Is English the most logical language?

[Werewolf]

Re the talk about accents, I'd much rather something that shows how something is meant to be pronounced as opposed to some novel way of pronouncing two or more letters that is different to almost every other use of them because we've kept the spelling but the pronunciation has changed over the last 1500 or so years (or the other way round), or worse a pair of letters that only sound one way in one specific instance.

If I wrote I was going outside to see Ghlaghghee how many people would get an idea of what I mean instantly? It's a perfectly logical spelling and follows the rules for the sounds in English (as set by multiple other words), but it looks like something Rachel Riley has pulled out of the stack.
Likewise under English rules of spelling I could say I was going out to get ghoti and you'd probably not have a clue what I was talking about, unless perhaps I said I was going to a ghotimonger.

Spoiler

Ghlaghghee was a bit of a writers joke on how to spell Fluffy when his very young daughter chose the name for their new kitten.
The cat in question was probably best known as "Bacon Cat".

 

[Freakbro]

They're are loads of examples, but for a grammar/structure perspective, I quite like "she said that she loved him", then put the word "only" anywhere in the sentence.

Hah, that's brilliant!

 

[RoboCod]

German I find is most logical. Well structured. Sehr efficient

 

[danlightbulb]

but for a grammar/structure perspective, I quite like "she said that she loved him", then put the word "only" anywhere in the sentence

The rule there is simple though. 'only' refers to a singular, i.e one. You simply put the word where you want to refer to the singular or unique entity.

So 'she said that she loved only him'
Or 'she said that only she loved him'
Or 'only she said that she loved him'

They all work fine and it's all about building blocks that you can construct how you want to make the sentence mean what you want it to mean.

It shows the power that you have in English to move words around to make different meanings. In other languages you'd probably need different words altogether to convey those meanings.

Which is harder to learn I really don't know, but to me building blocks is more logical. Learning one word you can move around in a sentence or learning 10 different words - English is more efficient.

 

[dirtychinchilla]

But you’re looking at it entirely from the perspective of a native English speaker. The fact that you can but only in a sentence in numerous different places doesn’t make it a building block. It makes interpreting English incredibly difficult.

PS. Tried to learn Russian at school. Did it for a year. The language itself wasn’t that hard to understand, but having to learn a whole alphabet was a complete nightmare. That was a waste of a year.

 

[Raymond Lin]

Confirmation bias.
Not fluent in multiple languages.

with those 2 being true, there is no way one can start making judgment and conclusion on the English language or any of the languages on the planet. Never mind dismissing them totally.

Besides moving the goal posts along the way and put it under “conversation evolve” just to suit your argument because it fails at the original argument now. Have we addressed that irony yet?

 

[MikeTimbers]

Maybe because "white" as a description is closer to the noun than small/large, and because naturally it sounds better with this order.

"Naturally it sounds better". Because you learnt it from birth not because of any tangible reason. Be very glad we English don't really get taught our language at school. We get taught spelling and told to read classics but we don't really get taught grammar etc. If you ever have to teach English to a non-native speaker then you will learn how incredibly difficult it can be to explain things you "naturally" think "just sound right".

Now imagine you are not English.

When using multiple adjectives to describe a noun, you must use them in this specific order.

1 opinion unusual, lovely, beautiful

2 size big, small, tall

3 physical quality thin, rough, untidy

4 shape round, square, rectangular

5 age young, old, youthful

6 colour blue, red, pink

7 origin Dutch, Japanese, Turkish

8 material metal, wood, plastic

9 type general-purpose, four-sided, U-shaped

10 purpose cleaning, hammering, cooking


Logical but not easy to remember in a conversation!

 

[dirtychinchilla]

Confirmation bias.
Not fluent in multiple languages.

with those 2 being true, there is no way one can start making judgment and conclusion on the English language or any of the languages on the planet. Never mind dismissing them totally.

Besides moving the goal posts along the way and put it under “conversation evolve” just to suit your argument because it fails at the original argument now. Have we addressed that irony yet?

Indeed. It’s ok to admit you’re wrong OP!

 

[BigT]

Exactly! A completely different word. In English the main bit of the word is still the same we just supplement it.

Eat (the core word)
Eaten - past tense
Eating - present tense

if you learn the word Eat and the endings 'en' and 'ing' you basically can apply that to all sorts of words.

Your example actually disproves your theory and a good example of why English is inconsistent. The simple past tense of eat is actually ate. Then you can have:

was eating - past continuous. How confusing is that when eating can also be present as you suggest.
had eaten - past perfect
had been eating - past perfect continuous

As a non native English speaker would you learn, “I ate a sandwich” or “I had eaten a sandwich” ? You could use either but one sounds better than the other in different situations by no real easy to understand rules.

Gender on nouns is alien to English speakers but when you start with a foreign language it’s just something simple. Just like you learn the word for a cow or sheep in English, you just happen to learn the gender at the same time in many European languages and it becomes second nature.

 

[GGizmo]

After watching a few foreign tv series over the years, mostly Danish based, I decided to watch some of the beginner language videos on youtube.

So far the main issue I have with Danish is the pronunciation of the words rather than understanding them. If someone said the sentence to me I could understand it. But its like they put their tongue in a different position to how we do when speaking English.

According to one site I looked at it said Norwegian was the easiest language an English speaker can learn. After watching the learner video I can see why. It is similar to Danish though the pronunciations sound like English.

The only part that trips me up about some of the other languages is when they are using special alphabet symbols, like the o with the 2 dots over, or the o with the strike through it, and the ae symbol.

 

[dirtychinchilla]

After watching a few foreign tv series over the years, mostly Danish based, I decided to watch some of the beginner language videos on youtube.

So far the main issue I have with Danish is the pronunciation of the words rather than understanding them. If someone said the sentence to me I could understand it. But its like they put their tongue in a different position to how we do when speaking English.

According to one site I looked at it said Norwegian was the easiest language an English speaker can learn. After watching the learner video I can see why. It is similar to Danish though the pronunciations sound like English.

The only part that trips me up about some of the other languages is when they are using special alphabet symbols, like the o with the 2 dots over, or the o with the strike through it, and the ae symbol.

Scandinavian languages are interesting. I think English shares a common root in that “olde english” is very similar.

 

[danlightbulb]

Confirmation bias.
Not fluent in multiple languages.

with those 2 being true, there is no way one can start making judgment and conclusion on the English language or any of the languages on the planet. Never mind dismissing them totally.

Besides moving the goal posts along the way and put it under “conversation evolve” just to suit your argument because it fails at the original argument now. Have we addressed that irony yet?

Think you're being a bit defensive there for the sake of it. So what I said logical first? You can see throughout the thread Ive been consistent in saying my question was about sentence structure, not necessarily the words themselves.

There has been opportunity for people to say why other languages are better or logical, no-one has really done so. There has been some criticism of English but from what I can see its mostly criticism of dual meaning similar words or the 'i before e' rule which are fairly marginal factors really. Obviously this is an English speaking forum so maybe that was expected.


Anyway, on a related but slightly altered topic, I still haven't found a good language app. Duolingo has got me saying 'a man eats an apple'. not sure what use that is in the real world. Plus it throws you straight into spelling the words and the constant use of czy, dz, and accented symbols in Polish is making that very difficult. To my mind the app should have started with the sounds of the letter combinations, eg Dz is pronounced like a j. It hasn't even gone there yet. Pretty poor.

 

[touch]

The rule there is simple though. 'only' refers to a singular, i.e one. You simply put the word where you want to refer to the singular or unique entity.

So 'she said that she loved only him'
Or 'she said that only she loved him'
Or 'only she said that she loved him'

They all work fine and it's all about building blocks that you can construct how you want to make the sentence mean what you want it to mean.

The point there is that you can put the word only anywhere in that sentence:
Only she said that she loved him
she only said that she loved him
she said only that she loved him
she said that only she loved him
she said that she only loved him
she said that she loved only him
she said that she loved him only

It refers to a singular, as you say, but the singular thing that it refers to changes depending on where it comes in the sentence.
I guess there will be similar constructs in other languages though but it does show why English is imprecise.
"She is walking with her child wearing a yellow tshirt" - there's no way to tell who is wearing the yellow tshirt in that sentence.

 

[Raymond Lin]

Think you're being a bit defensive there for the sake of it. So what I said logical first? You can see throughout the thread Ive been consistent in saying my question was about sentence structure, not necessarily the words themselves.

There has been opportunity for people to say why other languages are better or logical, no-one has really done so. There has been some criticism of English but from what I can see its mostly criticism of dual meaning similar words or the 'i before e' rule which are fairly marginal factors really. Obviously this is an English speaking forum so maybe that was expected.


Anyway, on a related but slightly altered topic, I still haven't found a good language app. Duolingo has got me saying 'a man eats an apple'. not sure what use that is in the real world. Plus it throws you straight into spelling the words and the constant use of czy, dz, and accented symbols in Polish is making that very difficult. To my mind the app should have started with the sounds of the letter combinations, eg Dz is pronounced like a j. It hasn't even gone there yet. Pretty poor.

I not being defensive, I’m being objective. The fact is that your native language is English, the fact is that your are not fluent in anything else. Hence the fact is that you are bias by this very nature due to your lack of understanding. hell, I speak 3 languages and I cannot say which one, out of the thousands isn’t the world is the most “pick your choice of description here”. Because I do not know them al, therefore to make any conclusive conclusion. That’s what I have been saying. You are drawing conclusions when you don’t know every language…that’s just wrong.

we can give examples…I mean what if we give 10 examples or 100 examples, that’s still not enough, there is not enough time to compare all the languages in every facet so why using so little information and form a conclusion? Unless you are biased?

that’s why I haven’t really bothered to give out examples because for everyone I can give there will be an counter, and there are endless examples. An interesting one I heard the other week was the word “dead”, you can say “deader”, did you know that? You would think, how can something be deader than dead, dead is dead. It’s 1 or 0. Well, you can if you are describing the acoustic in a room, one room is deader than the other.

And my advice to learning is still the same, forget all that grammar stuff, learn the words first. You are not trying to pass an exam, no one will have a go at you for getting the grammar wrong, it’s more important to get the words out first. “Me hungry” makes as much sense as “I am hungry”.

 

[danlightbulb]

I not being defensive, I’m being objective. The fact is that your native language is English, the fact is that your are not fluent in anything else. Hence the fact is that you are bias by this very nature due to your lack of understanding. hell, I speak 3 languages and I cannot say which one, out of the thousands isn’t the world is the most “pick your choice of description here”. Because I do not know them al, therefore to make any conclusive conclusion. That’s what I have been saying. You are drawing conclusions when you don’t know every language…that’s just wrong.

And my advice to learning is still the same, forget all that grammar stuff, learn the words first. You are not trying to pass an exam, no one will have a go at you for getting the grammar wrong, it’s more important to get the words out first. “Me hungry” makes as much sense as “I am hungry”.

I'm not making any conclusions - Im asking a question and posing a conjecture. I've made a case for English being the most logical/efficient/easy to learn language, there is room for others to come in and make a case for an alternative.

Which of the three languages you speak makes the most sense to you? I assume one was native, probably English, so which of the other two made the most sense?

The point there is that you can put the word only anywhere in that sentence:
Only she said that she loved him
she only said that she loved him
she said only that she loved him
she said that only she loved him
she said that she only loved him
she said that she loved only him
she said that she loved him only

It refers to a singular, as you say, but the singular thing that it refers to changes depending on where it comes in the sentence.
I guess there will be similar constructs in other languages though but it does show why English is imprecise.
"She is walking with her child wearing a yellow tshirt" - there's no way to tell who is wearing the yellow tshirt in that sentence.

Your final example is bad grammar though, a comma would sort out the ambiguity. As written the child is wearing a yellow t-shirt, but if you add a comma, she is wearing it: 'She is walking with her child, wearing a yellow t-shirt'.

Im aware of the point about the word 'only'. My point was you only learn one word, and the way you use the word changes the meaning, hence 'building block'. In other languages you need to learn many more words and then need to choose the version that means what you want it to.

 

[Raymond Lin]

All languages make sense, that’s the beauty of being fluent, I don’t think about it, words just comes out when you are fluent.

When you are not fluent, you think of what to say, how to say it before you speak.

and yes, when you are trying to rank them, you are drawing conclusions.

 

[Jean-F]

To my mind the app should have started with the sounds of the letter combinations, eg Dz is pronounced like a j. It hasn't even gone there yet. Pretty poor.

An example of how you can come unstuck by knowing a little of a language.
In an upmarket restaurant near London Bridge, our waitress was Polish, and showing off a tad, I asked for “rachunek proszę”, (the bill please), she brought it to the table and I said, “dziękuję”, (thank you).
My wife said, “Oh come on, you said that we were going.”
I said, “We are”, she said, “Didn’t you just say something about gin?”
As you’ll know OP, dziękuję sounds like jin koo-yer.

 

[SexyGreyFox]

I watched a documentary years ago that said Icelandic was the hardest language to learn.

In fact it was this -

 

[Feek]

I speak 3 languages

I've been meaning to ask anyone who is multilingual about this for years but I always forget.

When you're thinking, which language do you think in? What goes around your head the most?

Which out of these three would you consider your native language? Is that the language you think in?

I know they're not related in any way to the thread but it's just something I keep forgetting to ask people who are fluent in multiple languages.

 

[Chuk_Chuk]

I'm not making any conclusions - Im asking a question and posing a conjecture. I've made a case for English being the most logical/efficient/easy to learn language, there is room for others to come in and make a case for an alternative.

.

People have alluded to it, but I'm not sure it has been explicitly mentioned but i think you underestimate the amount of practise you've had in the english language. Depending on your age it could easily be over 100,000 hours.

Think about every conversation you have had, every book, email, letter, forum post you have read and everything you've written in your life. All of these have worked to reinforce your understanding of the rules of the english language (Both correctly and incorrectly).

After all of that practise of course the language is going to be logical to you.