn't make, and vice versa. That doesn't mean that either language, overall, tends to express concepts more precisely than the other.
deleted 3y ago
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mbg721 3y ago
A side effect of that cramming is that word order doesn't affect meaning as much as in e.g. English, which makes poetry and wordplay different.
School-Cotton 3y ago
> french remains the more exacting and clear language for communicating specific ideas. /r/badlinguistics nonsense.
jeroenhd 3y ago
Reducing word count is rather useless if you end up with words that are much longer. The distinction of what a word is, is also pretty interesting to think about. When I read some old Dutch stories back in high school, I noticed the writers would glue together words that I would consider to be completely separate. The Latin word "quodsi" from the second answer is obviously a combination of "quod" and "si", two separate words, but "nimium saepe" isn't combined into "nimiumsaepe" despite Cicero often using those words together. "valedīxit" is just "vale" and "dīxit" smashed together into a single verb. The proposed "illa nimium valedīxit" (from combining both answers, to include the stressed gender of the person in question) can be interpreted literally as "she overly goodbyesaid". You can derive the same meaning from reordering the words, but it won't sound as poetic. I don't think English or French are more exacting and clear per se, I think that's more of a cultural thing for native speakers. Compare posh British English speakers to American English speakers; the exact same words can be used to either say something directly ("very interesting") or to hide complete disagreement behind a nice expression ("very interesting"). I wouldn't consider French to be any better or worse than English. It's just another language. Though, with the exception of the useless ^ here and there to indicate a missing s, French spelling matches pronunciation a lot better at least.
deleted 3y ago
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lgeorget 3y ago

[citation needed]?!

OtomotO 3y ago

Nitpick: it's etc for et cetera

sandworm101 3y ago
And sentences generally end with periods, or release from confinement.
masswerk 3y ago
It's "&c" – Latin ligatures are important, especially in a thread like this! ;-)
- r0b1n 3y ago
  …
vgalin 3y ago
For further nitpicking: "etc." shall also end with '.' as it is the abbreviated form of "et cetera/caetera". Also, when used in an enumeration, it shall be preceded by a comma. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Et_cetera https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Et_cetera

stinos 3y ago

One could also say that French is 'rather different', not better or more clear. Let alone superior (though I do not know where that claim came from).

anbende 3y ago
If we’re talking about clarity I think there’s some merit to the claim. It has tense markers that English lacks which buys you information in the conjugation about tense, gender and speaker. And unlike other Latin languages you aren’t able to drop the subject and just rely on the verb to convey it which forces clarity one could argue. You get the best of both worlds for clarity though the worst of both worlds for conjugation complexity and overall verboseness. At least that’s my attempt to defend the GP’s statement.
- School-Cotton 3y ago
  > It has tense markers that English lacks English has (at least) four constructs to talk about the past: "he went", "he was going", "he has gone", and "he used to go". All four mean something clearly different. French meanwhile only has "il allait" and "il est allé" (and, technically "il alla" though nowadays that is basically only used in writing and its meaning is not clearly distinguishable from that of "il est allé"). It's easy to find examples of distinctions made by French that English doesn't make, and vice versa. That doesn't mean that either language, overall, tends to express concepts more precisely than the other.

deleted 3y ago

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mbg721 3y ago

A side effect of that cramming is that word order doesn't affect meaning as much as in e.g. English, which makes poetry and wordplay different.

School-Cotton 3y ago

> french remains the more exacting and clear language for communicating specific ideas. /r/badlinguistics nonsense.

jeroenhd 3y ago

Reducing word count is rather useless if you end up with words that are much longer. The distinction of what a word is, is also pretty interesting to think about. When I read some old Dutch stories back in high school, I noticed the writers would glue together words that I would consider to be completely separate. The Latin word "quodsi" from the second answer is obviously a combination of "quod" and "si", two separate words, but "nimium saepe" isn't combined into "nimiumsaepe" despite Cicero often using those words together. "valedīxit" is just "vale" and "dīxit" smashed together into a single verb. The proposed "illa nimium valedīxit" (from combining both answers, to include the stressed gender of the person in question) can be interpreted literally as "she overly goodbyesaid". You can derive the same meaning from reordering the words, but it won't sound as poetic. I don't think English or French are more exacting and clear per se, I think that's more of a cultural thing for native speakers. Compare posh British English speakers to American English speakers; the exact same words can be used to either say something directly ("very interesting") or to hide complete disagreement behind a nice expression ("very interesting"). I wouldn't consider French to be any better or worse than English. It's just another language. Though, with the exception of the useless ^ here and there to indicate a missing s, French spelling matches pronunciation a lot better at least.

deleted 3y ago

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