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People don't speak one universal language, or even a handful. Instead, today our species collectively speaks over 7,000 distinct languages.
And these languages are not spread randomly across the planet. For example, far more languages are found in tropical regions than in the temperate zones. The tropical island of New Guinea is home to over 900 languages. Russia, 20 times larger, has 105 indigenous languages. Even within the tropics, language diversity varies widely. For example, the 250,000 people who live on Vanuatu's 80 islands speak 110 different languages, but in Bangladesh, a population 600 times greater speaks only 41 languages.
Why is it that humans speak so many languages? And why are they so unevenly spread across the planet? As it turns out, we have few clear answers to these fundamental questions about how humanity communicates.
[...] Language diversity has played a key role in shaping the interactions of human groups and the history of our species, and yet we know surprisingly little about the factors shaping this diversity. We hope other scientists will become as fascinated by the geography of language diversity as our research group is and join us in the search for understanding why humans speak so many languages.
https://theconversation.com/why-do-human-beings-speak-so-many-languages-75434
Would you people care to speculate as to why there are so many languages ?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday July 18 2017, @12:40AM (21 children)
"English" and "logic" should never be used in the same sentence, and probably not even the same paragraph. We've got rules coming out the ass, with exceptions for every one of them. There is little if anything that is logical about the English language. It's probably the javascript of languages.
(Score: 1) by eliphas_levy on Tuesday July 18 2017, @02:11AM (8 children)
one word: portuguese
(and on the lesser side, spanish and others derived)
english: glass
portuguese: copo, óculos, vidro (referring to a cup, the lenses, the window)... english just condenses it all when it makes sense (and do not make me start on the verbs)
This is a sigh.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 18 2017, @02:31AM
Korean is the other way, not enough words.
One example we worked out years ago:
English: steel pipe (for fluid), steel tube (for structure)
Korean: only one word for both tubular products, all called "pipe" when translated to English.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Tuesday July 18 2017, @02:59AM (2 children)
What you're seeing there is a difference between a language that relies a lot on context and one which is more explicit. There's advantages to both approaches: a higher-context language like English can be more efficient, however it suffers from less redundancy so it's easier to have confusion or lost information. It's really not that different from data transmission and data compression: more redundancy in a data transmission means errors are easier to recover from or reconstruct the missing data, but it takes more time and is less efficient.
However, that said, English has more vocabulary than any other language on the planet, because it borrows from so many places. So while "glass" might refer to a lot of things, we also have explicit words for many things where in other languages they just stick together other words. For instance, in English, the meat from a young cow is called "veal", probably borrowed from some other language like French (not sure, I'm not going to look it up). But in German, the word is "kalbfleisch", which literally translates to "calf flesh". We have the words "calf" and "flesh" too, but if you ask for some "calf flesh" at the butcher section of your grocery store, you're probably going to get some weird looks.
And back to your example: for óculos (lenses), we also have "spectacles" (archaic) and "goggles". For vidro (window), we also have "window", but if you specifically mean the glass in the window, that's called a "pane", a word that offhand I can't think of being used anyplace else, though to be fair it's probably usually suffixed with "of glass".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 18 2017, @04:16AM
It's been my position for many years that English is a great language for poetry and literature and a terrible language for communication for that very reason. There's estimates up to over a million words in the language and a ton of irregularities to be had. There's also a ton of times when the language isn't very specific about what is meant no matter how you phrase it. In some cases, I've spent years trying to find a clear way of communicating a concept that isn't overly long.
I've found Chinese to be a much easier language to learn to a basic level, but the writing system is one that typically takes many years to master even to a basic degree for most learners. And to a proper degree expected of adults can require several thousand characters.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 19 2017, @02:43AM
Sure, German: Kalb, English: calf. But the meat is veal (French). German: Kuh, English: cow. But the meat is beef (bœuf, French). German: Schwein, English: swine. But the meat is pork (porc, French) (nowadays, even the animal gets its food-related name, pork). And so on.
As the Grammar Nazi I am, I have to point out that the word Kalbsfleisch needs some s for the genitive.
If you get used to it, it's easy to construct meanings anyone can understand, so my point is: It is no weakness to have to construct specific words from existing ones.
German speakers have the nice word Fensterscheibe (given context, also just Scheibe) for window pane. (Fenster: window, Scheibe: slice, pane; so Brotscheibe is slice of bread, Käsescheibe is slice of cheese and so on. Combinations are great. [Note that Fensterscheibe and Fenster Scheibe have different meanings which get regularly confused, especially as there is a new trend (since the 80ies or so) to separate combined words, as it looks more hip and Englishy. But Fensterscheibe is the pane of a window, while Fenster Scheibe is the window called pane (think romanes eunt domus).]
To misinterpret the first quoted words: Germans also have explicit words for many things, Du blödes Arschloch, Scheißkerl und verfickter Wichser! Which are fucking explicit and, to stay on topic, most of them are also compound words ... ass & hole, shit & guy ...
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday July 19 2017, @06:27AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Wednesday July 19 2017, @03:26PM (1 child)
The English for vidro is, as you say, window. No-one ever says "open the glass." Glass is what windows are made from, and Portugese presumably has a word for that, too.
"Glass" as a drinking utensil doesn't have much overlap with "cup" in English.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by bart9h on Monday July 24 2017, @05:14PM
No, he was wrong. "Vidro" means glass, the material. Window is "janela".
(Score: 2) by bart9h on Monday July 24 2017, @05:53PM
The Portuguese for window is "janela".
"Vidro" means glass, as the material.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 18 2017, @03:59AM
that's the first thing that comes out of your keyboards that's not pure crap, congrats!
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Tuesday July 18 2017, @05:40AM (6 children)
That's because English is more of a bastardised language than just about anything out there:
- Originally used by the Angles, native to modern day England
- Later adopted big chunks of Latin during the Roman occupation
- Even later, incorporated elements of German and French, primarily through the noble classes wishing to appear more cultured, though also through the Norman and Saxon invasions of England and the subsequent cultural impositions that followed
- Adopts grammar, spelling and punctuation rules from all four of its sources simultaneously, even when some of those rules directly contradict each other
Truly, Earth's most horrible language. I count myself fortunate to speak it natively, because I don't think I could handle learning it otherwise.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Tuesday July 18 2017, @06:33AM (4 children)
English also suffers from a very bad sense a history, something the Americans have sadly inherited.
Yeah, right. Except the Angles invaded England after the Romans left, and may in fact have been part of the reason the Romans left. so if any Angles adopted big Chunks of Latin, it might have been, oh, I dont' know, _after_ the Roman Occupation?
And, Mykl, you should be aware that the English, or the Angles, or the Anglo-Saxons, have never cared diddily-squat about appearing cultured, something that persists to the present day what with the uncultured Brexit thing going on. No, French (and some Norse, Old Norse) was the only language the Normans could speak. So that is why they tried to impose it.
Four Sources? Care to specify? I only count three, at most. Latin, Celtic, and Germanic. What is your fourth? Or are you just making things up? This is dangerous, for there are many scholars of ancient British history here on SoylentNews, and they will, perchance, take you to task.
Have you any experience with Pidgin languages? These are languages that are no one's native tongue, but are a common tongue, or a lingua franca for many people. English is well on the way to being just that, on the internet. Broken English.
He was a good cyning. We will have no more talk of Angles here, or of Saxons, or of Manchester.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Tuesday July 18 2017, @11:25PM (3 children)
Yes, I should've said Celts rather than Angles.
But your fourth source is French. Some of the french spoken by the Normans made its way into English, and persists today. If you are really such a scholar (and taking a scholarly name alone doesn't cut it), you'd know that.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Wednesday July 19 2017, @02:06AM (2 children)
And if you were, you would knot have made so many mistakes and you would know that I know. But evidently you do not. What do you mean by "scholarly name"?
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Wednesday July 19 2017, @07:54AM (1 child)
You must be a scholar, because that sentence is barely coherent, and contains absolutely nothing to support your previous positions.
If you are certain that English doesn't contain any French influence then you'll probably want to go and fix the Wikipedia page [wikipedia.org] on it:
While you're there, you can also look up why Aristarchus could be considered a scholarly name [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Wednesday July 19 2017, @09:11AM
Never claimed any such thing? Ah, obviously you are no scholar, or even a very good student? French is, much like English, a language composed of Latin and German (Frankish) superimposed over Gaulish. Of course, the Normans who introduced French into England as the language of the conquering class were actually Nor(th)men, Vikings, from Normandy.
I do not do vanity searches online.
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Tuesday July 18 2017, @11:44AM
Minor nitpick - before Angles it was Celtic who still guide some of the vocabulary.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday July 18 2017, @03:23PM (1 child)
Really? I had a class in college named Verbal Logic. You're right that it's one of the most difficult languages to learn as a second language, but all languages have logical problems with speech. Paradoxes, for instance, aren't real but actually errors in logic.
Verbal Logic was mentioned in Asimov's Foundation. When studied, the prince's (or whoever, haven't read it in years) speech turned out to say absolutely nothing at all.
As to why there are different languages, that's a REALLY unintelligent question. Language evolves; all of them. Even after American English evolving for only two centuries I find it hard to understand anyone from Massachusetts, Only a few hundred years ago the words "Thee" and "thou" were used. "Leveled" was spelled "levelled" in the first of the 20th century. And when was the last time you heard "shall" in conversation?
When you have the Chinese separated from Germany for thousands of years, the languages evolve differently because until recently it took a REALLY long time to get across any country. I think in a hundred years or two all languages will evolve into a single one.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday July 18 2017, @05:28PM
Not to disagree with your point, but rather to reinforce it with divergences that happen with evolution:
"Thou" and related forms are still are used in some rare dialects, particularly some Amish communities in the U.S.
Doubling of letters with suffixes is a very unstable phenomenon in English, with Brits retaining a lot more doubled letters these days than Americans.
Uh, yesterday -- when I said it. It still is used colloquially in certain contexts, though often in a somewhat stylized utterance. It often only appears in questions like "Shall we?" when about to embark on something, etc. It's a bit unfair to target "shall" because most of the first-person occurrences are subsumed into contracted forms "we'll," "I'll," etc., so it's actually unclear whether "shall" or "will" is intended. That's probably one major element that led to its gradual decline in usage; on the rare occasions that most people expand those contracted forms in speech, they now prefer "will" most of the time. (A better metric for this is the demise of the contraction "shan't" = "shall not" which is decidedly archaic now.) Aside from occasional use in questions (generally first-person plural), it still is standard when discussing formal rules or regulations, as in bylaws that state "The Treasurer SHALL do X..."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 18 2017, @03:25PM (1 child)
You just did.
(Score: 3, Funny) by linkdude64 on Tuesday July 18 2017, @03:59PM
There's an exception to that rule, too.