# 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:** 3
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2015, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-language-question/709093/41 "2015-01-12T21:25:04Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > he-ox vs. she-ox is a pretty important concept So important that after seeing it mentioned for the second time, I had to go look it up, because the only definition of ox I knew could not be a “she”. Does the English Bible really talk about he-oxen and she-oxen rather than bulls, oxen and cows? Because in a culture in which people know that bulls try to cover cows and oxen don’t, and that oxen are bigger, stronger and more docile than either bulls or cows, that distinction does go a long way beyond grammar. ---
**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, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-language-question/709093/42 "2015-01-12T21:28:13Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > That 2nd definition seem overly broad as it would include every language in the developed world. I am sure if it seems so, it is an error with my formulation of it. IANAL either. My education in the field comes almost entirely from reading Pinker, Deutscher, Crystal, the languagelog blog and chats with Excalibre. (Well, I did have one class in college but it was an intro to hispanic linguistics and all in spanish so fuck if I know what anyone said.) Upon review, I believe I did understate the level of change required. Merely absorbing some vocabulary is not enough to qualify a language for classification as a creole, nor does codeswitching. The prototypical example as far as I am aware are the various afro-caribbean creoles, such as Haitian Creole which doesn’t have an attested pidgin stage. There was an initial group of slaves that learned Colonial French, a koine (a dialect occurring from contact between two mutually intelligible varieties of a language) of traditional French. Then, as more slaves were brought over, they learned this colonial french mostly from other slaves who had influenced it with their native languages and successive waves of slaves pulled it further and further from the original colonial french but at no point could you label it a pidgin as opposed to a fully functional language. At any rate, I said it can start barfights because the creolists I’ve read consider “creoles are nativized pidgins” as akin to saying 'quadrilaterals are parallelograms". ---
**Author:** ![DingoelGringo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@DingoelGringo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DingoelGringo)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2015, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-language-question/709093/43 "2015-01-12T21:32:07Z")
> [@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. > > It may be that the language actually reflects how the people think, or that the language determines how people think. I had a discussion with a he-Israeli once about this. I asked him why it was important to specify gender in every word, even if that is not relevant. The example at hand was “doctor”, which in Hebrew must either be “doctor(m.)” or “doctor(f.)” He pointed out that in Hebrew, and thus in a Hebrew speaker’s view, a “doctor(m.)” and a “doctor(f.)” are two distinctly different things, and therefore necessarily have two different words. Spanish also of course, and don’t try calling my doctora el doctor, she isn’t! ---
**Author:** ![DingoelGringo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@DingoelGringo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DingoelGringo)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2015, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-language-question/709093/44 "2015-01-12T21:37:10Z")
> [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > I am sure if it seems so, it is an error with my formulation of it. IANAL either. My education in the field comes almost entirely from reading Pinker, Deutscher, Crystal, the languagelog blog and chats with Excalibre. (Well, I did have one class in college but it was an intro to hispanic linguistics and all in spanish so fuck if I know what anyone said.) > > Upon review, I believe I did understate the level of change required. Merely absorbing some vocabulary is not enough to qualify a language for classification as a creole, nor does codeswitching. > > The prototypical example as far as I am aware are the various afro-caribbean creoles, such as Haitian Creole which doesn’t have an attested pidgin stage. There was an initial group of slaves that learned Colonial French, a koine (a dialect occurring from contact between two mutually intelligible varieties of a language) of traditional French. Then, as more slaves were brought over, they learned this colonial french mostly from other slaves who had influenced it with their native languages and successive waves of slaves pulled it further and further from the original colonial french but at no point could you label it a pidgin as opposed to a fully functional language. > > At any rate, I said it can start barfights because the creolists I’ve read consider “creoles are nativized pidgins” as akin to saying 'quadrilaterals are parallelograms". One learns in school that Haitians speak Creole, but I know many of them here in the Dominican Republic and they swear they speak French! ---
**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, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-language-question/709093/45 "2015-01-12T21:44:07Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > So important that after seeing it mentioned for the second time, I had to go look it up, because the only definition of ox I knew could not be a “she”. Does the English Bible really talk about he-oxen and she-oxen rather than bulls, oxen and cows? Because in a culture in which people know that bulls try to cover cows and oxen don’t, and that oxen are bigger, stronger and more docile than either bulls or cows, that distinction does go a long way beyond grammar. An ox is a bovine (usually male, but can be a female) that is used as a daft animal. It’s the use that makes the animal an ox, not the gender. Bulls are generally bigger and stronger, hence more often used to pull things. Cows have other uses. Got milk? ---
**Author:** ![DingoelGringo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@DingoelGringo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DingoelGringo)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2015, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-language-question/709093/46 "2015-01-12T21:45:57Z")
> [@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. > > This may or may not actually be apocryphal. In the book [“Anna And The King of Siam”](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_and_the_King_of_Siam_%28novel%29), Anna Leonowens is shown trying to teach the king’s wives and children about the outside world, and she had difficulty getting them to understand the concept of snow. The story of Snow White has nothing to do with snow, and could be translated as very white girl, without worrying about the concept of snow. Which would convey the meaning of the story. The concept of a person being white may have been hard to translate 300 years ago perhaps in some areas, but I’m sure there are very few people on earth now that aren’t aware of that concept at present. ---
**Author:** ![DingoelGringo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@DingoelGringo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DingoelGringo)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2015, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-language-question/709093/47 "2015-01-12T21:48:27Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > An ox is a bovine (usually male, but can be a female) that is used as a daft animal. It’s the use that makes the animal an ox, not the gender. Bulls are generally bigger and stronger, hence more often used to pull things. Cows have other uses. Got milk? My understanding without looking it up is an ox is a neutered bull. And the idea of a she-ox is an OXymoron! SO I did look it up: Spell Syllables noun, plural oxen for 1, 2, oxes for 3. 1. the adult castrated male of the genus Bos, used chiefly as a draft animal. 2. any member of the bovine family. 3. Informal. a clumsy, stupid fellow. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2015, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-language-question/709093/48 "2015-01-12T21:49:05Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > An ox is a bovine (usually male, but can be a female) that is used as a daft animal. It’s the use that makes the animal an ox, not the gender. Bulls are generally bigger and stronger, hence more often used to pull things. Cows have other uses. Got milk? Yes, but like I said, that’s the definition which I wasn’t familiar with. In 36 years of speaking and reading English, this thread has been my first encounter with ox meaning “any bovine” rather than “a castrated bull”, hence my question about whether that’s how it’s used in the English bible. Can you answer that? Because what you told me, m-w already had, thank you. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2015, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-language-question/709093/49 "2015-01-12T21:54:49Z")
> [@JKellyMap](#): > > 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. Interesting. Would it be safe to say that English became somewhat simpler because it was widely used, rather than being widely used because it is simpler? From what you said about complexity being the default, I would say Yes. As a pidgin develops into a creole, does it become more complex? I imagine the vocabulary would widen. Would words acquire more specialized meanings, and thus become more complex? I am thinking of the rather charming term I was told meant “friend” in pidgin English - “himbrotherbelongme”. Would there be a series of specialized names for different kinds of friends? Regards, Shodan ---
**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, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-language-question/709093/50 "2015-01-12T22:10:15Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Yes, but like I said, that’s the definition which I wasn’t familiar with. > > In 36 years of speaking and reading English, this thread has been my first encounter with ox meaning “any bovine” rather than “a castrated bull”, hence my question about whether that’s how it’s used in the English bible. Can you answer that? Because what you told me, m-w already had, thank you. Also, the word “cow” doesn’t have to be female. One might say “cattle” when talking about the herd of mixed sex, but “cow” is OK, too. We speak of cowboys regardless of which gender they are wrangling. > [@Shodan](#): > > As a pidgin develops into a creole, does it become more complex? Yes. ---
**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 13, 2015, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-language-question/709093/51 "2015-01-13T00:19:44Z")
To elaborate on the “yes”, a pidgin is an abbreviated language that is developed for a limited purpose, e.g. to allow two different linguistic groups to trade goods. It tends to take bits and pieces of two languages and build up something that is just good enough to get the job done. It doesn’t need a lot of nuance, and so it tends to be stripped down to the basics. The idea is that kids who grow speaking the pidgin will naturally expand it to fill the space of the nuance that all languages have, making it more complex in the process. Once that happens, it’s considered a Creole. ---
**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 13, 2015, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-language-question/709093/52 "2015-01-13T01:22:15Z")
> [@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. Basically, yes. “Creolization” is a process, and its degree of impact lies on a continuum. English was more creolized then, say, German at several stages of its development. ---
**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 13, 2015, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-language-question/709093/53 "2015-01-13T01:33:39Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > Interesting. > > Would it be safe to say that English became somewhat simpler because it was widely used, rather than being widely used because it is simpler? From what you said about complexity being the default, I would say Yes. > > As a pidgin develops into a creole, does it become more complex? I imagine the vocabulary would widen. Would words acquire more specialized meanings, and thus become more complex? I am thinking of the rather charming term I was told meant “friend” in pidgin English - “himbrotherbelongme”. Would there be a series of specialized names for different kinds of friends? > > Regards, > Shodan As to your first question – “widely used”: not quite; the point is, it was widely used specifically by people using it as a second language in the home (mainly, Danish men living in England with Anglo-Saxon wives in the 800s), and passing on the resulting simplifications to their children. But, yes, there is surely a positive correlation between a language being “widely used,” and the likelihood that such second-language households will be common enough to affect the language as a whole. As for a pidgin developing into a creole, yes, creoles are definitely more complex. Most experts consider pidgins to not be true “languages,” while creoles most definitely are. Creoles have a full grammar, etc., while pidgins are barely standardized collections of words (usually with vocabulary pretty much limited to a particular realm, say fish trading) with which one doesn’t do much more than point and speak. (John Mace expressed this well, in the previous post.) ---
**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 13, 2015, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-language-question/709093/54 "2015-01-13T01:49:22Z")
To clarify: “Creolization” is the _simplification_ of a language, while the transformation of a pidgin to a creole is the _complexifying_ of a pidgin. Broadly, both involve converging on an “in some ways simple – but still very much full and complete – language,” but from different directions. ---
**Author:** ![KarlGrenze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/dbc845/32.png) [@KarlGrenze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGrenze)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2015, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-language-question/709093/55 "2015-01-13T02:00:29Z")
**Nava** , steer is the word most commonly used for the castrated bull, at least in the animal/veterinary/agricultural sciences. I wonder if this is a case were the word _buey_, which is indeed a steer in Spanish, was/is translated somehow to **ox**. But I do know that the times I’ve seen “ox” in English, it’s when the gender is undefined/unneeded/part of the question (stuff that has to do with my work/specialty, mainly). ---
**Author:** ![pianodave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e79b87/32.png) [@pianodave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pianodave)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2015, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-language-question/709093/56 "2015-01-13T02:11:33Z")
This thread is exploring some very interesting ideas, many far removed from my original question. What about the English language makes it so easy to apply to technological concepts? Is it generally agreed upon that if another language had taken the place of English early in its development and supplanted English, that we as a civilization would have achieved the same technological progress as we have now? Would the substitute language have evolved sufficiently to make this possible? Is the consensus that English does not have enough inherent advantages to make it any “stronger” or more “versatile” than any other language? At the risk of coming off as some kind of bigot, I find it hard imagining another language taking the world as far as English has (in terms of global communication and commerce.) Do other cultures view English as stilted and inelegant, or inefficient as a language? Say you are a polyglot who knows every language on Earth, and are equally fluent in all of them. Are there topics in which a certain language is considered advantageous over another, in terms of imparting meaning? Thanks, Dave ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2015, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-language-question/709093/57 "2015-01-13T04:01:46Z")
> [@KarlGrenze](#): > > **Nava** , steer is the word most commonly used for the castrated bull, at least in the animal/veterinary/agricultural sciences. I wonder if this is a case were the word _buey_, which is indeed a steer in Spanish, was/is translated somehow to **ox**. But I do know that the times I’ve seen “ox” in English, it’s when the gender is undefined/unneeded/part of the question (stuff that has to do with my work/specialty, mainly). Thank you. I think every case I’ve seen has it the other way round, with steer being treated as _ganado bovino_ (or _vacas_ for herds, with the understanding that there may be the occasional male in the herd) and ox as _buey_. Who knows where the confusion originated… **pianodave** , until very recently, Latin and later German were the languages of technology (with French not to be disregarded); Latin and later French were those of diplomacy. You seem to be under the confused notion that the grandparents/predecessors of all those people who currently speak English as a second language would have spoken English if they happened to need a second language, that the developments they created were made possible by having English as a common language. A lot of developments were aided by having common languages, but those weren’t necessarily English. ---
**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 13, 2015, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-language-question/709093/58 "2015-01-13T06:25:14Z")
> [@pianodave](#): > > This thread is exploring some very interesting ideas, many far removed from my original question. > > What about the English language makes it so easy to apply to technological concepts? Nothing. Why would you even ask the question? Making up new words is one of the easiest things in the world. Either combining or modifying old words or borrowing from other languages to do so. It makes no never mind whether you call something a telescope or a far-seer. > [@](#): > > Is it generally agreed upon that if another language had taken the place of English early in its development and supplanted English, that we as a civilization would have achieved the same technological progress as we have now? Would the substitute language have evolved sufficiently to make this possible? I have never heard anyone claim that technological advances were dependent on linguistics. I’m curious where you got this idea from? ---
**Author:** ![JoseB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/joseb/32/1530_2.png) [@JoseB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoseB)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2015, 10:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-language-question/709093/59 "2015-01-13T10:56:45Z")
> [@pianodave](#): > > What about the English language makes it so easy to apply to technological concepts? > > Is it generally agreed upon that if another language had taken the place of English early in its development and supplanted English, that we as a civilization would have achieved the same technological progress as we have now? Would the substitute language have evolved sufficiently to make this possible? > > Is the consensus that English does not have enough inherent advantages to make it any “stronger” or more “versatile” than any other language? > > At the risk of coming off as some kind of bigot, I find it hard imagining another language taking the world as far as English has (in terms of global communication and commerce.) \<…\> In Ancient Rome, the common language used in most scientific and technological writings was Greek. In the middle ages a lot of scientific books were written in Arabic (that is where we get words like “algebra” from). Newton wrote in Latin. His _Principia Mathematica_ are in Latin. And for many centuries, Latin was THE language of science, commerce and global communication (at least when we look at Western Civilization) – Roughly from the time of the Renaissance till the early 19th century. French was the language of diplomacy and high-level international, government-to-government communication from roughly the 17th to the 20th centuries. German was the language of science, from the early 19th to the early 20th centuries. My father studied medicine in the 1920s in Spain, and he had German language as a mandatory subject of study, for most of the really important books and papers on Chemistry and Medicine at the time were written in German. English achieved world dominance as the language for communication from the end of the 19th century to our days, thanks to both the British Empire and the rise in status of the US from the end of WWI onwards (with a huge boost after the end of WWII). I would say that the difference between the status of English today and the status of French or German in earlier centuries is that English is being used as a language for scientific communication, _and_ for commerce, _and_ for diplomatic communication. Nonetheless, in earlier centuries Latin was used for those three purposes as well. It is just a question of the vagaries of what countries achieve dominance in certain areas of international importance. Who knows what the “lingua franca” will be 300 years from now! So, TL;DR: No, English is not particularly special. Latin was the language of choice in centuries past, and in fact it proved itself to be rather amenable to incorporating new vocabulary (in the 17th-18th centuries, a LOT of scientific vocabulary was added to Latin, to aid in the communication between scientists). ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2015, 11:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-language-question/709093/60 "2015-01-13T11:47:35Z")
Missionaries who translate the Bible have said they have had trouble with words from the Bible which they are not familiar with. For example “Donkey”. One Filipino tribe had never heard of a donkey so they translated it as " a long legged pig one can ride on". Of course with Bible translations another issue is some languages are not written out so they must create a written alphabet AND make it compatible with the national language which in this case was Spanish. So for example they must take a clicking sound and come up with a letter/symbol for that sound that would also make sense in Spanish. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-language-question/709093.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/another-language-question/709093.md?page=4)