# Another Language Question **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 6, 2015, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-language-question/709093 "2015-01-06T02:51:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![pianodave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e79b87/32.png) [@pianodave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pianodave)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2015, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-language-question/709093/21 "2015-01-07T02:59:00Z")
Thank you, Quercus. I was asking about both inherent features of English and its external qualities that provide for its ubiquitousness in global interactions. It seems to me they both combine to make English the “go-to” language. I understand that languages can efficiently create new words to account for new vocabulary. But I keep wondering if there’s a testable method for determining if a language’s lack of versatility in regards to communicating in an English-speaking business world actually negatively impacts its speakers. To put in another way, can countries in which the national language is seldom spoken outside of that country (e.g. Burkina Faso,) be demonstrably shown to fare poorly in the global economy in part because of the limitations of their language? Or am I wildly off base? ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2015, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-language-question/709093/22 "2015-01-07T03:22:29Z")
> [@pianodave](#): > > Thank you, Quercus. > > I was asking about both inherent features of English and its external qualities that provide for its ubiquitousness in global interactions. It seems to me they both combine to make English the “go-to” language. I understand that languages can efficiently create new words to account for new vocabulary. But I keep wondering if there’s a testable method for determining if a language’s lack of versatility in regards to communicating in an English-speaking business world actually negatively impacts its speakers. To put in another way, can countries in which the national language is seldom spoken outside of that country (e.g. Burkina Faso,) be demonstrably shown to fare poorly in the global economy in part because of the limitations of their language? > > Or am I wildly off base? Well, French is an official language of Burkina Faso, so in some ways that’s a poor example, although in other ways it’s closer to home than you might think. Most of the world functions that way. English (or French or Spanish or another colonial-era language) functions as a de facto, if not de jure, official language. Chinese and Japanese are not commonly spoken in many places outside those countries (although increasingly so in recent years), but they are economic superpowers regardless. A [lingua franca](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_franca) has already existed to tie together trading partners outside their native language territories. English is merely the current favorite. If a group refuses to learn a _lingua franca_, then certainly it will face difficulties dealing with outsiders. That’s a mere practicality rather than an innate difference. You seem to want to keep conflating the two, and I know of no evidence that lets you do so. ---
**Author:** ![pianodave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e79b87/32.png) [@pianodave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pianodave)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2015, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-language-question/709093/23 "2015-01-07T03:26:49Z")
Thanks, Exapno! ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2015, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-language-question/709093/24 "2015-01-07T05:18:03Z")
> [@Quercus](#): > > In English when someone sneezes we say “Bless you”, which translates into ‘Good health’ in Spanish. > > However literally it is short for “God bless you”. > > I’m not sure that’s really an argument that English is more symbolic than Spanish, just that short little expressions like that can vary in their levels of symbolism, both within and across languages. No, the literal translations of the common Spanish expressions are either “health” or “Jesus”, not “good health”. The Jesus is the first half of the sentence whose second half is used in English, and you could make a case that what Jesus is supposed to be blessing (in this case with the meaning of “protect”) is the sneezer’s health. > [@Senegoid](#): > > I’ve read that it was problematical to translate the story “Snow White” into various languages of Equatorial Africa because there is no word for “snow” in their languages, and furthermore, most people had never seen or heard of the stuff and had no concept of it. So call her “White Daisy” or something like that. The problem in that translation is one of over-literalness… Snow White got her name from having skin “as white as snow”, pick something else that will make sense. It’s not the “snow” part that’s important, it’s the “white”. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2015, 5:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-language-question/709093/25 "2015-01-07T05:35:41Z")
> [@xnylder](#): > > French translators (and presumably those of other romance languages) have a problem much like this. For example, in English I can write, “That doctor may be well-educated, but the plumber I met yesterday is much more clever.” If I send that to a French translator, I’ll get the question back, “are the doctor and plumber men or women?” In this case, the adjectives and the past participle of the verb must match the nouns, so there’s four different ways of writing the sentence depending on the genders. We don’t always get a pass though. We have the whole “he or she” / whether you can substitute “they” awkwardness in English, that a number of other languages sidestep. ---
**Author:** ![banjopatterson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ac8455/32.png) [@banjopatterson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/banjopatterson)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2015, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-language-question/709093/26 "2015-01-07T05:45:13Z")
> [@Quercus](#): > > In English when someone sneezes we say “Bless you”, which translates into ‘Good health’ in Spanish. > > However literally it is short for “God bless you”. > > I’m not sure that’s really an argument that English is more symbolic than Spanish, just that short little expressions like that can vary in their levels of symbolism, both within and across languages. In Lao they say _Kop chai_ or “take my heart” for thank you 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2015, 10:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-language-question/709093/27 "2015-01-07T10:21:36Z")
There are two things being discussed here: the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, and the question of whether some languages are measurably more “complex” than others. Both ideas are discussed clearly and readably in John McWhorter’s recent book _The Language Hoax_. I recommend it highly to the OP and anyone else interested in these matters. To sum up: Sapir-Whorf is the popular notion that the language one speaks fundamentally determines how one thinks – and limits what is possible to be said and therefore conceived of. It is wrong. Sure, there are plenty of little things that can be said in one word in one language but take a whole phrase in another. Sure, studies show that Chinese speakers (say) tend to react to certain stimuli a millisecond faster or slower than English speakers, reflecting some language difference. Such things are fascinating, but relatively unimportant. As for language complexity: Usually, complexity in one matter in some language (say, phonemic tones) will be compensated for by complexity in some other matter in a different language (say, inflected verbs). But there _are_ languages that are objectively more complex overall. These are languages spoken by a small, more or less isolated group of speakers – indigenous languages, broadly speaking. They are more complex because they haven’t gone through the simplifying process which always occurs when a large group of people use the language as a second language. The extreme example of this are creole languages, but ALL major languages have gone through this – English during several major episodes, more than other Germanic languages (except Afrikaans). The more complex languages are actually the “norm,” the default. All languages were thus 15,000 years ago. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2015, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-language-question/709093/28 "2015-01-07T12:37:11Z")
> [@harmonicamoon](#): > > I wouldn’t say that Maya is more complex than English, but it is definitely more symbolic. Well, all words are symbols representing something else. I don’t think it’s really that meaningful expression to say one language is “more symbolic” than another. ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2015, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-language-question/709093/29 "2015-01-07T15:59:09Z")
> [@Monty](#): > > Well, all words are symbols representing something else. I don’t think it’s really that meaningful expression to say one language is “more symbolic” than another. Right. It was just this sort of romanticizing/exoticizing that Whorf (or was it Sapir?) mistakenly indulged in when analyzing Hopi tense forms. Again, anyone should read McWhorter’s _Language Hoax_ if they’re interested in this. It’s not a long book – you can read it in an afternoon. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2015, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-language-question/709093/30 "2015-01-10T22:30:31Z")
> [@JKellyMap](#): > > Right. It was just this sort of romanticizing/exoticizing that Whorf (or was it Sapir?) mistakenly indulged in when analyzing Hopi tense forms. Again, anyone should read McWhorter’s _Language Hoax_ if they’re interested in this. It’s not a long book – you can read it in an afternoon. Right. And by ‘I don’t think it’s really that meaningful expression to say one language is “more symbolic” than another,’ what I meant is: “Horlocks”.\* \*How’s that for “symbolic” language? ---
**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2015, 11:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-language-question/709093/31 "2015-01-11T11:54:46Z")
> [@Monty](#): > > Right. And by ‘I don’t think it’s really that meaningful expression to say one language is “more symbolic” than another,’ what I meant is: “Horlocks”.\* > > \*How’s that for “symbolic” language? Understood. You were being kind to the poster in your wording, and this is appropriate, because (as McWhorter makes clear), varieties of Sapir-Whorf are VERY popular among the general public. There is just something about human nature that makes us want to believe that one’s language has a profound impact on one’s worldview, or that one language is more “symbolic” (etc.) than another. So, we must be gentle when we point out to someone that it just isn’t so. Perhaps one reason for this near-universal wish/assumption is the excitement most of us feel when we’re just starting to learn a new language (or learn _about_ one), and we are understandably fascinated by unexpected (and hitherto never imagined) differences in grammar, classification of words, word order, etc. Another reason (which McWhorter explores) is the admirable desire among many in recent decades to recognize that non-prestige languages really are full-blown languages. In other words, we want to show our sensitivity to indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities, and – rightly so – redress the injustices of the past, when their languages were dismissed as mere “dialects” or even childish gibberish. But if we stray from the facts, this approach can backfire. If the complex grammar of Ojibwe language is a reason to praise the complexity of the Ojibwe mind, what does the simple grammar of Chinese imply about the Chinese mind? ---
**Author:** ![tapu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/49beb7/32.png) [@tapu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tapu)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2015, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-language-question/709093/32 "2015-01-11T14:07:50Z")
Languages are believed to be \*propositionally \*equal. That is, they can all express the same ideas, and over all the length will be equal. This is true even about sign languages. Basically you can say anything, and in the same amount of time (measured over a number of propositions). Despite the different size of articulators! ---
**Author:** ![Kiyoshi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e19adc/32.png) [@Kiyoshi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kiyoshi)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2015, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-language-question/709093/33 "2015-01-11T15:33:48Z")
> [@harmonicamoon](#): > > In Maya we say “Yuum bo’otik” which translates into “Thank you” in English. > > However, “Yuum bo’otik” literally translates as “god pays you”. I wouldn’t say that Maya is more complex than English, but it is definitely more symbolic. Maya is still a living language?! :eek: I assumed it died out hundreds and hundreds of years ago. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2015, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-language-question/709093/34 "2015-01-11T15:39:27Z")
> [@Kiyoshi](#): > > Maya is still a living language?! :eek: I assumed it died out hundreds and hundreds of years ago. [At least 6 million native speakers today.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayan_languages) The Mayans themselves did not disappear, just their civilization did. The people went back to the jungle, and their descendants live today. Growing up in West Texas, the Mayans were used as “proof” of extraterrestrials. The rednecks I grew up amongst figured space ships took all the Mayan people away. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2015, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-language-question/709093/35 "2015-01-11T16:33:43Z")
> [@Kiyoshi](#): > > Maya is still a living language?! :eek: I assumed it died out hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Yep. And it it’s unlikely the Maya writing system would have been as fully deciphered as it is if the decipererer(s) had not been able to investigate spoken Maya as part of the deciphering process. > [@Little Nemo](#): > > ``` > One thing about English which I believe is objectively an advantage is it has an unusually large vocabulary. This is because modern English is a combination of the vocabularies of old English, a Germanic language, and old French, a Romance language. > > ``` That’s not really the reason English has such a large vocabulary (and it’s got plenty of Old Norse in it, too). The main reason is that English has no problem\* borrowing words from other languages instead of modifying existing words when something new needs a name. And, having spread around the globe (thanks, British), it picked up words from every continent (except Antarctica). \*“not problem” here being a considerable understatement. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2015, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-language-question/709093/36 "2015-01-11T16:44:16Z")
> [@JKellyMap](#): > > The extreme example of this are creole languages, but ALL major languages have gone through this – English during several major episodes, more than other Germanic languages (except Afrikaans). Isn’t a “creole” technically defined as a “full” language developed from a pidgin and not just “a mixture of two (or more) languages”? In which case whether or not English is a creole is a debatable point. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2015, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-language-question/709093/37 "2015-01-12T16:18:42Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > This is true in Hebrew also. That is why English translations of the Bible, in trying to preserve the original meaning, often specify “man-servants” and “maid-servants” and “he-oxen” and “she-oxen” and so forth… And some translations use terms such as “slave”, “servant” and “bondservant” to attempt to convey the specific meaning behind the original text, but even that is imperfect. While the ancient world did have a distinction between, say, free servants (paid a wage, allowed to quit, etc.) and slaves, that distinction wasn’t as great as the one that was common in the US up until the 1860’s. So saying that so-and-so was a “slave girl” can mislead one into thinking that the text is talking about a chattel slave who had no rights and could be beaten at will. Many “slaves” had serious substantive legal rights that actually got respected by courts of law from time to time, and slavery also did not always have race as its basis. So, one _could_ translate a passage by saying something like, “Anna, a woman who was unmarried and approximately between the ages of 12 and 25, was subject to a compulsory labor arrangement obligating her to work three days out of each week in Farmer John’s fields but otherwise was entitled to work, travel, and own property freely, and who could buy out of the service obligation by paying 50 silver coins, traveled along the one-lane rural stone path that was officially funded as a postal service route and was repaved by the post office every three years toward Thomas’ house, which was a one-story thatched-roof hut in a working-class district of a medium to medium-large port city that was probably founded between approximately 500 BC and 300 BC.” instead of “Anna, Farmer John’s slave girl, traveled down the road to visit Thomas’s cabin in the workers’ quarter of his second-class trading port city.” You can _explain_ things in a translation, taking as many words as you need to. ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2015, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-language-question/709093/38 "2015-01-12T16:50:48Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Isn’t a “creole” technically defined as a “full” language developed from a pidgin and not just “a mixture of two (or more) languages”? In which case whether or not English is a creole is a debatable point. Tread very carefully as barfights have been started over less. Nativized pidgins are one way of forming a creole, but the general definition as I understand it is that a creole has the vast majority of their lexicon come from one language with bits and pieces of another (or more) language influencing it. They also show movement towards simplification by removing complex morphological tendencies and replacing them with invariant (or less variant) forms. But you could certainly have a creole form simply by basilectalization where a population moves away from the lexifiying language over several generations through contact with a less prestigious dialect or language without ever forming a true pidgin. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2015, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-language-question/709093/39 "2015-01-12T17:45:45Z")
There are so many topics here. the first thing I think of in complexity is the complexity of the grammar. Latin, what little I learned in the one year it was still taught in my high school, has things like six cases for nouns(?). The short pithy Latin sayings are related to the fact that what we use modifiers for in English, they use word forms. (“Romanus eunt domum”, or “People called Romans, they go house”). Similarly, Spanish or French like Latin tend to use endings rather than auxiliary words to signify tenses; plus more forms of the verb for each person and plurals - so grammar is more obvious to those speakers. I know our Spanish teacher complained he had to stop and give a 4-month intensive grammar course to one of his classes, because students from public schools in Ontario at the time did not do a lot of grammar, did not know first-second-third person, or different past tenses, etc. So certain languages, perhaps as a peripheral Sapir-Whorf effect, are more able to teach grammar in passing. However, it makes editing a sentence so much simpler in English that I can change tense, person, etc. with a very minimal edit - so maybe some ambiguity goes a long ways to making a language computer - friendly. Then there’s cultural concepts. Bushman may not have the word for “train” so translating Potter may be difficult. That extends to further cultural concepts - some cultures may not have a concept of an afterlife, retributive justice, or slavery. For others - for example, if you grow up in a primarily agricultural society, he-ox vs. she-ox is a pretty important concept; in a culture where men and women are separated frequently, gender is very important. Whereas, technical terms can be more or less specific, depending - “evaporate” means something specific in English which has centuries of scientific study, where it might simply translate as “dry up” in a culture where the only thing they know that evaporates is water. then there are other cultural issues - for example, one review I recall years ago of Disney said that Europeans we much less likely to anthropomorphize animals, so Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck etc. were somewhat alien to the culture; plus a lot of other behaviour seems very odd - children who are disrespectful of parents, for example. Thus the standard Disney movie formula - kids are smarter than adults, animals smarter than people - fails in many other cultures. There’s the other issue I recall reading - one of Isaac Asmiov’s essays - that English is essentially the Norman French language overlaid on the Germanic Anglo-Saxon original language. So, there tend to be multiple words for everything, and the more latin form is the more formal - breath vs. respire, sweat vs. perspire, …etc. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2015, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-language-question/709093/40 "2015-01-12T18:59:52Z")
> [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > Tread very carefully as barfights have been started over less. Nativized pidgins are one way of forming a creole, but the general definition as I understand it is that a creole has the vast majority of their lexicon come from one language with bits and pieces of another (or more) language influencing it. Well, I think you and I are going to have to step outside for a bit… 😃 That 2nd definition seem overly broad as it would include every language in the developed world. > [@](#): > > They also show movement towards simplification by removing complex morphological tendencies and replacing them with invariant (or less variant) forms. But you could certainly have a creole form simply by basilectalization where a population moves away from the lexifiying language over several generations through contact with a less prestigious dialect or language without ever forming a true pidgin. IANAL, and unless you are, I’ll wait for a response from the poster I quoted, who I believe is one (from academics, if not currently practicing). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-language-question/709093.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-language-question/709093.md?page=3)