What is the source on this? This seems wildly implausible even given the most optimistic scenarios imaginable. There aren’t enough English teachers on the planet (unless of course you redefine a “Chinese English Speaker” so liberally as to be meaningless).
Japan hasn’t exactly sputtered and stalled. They are still the world’s 2nd biggest economy. There’s no need wondering why Japanese hasn’t taken over… it’s because there’s no need to know Japanese outside of Japan, and never will be. Mandarin may be slightly different because it already enjoys a bit of *lingua franca *status in Asia outside Japan, but even then, it will never have that same status in the western world.
It was a constructed example to show that it is possible to have languages which are more complicated than others. Isn’t it true the Esperanto was created with the express purpose (amongst others) to make it more easy to learn than other European natural languages, by for instance removing irregularities and such. Did they utterly fail at that?
Do you mean, do I think English speakers are more stupid than Finns? Yeah. But not because of the language. I find it strange that the number of speakers of a language, the complexity of the speakers society, their amount of knowledge, their interaction with other cultures and languages, their history etc. don’t influence their language also in its complexity.
I don’t. I said English was comparatively easy to learn. Perhaps that is wrong. From then on I have responded to the sweeping claim that all are of the same complexity.
Yeah. Well bollocks to you. Your post are too stupid and way too emotionally involved to bother to answer. Absolutely every last human language on the face of the earth ever spoken by a humanoid being - living, dead, extinct, natural, constructed, all counted, none forgotten - are of the exact same complexity. Check. That out of the way, can we get on with the topic of the OP.
Probably pointless, since you seem to only want to hear your evidently preconcieved answer, but Lamia already addressed this, that one facet of complexity gets moved to other portions of the language. Lose declensions, get more complexity in syntax, etc.
And yeah, Esperanto began on a false premise, but that’s 19th century thinking anyway. I’d note that you keep circling back to European languages as if they are some kind of holy grail.
In short you have a sociopolitical view on the a priori nature of language, and are confusing one issue (vocabulary essentially) with language complexity… which you refuse to clearly define.
You mean you are responding to your sweeping straw man.
Because languages are normally formed by the undirected efforts of generations of people, occasionally with poorly thought out efforts from powerful people who wanted to shape the culture in question ? I’d think that ALL natural languages would be needlessly complicated; they weren’t consciously designed with cold efficiency in mind.
And the assertion that all languages are equally complex and/or easy to learn seems highly implausible. I doubt that could be achieved on purpose, much less by thousands of different cultures who have no reason to care if they are or not.
That presumes that some technocratic efficiency would (i) understand the total needs of communication perfectly, more perfectly than the large market-like force of generations of commnicators, (ii) that there is a single efficient balance in grammar and syntax. ADDED: Just as markets are better than government diktat by technocrats with imperfect knowledge, for issues of massive coordination, one would expect mass society is better than one theorician or some small body of technocrats. Given all natural languages (including the sign language that emerged in Nicaraugua spontaneously) show high and similar levels of grammatical complexity, I
'd go with market efficiency here).
I find both propositions illogical, rather like presuming that given the right tools one could design the best mammal, etc. (or that one species is ‘better’ than another).
As there appears to be a natural human propensity to language, that is hard wired, it seems entirely plausible that the grammatical complexity is natural, and it is merely the form (actual expression) that changes.
After that one gets into mere taste, like arguing that Oranges are inherently better than Apples.
Well, the data indicate, excluding written language, natural spoken language is learned at the same rate across cultures and languages by children. After that, for second language acquisition, it really would depend on where the language learner is coming from. If you came from a language that is heavily declined, without rigid word order, then going to English might be terribly confusing, for example. It would seem, then, to be an inherently relative proposition. Excluding vocabulary of course, but English is a fine example that vocabulary can be massively borrowed if one desires to quickly have a resource of words for new concepts, and that certainly doesn’t require any fundamental language change as such.
It would be possible to invent a language that was excessively complicated, a sort of anti-Esperanto, but it would never catch on. It would just be a sort of code or game, not a real language.
That was the idea behind Esperanto, yes. And yet here we are talking about the role of English as lingua franca. If Esperanto had been successful, we wouldn’t be having this discussion…and whatever discussion we were having instead would be in Esperanto.
It’s wrong if you intend it as a universal. The more similar one’s native language is to English, the easier English is to learn as a second language. People whose native languages are very different from English would have an easier time learning a second language that was more similar to their own.
There doesn’t need to have been any “intelligent design” behind the development of languages. They’re subjected to a kind of natural selection, although not in the same way as living creatures. Generations of ordinary people aren’t going to be willing to waste their time with complexities that express no meaning at all. There’s room for the odd vestigial structure here and there, but a language that was truly inefficient wouldn’t be much good for communication. Ordinary people aren’t going to adhere to prescriptive grammatical rules that they don’t see as being of any use in speaking with others.
If there were languages that were significantly more difficult to learn than others, the “baby talk” period of language acquisition would last significantly longer in some cultures than in others. This is not the case. There isn’t any human language too complex for a small child to master within a few years.
I have postulated that Esperanto is less complex than many other European languages. I don’t speak Esperanto so can’t myself witness, but that was what it was constructed for and that is what all the speakers I have talked to have told me. It is of course not unthinkable that the creators failed miserable at creating an easier language and that all the speakers were proselyting.
“Anti-Esperanto”. You think then that Esperanto succeeded in creating a less complex language?
Esperanto hasn’t yet been as successful as its creators and backers could have wished, but that has little to do with weather the language is successful in being less complex. I don’t personally much like the idea of Esperanto, as I very much like all the weird and very human idiosyncrasies and quirks of a natural language. But I do recognise that many of the complexities of languages I know seem very unnecessary and little else than historical baggage.
Language server other purposes than effective communications and carry around a lot of extra historical baggage. Gender in many Indo-European languages seem such a vestigial structure which doesn’t seem to add much in the way of communication compared to the extra complexity. I seem to recall that gender once served the purpose of distinguishing between inanimate and animate objects. In Danish there are two genders, which have no system at all. What extra complexity would need to be added in other areas of the language if these were done away with? German is also pretty much random. “Girl” is neuter. In Russian it’s very much just a matter of noun endings so it’s a little easier. But one sound funny or a little stupid when one use the wrong gender, and the little benefit there is in designating gender in the few words that has to do with actual female / male things seem massively overshadowed by having to memorize the gender of all these words. As well as all the baggage which follows in the way of different conjugation groups &tc.
I meant that I think English has a fairly low learning curve which it makes up for in word count and fixed expressions. It’s easy to get going at but hard to master. People with native languages very different from English would have an easier time learning a second language that was more similar to their own but still an easier time starting on English than another related language – like perhaps German for instance or Finnish which is unrelated to both Chinese and English and - having worked in Nokia - hellish difficult.
“Baby talk period” seem to be a little wobbly term to use as comparison and babies are wired to pick up languages. Besides there are so many other factors and I supposed vocabulary building overshadows the grammatical difficulties. But my kids at eight still make errors on irregular words. Perhaps a better comparison would be for how long it takes university students to learn another unrelated language than their own.
Secondly, an overlooked factor is the place of English in popular culture. Hollywood and the Anglosphere continues to produce the popular films, music, TV and books. It’s everywhere and there are industries generating more of it constantly, to satisfactory profits. This is why my learning English is easy and will continue. There is so much of it about.
Beats me. I don’t know anything about Danish, and as I said, I’m not a linguist. I don’t know that even a real linguist could predict such a thing. Languages don’t shift because someone sat down and said “let’s take away some complexity here and add some more there”, it’s a natural process. liberty3701 provided an example earlier in the thread about changes that took place during the transition from Old to Modern English.
*It isn’t random. “Maedchen” is neuter because it’s a diminutive. The suffix “-chen” causes the word to take the neuter gender.
*Having gendered nouns avoids ambiguity in sentences such as “I threw the vase at the window and it broke.” Since the neuter pronoun “it” applies equally well to “vase” and “window” in English, it isn’t clear what broke. If vase were feminine and window masculine in English, then “and she broke” would clearly refer to the vase rather than the window. English works even without this feature, but it isn’t a totally useless one.
Memorizing the gender of words can be a pain for students learning a second language, but native speakers seem to manage it pretty easily.
I don’t believe there’s any language that, when studied as a second language, is hard to get going at but easy to master. “Easy to get going at but hard to master” applies pretty well to the study of any language, or indeed the study of anything*.
*Having both studied German and taught English in Japan, I do not see any reason to believe that German would be overall more difficult for the Japanese to learn. I can think of some elements that would be more difficult to teach to a native Japanese speaker, but others that would be easier. I know several Japanese people who had studied German, and none of them ever mentioned that it was more difficult than English.
This is only anecdotal of course, but it’s consistent with what I have read about linguistics. Your claim above seems to be just your personal opinion phrased as a universal truth. You’re obviously determined not to learn anything that contradicts your existing opinions, so I don’t see any point in continuing this tangential discussion.
What is it I claim? I propose some things because I find your arguments unconvincing. It’s called discussion and pretty much the reason forums like this exist. But for some reason you guys think this is very bad and means I have a prior made up my mind and unwilling to learn and what not. If you are unable or can’t be bothered to present your case in a convincing manner perhaps you should just say that instead of accusing me of all sorts of things. But you’re right that this tangential discussion should stop. For some reason that beats me, you guys seem to be emotionally invested in this way beyond what I can muster.
You keep insisting on your evidently pre concieved view that for some reason English is easier to learn than given lang. X, and frankly as far as the emotionally invested mate, you’re the one who has bizarrely thrown out more and more frenzied accusations (such as bias, emotional investment). It hardly seems worth the effort since you haven’t engaged even the simplest observations yet.
Well, for one, at times language develops to conceal meaning. For example, one function of slang is to keep outsiders “out of the loop.” Or why thieves use their own special words. This stuff gets picked up (because it’s cool for being associated with outsiders) and then replaced quickly.
At other times, language can convey additional meanings than simply the words. For example, group identity. Young people speak differently than old people. Southern people speak differently than Northern people.
These are just a couple of examples of why a language can be more complex than it needs to be. There are hundreds of reasons why languages evolve into messy beasts instead of smooth machines.
This is absolutely true. There is an amazing amount of effort being put forth to teach people English in China.
Today a Chinese elementary school student is just as likely to be studying English books as Chinese flashcards. Students continue learning English throughout primary school and high school. Although instruction quality can be variable, especially in remote areas, a surprising number of high schools manage to hire foreign native-English speakers. I teach college freshmen, mostly from rural backgrounds. Most of them speak well enough out of high school to follow me well in class, carry on basic conversations, and read young-adult level novels.
English is one of, if not the, most popular university majors. Most universities have native-speaker teachers, some have quite a few. My fairly small and remote school has five. My friend’s school on the big city has over 50. Often the Chinese English teachers have spent time abroad in Anglophone countries. Students are so eager to learn that in each class I have at least 10 random students from other majors or people from the community sitting in. School is full of English language speech contests, English clubs, English language movie and literature clubs, etc. Most of our English majors leave speaking enough English that they could, say, function working your average American office job without too much of a language barrier. Again, I’m at a fairly remote lower-tier school.
Outside of school, there is a government run English-language TV station. How many other countries have TV stations in foreign languages targeted at the populace? There is a fair amount of bilingual signage. Business English classes are booming and often companies will offer their employees night and weekend English classes. Some English learning schools are household names.
You are right that English has not penetrated too far into rural areas and the older generations (though you are completely wrong that "many of them are completely illiterate…China has a 90% literacy rate. Nearly all people under, say, 35 are literate.) You are working with a concept of “what China is like” that is a couple generations old. Although it’s not like everyone speaks English, the English language infrastructure here is a world better than, say, the efforts we make to teach our citizens a second language.
I’m not sure why people feel compelled to talk about stuff they know nothing about. Nobody goes around claiming to know the ins and outs of Bolivian foreign language learning programs. So why talk like an authority on what goes in in China when it’s clear that is not your area of expertise?
I’m only saying that estimates of current and future English speakers in China seem wildly overrated if we’re talking about competence in English, not merely exposure. See http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=433481 this abstract for at least one voice that seems to agree with me.
I guess it’s how some people experience one small aspect and area country and feel like their experience extrapolates to the whole. You’re an English teacher, of course you’re going to get heavy exposure to English speakers.
Slang does express meaning, though. This meaning may not be obvious to everyone, but it’s clear enough to the intended audience. If part of the speaker’s intent is to make a statement that is clear to those “in the know” but difficult for outsiders to understand, then using slang or jargon isn’t an unnecessary complication.
*Again, this is an example of the use of language to express some meaning, not the use of language that does not express any meaning at all.
I think you’re projecting. The reason I began posting in this thread was because I felt liberty3701 was being jumped on unfairly. To the best of my knowledge, nothing he said would be considered controversial by modern, mainstream linguists. Since I am not an expert it’s possible I am badly mistaken, but my powers of persuasion don’t come into it. I have not been trying to convince you of an opinion, I have been trying to explain a fact. Since you aren’t interested in this, I leave you to argue with someone else. If you ever care to learn anything about linguistics you can read a book about it.
They do? Danish children make regular errors on fairly common words many years beyond the baby-talk age. And native adult speakers are often at a loss what to do with new or imported words and which gender to classify them in. And incidentally the extra precision in sentences, which only works when the two nouns are of a different gender – so you never know, doesn’t work in Danish since the two genders are conjugated the same way.
Yeah. I’m of course super impressed. :rolleyes: And btw. I haven’t been trying to convince you of an opinion either, I have been trying to explain a fact to you. But since you are too set in your ways and unwilling to learn, there’s no reason to take it further.