I have a question about linguistics. I have travelled extensively in Europe, particularly in Greece and Eastern Europe (Poland, Czech Republic etc).
When having discussions with natives in these countries, they frequently tell me that their own languages (Greek, Polish, Czech) are superior to English, that they have more words, more sayings and figures of speech and in general can explain things and express themselves better in these languages than they can in English.
Is this true? You can obviously express yourself better in your own native language, but is there any truth to this assertion that any human language is superior or inferior to any other?
If any language was truly and demostrably superior in every way, we’d have heard about it long before now. Each language has its own characteristics - English is great for inventing new scientific terms, Italian is easy to write songs in, Navajo confuses the Japanese … but until anybody defines what a “good” language should be able to do, there’s only opinions. And all of them have a vested interest - we all have a ‘first’ language which we will instinctively defend.
I’m not surprised that people who speak English as a second language say they can express themselves better in their native languages than in English.
As to the number of words, I’ve heard the opposite. Here’s a linguistics mailing list thread that describes the problems with counting the number of words in a language, though.
English isn’t terribly good for inventing scientific terms. The scientific vocabulary is derived mostly from (ancient) Greek and Latin, which are useful hoards of alternative, arcane-sounding words for things because they’re ‘dead’. The scientific vocabulary is easily adaptable between languages, and English in and of itself isn’t particularly good for scientific terms. For example, if we’d restricted ourselves to native roots for naming elements, like German does to some extent, we’d have something like this: waterstuff, sunstuff, stonestuff … coalstuff, chokestuff, acidstuff, flowing-air… (Beryllium and boron are derived ultimately from Greek and Arabic, so I can’t think of words for them.)
Certain languages have weaknesses that others don’t, but they’re all very subjective. Highly inflected languages are difficult to learn; languages with strict word order lack variation. Some languages over-emphasize gender in a world of equality – consider French ‘visiteurs et visiteuses’. Some languages have weaknesses in their pronoun structure; consider ‘you’, or the lack of formal and informal pronouns.
The given reasons for the superiority of one’s native language over English – and I’ve heard non-native speakers say them too – are purely subjective. The reason that English seems to have fewer words or figures of speech than their native language is that they don’t know them, not because they don’t exist.
In any case, no linguist worth their salt would ever use a value-laden term like “superior” in comparing two langauges.
No language is better or worse than any other. They are simply different - and it is those differences (and similarities) that make each language such a unique and wonderful thing.
Why is it that we can’t consider that one language is possibly better than another? Sure, we don’t want to offend anybody, but isn’t it possible? Couldn’t one language be more consise and descriptive?
This was just a convention, and isn’t a fact. As a software developer who has been in several foreign countries, I have found that it is very often the case that there is no native word for the english computer science words. I will sit and listen to a set of words that mean nothing to me, but intersperced are the english words for computer science concepts.
Esperanto hasn’t been mentioned yet. Here is a site all about it: http://www.esperanto-usa.org/about_eo.html
It seems pretty easy to do and it is really handy as a secondary language. It seems to be somewhat rigid but poetry has been written in the language. There is lots of material out there about it on the web and the library. It has no irregular verbs, only 16 rules of grammar and only one sound for each letter (it uses a slightly different alphabet). I’d say its a great way to communicate internationally (if you can find anyone that speaks it, like a language professor) but if you are looking for beauty in a language or poetic value, it’s pretty subjective (although German sounds pretty harsh to me-- no offense to any Germans).
Finally, Language and Linguistics class pays off.
The largest documented vocabulary, perhaps – as in, the largest vocabulary written down in dictionaries. There are any number of languages that could probably match or excede English if equal attention was given to them, and some, like German, have theoritically limitless vocabularies.
See Milum’s post for an example of how the value of one’s own language is terribly subjective. English may be the lingua franca now, but it’s been others in the past, and it will be others in the future, and that has to do with politics and economics, not the virtues of the language.
I will suggest one virtue of English and other languages that make it superior to French and other languages in the classes I’ll propose: namely, that there are languages that borrow words heavily from other languages, and those that don’t (English and Japanese being the first, French being the second). This gives the borrowing language more expressive power and a wider vocabulary (and so greater conciseness).
The cost of that virtue, however, is a less easily defined, more ad-hoc syntax that makes the language more difficult to learn, so it’s only a qualified virtue.
I might suggest-- somewhat loosely-- that English itself is not a singular language. Where I work, there is a unique lexicon that we use in the office. We go out of our way however to avoid using that same “language” when talking to customers. Some of our customers use the slang and even some of the technical jargon and, truthfully, I sometimes wish they wouldn’t because they don’t really unserstand it.
My point is that within many languages there are "sub"languages and, in some respects, languages evolve in the same way animals might. Again somewhat loosely, while “speciation” has occurred between French and English, there are “Breeds” of English that I don’t understand exactly, but I can still communicate with people who speak their particular language.
To try to clarify my own mud, the only “supreme” language" is the Human language in all it’s permutations and the better the communicator, the better they are able to use their options.
It doesn’t really have anything to do with wanting to avoid being judgmental. All things considered, all languages are equally capable of expressing anything. That’s just the way it is, and it has nothing to do with trying to be diplomatic or fair.
You could say non-pidgin languages are superior to pidgins, but that isn’t really saying much. Otherwise, the simple answer is a resounding no.
The argument that English has the most words is a little self-serving. English has the most words because it has borrowed the most words from other languages. Yet when other languages borrow from English, this is somehow considered cheating or taken as proof of the superiority of English. You can’t have it both ways.
As for science terms, particularly computer science terms, the field is rife with English terms because the technology was pioneered in an English-speaking country. If computers had been commercialized in Poland, English would borrow the Polish terms to talk about computers. There is nothing special about English syntax that makes it a superior language for coining new terms. Every language can and does do it. If they couldn’t, they wouldn’t be languages.
Ah, hansel, but is conciseness really a virtue or is it a limitation in disguise? I think we agree that the quality and nature of a language determines the quality and nature of thought by those who speak it. One might look at the nature of the English-speaking peoples and suggest that we reason from specific to general because our adjectives come before our nouns; however, in French, the nouns come before the adjectives. Do the French-speaking peoples reason from general to specific?
With a smaller vocabulary being used to describe the same world concepts, does that language give its speakers a more symbolic, philosophical, abstract, or iconic way of thinking? Does a language of amazing specificity (and few overarching concept-words) engender a mindset of hair-splitting logic? Does a language with excruciating sets of formal and casual, masculine and feminine divisions encourage social castes and power hierarchies? What about the use of pictograms and ideograms versus the use of an alphabet — does that change the way we think?
And if so, is abstract thought better than logical thought? Is a chain of command better than a social plateau?
Dunno if there’s an easy answer to that. Dollars to donuts, the philosophers have been asking the question of How Language Influences Culture for generations; that’s the key to if any language is “better.”
Quine observed in “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” that languages can more or less fall somewhere on a spectrum between languages with minimal vocabulary and maximal transformational ability (so that more complex words/concepts are constructed from simpler ones) vs. maximal vocabulary and minimal transformation (a word for everything and little way to invent new words). The tradeoff then is between a simple to grasp vocabulary at the expense of a longer discourse, vs. a difficult to learn vocabulary with the virtue of conciseness.
That always struck me as a false dichotomy, though. Why can’t we have both virtues in a language flexible enough to have a wide vocabulary and a wealth of transformational rules, such that a speaker or writer can choose between conciseness or expressiveness as required by the situation? Such a language would borrow a lot from other languages to enrich its vocabulary, while at the same time making use of a small but flexible set of rules to construct new words (or, alternatively, simply allow a lot of neologisms with metaphorical, if not rule-based, meaning).
Surely we can agree, Fish, that the culture producing such a language would have more sophisticated thought in both the abstract and the practical. Wouldn’t that then qualify as a superior language?
… but until anybody defines what a “good” language should be able to do, there’s only opinions. And all of them have a vested interest - we all have a ‘first’ language which we will instinctively defend.