# Linguistics and Language



## Tristan

It seems that there are a number of people here who are knowledgeable in linguistics and other languages, so I thought would start a thread dedicated to the topic.

Although I'm only in high school, I plan on studying linguistics once I get to college. I am passionate about languages, particularly older ones, and I have currently studied Latin, Ancient Greek, Japanese, and to a small extent, Sanskrit. Latin is my primary interest and the only one I've actually taken in school.

Linguistics is a passion for me, all fields of it, from the sounds of the language to the morphology to the meaning. Even though I only fluently speak one language, I could never limit myself to listening to just one. I seek out music in other languages just so I can hear the sounds; I find many of them beautiful, even if I don't understand what's being sung.

I can pick up a linguistics book (whether it's a book on Case or a grammar of a specific language) and read it for fun 

*So: how many others are interested in linguistics and language? Anyone study it in college? What languages do you speak/study/or just plain like? *


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## Valkhafar

I am also very interested in linguistics and language since my childhood. Linguistics is a passion for me too, specially the sounds. I speak fluently English, Swedish, German and French. But in college I studied Physics.


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## Blancrocher

I envy both of you your knowledge of linguistics--my pronunciation of English occasionally makes people laugh.

Just thought I'd mention an introduction to the study of language that may be interesting to anyone--this amusing lecture by Simon Winchester from around the time he was publishing books about the OED:






I'll also mention one of my favorite anecdotes from Winchester, about James Murray (who would eventually become the primary editor of the dictionary):



> Some idea of the depth and range of his linguistic erudition may be gained from a letter of application he wrote to Thomas Watts, Keeper of Printed Books at the British Museum, in which he claimed an 'intimate acquaintance' with Italian, French, Catalan, Spanish and Latin, and 'to a lesser degree' Portuguese, Vaudois, Provençal & various dialects'. In addition, he was 'tolerably familiar' with Dutch, German and Danish. His studies of Anglo-Saxon and Mœso-Gothic had been 'much closer', he knew 'a little of the Celtic' and was at the time 'engaged with the Slavonic, having obtained a useful knowledge of the Russian'. He had 'sufficient knowledge of Hebrew & Syriac to read at sight the Old Testament and Peshito' and to a lesser degree he knew Aramaic, Arabic, Coptic and Phoenician. However, he did not get the job.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Murray_(lexicographer)

So, my advise to Tristan would be not to learn so many languages as to become unemployable! :lol:


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## brianvds

I am interested in linguistics in an informal sort of way. All the terminology the professionals use has thus far been a bit above my head, but I am always interested to see how the vocabulary of related languages are similar in some ways and different in others.


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## Crudblud

I am interested in language and linguistics but I don't have the inclination to study, and "intuitive" language learning programmes like Rosetta Stone do not seem particularly reliable. As it stands I mainly pick up bits here and there from various sources and have learned certain patterns on an intuitive basis, they are an invaluable resource for my short wordplay/nonsense pieces.


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## Winterreisender

I am also interested in languages. Since living in Germany, my German has improved enormously but I am still far from fluent. In addition, I share your enthusiasm for Latin and have studied this language quite a bit at university. 

Other than that, I have set myself the goal of one day learning Icelandic but I imagine that would be difficult given that the learning resources available are not quite as extensive as for other languages. But I do have a particular fascination for the language and culture of this country.


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## Tristan

Thanks for the responses; glad to know there are others interested.  Informal or formal, it's good to be interested in language.

I forgot to mention that one of my goals is to create my own language, something I have already started and hope to really refine in college. Tolkien of course is my inspiration for that.


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## Turangalîla

I am a native English speaker with some training in French (which I quite enjoy speaking). That is the extent of my foreign language experience.

For those of you who do not know, I am also highly involved in the field of Speech and Drama (it formerly went by the title of Elocution, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elocution). This is certainly what has led to my pedantry over grammar and diction!


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## Kivimees

As an Estonian speaker, I enjoy a degree of rarity. :lol:


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## brianvds

Kivimees said:


> As an Estonian speaker, I enjoy a degree of rarity. :lol:


Similarly, I enjoy being Afrikaans: it makes me something of an exotic beast.


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## superhorn

I've been extremely interested in languages and linguistics for many years , too . My interest in
languages was awakened by listening to complete recordings of operas way back in the LP age 
which came with the librettos and English translations along with the original .
I was able to gain familiarity with Italian, German, French , Russin and even Czech this way .
When I took German in junior and senior high school I was already pretty familiar with this language'
and it helped me a lot .


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## Jos

HI Tristan,

I did Language and literature at uni a long time ago. It's an interesting field to explore, but the courses in formal linguistics, you know; the hardcore Chomsky stuff, are incredibly abstract. Not saying that you are not smart enough  , just that it is less about learning languages but more about finding the underlying patterns, the alghoritms that constitute the phenomenon of human language. I definitely wasn't smart enough for it and became a welder instead....:lol:
Best of luck in choosing your career, there are great opportunities for formal linguists with these softwaredevelopers for searching "big data" 

Best regards,

Jos


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## Ukko

My interest in Spanish came well after my ability to learn it left. My longtime interest has been in the evolution of language, English in particular but language in general too. On the latter subject I can enthusiastically recommend this: "What Language Is", by John McWhorter. One of the blurbs on the just jacket, from Publishers Weekly: "... unearths a wealth of colorful linguistic facts, from which he distills larger principles, couching his erudition in a lucid, supple prose. The result is a fascinating romp through the ornery wonders of language."

That 'romp' is going a bit overboard, and the author's conclusions are not universally agreed upon (looks like there is no universal agreement anyway). Lots of interesting stuff though, garnered from languages spoken in places from Indonesia to Navajo-land.


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## Blancrocher

Hilltroll72 said:


> My interest in Spanish came well after my ability to learn it left. My longtime interest has been in the evolution of language, English in particular but language in general too. On the latter subject I can enthusiastically recommend this: "What Language Is", by John McWhorter.


McWhorter? Is nominative determinism among his controversial theories, by chance? :lol:

Thanks for the recommendation--I'll check it out.


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## superhorn

You should try this very interesting website for language learning and discussion :

unilang.org . Sign up to join the forum for language discussion . It's very easy ,
and I'm on it .


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## Guest

As a half Brit/Spaniard living in France co-habiting with a crazed (but not jack-booted) German and with friends and colleagues from around the globe, language is an issue I deal with everyday. And of course the interesting thing is very often the culture and 'mindset' behind the language, and I love the things that defy adequate translation from one language into another - they are quite often hilarious obstacles that are circumnavigated by paraphrase and allusion.

What really whets my appetite are claims that certain languages do not have the 'tools' for expressing concepts we (in the Occident) take for granted, such as numbers or past & present tenses. When I hear such stories I think 'Wow, how can anyone survive without these sorts of things?'

_A propos_, a few weeks ago I saw a programme (I'll give the link at the end of this post) that covered the story of a former evangelist missionary (linguist Daniel Everett) who spent 35 years or so with an isolated Amazonian tribe called the Piraha. The major part of the documentary was quite polemic in that Everett (one of a handful of westerners able to speak their tongue) claims their language is unique in that it is not 'recursive', placing him at great odds with Noam Chomsky who says recursive grammatical function is basic to all languages. What was also fascinating about the claims Everett made about the Piraha people is that they have no past or future tense, and no language for counting (1, 2, 3 etc).

Anyway, here's the link to the documentary (in French only, I'm afraid):
http://www.arte.tv/guide/fr/038373-0...hee-d-amazonie)

And here's a link to a Wikipedia article about the Piraha and their language:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirahã_language


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## HaydnBearstheClock

I live in Germany, study English/French in university to become a teacher, and my native tongue is Russian . We had to take linguistics courses as a part of our university program - I thought they were interesting, but personally preferred the literature courses.


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## Vaneyes

Thankfully, I had a Linguistics professor (US university) who was more interested in the "fun of", rather than the "correctness of" language. As I recall, formality was only present in the course's introduction and wrap-up.

The focus was English language, American dialects. The final paper was out of this world--"How would you communicate with an alien?"

This was forty years ago. I don't know if it would even be possible now, with the "changing face of America". Maybe that paper foresaw.


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## Gilberto

I picked up this and that over the years. What I really want to learn is Icelandic. I understand that I need a basic understanding to move there. Not finding many resources anywhere.


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## Ukko

Gilberto said:


> I picked up this and that over the years. What I really want to learn is Icelandic. I understand that I need a basic understanding to move there. Not finding many resources anywhere.


You probably don't need to understand it to _go there. _A student visa maybe?


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## Gilberto

Hilltroll72 said:


> You probably don't need to understand it to _go there. _A student visa maybe?


I want to MOVE there. Okay okay, I'll get a student visa and wander out in the volcano lands until they don't care what I study. Last I saw, you need a basic understanding for citizenship.


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## mamascarlatti

I'm an ESOL teacher so I deal with linguistic issues every day, and as part of my PD I did a Masters in Applied linguistics at Macquarie University in Sydney, but I enjoy more the sort of informal learning I do from books, magazines and online seminars (usually to prepare a workshop of my own for trainee teachers).

I grew up in France and Switzerland so have been bilingual in French and English from an early age (although my French only gets rare airings in New Zealand). This made it easier for me to learn Italian when I lived there, and I have some Spanish and Greek. I used to love learning European languages but there is less incentive to do so in largely monolingual NZ. Maori nearly died out in the 50s and 60s, and has not really recovered since, there are hardly any native speakers these days although a lot of effort is put into reviving it. But there are certainly words in Maori like aroha, mana, whanau, whakapapa, which have associations and connotations that a direct translation into English would not capture


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## Tristan

Vaneyes said:


> Thankfully, I had a Linguistics professor (US university) who was more interested in the "fun of", rather than the "correctness of" language. As I recall, formality was only present in the course's introduction and wrap-up.


Oh yes; descriptive linguistics should be about how people _do_ talk, now how they _should_ talk.


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## Weston

I don't know if it is linguisticss exactly, but I am fascinated by language history. I'vee been listening to The Historry of English podcast. I don't have a way of copying a link at the moment. but it is easy to find. It traces the history of English and other Indo-European languages all the way back to the Hittites who used wrods very familiar to all of us.. I sends chills of wonder up my spine.


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## SiegendesLicht

superhorn said:


> You should try this very interesting website for language learning and discussion :
> 
> unilang.org . Sign up to join the forum for language discussion . It's very easy ,
> and I'm on it .


There is also a very good website for language students callled SharedTalk, http://www.sharedtalk.com/ where you can find people to chat with practically in any language.


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## mstar

I speak Arabic along with some other languages. (Ana ba7ke 3arabe wa kaman lo5at tanye....)


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## SiegendesLicht

One of my personal heroes is J.R.R. Tolkien, who was an Oxford professor of philology, familiar with a lot of languages, including all main European ones and a lot of dead ones, and yes, I have a great interest in language learning as well. My native language is Russian, I also speak English (quite well, I hope) and German (not as fluently, but well enough for my job, and I keep working on it). I also have plans, for some future time in my life, to learn Swedish, Dutch, at least some Finnish (its grammar is known to be extremely complicated, but the look and sound are absolutely fascinating), and possibly Italian. It's just that at the moment I am so completely enamored with all things German, the language first and foremost (and the music second and close behind!) that I cannot get on with learning anything else.



Tristan said:


> Linguistics is a passion for me, all fields of it, from the sounds of the language to the morphology to the meaning. Even though I only fluently speak one language, I could never limit myself to listening to just one. I seek out music in other languages just so I can hear the sounds; I find many of them beautiful, even if I don't understand what's being sung.


I know exactly what you mean, I find the sound of some languages to be music all by itself. And when it is put over some good actual music: German over Wagner or Haydn, or Finnish over Sibelius, they mutually enhance each other to even greater beauty.


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## Tristan

SiegendesLicht said:


> I know exactly what you mean, _I find the sound of some languages to be music all by itself_. And when it is put over some good actual music: German over Wagner or Haydn, or Finnish over Sibelius, they mutually enhance each other to even greater beauty.


I know what you mean. The first time I heard Latvian, being sung in a pop song, even though the song was somewhat generic (although pretty in its own way), it was the sound of the Latvian itself that I was listening to more and the sound was so beautiful in some spots that it moved me.


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## Cheyenne

SiegendesLicht said:


> Swedish, *Dutch*, at least some Finnish (its grammar is known to be extremely complicated, but the look and sound are absolutely fascinating), and possibly Italian.


Dutch is a terrible language. It has almost as many exceptions and ridiculous extra rules as French, which, moreover, constantly change; it sounds and looks ugly, and every prose-style is a mess, even from the greatest of authors; there is no interesting literature at all: J.M. Coetzee, who can speak the language, felt it necessary only to translate a mediocre novel by the name of A Posthumous Confessions, while stating in the foreword that it came from a second-rate thinker; and translations of nearly everything important are populous in museums and so forth. There is no reason to learn it, and frankly I detest the language. Don't waste your time, even if it's close to German.

I want to learn Russian, Greek, Latin and Italian, all for what I hope is an obvious reason. Perfecting my French and German should also come up sometime; I can already speak English and Dutch fluently.


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## Winterreisender

Gilberto said:


> I picked up this and that over the years. What I really want to learn is Icelandic. I understand that I need a basic understanding to move there. Not finding many resources anywhere.


I am also learning Icelandic, or at least trying to. The resources I am using are this book http://www.amazon.co.uk/Colloquial-...UTF8&qid=1382345519&sr=8-2&keywords=icelandic and this online course http://icelandiconline.is/

I find this language very difficult to learn because it hasn't changed much in the last 1000 years and therefore, like many ancient languages, is very highly inflected. But I'm sure it is worth the effort and I too hope to spend some time living (or studying) in the country.


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## SiegendesLicht

Cheyenne said:


> Dutch is a terrible language. It has almost as many exceptions and ridiculous extra rules as French, which, moreover, constantly change; it sounds and looks ugly, and every prose-style is a mess, even from the greatest of authors; there is no interesting literature at all: J.M. Coetzee, who can speak the language, felt it necessary only to translate a mediocre novel by the name of A Posthumous Confessions, while stating in the foreword that it came from a second-rate thinker; and translations of nearly everything important are populous in museums and so forth. There is no reason to learn it, and frankly I detest the language. Don't waste your time, even if it's close to German.


Just curious, are you not Dutch by any chance?


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## Cheyenne

Yes. But there's little reason to learn it, even if you do find it pleasing, for whatever reason.


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## SiegendesLicht

Cheyenne said:


> Yes. But there's little reason to learn it, even if you do find it pleasing, for whatever reason.


I believe you, it's just that it is usually native speakers who have a depreciating attitude about their language.


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## aleazk

lol, Cheyenne's rant was rather funny.

------------------------------------------

For my career, I only need English. So, English will always be my priority.
I studied some French in high school. I would like to improve my French.
I really like the sound of German, and I would like to learn it someday.
I'm not very interested in the ethnical/cultural/historical/etc. aspect of languages.


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## SiegendesLicht

Tristan said:


> I know what you mean. The first time I heard Latvian, being sung in a pop song, even though the song was somewhat generic (although pretty in its own way), it was the sound of the Latvian itself that I was listening to more and the sound was so beautiful in some spots that it moved me.


There was a time, before I discovered Real German Music, when I would listen to the kind of mediocre pop that I otherwise wouldn't give a moment's attention to, for the only reason that it was in German. I even listened to rap sometimes 

And I remember an almost heart-breaking feeling of happiness, waking up in a hotel room on the island of Sylt and listening, still half-asleep, to my roommates' conversation. This room, this island, the sun rising over the hills, the wild roses covering them, the eternal sea, invisible from where I was, but still near, and the quiet melody of those two young German voices - this whole scene was heaven (or Valhalla, if you please), one of those moments that you wish could last forever.


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## Cheyenne

SiegendesLicht said:


> I believe you, it's just that it is usually native speakers who have a depreciating attitude about their language.


Ah, yes, but one does not have to go to natives to realize the literary canon is awful. Even my Dutch teachers admit they'd rather be reading other languages, and I even translate English essays into Dutch manually because it's easier and gets better results, though the Dutch vocabulary is irritatingly tiny. I'm absolutely sick of having to read bad Dutch literature when I could be reading so many other things. It reminds me of Shaw's statement in his Treatise on Parents and Children:

_With the world's bookshelves loaded with fascinating and inspired books, the very manna sent down from Heaven to feed your souls, you are forced to read a hideous imposture called a school book, written by a man who cannot write: a book from which no human being can learn anything: a book which, though you may decipher it, you cannot in any fruitful sense read, though the enforced attempt will make you loathe the sight of a book all the rest of your life._​
Maybe Dutch authors could write a decent book, but they certainly chose the wrong language for it. We may have excelled (and past tense is here very much appropriate) in the visual arts, and once have been home to both Spinoza and Descartes, but that time is long gone, and Spinoza was wise to write his best works in Latin.


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## brianvds

Cheyenne said:


> It reminds me of Shaw's statement in his Treatise on Parents and Children:
> 
> _With the world's bookshelves loaded with fascinating and inspired books, the very manna sent down from Heaven to feed your souls, you are forced to read a hideous imposture called a school book, written by a man who cannot write: a book from which no human being can learn anything: a book which, though you may decipher it, you cannot in any fruitful sense read, though the enforced attempt will make you loathe the sight of a book all the rest of your life._​


I tend to agree - for some reason, there seems to be a powerful belief that school books should at all costs be boring. I cannot for the life of me understand why; a lot of the school curriculum covers stuff that is absolutely fascinating. It surely takes quite a bit of effort to somehow make it boring.

In the meantime, superb non-fiction books are written for children; why not just use some of them as textbooks, I wonder.



> Maybe Dutch authors could write a decent book, but they certainly chose the wrong language for it. We may have excelled (and past tense is here very much appropriate) in the visual arts, and once have been home to both Spinoza and Descartes, but that time is long gone, and Spinoza was wise to write his best works in Latin.


When I was in high school, we had to read some Dutch books as part of our Afrikaans home language course. Thankfully, we did not have to learn Dutch grammar or write in Dutch (Dutch grammar is an absolute nightmare :lol, but we did have to read through the books and be able to answer questions about them.

I enjoyed some of them, notably _Koning van Katoren_, which is apparently something of a classic. Don't know if they still do this in school here.


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## Kivimees

SiegendesLicht said:


> I believe you, it's just that it is usually native speakers who have a depreciating attitude about their language.


I just love Estonian.

How can one not love a language that contains such beautiful words, e.g. jäääär, kuuuurija, õueaiaäär, etc.? :lol:


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## Cheyenne

brianvds said:


> I tend to agree - for some reason, there seems to be a powerful belief that school books should at all costs be boring. I cannot for the life of me understand why; a lot of the school curriculum covers stuff that is absolutely fascinating. It surely takes quite a bit of effort to somehow make it boring.


Also, they are all written in very simple language. They always use very short sentences. So that the children won't be confused. There is no style to them. No more than ten words per sentence are used. Otherwise it's too difficult to understand. Why not connect the sentences? Blasphemous!

It's hurting people's will to learn. No wonder I despised reading for so long!



brianvds said:


> In the meantime, superb non-fiction books are written for children; why not just use some of them as textbooks, I wonder.


Yes! I read essays all the time, but everybody hates the horrible ones we're given to study in English class - usually a minor one taken from the Guardian or Telegraph or similar newspaper. If I had been introduced to Hazlitt and Johnson as essayist, instead of those sorts of things, I would have enjoyed reading much sooner! And so many kids are reading Dawkin's books on biology, but when they go into biology class, they encounter only a textual lullaby.



brianvds said:


> When I was in high school, we had to read some Dutch books as part of our Afrikaans home language course. Thankfully, we did not have to learn Dutch grammar or write in Dutch (Dutch grammar is an absolute nightmare :lol, but we did have to read through the books and be able to answer questions about them.
> 
> I enjoyed some of them, notably _Koning van Katoren_, which is apparently something of a classic. Don't know if they still do this in school here.


Yeah, people are still reading it all the time. We're never forced to read any book, but we have to pick something somewhat 'literary': inevitably we end up with the same canonical authors - 25 or so, of which only 10 are often read.


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## PetrB

SiegendesLicht said:


> I believe you, it's just that it is usually native speakers who have a depreciating attitude about their language.


The Dutch are almost entirely pragmatic in all things  This includes comments on their own language, "It sounds more like a throat disease than a language," being just one Dutch saying.

They also routinely urge long-term foreign guests or residents to not learn it, saying, "Why learn it? Where else can you use it?"

It is a mouthful, silly with dipthongs, and not exactly a pretty language to sing in, which the Dutch also readily acknowledge.

~ an aside: It may startle native English speakers to know that for many another language, there is no such thing as a Thesaurus, the fact of English having such a staggering amount of different words compared to many another language.


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## Mahlerian

I speak English at a native level. I can speak and read Japanese at a high enough level to understand newspapers and novels, although my listening and writing are not quite as good as they should be. I have a basic knowledge of German as well.


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## jurianbai

that's cool, Japanese maybe one of most difficult language to learn. 

Btw, I curious to know how the member of TC opinion about mandarin? anybody else learning, speaking or even native? I can speak on street level, but only read 20% of the characters... which is not good enough to even understand a newspaper.


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## superhorn

LIke Japanese, written Mandarin or any Chinese dialect is very dificult , but the grammar is very simple
compared to most other languages . One difficulty is that it is a tone language , where words pronounced the same
way can have completely different meanings bsed on intonation . Words tend to be monosyllabes .
For example, Ma can mean either "mother", "horse", "hemp" or the verb to scold based on highness or
lowness of pitch . So if you don't use the right intonation and try to introduce someone to your mother , you'll be
introducing your horse to that person !


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## Mahlerian

superhorn said:


> LIke Japanese, written Mandarin or any Chinese dialect is very dificult , but the grammar is very simple
> compared to most other languages . One difficulty is that it is a tone language , where words pronounced the same
> way can have completely different meanings bsed on intonation . Words tend to be monosyllabes .
> For example, Ma can mean either "mother", "horse", "hemp" or the verb to scold based on highness or
> lowness of pitch . So if you don't use the right intonation and try to introduce someone to your mother , you'll be
> introducing your horse to that person !


Japanese doesn't have that hurdle, but the written language is in some ways even more confusing than Chinese, because of the way it came about. Each character has multiple pronunciations, which are often context specific, and some of which are entirely arbitrary.

The grammar is also practically the inversion of English.


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## Tristan

Yes, that is annoying about Japanese. In Chinese, each character has one pronunciation all the time, but Japanese characters could have many different pronunciations, sometimes up to 4 or so syllables in one character. And then you'd have things like 今日 where you can't even separate the pronunciations of the characters >.<


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## Mahlerian

Tristan said:


> Yes, that is annoying about Japanese. In Chinese, each character has one pronunciation all the time, but Japanese characters could have many different pronunciations, sometimes up to 4 or so syllables in one character. And then you'd have things like 今日 where you can't even separate the pronunciations of the characters >.<


There are worse examples than that, like Tanabata, the star festival:七夕. The two characters here mean seven and night, but since Tanabata happens (traditionally) on the seventh night of the seventh month, they decided to stick those characters and that word together...


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## Tristan

Just some linguistics-related fun that I read about recently:

_Doublets_ are words that come from the same root but developed into separate words with separate meanings. Examples in English include:

pyre/fire - both from a root meaning "fire"
wine/vine - both ultimately from a root meaning "wine"
frail/fragile - both from Latin "fragilis"
overture/aperture - both from a root meaning "opening"
skirt/shirt - both from a Germanic root meaning "apron/skirt"
host/guest - these words are opposites, yet both come from a root meaning "stranger/guest"

And the weirdest one of all: grammar/glamour - both come from a root meaning "study", but "glamour" came by way of "occult studies" and thus "magic spells".

We also get a number of parallel words from Norman and French, which include (Norman root on the left, French on the right):

warranty/guarantee
warden/guardian (ward/guard)
cattle/chattel
convey/convoy
hostel/hotel

Anyway, I just thought that was really interesting


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## Chrythes

Do you native only-English speakers tend to think about objects in terms of gender, as it would be in many languages that has grammatical gender? I am asking since I wonder if there's any innate basis to apply gender to specific objects. E.g. in Lithuanian a bridge is a "he", a bed is a "she" etc, while in English they are just "it". It appears that some musicians think about their guitar as a "she", though it might have something to do with the delicate and consistent care the instrument requires.

A bit of information - "For instance, German-speakers more often described German: Brücke, (f.) "bridge" with words like 'beautiful', 'elegant', 'fragile', 'peaceful', 'pretty', and 'slender', whereas Spanish-speakers, which use puente (m.) used terms like 'big', 'dangerous', 'long', 'strong', 'sturdy', and 'towering'."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_gender

It's pretty interesting, since it appears that certain objects invoke certain feelings depending on their gender. Maybe the manner in which objects are treated with has actually a lot to do with language itself.


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## Kivimees

To look at the other extreme, Estonian uses the same word for "he" and "she", we're all "tema".


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## mirepoix

I spent five years living and working in Russia. When I arrived I didn't speak one word of Russian and due to me *not being academically gifted it was difficult for me to learn. However with the patience of my then partner (and her dear mother) I learned to speak and take part in conversations quite comfortably.
After all that ended I met a French woman. For those two years I started to learn French, but she always preferred to speak English. I'd still like to speak French though.
Now I've been seeing someone who is half-Danish. Have you ever tried to speak Danish? The hell with that.



*I are dum.


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## Freischutz

Chrythes said:


> Do you native only-English speakers tend to think about objects in terms of gender, as it would be in many languages that has grammatical gender? I am asking since I wonder if there's any innate basis to apply gender to specific objects. E.g. in Lithuanian a bridge is a "he", a bed is a "she" etc, while in English they are just "it". It appears that some musicians think about their guitar as a "she", though it might have something to do with the delicate and consistent care the instrument requires.
> 
> A bit of information - "For instance, German-speakers more often described German: Brücke, (f.) "bridge" with words like 'beautiful', 'elegant', 'fragile', 'peaceful', 'pretty', and 'slender', whereas Spanish-speakers, which use puente (m.) used terms like 'big', 'dangerous', 'long', 'strong', 'sturdy', and 'towering'."
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_gender
> 
> It's pretty interesting, since it appears that certain objects invoke certain feelings depending on their gender. Maybe the manner in which objects are treated with has actually a lot to do with language itself.


Although we might presume that there's some innate feature of language in the brain that _allows_ grammatical gender to exist because you find it in so many languages, it isn't _so_ fundamental that the idea of gender exists even in languages that don't use it. In English, we certainly don't conceive of objects as having gender, and it is always slightly new and strange to young students when learning foreign languages that they should have such a remarkable approach to labelling nouns when it seems to us that there is nothing masculine, feminine or neuter about any of these things!

In the case of referring to instruments (or cars or other prized possessions) as "she", these are rare exceptions and are only metaphors - the point is that the object itself is fragile and delicate (and other sexist connotations) like a woman, but this has nothing to do with our idea of the grammar or the word.

I can't think of any good examples right now, but I'm also sure there are some languages that label some words as masculine or feminine that you would really expect to be the other way round based on cultural associations - a fake example just to make my point would be having "beard" as feminine, but I can't think of any actual ones at the moment because they've slipped my mind. In any case, this phenomenon shows that grammatical gender is not always (if ever) assigned on the basis of us perceiving biologically gendered qualities in the objects we're describing.


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## SiegendesLicht

Freischutz said:


> I can't think of any good examples right now, but I'm also sure there are some languages that label some words as masculine or feminine that you would really expect to be the other way round based on cultural associations - a fake example just to make my point would be having "beard" as feminine...


In Russian beard is feminine indeed.


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## Chrythes

> Although we might presume that there's some innate feature of language in the brain that allows grammatical gender to exist because you find it in so many languages, it isn't so fundamental that the idea of gender exists even in languages that don't use it. In English, we certainly don't conceive of objects as having gender, and it is always slightly new and strange to young students when learning foreign languages that they should have such a remarkable approach to labelling nouns when it seems to us that there is nothing masculine, feminine or neuter about any of these things!
> 
> In the case of referring to instruments (or cars or other prized possessions) as "she", these are rare exceptions and are only metaphors - the point is that the object itself is fragile and delicate (and other sexist connotations) like a woman, but this has nothing to do with our idea of the grammar or the word.
> 
> I can't think of any good examples right now, but I'm also sure there are some languages that label some words as masculine or feminine that you would really expect to be the other way round based on cultural associations - a fake example just to make my point would be having "beard" as feminine, but I can't think of any actual ones at the moment because they've slipped my mind. In any case, this phenomenon shows that grammatical gender is not always (if ever) assigned on the basis of us perceiving biologically gendered qualities in the objects we're describing.


True. I should have highlighted that the example of the bridge and the guitar are both culturally determined modes of perception, thought they both differ. In the bridge example the perception of the object is generated by the language itself, while the latter is a construct of gender perception. Can it be assumed that the presence of grammatical gender in language provide a collective mode of how certain objects (or even ideas, e.g. "health" is feminine in Lithuanian) are supposed to be treated in a given society? And a very farfetched assumption, but do cultures with languages that do not have grammatical gender tend to be more of an individualistic nature?

By the way, beard in Lithuanian is feminine as well.


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## Freischutz

Chrythes said:


> Can it be assumed that the presence of grammatical gender in language provide a collective mode of how certain objects (or even ideas, e.g. "health" is feminine in Lithuanian) are supposed to be treated in a given society?


I don't know all that much about this particular area myself, but in case you haven't heard of it before, you may be interested in the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, which is a very famous idea in linguistics that the form of your language can limit or influence the way you think and behave. It's unresolved how much language really influences these things, but there are some really cool examples like colour perception being affected.

I don't have any data myself, but if it's true as you said earlier that people are more inclined to describe things like bridges in different ways depending on whether their language labels them as masculine or feminine, then it makes perfect sense to say that the language can influence the way we view such things (although this will also be combined with our stereotypes of the genders). However, the scope of this influence is probably quite small and would not extend to other suggestions like cultures being more individualistic because of language. If you take any European country, we've all had our phases of fascism and socialism, monarchy and revolution, collectivism and individualism, and these are all formed by a constant dialogue about political ideology while the language stays pretty much the same and has no influence on the way that we perceive ourselves or other people.


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## schuberkovich

What was really interesting for me was taking a Japanese exam last year. I am half English half Japanese and grew up speaking both but since I live in England I have naturally let my Japanese skills dwindle. I can speak fairly fluently but there's no way in hell that I would be able to read novels or newspapers - I don't have the sufficient vocabulary knowledge.

Anyway, I was taking this Japanese exam and I was looking through some grammar - and none of it made any sense. I realised that I could only get by with Japanese based on a feeling and intuition for the language (stemming from a childhood of speaking it). I can't imagine how difficult it is for a new speaker to get used to it.


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## Mahlerian

schuberkovich said:


> I can't imagine how difficult it is for a new speaker to get used to it.


English and Japanese are very different languages. I can read newspapers and novels (though sometimes I might want a dictionary handy), but it took me a while to get to this level, and I've had to keep it up.


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## schuberkovich

Mahlerian said:


> English and Japanese are very different languages. I can read newspapers and novels (though sometimes I might want a dictionary handy), but it took me a while to get to this level, and I've had to keep it up.


So I take it you had no early exposure to Japanese. I'm curious: what prompted you to learn Japanese specifically to such a high level?


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## Mahlerian

schuberkovich said:


> So I take it you had no early exposure to Japanese. I'm curious: what prompted you to learn Japanese specifically to such a high level?


Never spoke a word before college, really. I spent some time over there as a student, and I found that I loved learning the language and the culture.


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## Morimur

I speak only Spanish and English (obviously), so I am not anything special.


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## Morimur

Mahlerian said:


> Never spoke a word before college, really. I spent some time over there as a student, and I found that I loved learning the language and the culture.


I've had a passion for Japanese culture and art ever since I saw some disgustingly violent Ukiyo-e prints as a child. Needless to say, I am a ravenous fan of traditional Japanese classical music and my passion for it is only second to European/Western Art music. Indian Classical (Carnatic and Hindustani) is a relatively close third.


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## aleazk

I always felt an outsider in the culture (this term used in a broad sense here) of my own country and language. But I feel an outsider in many/most things, lol.


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## Tristan

One thing I wonder about in regard to gender is languages where names are clearly gendered and marked as either "feminine" or "masculine" and how easy it is to cross those lines.

In English, it's easy for a name that is traditionally associated with one gender to be used by the other and create a whole swath of "gender neutral names". Like my name, for example. "Tristan" is traditionally a man's name, but it's now "trendy" to name your daughter "Tristan". But that wouldn't work well in a language like Italian where names are clearly marked for gender (usually by -a in the feminine and -o in the masculine).

I bet it is very difficult to have gender neutral names in languages with grammatical gender marking, unlike in English where gender marking on names is purely tradition and history and can easily be changed.


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## Taggart

Plus you end up with some oddities. La Presidenta used to mean the president's wife, until we got female presidents. La Policia is the police force and el policia is a police man so what *do* you call a police woman? Don't forget many gender based languages also have a neuter gender e.g. Latin; German has four third-person nominative singular pronouns - masculine, feminine, neuter and "common" although since that is _man_ it is not seen as totally neutral. Latin has a similar problem.


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## lupinix

I believe I like language typology, also once in a while I feel like creating a personal language which is totally different from European languages at least in things like grammar, I never come far with making vocabularies though


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## Tristan

lupinix said:


> I believe I like language typology, also once in a while I feel like creating a personal language which is totally different from European languages at least in things like grammar, I never come far with making vocabularies though


I'm in the process of making my own language, although its grammar is strongly based on Indo-European  though the vocabulary is entirely original.


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## lupinix

Tristan said:


> I'm in the process of making my own language, although its grammar is strongly based on Indo-European  though the vocabulary is entirely original.


haha sounds like we should work together!


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## Ukko

Tristan said:


> I'm in the process of making my own language, although its grammar is strongly based on Indo-European  though the vocabulary is entirely original.


Jeez, Vulcan ain't good enough?


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## aleazk

Taggart said:


> Plus you end up with some oddities. La Presidenta used to mean the president's wife, until we got female presidents. La Policia is the police force and el policia is a police man so what *do* you call a police woman? Don't forget many gender based languages also have a neuter gender e.g. Latin; German has four third-person nominative singular pronouns - masculine, feminine, neuter and "common" although since that is _man_ it is not seen as totally neutral. Latin has a similar problem.


Believe it or not, a popular option is "mujer policía", which means "woman police"...

I prefer La Presidente instead of "Presidenta"... sounds awful...nobody says "la soldada" for a soldier woman... it's "la soldado" or "la mujer soldado" (less common).


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## superhorn

Many non-european languages have no grammatical gender,such as Turkish ,which uses the same 
pronoun to mean either he,she or it . Turkish does not have separate words for brother and sister .
The word Kardesh means a brother .It literally means "womb companion ". 
Kiz Kardesh mean a girl womb companion , and is used for "sister ".


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## Blancrocher

Inspired by a recent post by Taggart, I'm reading an article called "An anatomical perspective on sublexical units: The influence of the split fovea." In case others may find it of interest:

http://web.archive.org/web/20070307073659/http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~pjm21/papers/LCP.pdf


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## Ukko

Blancrocher said:


> Inspired by a recent post by Taggart, I'm reading an article called "An anatomical perspective on sublexical units: The influence of the split fovea." In case others may find it of interest:
> 
> http://web.archive.org/web/20070307073659/http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~pjm21/papers/LCP.pdf


Hoo boy. Not a chance.


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## Taggart

Blancrocher said:


> Inspired by a recent post by Taggart, I'm reading an article called "An anatomical perspective on sublexical units: The influence of the split fovea." In case others may find it of interest:
> 
> http://web.archive.org/web/20070307073659/http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~pjm21/papers/LCP.pdf


Not this one surely - although it certainly refers to the same lexical neighbourhood - albeit the low rent area.

I must admit I wonder about the lexical credentials of somebody who spells Patrick - Padraic.


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## superhorn

Lupinix, there a terrific language website about learning languages and discussing them called
unilang.org . Some of the members are active in inventing languages, called "conlangs " or constructed languages
here . It's very easy to join and is always highly interesting .


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## shangoyal

Tristan said:


> I'm in the process of making my own language, although its grammar is strongly based on Indo-European  though the vocabulary is entirely original.


What if nobody learns it but you?


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## Tristan

shangoyal said:


> What if nobody learns it but you?


Well that wouldn't really bother me since I'm mainly doing it for myself  But I'd still have to make a comprehensive grammar so that someone else could learn it


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## SottoVoce

SiegendesLicht said:


> In Russian beard is feminine indeed.


In Latin, "virtus", which literally means "manliness" (the Latin word for man is "vir") is feminine. You _never_ forget that one. Goes to show that the masculine/feminine functions are grammatical, not literally gender-specific. However, there are some exceptions; "poeta, poetae" is suppsed to be feminine, as it ends in -a and thus is in the first declension, but writing poetry was very 'manly' back then and thus it is a masculine noun.


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## Tristan

^That is true. The gender of a noun can sometimes be influenced by the semantics even if it fits the paradigm of a specific gender--masculine nouns of the first declension are always professions that are associated with men: poet, nauta, agricola, etc.

Some others really don't seem to make sense. All nouns of the fifth declension are feminine except "dies" meaning "day". I wonder why that is...


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## Taggart

We all know that English has some odd pronunciations. Try this for size and see how you get on:

90% of people can't pronounce this whole poem.

Thanks to Ingélou for the link.


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## Couac Addict

Taggart said:


> We all know that English has some odd pronunciations. Try this for size and see how you get on:
> 
> 90% of people can't pronounce this whole poem.
> 
> Thanks to Ingélou for the link.


A great example. English is a memorised language. I mean in the sense that no rules seem to apply - you either remember how every word is pronounced, or you don't.


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## Ukko

Too bad the author couldn't restrain herself; those 'proper' names shouldn't be included.

All of the words legitimately included are in my vocabulary, and pronounced well enough - to the Northwestern New England standard.


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## Svelte Silhouette

OED for me, ROTW nil.


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## Tristan

Couac Addict said:


> A great example. English is a memorised language. I mean in the sense that no rules seem to apply - you either remember how every word is pronounced, or you don't.


The polar opposite of a language like Italian. I always used to think about that: Spelling Bees are so popular in English-speaking countries because of this memorized pronunciation of English. But would a Spelling Bee work in Italian? As long as the words were enunciated, I think almost any educated Italian could win one. The same can't be said for one in English.


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## SiegendesLicht

SottoVoce said:


> In Latin, "virtus", which literally means "manliness" (the Latin word for man is "vir") is feminine


Doesn't "virtus" also mean "moral virtue"? So it seems, the Romans equated moral virtue with manliness and manly values?



Tristan said:


> The polar opposite of a language like Italian. I always used to think about that: Spelling Bees are so popular in English-speaking countries because of this memorized pronunciation of English. But would a Spelling Bee work in Italian? As long as the words were enunciated, I think almost any educated Italian could win one. The same can't be said for one in English.


A spelling bee would not work in German either, as the spelling and pronunciation are orderly and governed by a few simple rules.


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## Ingélou

It's not true to say there aren't rules in English. It's just that there are too many to apply in a simple fashion across the board. The rule about 'magic e' and long and short vowels & double letters isn't too difficult to learn, all the same. 

Also, the rules were much more easily understood at one time, but they've been changed by time & historical incursions. Words with -ough would have had just one pronunciation in Old English - much as they have in Scots - but across the centuries those words have changed in different ways. There are doublet words too, depending on the dialect of Old or Middle English spoken. In the North, you get birk & kirk; in the south, birch & church; skip & skipper - ship & shipman. 

And there are loan words not just from Latin, Greek, French, Old Norse & Old English, but from Hindi, Arabic, Malay, you name it - an inheritance from The British Empire. 

That's why I love English - its historical parentage is printed through it as in a stick of rock.


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## Blancrocher

George Bernard Shaw tried his best to have our language improved, but sadly the lawyers prevented it after his death.



> Concerned about the vagaries of English spelling, Shaw willed a portion of his wealth (probated at £367,233 13s)[92] to fund the creation of a new phonemic alphabet for the English language.[93] However, the money available was insufficient to support the project, so it was neglected for a time. This changed when his estate began earning significant royalties from the rights to Pygmalion after My Fair Lady-the musical adapted from Pygmalion by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe-became a hit. However, the Public Trustee found the intended trust to be invalid because its intent was to serve a private interest instead of a charitable purpose, and as a non-charitable purpose trust, it could not be enforced because it failed to satisfy the beneficiary principle.[94] In the end an out-of-court settlement granted only £8600 for promoting the new alphabet, which is now called the Shavian alphabet. The National Gallery of Ireland, RADA and the British Museum all received substantial bequests.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bernard_Shaw


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## Ingélou

I don't find this sad at all! If you tidied up English, you'd be acting unfairly for people like the Scots who still pronounce it the way it's spelled. And there are words which are related - if you tidy up 'doubt' to 'dowt' or some such, you lose the link with 'indubitable'. If you get rid of the final b in bomb, you lose the connection with bombard and bombardier. And you'd lose quite a lot of the meaning and wordplay in Shakespeare, for example. (The same Shakespeare whose greatness Shaw just couldn't see!)

English hasn't had much trouble establishing itself as an international language despite Mr Shaw's efforts being rebuffed. It's not as simple as Shaw seemed to think; and to be honest, I find him more than a little arrogant in his attitudes, not just as regards language. His view of women was extremely patronising, for example.


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## Blancrocher

Ingélou said:


> and to be honest, I find him more than a little arrogant in his attitudes


At best, he's rather lovably arrogant--though at the worst, he's totally intolerable!

I'd always assumed his proposal to remedy the English language was something of a joke, by the way, though with him one can never be sure.


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## Ingélou

No, the *man's plan* was intended seriously. In his own published works, he *didn't use* the apostrophe, for example. On that score, I have a little sympathy with him. So many people just *can't seem* to get their heads round how to use it. But when we were reading 'Pygmalion' in class, it was in fact disconcerting to see the words without their apostrophes: *man s plan*; *didn t use*;*can t seem*. (It was only half a space, as I recall, but very distracting.)

To me, it does seem bigheaded to want to force your own ideas on disparate communities of English speakers. But still, Shaw's arrogance might have been better left out of it.  The trouble is, I know too much about his life from reading biographies of Ellen Terry, Annie Besant, E. Nesbit, Mrs Patrick Campbell - all women that Shaw strung along for the sheer pleasure of seeing the power that he had over them. Of course, that isn't relevant to his linguistic concerns & I should make a note to myself that unbiased posts are hard to achieve last thing at night!


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## Taggart

One of the problems is heteronyms. The poem has (at least) one with bass which changes meaning according to the stress. Quite difficult to both change the spelling and preserve the etymology. Another example is "there's a sewer in the sewer".


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## Couac Addict

Ingélou said:


> I don't find this sad at all! If you tidied up English, you'd be acting unfairly for people like the Scots who still pronounce it the way it's spelled.


Can't we just give the the Welsh some extra alphabet letters? Then they wouldn't have to go so crazy with L, F, D.


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