Is English the most logical language?

[Blackjack Davy]

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.

Yeah gendered nouns is like the inconsistencies in english its something you don't think about if you're a native speaker but for foreigners its a nightmare. Old english had masculine, feminine and neuter forms for "woman", modern english is easier there at least.

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

English adopted a lot of grammatical forms from scandanavian settlers you can construct sentences in a similar way to scandanavian tongues that are impossible in dutch or german. As well as several thousand words. Its probably contact with them ended the complex gendered and inflected endings of old english a sort of hybrid, pidgin english developed that was much simpler to understand for non-native speakers. The pronouns them, they, their are norse as is the typical usage of the verb to be "are" (west country dialect preserves the old english form "I be" as they were furthest from scandanavian influence)

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.

I've heard it said more than once that your native or first language is the language that you think or dream in, I remember the newsreader Huw Edwards saying his thoughts are in welsh he does a sort of internal translation before speaking aloud in english

 

[Feef]

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 can't really be bothered catching up with where we are now about logical /efficient languages at this point, but I completely agree with this. Language is about communication, making yourself understood and achieving something, whether that's ordering some dumplings or blundering through a chat with some strangers over a beer.

The single biggest obstacle I found trying to teach people English was students who were scared to make a mistake, because through school they'd be picked up on that and told they were wrong, and therefore too scared to try to speak. My entire approach to teaching it was to encourage conversation (again, this was with adults in particular situations rather than kids, which would be different), and a big part of that was just making people feel that they could speak without being beaten down for every mistake. Of course you pick up on things if that's the focus of a class, but you're never going to speak another language if you're terrified of making a mistake.

 

[TurtleTwo]

U wot m8 dnt be dissin ma ingrish coz I'll ave to bring me staffie Tyrone round yer gaff an e's 'ungry

 

[Raymond Lin]

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.

I am more fluent in English and Cantonese than i am in Hakka. I don't really talk to my parents in Hakka, that's more to my grandmother which is only on Skype these days. However my parents speaks Hakka sometimes and I understand what they are saying perfectly. There are times when my sister is around 3 languages goes on between us as a family and there is no pause in between (from my perspective) in switching as they are the same as each other. I can think in a language but I am not really conscious of it, like when I count, I can count in any the 2 i am more fluent in. In a way I prefer to count in in Cantonese as it's 1 tone for each number, rather than saying Seven (2 syllables), 七 is 7 and it's just 1 syllables.

I guess I am thinking in English now, I am thinking and in a way reading out what I am typing as I type, and as I am typing in English, my mind is reading out in English. There is no switching in the brain, i guess if i am typing in Chinese I would be doing the same.

Think of it as driving, when you are first driving you are constantly thinking of all the things you need to do, like observation, signal, manoeuvre, clutch down, shift gear etc. After a while you just do it and don't think about it. When you are fluent it's a bit like that, you just do it.

As for dreaming? I've dreamt in both, I can't say which one, I guess I've done it in both?

 

[MikeTimbers]

If I were to win the lottery and have total freedom to do whatever I wanted I would be very tempted to go to Uni and study linguistics. Languages across the world all have fascinating idiosyncrasies but also commonalities.

Apparently in nearly every language the word for mother begins with an "M" sound. This is believed to be because it's likely the first sound a baby will make and generally it is the female that cares for the infant and so assumes the sound is directed at them.

In tonal languages it is effectively impossible to be sarcastic as the different pronunciation of the words would change their meaning entirely rather than indicate a contradictory meaning.

Don't know why but this stuff just fascinates me. If it interests you, read "Mother Tongue" by Bill Bryson.

 

[Lopéz]

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.

It's teaching you to build a sentence construct combining tense and gender (both "man" and "apple" will have a gender in Polish, so later you'll learn things like "A woman eats a frog" or whatever to vary the genders.
You do know you don't learn languages by literally learning entire sentences of text, right? It's teaching you patterns and rules.

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.

When people learn English, they are taught "The man eats the apple" not "De man eetz de apull"

Of course you are going to learn with the correct alphabet!

I think maybe languages aren't for you, given the content of this thread.

 

[Feek]

When you are fluent it's a bit like that, you just do it.

Interesting, thanks Raymond.

I think maybe languages aren't for you, given the content of this thread.

What about you, Lopears, do you think in Kentish, Welsh or Polish?

 

[Raymond Lin]

If I were to win the lottery and have total freedom to do whatever I wanted I would be very tempted to go to Uni and study linguistics. Languages across the world all have fascinating idiosyncrasies but also commonalities.

Apparently in nearly every language the word for mother begins with an "M" sound. This is believed to be because it's likely the first sound a baby will make and generally it is the female that cares for the infant and so assumes the sound is directed at them.

In tonal languages it is effectively impossible to be sarcastic as the different pronunciation of the words would change their meaning entirely rather than indicate a contradictory meaning.

Don't know why but this stuff just fascinates me. If it interests you, read "Mother Tongue" by Bill Bryson.

I don't think the mother thing is right. Just flicking through Google Translate for fun…

In Malay mother is ibu, Kurdish is dê, In Esperanto it's patrino, in Arabic it's 'um, in Hungarian it's anya.

 

[manic111]

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.

I'm not multilingual, but spent a year in Central America teaching, and a few months in started to have the occasional dream in Spanish. Which was odd, as my Spanish never went beyond being conversational, so what was actually probably happening was that my brain tricked itself into thinking that it was dreaming in Spanish. Brains are wacky.

 

[danlightbulb]

It's teaching you to build a sentence construct combining tense and gender (both "man" and "apple" will have a gender in Polish, so later you'll learn things like "A woman eats a frog" or whatever to vary the genders.
You do know you don't learn languages by literally learning entire sentences of text, right? It's teaching you patterns and rules.


When people learn English, they are taught "The man eats the apple" not "De man eetz de apull"

Of course you are going to learn with the correct alphabet!

I think maybe languages aren't for you, given the content of this thread.

I agree learning a new language has never interested me until now. Im very good at maths though - hence why Im looking for logic in the language to try and learn it I think.

Anyway, on the subject of the app. What it is doing is saying 'translate this' and then giving me for example 'a man eats an apple'. Now the problem is that it needs me to type it out with no other clues. Man in Polish is mężczyzna. With the best will in the world I cannot (at the moment) remember how to spell that word without a prompt. Firstly all the z's, y's and c's are difficult on their own but secondly it isn't pronounced how it is spelt. Im also noticing that the app is asking me to spell words with accents, but those accents are not available in the dictionary installed in my phone. So its all a bit disjointed.

I think it should have started with simpler words that are spellable by memory.

 

[Feek]

How do you expect to learn a foreign language when you can’t even get apostrophes right in your native language? The one that you think is the most logical and easiest.

 

[touch]

I agree learning a new language has never interested me until now. Im very good at maths though - hence why Im looking for logic in the language to try and learn it I think.

Anyway, on the subject of the app. What it is doing is saying 'translate this' and then giving me for example 'a man eats an apple'. Now the problem is that it needs me to type it out with no other clues. Man in Polish is mężczyzna. With the best will in the world I cannot (at the moment) remember how to spell that word without a prompt. Firstly all the z's, y's and c's are difficult on their own but secondly it isn't pronounced how it is spelt. Im also noticing that the app is asking me to spell words with accents, but those accents are not available in the dictionary installed in my phone. So its all a bit disjointed.

I think it should have started with simpler words that are spellable by memory.

It's easier if you use the web app through your computer's browser. You can hover over the words it's asking you to translate to see what they are (and how to spell them). You also get a small on-screen keyboard with all the accented characters that you might not have on your own keyboard.

 

[Voltar]

Tldr:
Bloke spends a short time learning a new language on Duolingo and decides to tell everyone how it is illogical, how other foreign tongues are illogical and how his mother tongue is best.

Why can’t everyone just speak English!?

Some very patient and interesting responses to the OP in here.

I speak two Romance languages fluently, another to a basic level, learned a “hard language”, and self taught German and Japanese using the same app as the OP to the extent I could communicate when being a tourist.

I won’t quote them because it will make for a huge post but a lot of what Raymond has been saying about language, and learning language is spot on.

 

[danlightbulb]

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.

I didn't see this edit until now. Isn't this a good example of the building blocks in English though? The ending 'er' can be applied to lots of words to mean more than the original. Eg long/longer, small/smaller. Whilst I agree deader isn't a word used regularly the building block still makes sense.

How do you expect to learn a foreign language when you can’t even get apostrophes right in your native language? The one that you think is the most logical and easiest.

As you probably know this is just a laziness that comes from mobile phone / quick forum typing. I am fully aware of where apostrophes go in English thank you.

 

[danlightbulb]

Tldr:
Bloke spends a short time learning a new language on Duolingo and decides to tell everyone how it is illogical, how other foreign tongues are illogical and how his mother tongue is best.

Why can’t everyone just speak English!?

Again I think you've missed the point a little. I asked a question and made an argument for my hypothesis one way, I haven't concluded it nor said it's definitive.

I agree some great points have been made.

Of course though, it would be far easier if there was only one language in the whole world. It's not necessarily the words that are the issue in other languages as I have said, it's conveying the right meaning.

 

[finga]

Polish is simple, English is complicated!
Wifes Polish, tbh the hardest part of Polish is changing your palate when speaking, not the grammar

 

[Raymond Lin]

I didn't see this edit until now. Isn't this a good example of the building blocks in English though? The ending 'er' can be applied to lots of words to mean more than the original. Eg long/longer, small/smaller. Whilst I agree deader isn't a word used regularly the building block still makes sense.

What I was trying to show isn't about building blocks, 1 - how do you know that no other languages in the entire planet does the same? or better?

You don't.

Second, I was trying to show that, even to a native, in this case, Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode (Wittertainment Podcast where I heard this on), both with over 100 years of English learning combined, both university graduate and Kermode having a PHD (yes I know not in English but you still need to write in English for his PHD). They spent a while debating whether deader is a word. It wasn't until a linguist email in the following week to confirm it and gave an example.

So point no.1 still stands, stop drawing any comparisons and conclusion until you are fluent at least in more than 1, best if you are fluent in every language, then your opinion will actually have some weight. Right now, you sound like you have Dunning-Kruger effect moment, barely starting to learn a 2nd language and think you are an expert and trying to debate with people who actually am fluent in multiple languages.

 

[danlightbulb]

Polish is simple, English is complicated!
Wifes Polish, tbh the hardest part of Polish is changing your palate when speaking, not the grammar

Have you made much progress in learning it?

 

[danlightbulb]

What I was trying to show isn't about building blocks, 1 - how do you know that no other languages in the entire planet does the same? or better?

You don't.

Second, I was trying to show that, even to a native, in this case, Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode (Wittertainment Podcast where I heard this on), both with over 100 years of English learning combined, both university graduate and Kermode having a PHD (yes I know not in English but you still need to write in English for his PHD). They spent a while debating whether deader is a word. It wasn't until a linguist email in the following week to confirm it and gave an example.

So point no.1 still stands, stop drawing any comparisons and conclusion until you are fluent at least in more than 1, best if you are fluent in every language, then your opinion will actually have some weight. Right now, you sound like you have Dunning-Kruger effect moment, barely starting to learn a 2nd language and think you are an expert.

I'm very confused by your interpretation of my thread and posts to be honest with you.

I have asked a question not stated a conclusion. You seem to think I have already made up my mind, that is not the case.

 

[Raymond Lin]

I'm very confused by your interpretation of my thread and posts to be honest with you.

I have asked a question not stated a conclusion. You seem to think I have already made up my mind, that is not the case.

But every example you are trying to give or when others showing you otherwise you are making a defence and justify why English is somehow superior. You already drawn your conclusions.

The ACTUAL thread question itself is wrong if you are starting a research on this and want some objectivity. It should not be "Is English the most logical or whatever word you choose to describe it". The unbiased question to this would be "Which language is the easiest to learn" or "Which language is the most efficient in getting information across".