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It shouldn't be a big revelation to anyone that a Chinese person can communicate more efficiently in Chinese than in English, or that the same applies to other

It shouldn't be a big revelation to anyone that a Chinese person can communicate more efficiently in Chinese than in English, or that the same applies to other nationalities and native languages too.

Raphael_Amiard 18y ago
Well i think you're quite wrong to put all languages on the same level here. I mean, as programmers we know very well than some languages are closer by spirit than others, even if their syntax differ greatly. It's exactly the same thing for spoken languages. I'm french, and i learnt English, German, and a bit of Spanish. Once you learnt one, you can learn the others more easily, not only because of your mind adapting to other languages, but also because those languages share a lot, be it from a vocabulary perpective or from a grammatical one. I'm no expert in asian languages, but from my past in linguistic and ethnology, i aquired the strong belief that theses languages are different enough to really "wire" your brain differently. And you must also take into account the cultural penetration of the english/american culture into a country. Even if this penetration happenned everywhere, Western Europe has much more exposure to this culture than , say , China. The bottom line is : French people will probably never need a french StackOverflow as badly as Chinese people. The world is not flat !
- riobard 18y ago
  I'm native Chinese. I speak English quite well, and now I'm learning German. I definitely agree with you that German is much much easier to learn if one knows another Latin-based language before. I guess same is true for French or Spanish--They are just way too similar. And they share a lot of cultural background so differences seem very trivial compared to the painful transition from Chinese to English.
- shiranaihito 18y ago
  I'm Finnish myself, and have studied English, Swedish, German, Chinese, Japanese and now a bit of Korean, so I understand your point about differences between languages. It seemed to me like the point of the article was that your communication is at its most efficient/natural in your native language, instead of English for example, if it's not. I just thought it was obvious. Well i think you're quite wrong to put all languages on the same level here. Every language is someone's native language, so they're on the same level as far as that point is concerned.

It shouldn't be a big revelation to anyone that a Chinese person can communicate more efficiently in Chinese than in English, or that the same applies to other nationalities and native languages too.

Raphael_Amiard 18y ago

Well i think you're quite wrong to put all languages on the same level here. I mean, as programmers we know very well than some languages are closer by spirit than others, even if their syntax differ greatly. It's exactly the same thing for spoken languages. I'm french, and i learnt English, German, and a bit of Spanish. Once you learnt one, you can learn the others more easily, not only because of your mind adapting to other languages, but also because those languages share a lot, be it from a vocabulary perpective or from a grammatical one. I'm no expert in asian languages, but from my past in linguistic and ethnology, i aquired the strong belief that theses languages are different enough to really "wire" your brain differently. And you must also take into account the cultural penetration of the english/american culture into a country. Even if this penetration happenned everywhere, Western Europe has much more exposure to this culture than , say , China. The bottom line is : French people will probably never need a french StackOverflow as badly as Chinese people. The world is not flat !

riobard 18y ago
I'm native Chinese. I speak English quite well, and now I'm learning German. I definitely agree with you that German is much much easier to learn if one knows another Latin-based language before. I guess same is true for French or Spanish--They are just way too similar. And they share a lot of cultural background so differences seem very trivial compared to the painful transition from Chinese to English.
shiranaihito 18y ago
I'm Finnish myself, and have studied English, Swedish, German, Chinese, Japanese and now a bit of Korean, so I understand your point about differences between languages. It seemed to me like the point of the article was that your communication is at its most efficient/natural in your native language, instead of English for example, if it's not. I just thought it was obvious. Well i think you're quite wrong to put all languages on the same level here. Every language is someone's native language, so they're on the same level as far as that point is concerned.