Gurdur

It is for such small strokes as these that we all live.

I wouldn't worry. At least your question is firmly on-topic and germane to the issue (pun intended).

I've known the same and similar phenomena --- and the same phenomenon in reverse for me.

Ever since learning German (staring 12 years ago), I think in a mixture of mainly English, then German, then another 2 languages as a small minority of set thoughts.

It is far easier for me to say ""Kann sein"" than "That might well be or not well be"; I prefer to say "Du kannst mich mal", rather than saying "Bugger off, you poor excuse for an incompetent aardvark";
contrawise, I still find it easier to express some things in English.
There are two questions involved here:

1) Signal transmission, and conciseness and clarity of signal

2) Emotional and cultural baggage of the signal

E.g., many immigrants here will rather swear in the to them foreign language German, and Germans will occasionally swear in Germanicized English.
Which is why I brought up the evidence from child-learning of languages.Children have no problems with SOV, SVO, etc.
Such translators are usually people who learnt the foreign languages as adults; and that makes all the difference.

Language plasticity usually decreases markedly somewhere around just before puberty, and lack of exposure to deep immersion in a language is also the great hindrance.

These days, just speaking for myself, I have no problems with SOV or OSV subordinate clauses ---- oddly, despite never having been exposed to at least OSV in my childhood (while I have been exposed to SOV and SVO).

Luiseach

Good point...

Mais, bien sur!

Yep...can't disagree with you there either.

As for the two criteria that you cite, and which are often used to judge the value of one language as compared to another - that is, 'flexibility' and 'incorporational ability' - are there any comparative studies of languages which actually demonstrate the equality of languages? Just curious...and I may have missed the link...

It would be incredibly difficult to demonstrate the superiority or inferiority of languages based on claims of greater or lesser 'flexibility' or 'incorporational ability.'

Are there other criteria (beyond flexibility, incorporational ability) that have been used in the mythologising process?

Do you think that it would be useful to draw up a list of these criteria of value?

echidna

See now for me the concise English responses would be the more common �maybe not� & �piss off, dickhead�, both quite brief & effective, in fact German is more often infamous for its verbosity. Even in text books where English & German text is placed side by side, only very rarely is the English version shorter. I might be so bold as to make the same comment for French, although not as guilty as German.

But I think people of all cultures often draw on a phrase from another language to add some flair to their words. It adds interest to what otherwise might be quite a dull statement. People often prefer to say �gesundheit� than �bless you�, simply because it sounds more interesting, it gives the words a �je ne sais quoi�.

Alternatively other cultural reasons might push language to adopt a foreign word. I�ve always found it amusing that the English adopt toilet from the French, and sometimes the French will adopt lavatory from the English. So what is the history behind the English shift in word order ? Political or pragmatic ? What thinkest thou ?

Further comments in no particular order �

I�m pretty confident that English has an unusually high number of idiomatic phrases, especially expletives. I can only draw on discussing English idioms with people of other languages as evidence & have no idea where to back it up from, but I�m yet to come across a non-English speaker who can match a list of English idioms.

I think clearly there are degrees of sophistication in language, sophistication contributing flexibility & increased means of communication. In simple terms a language which counts one, two, three, many will always be limited behind one which can deal with fractions & imaginary numbers. Similarly, increased variants of past tenses can add many subtleties to a language, subleties which add much to the understanding between two speakers.

Two languages criticised in particular for their over-simplicity & colonially patronising legacies would be Malay (bahasa) and Pidgin. Neither are very sophisticated & were implemented primarily for their simplicity to enable the rapid introduction of a national language. It may have worked well in the short-term, aiding communication & defragmenting tribal cultures, but in the long term, Pidgin in particular lacks the tenses & sentence structure to convey the detail of a more complex structure.

A secondary criticism (although not so relevant to your thread) of Pidgin, is that simply from its near-childish approximations of English words, it will perpetually be viewed as a sub-standard language by English speakers. Helicopter

oneofshibumi

Quote by phaedrus
�DOES ONE REQUIRE LANGUAGE TO 'THINK'?�

Gurdur,

With all due respect, the question was legitimate. Unfortunately, since humans grow up with other humans that speak or communicate in some type of language we would not be the appropriate species to test the hypothesis.

Many scientific disciplines treat non-linguistic creatures as thinkers, explaining their behavior in terms of their thoughts about themselves and about the environment. While arguably this type of description could be metaphorical or the projection of how human language describes behaviors, some scholars argue that under the correct conceptual framework for non-linguistic communication (derived from developmental psychologists and animal behaviorists), a positive non-linguistic thought can be used to give a precise account of the way in which human infants and non-human animal is representing the world. Of course, there are clear limits to the expressive power of non-linguistic thought.


http://www.oup-usa.org/search/jsp/do...+Without+Words

echidna

I got dragged away before I could finish. Helicopter translates as "mixmaster blong jesus" for instance. In such terms it is difficult not to view Pidgin as a parody of a language.

Hugo Holbling

Your point is clear but the comment is elliptic: ... if the user needs to deal with fractions and imaginary numbers. A language can only be considered limited if a speaker is unable to wield it as he or she would like; that is, we cannot judge on the basis that certain concepts are not expressable without a presupposition as to what ought to be expressable.

Gurdur

Certainly, the question is legitimate; I merely pointed out that it is a very deep and far-ranging question, and one which I couldn't possibly hope to answer adequately and still answer the original thread topic.

It's a good question, and one which would have to be eventually answered even when considering the perforce limited scope of the OP's intentions; and I'll eventually do that in another thread.
The question as put by Phaedrus is one I've answered in short if not in full, BTW, elsewhere; try Luisereach's thread, "The Truth About Dog-Houses" up in the Philosophy forum.

Gurdur

In English, the word "kindergarten" has been fully adopted from German, and translates out directly to "children-garden".
In such terms, it is difficult not to view English as a parody of a language.

Or, to put it another way, snobbishness cuts both ways, and snobbishness in and of itself does not constitute valid scientific or even valid aesthetic judgmental criteria.

There are also the English words:

"horde" --- from the Monglolian urdu, meaning a sub-clan

"ogre" --- from the Uigher, a people who like the Tartars and the Mongolians raided into Europe

"dunce" --- meaning someone stupid, this originally meant a scholar of Duns Scotus, and therefore someone quite pedantic

"chimpanzee" ---- adopted from a Mozambiquen Bantu language, imported through Portuguese. It literally means "little old man of the woods"

It is difficult not to regard English as a parody of a language.

But then, that goes for all natural human languages.

phaedrus

Cool, no probs....guess i misunderstood.

Thought certain basic and fundamental questions need to be answered/sorted out before moving on to politics of language.

jp

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Celsus

*bump*