Is English the most logical language?

[MikeTimbers]

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.

I said "generally", read this wikipedia entry for a more complete list to which there are of course exceptions as you say.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mama_and_papa

 

[JRS]

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.

Yes, it is lazy and it can destroy meaning. Punctuation is the difference between pandas (eats shoots and leaves) and gangsters (eats, shoots and leaves).

Do better.

 

[danlightbulb]

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".

Yes that is true, I have been giving the English examples because I only know English. Maybe I expected too much to think people might be able to give counter examples from other languages.

It wasn't intentional that my OP title is biased, thread was created on the spur of the moment not after many days of thought. You don't have to take it literally.

 

[finga]

Have you made much progress in learning it?

As much as I need to. Apparently I sound Polish, Its not spoken at home here, despite 2 kids, only when skyping her parents, Polish satellite tv is on all day though so we hear it all the time.
You dont need to be exact to be understood, learning the words is more important than the appropriate endings.
You need to look at it like yoda speak, kind of backwards, jest, jestem, jestes, jestesmy etc. Also putting the emphasis on the penultimate syllable rather than an earlier one like we do.
Starting out I found trilled R the hardest, the very subtle differences between y and i, rz and sz, that we dont hear at first but they do!
Nearly 20 years since I met her now though..

 

[MikeTimbers]

Personally I would argue that French is more logical than English and German probably even more so. Both French and German have been heavily "maintained", in France L'Acadamie Francaise has a lot of power to dictate what outside words are acceptable and may be taught in schools. English has no such controller and as such, mutates seemingly like literally every five minutes.

 

[Raymond Lin]

Yes that is true, I have been giving the English examples because I only know English. Maybe I expected too much to think people might be able to give counter examples from other languages.

It wasn't intentional that my OP title is biased, thread was created on the spur of the moment not after many days of thought.

I already gave an example in tenses, you are having to learn 4x the number of words rather than add Tomorrow, Now, Soon or Yesterday to every verb and don't need to change the tense. Go, went, been, going, gone,

So "I drink coffee yesterday" works perfectly in Chinese, you don't need to learn to say "I drank coffee yesterday."

You can't tell me in this example English is more efficient, logical or whatever way you want to rank it?

 

[MikeTimbers]

I already gave an example in tenses, you are having to learn 4x the number of words rather than add Tomorrow, Now, Soon or Yesterday to every verb and don't need to change the tense. Go, went, been, going, gone,

So "I drink coffee yesterday" works perfectly in Chinese, you don't need to learn to say "I drank coffee yesterday."

You can't tell me in this example English is more efficient, logical or whatever way you want to rank it?

Thai works the same way with tenses.

@Raymond Lin did you know Thai and Cantonese have very similar words for numbers?

Yat, Ye, Sam, Say, Mm, Lop, Chat, Bat, Gow, Sap
Nung, Song, Sam, See, Ha, Hoke, Jet, Bat, Gow, Sip (and 20 in Thai is Ye Sip)

 

[Raymond Lin]

Thai works the same way with tenses.

@Raymond Lin did you know Thai and Cantonese have very similar words for numbers?

Yat, Ye, Sam, Say, Mm, Lop, Chat, Bat, Gow, Sap
Nung, Song, Sam, See, Ha, Hoke, Jet, Bat, Gow, Sip (and 20 in Thai is Ye Sip)

And Japanese, in fact they share the same word, they use Kanji (Chinese characters). Chinese influence in the region is massive due to it's history in conquering the region and also immigration.

ps, reading the phonetic in the numbers in English hurts my brain lol The number 7 is way off than "chat". I don't think I can spell it. It's a bit like saying "tut tut tut", that length but start with ch but without the t in the end….

 

[danlightbulb]

I already gave an example in tenses, you are having to learn 4x the number of words rather than add Tomorrow, Now, Soon or Yesterday to every verb and don't need to change the tense. Go, went, been, going, gone,

So "I drink coffee yesterday" works perfectly in Chinese, you don't need to learn to say "I drank coffee yesterday."

You can't tell me in this example English is more efficient, logical or whatever way you want to rank it?

Hmm but doesn't having drink and drank indicating tense convey more meaning in a more efficient way?

'I drink' means present tense, 'I drank' means past tense. You add an extra word to convey the timeframe if you need to. In Chinese could you say 'I drank water' without specifying when, only that it was in the past?

Another point I was making was that you can learn the word 'I', the word 'drink', and you can then construct the sentence, which is quite a logical approach. In other languages there would be one word for 'I drink', so it's not disaggregated as much.

 

[Jean-F]

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

This reminded me of my Polish live-in girlfriend of a gazillion years ago.
She taught me a word here and a word there, but I had no ambition to learn the language.
One night I took her to the pub in Bermondsey where I used to drink with the guys at weekends, “The Red Cow” in The Grange.
One of the guys bought us a drink, and said, “Who’s the unlucky woman Jean?”
I smiled at her and said, “Moja żona” (my wife), the friend looked puzzled at that.
She rolled her eyes and said in perfect English, “He should be so lucky!”

 

[danlightbulb]

That is very logical. Better than English definitely.

 

[Raymond Lin]

Hmm but doesn't having drink and drank indicating tense convey more meaning in a more efficient way?

'I drink' means present tense, 'I drank' means past tense. You add an extra word to convey the timeframe if you need to. In Chinese could you say 'I drank water' without specifying when, only that it was in the past?

Another point I was making was that you can learn the word 'I', the word 'drink', and you can then construct the sentence, which is quite a logical approach. In other languages there would be one word for 'I drink', so it's not disaggregated as much.

No it does not, adding when you do it does the same job and it also tell you when.

"I drank coffee." he says

I say "You drank coffee? what you do you mean you drank coffee? You used to drink coffee but no longer or do you mean you drank coffee this morning?"

You had to say I drank coffee + when to give the full information.

 

[touch]

Hmm but doesn't having drink and drank indicating tense convey more meaning in a more efficient way?

'I drink' means present tense, 'I drank' means past tense. You add an extra word to convey the timeframe if you need to. In Chinese could you say 'I drank water' without specifying when, only that it was in the past?

Another point I was making was that you can learn the word 'I', the word 'drink', and you can then construct the sentence, which is quite a logical approach. In other languages there would be one word for 'I drink', so it's not disaggregated as much.

I don't understand?
You're saying that English is more efficient than Chinese because you can say "I drank water" and convey what/when using less words.
But you also say that other languages which can convey "I drink" in less words than English are not logical.

 

[danlightbulb]

No it does not, adding when you do it does the same job and it also tell you when.

"I drank coffee." he says

I say "You drank coffee? what you do you mean you drank coffee? You used to drink coffee but no longer or do you mean you drank coffee this morning?"

You had to say I drank coffee + when to give the full information.

What I meant was, what if you didn't want to specify the timeframe, only that it was in the past. In English you can do that.

'I ate chips'.

It doesn't matter when I ate them, that's not information I wanted to convey so I can just leave it out.

 

[Raymond Lin]

What I meant was, what if you didn't want to specify the timeframe, only that it was in the past. In English you can do that.

'I ate chips'.

It doesn't matter when I ate them, that's not information I wanted to convey so I can just leave it out.

You can also say I ate (or rather, had) chips in chinese too.

You still say the word eat…you don't need to learn a new word, just just say another just after it, think of it adding "en" to eat.

In the end, you don't need to learn all these went, going, gone, ate, been, take/took, (plus all the ed in moved, washed) and then a rule where some words don't have a past tense word like read. So not only you have 3 or more words for tenses, you have rules on which words don't need to learn a new word, you add ED to the end, and then you need to learn which you don't need to do anything.

That's English.

Or….you don't do any of that at all in Chinese.

You tell me….which is simpler?

 

[danlightbulb]

I don't understand?
You're saying that English is more efficient than Chinese because you can say "I drank water" and convey what/when using less words.
But you also say that other languages which can convey "I drink" in less words than English are not logical.

Yeah I see your point. I suppose it makes more sense to me to have building blocks 'I', 'my' etc separate from the verb, and to have different verbs to mean past or present tense. Rather than the other approach which combines the pronoun(?) with the verb in one word.

 

[danlightbulb]

You can also say I ate (or rather, had) chips in chinese too.

You still say the word eat…you don't need to learn a new word, just just say another just after it, think of it adding "en" to eat.

In the end, you don't need to learn all these went, going, gone, ate, been, take/took, (plus all the ed in moved, washed) and then a rule where some words don't have a past tense word like read. So not only you have 3 or more words for tenses, you have rules on which words don't need to learn a new word, you add ED to the end, and then you need to learn which you don't need to do anything.

That's English.

Or….you don't do any of that at all in Chinese.

You tell me….which is simpler?

Fair enough yes, it does sound like Chinese is simpler/more logical in that example.

And the numbers rule you posted above for Cantonese was definitely more logical from a construction perspective, albeit longer words than in English.

 

[Terminal_Boy]

I found German easier to learn at school than French as, in typically Germanic fashion, it always follows its’ own rules. Gendered nouns always make my native English speaker’s brain hurt though.

As I gradually get less horrific at spoken French, I’m finding that a lot of familiar English sayings have no French equivalent and vice versa. French swearing is interesting.

 

[Feef]

Just thinking of numbers with Chinese, if we're being logical - January? 1 month. February? 2 month. March? 3 month. Etc

Similar days, Monday to Saturday just go day 1 to 6 (funnily enough, Sunday is...er, day sun).

Though, don't get me started on large numbers in Chinese, though that's purely because they group them in sets of 4 zeros rather than the 3 we use, and it makes me head hurt. If you dislike four twenties in French, try 170 ten thousands

 

[SexyGreyFox]

I don't know why it's so hard for everybody, all you have to do is what my wife does in a foreign country, she speaks slow and puts an 'o' on the end of everything.
It does seem to work.