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[mortal]

Are there certain languages better for getting a point across, or helping convey certain concepts more concisely or succinctly? Or even perhaps instances expressing emotions?
I suppose those of us that speak more than one language could attest to this.

Swearing in English seems to be big with quite a lot of people around the planet, including many living in places where English isn't the primary language.
Fuck, Shit, Asshole, Bitch, Damn, and Goddamn are all very satisfying to say tbh, and it seems even people that aren't fluent in English would agree.
The use of Hindu-Arabic numerals also appears to be popular around the world. Are there any other examples?

Why certain languages and not others? Is it mostly the result of "the right place and right time," or are some more suited for writing or speaking than others?

 

[Pagusas]

Yes

 

[Punished Miku]

Yes

I see what you did there.

 

[Grildon Tundy]

The Inuit had a dozen words for snow (with the shortest being three syllables long), but only one word for when you stub your toe on the couch

 

[Lasha]

Languages are good at different things. Mandarin's highly contextual nature and limited phonology allow a native speaker to be rude to a less educated listener while sounding polite and formal. Japanese and Korean's use of relative social distance between speakers in grammar provides a unique way to signify sarcasm or disdain through conjugation. Georgian is probably the clearest language in the planet since a sentence is clear even if the words are put into a random order because of the modification of each noun or verb and a near complete lack of pronouns. I think English probably strikes the best balance of expressiveness and succinctness.

 

[ZehDon]

I remember an article some years back that hypothesized that successful languages were successful because of their ability not to effectively communicate, but to be effectively understood. For example, English has lots of words that add easily inferable context. "Its", "is", "of", "from", etc. In fact, these words make up huge chunks of the written and spoken text. However, what they appear to also do is slow down the rate that information is communicated, making it easier for the person being communicated to to actually breakdown and process what's being communicated. It would stand to reason that some languages are therefore easier understood when written, others when spoken. Whether or not categorical differences exist - such as, communicating mathetics in English is the best or worst way vs French, for example - I'm not sure. Any reading on the topic?

 

[ShinFuYux]

Probably Esperanto.

The guy who created it used the best parts of a bunch of languages and smashed them together make one unique language.

 

[Scotty W]

Friendly reminder not to say anything good about English, because English is racist.

 

[Elder Legend]

Are there certain languages better for getting a point across, or helping convey certain concepts more concisely or succinctly? Or even perhaps instances expressing emotions?
I suppose those of us that speak more than one language could attest to this.

Swearing in English seems to be big with quite a lot of people around the planet, including many living in places where English isn't the primary language.
Fuck, Shit, Asshole, Bitch, Damn, and Goddamn are all very satisfying to say tbh, and it seems even people that aren't fluent in English would agree.
The use of Hindu-Arabic numerals also appears to be popular around the world. Are there any other examples?

Why certain languages and not others? Is it mostly the result of "the right place and right time," or are some more suited for writing or speaking than others?

While I do agree to a certain extent that cursing in english can be somewhat satasfying. What I will tell you though is that there is no other language in the world other than Russian where you have way more fun with cursing. The amount of ways and different phrases that exist in my language for insulting people or creating a a sentence with a bunch of words that mean a lot of bad things is absolutely insane. English is a complete joke if you compare it to Russian when it comes to insults.

I love it, because when I am on the road and some moron cuts me off I simply open my window, smile and say a bunch of shit in a polite manner in a language they have no clue of understanding. They look very confused, show 0 emotion and look like complete idiots. Its fantastic. It works basically in any situation, even if a server pisses me off at a resturant cause of shitty service or asks me stupid questions, like do you need a spoon? After bringing out a bowl of soup without silverware. No idiot, I don't need a spoon, I'll scoop it with my fucking nose.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

every language is the most efficient to convey information to the people who speak it natively.

 

[LordOfChaos]

The nature of the language, like English with its 7,000 distinct syllables versus the few hundred in Japanese, don't make much difference. Basque at 8 syllables per second and Vietnamese at 5 syllables per second mean the rate at which information is conveyed similar for both.

those speaking more information-dense languages speak more slowly on average.

https://www.science20.com/content/information_density_all_languages_communicate_at_the_same_rate

Despite the differences in syllables per second, information is carried at a quite similar rate across human languages. Probably an interesting neurological constraint and we're adapted to the fastest we can go while letting everyone mostly keep up.

 

[Patrick S.]

German best Language.

Compound words in German are kind of awesome, where you can basically take any word and put a hundred other words and put them at the end and it will make sense and create a completely different or seemingly unrelated word.

Thinking of other languages, I remember seeing some copypasta about the Finnish language, where one word, or variations of that word, meant like three dozen different things… what a nightmare that language must be to learn haha

 

[Rentahamster]

Japanese can be a lot more information dense per unit area in written form than English is.

 

[murmulis]

In my language there's no singular/gender neutral "they" - there are separate "masculine they" and "feminine they" and there are no "neopronouns" so certain English sentences are very hard to translate. If you translated singular "they" directly then others would think that you're talking about multiple people.

 

[Alx]

The way a language sounds can have some use, for example lion tamers use German for giving orders and English for rewards ("Sultan, Platz ! Good boy...")
Also I always wondered if the German rule of putting the verb at the end of a sentence helped having people listen until you're finished before interjecting.

But I guess a lot of the preferred usage of different languages (swearing in English, seducing in French,...) is more linked to cultural history than true properties of the language.

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

You didn’t swear if you never did it in Italian.
Like someone wrote, if they had the Pope in their country for two thousand years, even polar bears would swear.
The creativity and the possibilities are off the charts. In English you just throw a “fuck” in between words and alternate it with the local words for genitalia. The English language also spent a lot of time distorting words to pretend they weren’t insulting God.

Languages developed around local necessities and culture, so of course some are more nuanced and effective when discussing certain topics. I guess Japanese is very effective to talk about semi-divine beings existing for the sole purpose of fucking up with humanity for some reason.

 

[Patrick S.]

What’s inefficient in German is our naming scheme for numbers. It’s not “forty eight”, or “forty and eight”, but it’s “eight and forty”, which often makes it really hard to write down stuff like TeamViewer IDs or phone numbers or Bitlocker recovery keys. You need a lot of patience for that when listening to German.

 

[Kenpachii]

What’s inefficient in German is our naming scheme for numbers. It’s not “forty eight”, or “forty and eight”, but it’s “eight and forty”, which often makes it really hard to write down stuff like TeamViewer IDs or phone numbers or Bitlocker recovery keys. You need a lot of patience for that when listening to German.

Hate this shit so much, whenever i speak english then revert back to dutch, i get all confused about how to even say numbers lol. Opposite land.

 

[kruis]

What’s inefficient in German is our naming scheme for numbers. It’s not “forty eight”, or “forty and eight”, but it’s “eight and forty”, which often makes it really hard to write down stuff like TeamViewer IDs or phone numbers or Bitlocker recovery keys. You need a lot of patience for that when listening to German.

Dutch is the same in that regards. I don't think it makes much difference. When its your mother tongue, that numbering scheme will be imprinted in the core of your language system and there's no need to have "a lot of patience" when you're writing down numbers.

 

[Patrick S.]

Dutch is the same in that regards. I don't think it makes much difference. When its your mother tongue, that numbering scheme will be imprinted in the core of your language system and there's no need to have "a lot of patience" when you're writing down numbers.

I do need patience, because I’m used to the other way of writing and saying numbers. So whenever someone is giving me a long number sequence and I hear someone starting to say “ach…” my brain immediately completes it as “acht” and wants to write that down. I might have some form of brain damage, but yeah, being used to the other format for 40 years did that to me I guess…

 

[STARSBarry]

One of the things about language is that some cultures lack words for things, it's why when translating to Japanese for example you get the "closest approximation to intent" rather than a direct translation. Because most Western languages are structured completely differently and we would need to invent new words (or just takes there's) to allow for this, for example we use the French word entrepreneur because there is no equivalent, we know what the word means but we use the French because there is no direct replacement in English.

When you think in your head, what language do you think in? How do you understand the meaning of the words. There was an intresting study of deaf people who think in "sign" and gestures.

So yes it's very easy to see why some languages would get better at getting information or a message across because quite simply they have the words and meaning to get it across while others would take sentences to do so.

 

[Patrick S.]

I’m German but I actually prefer speaking Spanish, which is what I speak with my wife.

I prefer the sound, and often it’s much much more effective than German.

For example, “it fell down” is three syllables in English, in Spanish it’s “se cayó”, also three, and in German it’s “es ist runtergefallen”, which is seven syllables… so yeah, you get out what you want to say quicker in Spanish.

 

[Ar¢tos]

Probably Esperanto.

The guy who created it used the best parts of a bunch of languages and smashed them together make one unique language.

No, Esperanto totally sucks for communication, especially modern communication, Esperanto was good to make people of different native languages understand each other, but in a clumsy and often subjective way.
And it has flaws (like the pointless "da/de" taken from slavik languages and the optional allative case).
New words in Esperanto are created by gluing together words and prefixes/suffixes, meaning someone from a country can create a word meaning something that someone from another country with a different culture won't understand because of different ways of thinking.

Esperanto was a good idea 100 years ago, when there was no internet and tons of TV channels, nowadays it was replaced by English. English as a foreign language is only a tad more complex than Esperanto but that is easily compensated by the constant presence of the language in media.

 

[Tams]

One of the things about language is that some cultures lack words for things, it's why when translating to Japanese for example you get the "closest approximation to intent" rather than a direct translation. Because most Western languages are structured completely differently and we would need to invent new words (or just takes there's) to allow for this, for example we use the French word entrepreneur because there is no equivalent, we know what the word means but we use the French because there is no direct replacement in English.

There are more words in the English language than in Japanese though. Far more.

And while some is translation style, when reading/watching English language media with Japanese translations, the Japanese is often a lot simpler and lacking in detail.

For instance, I was watching Mad Max: Fury Road. There was a scene with a car coming. In English it's, 'Look, the War Rig is coming!' which the Japanese subtitles had as 'Look, a car!'

 

[Clear]

Mathematics is the most efficient and universal human language.

 

[Scotty W]

You didn’t swear if you never did it in Italian.
Like someone wrote, if they had the Pope in their country for two thousand years, even polar bears would swear.
The creativity and the possibilities are off the charts.

 

[mortal]

every language is the most efficient to convey information to the people who speak it natively.

I suppose that's true. You use what you know, etc.

I am curious as to why certain languages, or even aspects of a language, are more adopted than others. Some languages become widely used, and some die out.

 

[Scotty W]

I suppose that's true. You use what you know, etc.

I am curious as to why certain languages, or even aspects of a language, are more adopted than others. Some languages become widely used, and some die out.

Check out this book. It is a very readable answer to your question.

Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World: Ostler, Nicholas: 9780060935726: Amazon.com: Books

Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World [Ostler, Nicholas] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World

www.amazon.com

 

[Ar¢tos]

every language is the most efficient to convey information to the people who speak it natively.

Not always. Some concepts that exist in English are hard to explain in Portuguese, for example (mainly because we lack words for them).

 

[mortal]

Check out this book. It is a very readable answer to your question.

Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World: Ostler, Nicholas: 9780060935726: Amazon.com: Books

Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World [Ostler, Nicholas] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World

www.amazon.com

Thank you! I'll be checking this out.

 

[ÆMNE22A!C]

Hieroglyphs

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

I suppose that's true. You use what you know, etc.

I am curious as to why certain languages, or even aspects of a language, are more adopted than others. Some languages become widely used, and some die out.

well, I think English and Spanish are the most spoken languages around the world (excluding Chinese and Hindi -because of population).

what i mean is. English because of how dominant United Kingdom/States have been through History. (colonization, industry)

Spanish, basically 2/3 of the American continent speak it. (colonization, immigration) strongly tied to United states and very close resembles to Italian, Portuguese.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

Not always. Some concepts that exist in English are hard to explain in Portuguese, for example (mainly because we lack words for them).

natively.

 

[Mistake]

This reminds me of dubs. A lot of times English shows will try to lip sync to characters when dubbing, but when I saw a chinese dub for an English show, they were talking a mile a minute

 

[lukilladog]

I’m German but I actually prefer speaking Spanish, which is what I speak with my wife.

I prefer the sound, and often it’s much much more effective than German.

For example, “it fell down” is three syllables in English, in Spanish it’s “se cayó”, also three, and in German it’s “es ist runtergefallen”, which is seven syllables… so yeah, you get out what you want to say quicker in Spanish.

I hope you are not Kristoff from Berlin lol.

 

[ÆMNE22A!C]

Dutch is best though.

 

[Scotty W]

Dutch is best though.

You ain’t much if you ain’t Dutch.

 

[Patrick S.]

Dutch is best though.

Dutch sounds like me when I have a cold and I’m getting rid of my phlegm after waking up tho…

 

[ReBurn]

Mathematics is the most efficient and universal human language.

How do you talk about ass cancer with your buddies using math?

 

[H4ze]

Yes of course. For example, I think English is a really funny language and often pretty efficient, shorter sentences etc.

But I would always prefer German to talk about things in detail, or to describe the beauty of something, art in general or just for cursing, to name a few. God I love German.

 

[Clear]

How do you talk about ass cancer with your buddies using math?

How do you work out how much medication to take to treat your ass cancer?

 

[Patrick S.]

How do you work out how much medication to take to treat your ass cancer?

„A leeeetle more of them magic drops“

 

[ÆMNE22A!C]

You ain’t much if you ain’t Dutch.

Damn straight

Dutch sounds like me when I have a cold and I’m getting rid of my phlegm after waking up tho…

It's true though. Fleming Dutch though.... Rawwrr

 

[ÆMNE22A!C]

How do you talk about ass cancer with your buddies using math?

Hey buds i have ass cancer let me tell you all about it

 

[Ar¢tos]

natively.

Sadly, even natively, because we can understand the concepts, but we don't have words for them. The Portuguese language is very strict and new words are added very slowly and need to respect the language rules regarding letters used and endings.
Not like English, where anything goes (like "Octopus" , a Greek loanword to Latin, that follows Greek rules for plural, so the proper plural is "Octopuses", but because people kept saying "Octupi", they just made both valid in English, instead of correcting people).
For example, many years ago I read a book written by a Portuguese neuroscientist about self awareness (it's an universal concept, but there is no direct word for it in Portuguese), he lives in America and published the book there first with the title "self comes to mind" (impossible to translate literally to Portuguese), when the book was translated much later into Portuguese the new title was "the feeling of self" and in the preface he described the struggle he and the translator had to write it without using English words and how they failed, because in the end, an English word had to be used twice, since there is no equivalent in Portuguese, can only be described into a sentence with examples of situations (the meaning/description was in a footnote in the page the word was used).

And I see (hear) everyday, people talking in Portuguese and every now and then an English word is used, mainly when taking about tech, because there are no equivalent words in Portuguese, or the accepted Portuguese way of saying it is very long.

 

[ÆMNE22A!C]

In any case I detest the language of emojis.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

Sadly, even natively, because we can understand the concepts, but we don't have words for them. The Portuguese language is very strict and new words are added very slowly and need to respect the language rules regarding letters used and endings.
Not like English, where anything goes (like "Octopus" , a Greek loanword to Latin, that follows Greek rules for plural, so the proper plural is "Octopuses", but because people kept saying "Octupi", they just made both valid in English, instead of correcting people).
For example, many years ago I read a book written by a Portuguese neuroscientist about self awareness (it's an universal concept, but there is no direct word for it in Portuguese), he lives in America and published the book there first with the title "self comes to mind" (impossible to translate literally to Portuguese), when the book was translated much later into Portuguese the new title was "the feeling of self" and in the preface he described the struggle he and the translator had to write it without using English words and how they failed, because in the end, an English word had to be used twice, since there is no equivalent in Portuguese, can only be described into a sentence with examples of situations (the meaning/description was in a footnote in the page the word was used).

And I see (hear) everyday, people talking in Portuguese and every now and then an English word is used, mainly when taking about tech, because there are no equivalent words in Portuguese, or the accepted Portuguese way of saying it is very long.

yeah. but this happens in every language; imagine Kanji that could mean entire concepts rather than just words.

the think that you described at the end I have heard that in Japanese as well (where they have to use and English words because it doesn't exist in their language)

but also there is the creation of entire new vocabulary adopting "foreing concepts"

English:
PC = Personal Computer
Japanese:
pasacon.

Now. regarding Portuguese....ok, there is kind of a joke or something that Brazilian journalists (at least in the videogame industry) are obsessed with asking if a game is going to be translated to Portuguese. (that they even ask this question in innapropiete times).

I wonder if there is some kind of cultutal idiosyncratic way of lookint at your native language (maybe more protective or pure).















.

 

[Ar¢tos]

yeah. but this happens in every language; imagine Kanji that could mean entire concepts rather than just words.

the think that you described at the end I have heard that in Japanese as well (where they have to use and English words because it doesn't exist in their language)

but also there is the creation of entire new vocabulary adopting "foreing concepts"

English:
PC = Personal Computer
Japanese:
pasacon.

Now. regarding Portuguese....ok, there is kind of a joke or something that Brazilian journalists (at least in the videogame industry) are obsessed with asking if a game is going to be translated to Portuguese. (that they even ask this question in innapropiete times).

I wonder if there is some kind of cultutal idiosyncratic way of lookint at your native language (maybe more protective or pure).















.

Brazilians have more difficulty learning other languages than the Portuguese, so I don't find that surprising.

 

[Grildon Tundy]

While I do agree to a certain extent that cursing in english can be somewhat satasfying. What I will tell you though is that there is no other language in the world other than Russian where you have way more fun with cursing. The amount of ways and different phrases that exist in my language for insulting people or creating a a sentence with a bunch of words that mean a lot of bad things is absolutely insane. English is a complete joke if you compare it to Russian when it comes to insults.

I love it, because when I am on the road and some moron cuts me off I simply open my window, smile and say a bunch of shit in a polite manner in a language they have no clue of understanding. They look very confused, show 0 emotion and look like complete idiots. Its fantastic. It works basically in any situation, even if a server pisses me off at a resturant cause of shitty service or asks me stupid questions, like do you need a spoon? After bringing out a bowl of soup without silverware. No idiot, I don't need a spoon, I'll scoop it with my fucking nose.

I'll have to take your word for it, as I don't speak Russian. I do, however, speak English and have never felt limited by the volume and variation of insults English affords

 

[Patrick S.]

While I do agree to a certain extent that cursing in english can be somewhat satasfying. What I will tell you though is that there is no other language in the world other than Russian where you have way more fun with cursing. The amount of ways and different phrases that exist in my language for insulting people or creating a a sentence with a bunch of words that mean a lot of bad things is absolutely insane. English is a complete joke if you compare it to Russian when it comes to insults.

I love it, because when I am on the road and some moron cuts me off I simply open my window, smile and say a bunch of shit in a polite manner in a language they have no clue of understanding. They look very confused, show 0 emotion and look like complete idiots. Its fantastic. It works basically in any situation, even if a server pisses me off at a resturant cause of shitty service or asks me stupid questions, like do you need a spoon? After bringing out a bowl of soup without silverware. No idiot, I don't need a spoon, I'll scoop it with my fucking nose.

Your typical polite Russian.