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Old 07-14-2014, 01:16 PM   #11
Critical
 
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Default Re: [Basic] Learning languages

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Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
Some languages are easier to learn that other is one of those things that comes up all the time in anecdotes but persistently fails to show up in studies that measure anything beyond the most basic levels - that it may show up at those most basic level is probably because you can manage some communication with no grammar at all, and it probably is easier to memorize and understandably pronounce a few hundred vocabulary words when they use the same sounds as or are actual cognates of words you already know.
In terms of hours, if you can acquire vocabulary in half the time, it cuts down significantly on the time it takes you to learn a new language; you can spend those saved hours on mastering grammar. That's probably the main reason it is easier for English speakers to learn Spanish than some totally unrelated language like Mongolian. I have heard some people hypothesize that grammatical similarities between two languages can also reduce learning time, but I don't know about that. The vocabulary part, though, is obvious to anyone who has studied both a similar language and a dissimilar language to his or her native language(s).
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Old 07-14-2014, 01:34 PM   #12
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Default Re: [Basic] Learning languages

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Originally Posted by Flyndaran View Post
There's one that lacks words for numbers, colors, or ability to nest clauses within sentences.
You're referring to Pirahã, which is somewhat contentious, but at least two of these features are not uncommon crosslinguistically.
  • Numbers are a technology. Cultures which don't do much commerce don't really have them - the Pirahã are hunter-gatherers, so they don't really have much more in the way of "numbers" than "one, some, many".
  • Colours are a really contentious issue, because they tie into Sapir-Whorf, but colour words seem to breed colour words over time; the difference is where they draw the lines on a colourmap, not "they have no word for green". Through the Language Glass by Guy Deutscher is the most accessible coverage of the subject that I know of.
I'd say it's fairly true to say that all languages spoken by cultures which have embraced agriculture are of roughly even complexity.

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Basically, word-flexing case systems are a dead end as far as lingtech goes - they lack any redeeming features in the form in which they exist.
Language isn't a technology - there's no progression to it. Sound change causes languages to go from isolating to agglutinating to inflecting and back to isolating again - independent words become affixes which then fuse together and wear away to be replaced by new independent words.
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Old 07-14-2014, 05:29 PM   #13
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Default Re: [Basic] Learning languages

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Originally Posted by Ketsuban View Post
  • Numbers are a technology. Cultures which don't do much commerce don't really have them - the Pirahã are hunter-gatherers, so they don't really have much more in the way of "numbers" than "one, some, many".
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Language isn't a technology - there's no progression to it. Sound change causes languages to go from isolating to agglutinating to inflecting and back to isolating again - independent words become affixes which then fuse together and wear away to be replaced by new independent words.
Mutually-contradictory paragraphs. Both numbers and numberless language are two sides of the same coin: symbolical representation.
And while we're at it, there's no progression to numbers - decimal systems still have 10 numbers, duodecimal have 12 etc. But there's progression in math - as new procedures are invented, so are symbolical representations of them. And as people invent, say, new procedures in marketing, or discover new phenomena in sociology, so they also invent the symbolical representation for them, making the language richer, more advanced.

It would be accurate to say that language-making is unscientific - just like boatmaking was unscientific before the invention of hydrodynamics and material science. But it would be strange to say that boatmaking was not a technology back then.
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Old 07-14-2014, 05:55 PM   #14
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Default Re: [Basic] Learning languages

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I would qualify that as most languages are of the same complexity.
The Defense Language Institute would disagree with this statement. They have roughly uniform (ha ha) expectations of fluency across all their "full-time" programs, but they divide languages into at least three catagories of difficulty, with the hardest getting only the "best" students and still taking about twice as long to learn!
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Old 07-14-2014, 06:45 PM   #15
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Default Re: [Basic] Learning languages

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The Defense Language Institute would disagree with this statement. They have roughly uniform (ha ha) expectations of fluency across all their "full-time" programs, but they divide languages into at least three catagories of difficulty, with the hardest getting only the "best" students and still taking about twice as long to learn!
I would be highly suspicious of that unless it includes reading and writing. Those are quite varied in difficulty.
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Old 07-14-2014, 06:48 PM   #16
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Default Re: [Basic] Learning languages

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The Defense Language Institute would disagree with this statement. They have roughly uniform (ha ha) expectations of fluency across all their "full-time" programs, but they divide languages into at least three catagories of difficulty, with the hardest getting only the "best" students and still taking about twice as long to learn!
That's for native speakers of English. What they are saying with that is that some languages take longer for English speakers to learn than others. The reasons for that have already been discussed; it is not because some languages are inherently more complex than others.
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Old 07-14-2014, 06:55 PM   #17
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I would be highly suspicious of that unless it includes reading and writing. Those are quite varied in difficulty.
It does include reading and writing, but the two grads I know said that the spoken section was far more important. And again, these are people for whom comparative languages is literally a matter of life and death!
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Old 07-14-2014, 07:03 PM   #18
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Default Re: [Basic] Learning languages

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Originally Posted by Critical View Post
That's for native speakers of English. What they are saying with that is that some languages take longer for English speakers to learn than others. The reasons for that have already been discussed; it is not because some languages are inherently more complex than others.
I disagree - I think the two issues are convolved. That is, a language may be technically more or less difficult, AND may be relatively easy or difficult based on how similar it is to one's mother tongue. But the fact that (for example) English is more closely related to German than to Chinese probably makes it an easier lanuage for Germans to learn than it is for the Chinese... but it is still a difficult language compared to most in the world (from what I have been told by a host of non-native speakers).

I would also note that saying "That's for native speakers of English" only indicates that the language difficulty should be based on native language, not that it should be eliminated. Excepting the rare individual who does not have (for example) native phonyms and such, we are all going to have biases. If you want to consider languages solely by relative difficulty, then create a rule that correlates the similarity of languages to their difficulty - because they will NOT be equal for any given person!
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Old 07-14-2014, 07:54 PM   #19
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Default Re: [Basic] Learning languages

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Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post

Speaking of poetry, I was surprised to find out that English poetry relies on accented-nonaccented alternation of syllables. I never had that pointed out to me in school.
.
That sounds to me like the rule for iambic pentameter (i.e. Shakespeare) and not poetry in general.

<shrug> I could be wrong. I'm terrible at picking up iambic pentameter in Shakespeare and I don't think I could write any to save my life. I suppose I could have missed it everywhere else but I don't think so.

I am sure that no one in school told me that I had to alternate accented and unaccented syllables when writing poetry. Rhyme schemes, internal rhymes, euphony but not alternating syllable stress.

Note that English poetry does not all descend from Shakespeare. It's as sprawling and unorganized as everything else in the language. Remember when you decided that English does not have a "literary" language form? What you may not have grasped was how much trouble you had explaining to us what one was and/or why we would want one. I couldn't explain it.
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Old 07-14-2014, 08:02 PM   #20
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Default Re: [Basic] Learning languages

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Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
Mutually-contradictory paragraphs.
Numbers aren't language; the words for them are, sure, but those words are - where we know their origin at all - generally either loanwords or derived from the process of counting on fingers. In the absence of animal handling or trade which necessitate being able to count, you don't need many numbers beyond the ones I mentioned which map cleanly onto the division of number expressed on the verb - singular, paucal (or dual, since a lot of anatomical features come in pairs), plural. Very few languages have a trial (three).

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Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
It would be accurate to say that language-making is unscientific - just like boatmaking was unscientific before the invention of hydrodynamics and material science. But it would be strange to say that boatmaking was not a technology back then.
Languagemaking is exactly as scientific as you want it to be. Just don't be fooled into thinking that there was ever a period in human prehistory where the species sat down and started deciding on grammatical forms - our best guess is that language developed as the species did. There was most likely no Proto-World other than in the evolutionary-science sense that past a certain point in history all language is the ancestor of either all languages or none.

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