Support NeoGAF

[Grildon Tundy]

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

Awesome, just ordered it based on your post

 

[Elder Legend]

Your typical polite Russian.

Cyka blyat

 

[jufonuk]

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

 

[jshackles]

There are more words in the English language ghan 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 seen with a car coming. In English it's, 'Look, the War Rig is coming!' which the Japanese subtitles had as 'Look, a car!'

As a native English speaker who has spent a lot of time studying Japanese this past year - this is absolutely maddening to me.

 

[Tams]

As a native English speaker who has spent a lot of time studying Japanese this past year - this is absolutely maddening to me.

Yeah, the details are so often just not there. It makes it seem so lacking in emotion. It think that is part of the reason that quite a lot of Western media is not that popular in Japan; it comes across as boring in translation. Comedy is also an issue, but that's a much deeper topic.

Whereas the simplified English translations of Japanese media? It usually doesn't really change much. The emotion and character is still there (and a lot of JP-EN translators really try to get that across, even if it means completely changing what is said). While many of the fan translations are great, quite a few go for technical accuracy than getting the right feeling. And often the translated terms only really allow for a detailed understanding that really needs quite a deep understanding of Japanese culture to understand, which most viewers do not have.

 

[Patrick S.]

Cyka blyat

Cheeki Breeki

 

[NecrosaroIII]

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

01001000 01100101 01111001 00100000 01100111 01110101 01111001 01110011 00101100 00100000 01001001 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110110 01100101 00100000 01100001 01110011 01110011 00100000 01100011 01100001 01101110 01100011 01100101 01110010

 

[Elder Legend]

Cheeki Breeki

Tri Poloski. (Three Lines)

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

Hint: whenever a word here is beeped or silenced, it’s Dio (God).

 

[ahtlas7]

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

I just moved to Brussels and can officially say I love to watch Gumball in Dutch.

 

[TheInfamousKira]

I dunno. I'm a native English speaker, took three years of Spanish in high school, and have picked up tiny pieces of German, French and Japanese (not anywhere near enough to hold a conversation, mind) so I'm biased, but

English is fucking awesome. I know it didn't originate in America, but it's always been Americana distilled for me: a non-tangible manifestation of ideals - a language built on modifiers, where one word can mean eight different things in eight different contexts, but people fluent in the language just have like...an unspoken second language of nuance. A lot of our expressions and turns of phrase would completely baffle foreigners, but we've essentially conditioned our culture to know catchphrases and expressions through cultural osmosis to the point where we'll understand what an expression means in our language before we understand the meaning of the expression itself.

"Keep your eyes peeled," I grew up hearing that and always knew it meant to keep a close watch, but I was like 22 when I sat down and correlated the meaning of the expression with the expression itself. Keeping your eyes peeled. Open. Little epiphanies like that are neat.

And going back to the American thing, English is also a melting pot of different words and phrases we borrow wholesale from other languages. Kung fu. Deja vu, kamikaze, etc.

English is bae.

 

[Wildebeest]

You better start believing in efficient languages because you are using one baby.

As for types of information, a problem is trying to understand why communication goes wrong, which is complicated. Wittgenstein said that when you talk about things which actually exist, communication works as intended. Example. "The apple is on the table." But talking about things which don't exist on the level of things you can see and touch makes communication hard and open to misunderstanding. Example. "It would be fair if you gave me and apple in exchange for this coin because both are made of atoms."

 

[Patrick S.]

I dunno. I'm a native English speaker, took three years of Spanish in high school, and have picked up tiny pieces of German, French and Japanese (not anywhere near enough to hold a conversation, mind) so I'm biased, but

English is fucking awesome. I know it didn't originate in America, but it's always been Americana distilled for me: a non-tangible manifestation of ideals - a language built on modifiers, where one word can mean eight different things in eight different contexts, but people fluent in the language just have like...an unspoken second language of nuance. A lot of our expressions and turns of phrase would completely baffle foreigners, but we've essentially conditioned our culture to know catchphrases and expressions through cultural osmosis to the point where we'll understand what an expression means in our language before we understand the meaning of the expression itself.

"Keep your eyes peeled," I grew up hearing that and always knew it meant to keep a close watch, but I was like 22 when I sat down and correlated the meaning of the expression with the expression itself. Keeping your eyes peeled. Open. Little epiphanies like that are neat.

And going back to the American thing, English is also a melting pot of different words and phrases we borrow wholesale from other languages. Kung fu. Deja vu, kamikaze, etc.

English is bae.

That’s awesome, but that’s not unique to the English language at all.

 

[Ozzy Onya A2Z]

Yes, actions, body language, facial expressions etc say more than your spoken/written words do and can circumnavigate roadblocks from interpreting differing languages etc.

 

[01011001]

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

wait till you learn about how French counts numbers

 

[Dr. Suchong]

Cockney rhyming slang.

 

[Tams]

Cockney rhyming slang.

Al'rite china plate. Ima tea leaf, so off up the bangers and mash! No porkies! I no u got it!

 

[jufonuk]

Al'rite china plate. Ima tea leaf, so off up the bangers and mash! No porkies! I no u got it!

You are off up where ? You mean the rub a dub dub or the battle cruiser… Fam

 

[jufonuk]

Yes, actions, body language, facial expressions etc say more than your spoken/written words do and can circumnavigate roadblocks from interpreting differing languages etc.

Sounds like Italian. Hmmm But if the Italian’s lose their arms in a freak pasta cutting accident accident they loose about 90% expression

Maybe Australian is the real winner ?
But that’s the more matey form of English.
English wins.

 

[Nobody_Important]

German is pretty good at it.

 

[Soodanim]

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.

Octopus is a word of Greek origin, so if you follow the appropriate rules the correct plural is octopodes. At least, that's what I've been led to believe. Why is octopuses the correct for a Greek loanword?

 

[Ar¢tos]

Octopus is a word of Greek origin, so if you follow the appropriate rules the correct plural is octopodes. At least, that's what I've been led to believe. Why is octopuses the correct for a Greek loanword?

Technically, it is, for the Greek language, but we are talking of its use in English.

“Octopuses” gives the word an English ending to match its adoption as an English word. Generally, when a noun enters into English, it is pluralized as an English word rather than in its original form. Octopuses may sound peculiar to some, but this is the preferred plural.

Phonetically octupuses is closer to octopodes.

But I only mentioned to show how easily the English language adds new words. Portuguese language "fights" addind new words and every word needs to be modified to fit Portuguese letter rules and phonetics (and we are lucky when the new addition is a single word instead of a full expression).

In the whole 2021, 600 words were added to the Portuguese dictionary, while in September 2022 alone, 370 words were added to the English dictionary.

 

[01011001]

German is pretty good at it.

 

[nkarafo]

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.

That's mostly because of English speaking Hollywood movies i would bet.

 

[jufonuk]

That's mostly because of English speaking Hollywood movies i would bet.

 

[STARSBarry]

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!'

Ironically I reread what I put and yes that exactly as it comes across when I put this sentence up, so sorry about that. I was more thinking in line with how we don't have a word that directly translates to Sugoi so we would just replace it with one of the many words English uses that captures a portion of it. Or alternatively we could simply take the Romanji Sugoi and use that instead and understand the context and meaning like we did for the french word, entrepreneur.

I still don't understand why yanks take the U out of everything and replace S's with Z's though.

 

[Tams]

Ironically I reread what I put and yes that exactly as it comes across when I put this sentence up, so sorry about that. I was more thinking in line with how we don't have a word that directly translates to Sugoi so we would just replace it with one of the many words English uses that captures a portion of it. Or alternatively we could simply take the Romanji Sugoi and use that instead and understand the context and meaning like we did for the french word, entrepreneur.

I still don't understand why yanks take the U out of everything and replace S's with Z's though.

Well, umm 'sugoi' is one of those words that's actually the opposite. English actually has more words to express positive feelings, so 'sugoi' would be used in Japanese where in English it could be a variety of words. And I'd say any subtitler getting picky over that point is overzealous to the point of boredom.

 

[MilkyJoe]

The natural language of the human race is English. Anything else is backwards gibberish.

 

[STARSBarry]

Well, umm 'sugoi' is one of those words that's actually the opposite. English actually has more words to express positive feelings, so 'sugoi' would be used in Japanese where in English it could be a variety of words. And I'd say any subtitler getting picky over that point is overzealous to the point of boredom.

I'm starting to realise how much Japanese sucks and why I stick to the bastard that is English.

 

[West Texas CEO]

The best way to convey information, is to smoke crack and then use sub-communication.

 

[Kamina]

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.

Vierzig-Acht hört sich scheiße an

 

[mortal]

The natural language of the human race is English. Anything else is backwards gibberish.

 

[01011001]

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!'

professionally done subtitles are often simplified and not 1 to 1. the subtitles you had there were most likely based on the english dub btw. not the japanese dub.
subtitles for each language are done only once and not multiple times for each dubbed version of a movie.

so you often get discrepancies even if you watch the movie in english and have english subtitles on, and then if you have a different dub the differences just get bigger and bigger.

 

[EverydayBeast]

Understanding foreign languages is a strength.

 

[Tams]

professionally done subtitles are often simplified and not 1 to 1. the subtitles you had there were most likely based on the english dub btw. not the japanese dub.
subtitles for each language are done only once and not multiple times for each dubbed version of a movie.

so you often get discrepancies even if you watch the movie in english and have english subtitles on, and then if you have a different dub the differences just get bigger and bigger.

Mad Max: Fury Road is an English language film... and there's no way the English subtitles would be that bad.

And it's absolutely not the only time I've seen it. Now some is likely just being cheap on the subtitling, but some of it is it just not translating well, so they half-arse it.

 

[01011001]

Mad Max: Fury Road is an English language film... and there's no way the English subtitles would be that bad.

And it's absolutely not the only time I've seen it. Now some is likely just being cheap on the subtitling, but some of it is it just not translating well, so they half-arse it.

subtitles are often altered to be easy to read and fast to understand.

so this isn't about being bad, the person doing the subtitles might have changed this for that reason.

do you have a clip of the Japanese version for that particular scene?

edit: also while dubbing a movie a good dubbing studio will always try to match mouth movement as well as possible.
so dialogue is adjusted to fit how the actors move their mouths.

if the japanese sentece doesn't fit the timing and mouth movement of the original well enough, then the director of the dub will change sentences to match the timing.

 

[Tams]

subtitles are often altered to be easy to read and fast to understand.

so this isn't about being bad, the person doing the subtitles might have changed this for that reason.

do you have a clip of the Japanese version for that particular scene?

edit: also while dubbing a movie a good dubbing studio will always try to match mouth movement as well as possible.
so dialogue is adjusted to fit how the actors move their mouths.

if the japanese sentece doesn't fit the timing and mouth movement of the original well enough, then the director of the dub will change sentences to match the timing.

Ain't talking about dubs here, mate.

 

[Nico_D]

 

[01011001]

Ain't talking about dubs here, mate.

You're talking about nothing it seems...

 

[Happosai]

English if we're getting more definitive terms. Spanish is my second language. Many things just don't interpret well in Spanish to other languages with being too literal or just not enough. Sorta how Tams described one word in Japanese not having enough depth. In Spanish a word like gana, ganar, ganancia...just roots back to gana. I've heard some say, "I ate too much an won weight." Gain = gana/ganancia. "I win a lot of money at work." Gana / ganar = earn. There's a huge learn gap for ESL students and I won't even get into prepositions other than "en" is usually mentally interpreted for out/in/on.

 

[Scotty W]

It is difficult to resist the inference that some languages are more efficient.

If languages are systems of signs, I don’t see how it is possible that all systems if organization are equal. For example, the Greeks did amazing things in mathematics, but mostly in Geometry. If you look at some if the later ancient mathematicians, you can see them starting to get into algebra. But their numbering system was very unwieldily, same with Roman numerals. That is why the Greeks tended to use proportion and lines broken into segments.

But when Leonardo of Pisa many years brought the Indian numbering system over from the Arabs, mathematics was able to explode in the west, as it had in the Arabic countries, ie al-gebra.

 

[Tams]

You're talking about nothing it seems...

You're the one going off about dubs.

 

[01011001]

You're the one going off about dubs.

yeah, I'm explaining to you that subtitle changes and dub changes are not even remotely connected to how well you can translate anything into another language.
subtitles are almost always adjusted to be easy and fast to read and parse, and dubs are altered to fit lip movements and timings.

and both of this is relevant to what you initially posted

 

[Tams]

yeah, I'm explaining to you that subtitle changes and dub changes are not even remotely connected to how well you can translate anything into another language.
subtitles are almost always adjusted to be easy and fast to read and parse, and dubs are altered to fit lip movements and timings.

and both of this is relevant to what you initially posted

Subs and dubs are very different. Subs absolutely do not need to line up with the mouth movements of the actors on screen, so they can be more nuanced. And Japanese subs often are of poor quality. Trust me, I've seen enough of them.

The Japanese dubs often aren't great either, but they are much harder to do. Not that I like dubs in any language.

 

[01011001]

Subs and dubs are very different. Subs absolutely do not need to line up with the mouth movements of the actors on screen,

I never said that, read my comment again, it's not hard to understand what I said and what I said is a 100% factual statement

The Japanese dubs often aren't great either, but they are much harder to do. Not that I like dubs in any language.

irrelevant to the discussion.

 

[Tams]

I never said that, read my comment again, it's not hard to understand what I said and what I said is a 100% factual statement





irrelevant to the discussion.

Are you being deliberately obtuse?

This thread is about if any languages are more efficient at communicating information than others. Japanese subs of non-Japanese media are often poor, which suggests that there are words and concepts that don't translate well or easily into Japanese. That suggests that perhaps Japanese isn't very good at conveying some concepts and emotions.

And of course it can go the other way. I just take great exception to people thinking any one language is better than another. It especially seems to happen with Japanese.

 

[LarsQMorient]

They change subtitles for the audience. For example, in this scene from Intouchables they keep Obama but change the names of the other politicians:

 

[Ememee]

Spanish is best for giving sass.

 

[eddie4]

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Wouldnt sign language be the most efficient? LOL. For example, you dont have to say anything to someone in order for them to get this message: