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I was reading the Humanities RD, and I came across this comment: "As I understand it, English is a particularly good technical language (the syntax in English, like German, is primed for constructing fine details in noun phrases), while romance languages like French are better at conveying nuances of emotion. Other languages have their own strengths and weaknesses: Chinese, for instance, is a lousy language for expressing conditionality or time (it has a weak tense system that relies on the context of the discussion), but is one of the more efficient languages in terms of conventional conversation." ( source) I was wondering if any of you here could elaborate on this a bit, perhaps with some examples? At the very least, are there any online sources I could read which would explain this in a bit more detail? I am at least familiar with Spanish, so examples in that language would be most useful. I realize this is a somewhat vague question, but thanks in advance for any light you can shed on this! 68.54.4.162 ( talk) 18:25, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
English has at leastfour benefits I am aware of. It does not have a complicated declensional system. It has a large literature and is the language of the two major innovative countries of the last three centuries. It does not have a limited native phonological system requiring drastic reworkings of loanwords from western languages, as do Chinese and Japanese. And, often having native, French, Latin and Greek triplets or quadruplets in its lexicon, it has a larger working vocabulary than other languages--allowing subtler distinctions of meaning in many cases. [1]. μηδείς ( talk) 20:05, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
μηδείς, I'm not sure that the lack of a declentional system is always a drawback. My language is unique among Slavic languages for having lost its declentional system, and uses prepositional phrases where other Slavic languages would express the concept with their case systems (especially the genitive, instrumental, dative and locative cases). Usually it cannot, either, syntactically construct noun phrases like English, German and other Germanic languages do. Words are usually longer than they're in English, and often inflect, including for definiteness (nominal phrases). That makes some technical instructions stay and look rather clumsy and far less succinct and concise than their English equivalents would be; and the Bulgarian lexicon is somewhat less pliable than the English one, so newly-created technical terms sometimes look and sound too "artificial", and their meanings could be unobvious, vague or ambiguous - unless English terms enter directly, as it's been happening more and more often nowadays, but in that case they just seem "out of place" and may not make any sense to those who don't know any English (not that there are many of them). Based on my personal experience, I can’t help feeling that English is a better "technical language" than Bulgarian is. -- Theurgist ( talk) 22:47, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
(ec):::It seems that there are simultaneous tendencies to simplification and complexification in natural languages. Toddlers acquire linguistic features that second language learners sweat blood over. Zulu 14 noun classes - I reckon it depends how you learn about it. In Vietnamese there are umpteen "classifiers" for nouns. If you tell a learner they must memorise them all, then they might become discouraged. But if you say that they will encounter them in reading and soon start to use them correctly, problem solved. In Chinese, most words are two syllables, some three. Itsmejudith ( talk) 19:00, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
Wow, I didn't expect this off-hand comment to go ballistic. I'm not a monoglot (I speak at least two other languages, albeit badly, unless you also count computer languages). This is not my field, I was just commenting based on things I'd heard from fellow academics, in particular that English - like German - allows for easy noun conjunction which works well for conceptual structuring. for instance, a phrase like ' radiometric dating' would be a longer and more descriptive phrase in a language like French, where it's not conventional to crunch words together to make new words. it's not that it couldn't be done in French, obviously, but the more complex the idea being conveyed, the more that minor structural efficiency starts to tell. But as I said; not my field. I bow to any linguists in the crowd. -- Ludwigs2 04:11, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
I always though that Enlgish (and, for that matter, most Latin/Greek based European languages) are useless in terms of coming up with new words. A simple example would be that a person who knows what 'pig' and 'meat' means will have no idea what 'pork' means, whereas in other languages (such as Chinese), the word for pork is just 'pigmeat'. In terms of more technical words, look at the word 'photosynthesis'. Now, it's made up of 'photo' and 'synthesis', Greek for 'light' and 'putting together', which pretty much sums up what the noun means. But for people who don't know Greek, it means nothing. (Well, you might be able to have a vague guess since synthesis is still a word used in English today). In Chinese, however, it is literally 'light' 'together' 'effect', which, when put in context (say, plants get energy from photosynthesis) pretty much defines the term. (Then again, when it comes to Chinese, it's not exactly easy to write...) Zlqq2144 ( Talk Contribs) 02:11, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
I see the definition of "buddhi" in Wiktionary. Can you give me a sentence or two with this usage of
A transpersonal faculty of mind higher than the rational mind that might be translated as ‘intuitive intelligence’ or simply ‘higher mind’?--
Doug Coldwell
talk
22:17, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
Thanks, I resubmitted question at Humanities Desk. Thanks TammyMoet, sounds correct to me. Good answer.-- Doug Coldwell talk 11:42, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
Language desk | ||
---|---|---|
< October 14 | << Sep | October | Nov >> | October 16 > |
Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives |
---|
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages. |
I was reading the Humanities RD, and I came across this comment: "As I understand it, English is a particularly good technical language (the syntax in English, like German, is primed for constructing fine details in noun phrases), while romance languages like French are better at conveying nuances of emotion. Other languages have their own strengths and weaknesses: Chinese, for instance, is a lousy language for expressing conditionality or time (it has a weak tense system that relies on the context of the discussion), but is one of the more efficient languages in terms of conventional conversation." ( source) I was wondering if any of you here could elaborate on this a bit, perhaps with some examples? At the very least, are there any online sources I could read which would explain this in a bit more detail? I am at least familiar with Spanish, so examples in that language would be most useful. I realize this is a somewhat vague question, but thanks in advance for any light you can shed on this! 68.54.4.162 ( talk) 18:25, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
English has at leastfour benefits I am aware of. It does not have a complicated declensional system. It has a large literature and is the language of the two major innovative countries of the last three centuries. It does not have a limited native phonological system requiring drastic reworkings of loanwords from western languages, as do Chinese and Japanese. And, often having native, French, Latin and Greek triplets or quadruplets in its lexicon, it has a larger working vocabulary than other languages--allowing subtler distinctions of meaning in many cases. [1]. μηδείς ( talk) 20:05, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
μηδείς, I'm not sure that the lack of a declentional system is always a drawback. My language is unique among Slavic languages for having lost its declentional system, and uses prepositional phrases where other Slavic languages would express the concept with their case systems (especially the genitive, instrumental, dative and locative cases). Usually it cannot, either, syntactically construct noun phrases like English, German and other Germanic languages do. Words are usually longer than they're in English, and often inflect, including for definiteness (nominal phrases). That makes some technical instructions stay and look rather clumsy and far less succinct and concise than their English equivalents would be; and the Bulgarian lexicon is somewhat less pliable than the English one, so newly-created technical terms sometimes look and sound too "artificial", and their meanings could be unobvious, vague or ambiguous - unless English terms enter directly, as it's been happening more and more often nowadays, but in that case they just seem "out of place" and may not make any sense to those who don't know any English (not that there are many of them). Based on my personal experience, I can’t help feeling that English is a better "technical language" than Bulgarian is. -- Theurgist ( talk) 22:47, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
(ec):::It seems that there are simultaneous tendencies to simplification and complexification in natural languages. Toddlers acquire linguistic features that second language learners sweat blood over. Zulu 14 noun classes - I reckon it depends how you learn about it. In Vietnamese there are umpteen "classifiers" for nouns. If you tell a learner they must memorise them all, then they might become discouraged. But if you say that they will encounter them in reading and soon start to use them correctly, problem solved. In Chinese, most words are two syllables, some three. Itsmejudith ( talk) 19:00, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
Wow, I didn't expect this off-hand comment to go ballistic. I'm not a monoglot (I speak at least two other languages, albeit badly, unless you also count computer languages). This is not my field, I was just commenting based on things I'd heard from fellow academics, in particular that English - like German - allows for easy noun conjunction which works well for conceptual structuring. for instance, a phrase like ' radiometric dating' would be a longer and more descriptive phrase in a language like French, where it's not conventional to crunch words together to make new words. it's not that it couldn't be done in French, obviously, but the more complex the idea being conveyed, the more that minor structural efficiency starts to tell. But as I said; not my field. I bow to any linguists in the crowd. -- Ludwigs2 04:11, 18 October 2011 (UTC)
I always though that Enlgish (and, for that matter, most Latin/Greek based European languages) are useless in terms of coming up with new words. A simple example would be that a person who knows what 'pig' and 'meat' means will have no idea what 'pork' means, whereas in other languages (such as Chinese), the word for pork is just 'pigmeat'. In terms of more technical words, look at the word 'photosynthesis'. Now, it's made up of 'photo' and 'synthesis', Greek for 'light' and 'putting together', which pretty much sums up what the noun means. But for people who don't know Greek, it means nothing. (Well, you might be able to have a vague guess since synthesis is still a word used in English today). In Chinese, however, it is literally 'light' 'together' 'effect', which, when put in context (say, plants get energy from photosynthesis) pretty much defines the term. (Then again, when it comes to Chinese, it's not exactly easy to write...) Zlqq2144 ( Talk Contribs) 02:11, 21 October 2011 (UTC)
I see the definition of "buddhi" in Wiktionary. Can you give me a sentence or two with this usage of
A transpersonal faculty of mind higher than the rational mind that might be translated as ‘intuitive intelligence’ or simply ‘higher mind’?--
Doug Coldwell
talk
22:17, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
Thanks, I resubmitted question at Humanities Desk. Thanks TammyMoet, sounds correct to me. Good answer.-- Doug Coldwell talk 11:42, 16 October 2011 (UTC)