Post: #1

I recall a certain topic I saw on an Internet discussion board years ago. It was a topic on the idea of some languages being superior and more evolved than others. As you can expect, it wasn't long before the thread incurred the outrage of Internet SJW's and was subsequently censored by the Political Correctness patrol. It seems that the notion that one language can be superior to another is off limits for the overly sensitive.

I see human languages as evolving organisms that transform over time and adapt to the needs of their respective culture. As a civilization grows in complexity, its language too will evolve and reach a higher level of linguistic refinement. Therefore, it is only logical that the most advanced cultures will most likely have developed the most semantically complex, precise and expressive languages. It goes without saying that this is even more so once a particular civilization establishes a rich literary tradition and a deep philosophical outlook. If one accepts this evolutionary aspect of human languages, then it would be absurd to insist that all languages must be of equal expressive value or that the concept of superior languages and inferior languages is untrue.

I have been a foreign language enthusiast for most of my life and I have no problem with discussing the possibility that some languages may be superior to others. It feels like I have been on a quest for linguistic superiority and expressive perfection for many years. It is as though my genetic memory remembers some perfect heavenly language from a primordial and mythical Golden Age of Man and my mind yearns to taste that perfection once more. So I have explored various languages wishing to find what I have always been longing for.

Which characteristics make for a superior language?

I have given this question much thought. These are some of the conclusions I have reached.

An extensive and ultra-precise lexicon

The greatest languages wield a vast ocean of words, are packed with many precisely nuanced synonyms and literally have an expressive term for everything. They can capture the subtlety of every emotion, psychological state, philosophical idea and metaphysical concept. They have so much expressive power. They are not satisfied with just getting the point accross, they are fully equiped to do it with style and exactitude. Think of great philosophical and intellectual languages such as German and Ancient Greek. Think of great spiritual and literary languages such as Sanskrit. They can express abstract concepts to their finest components. This feature is a must for a superior language and I feel that a linguistic culture's lexical stock expands as its corresponding intellectual culture grows. That is, nations with greater cultural capital tend to develop more precise languages.

A flexible compounding system

Why were lexically precise languages able to develop so much lexical precision? The answer is that their structure of word construction was flexible and allowed for complex compound words formed with ease. Greek, the mayor source of philosophical and scientific terms in modern Western languages, is a perfect example. Greek was always perfect for forming the most abstract semantic constructs.

For example, phílos (beloved) + sophía (wisdom) = Philosophy - the pursuit of knowledge through abstract reasoning; epistéme (knowledge) + logía (discourse) = epistemology - theory of knowledge; óneiros (dream) + naútes (sailor) = oneironaut - explorer of dream worlds; dys- (bad) + tópos (place) + ía (state, condition) = dystopia - futuristic vision of a corrupt society; eu- (good) + daímon (spirit, daemon, genius) + ía (state, condition) = eudaimonía - True happiness and wellbeing, condition of objective human flourishing, literally "state of good-spiritedness".

The compounding capabilities of Greek made it a language of superior creativity and so its deep and precise learned terms were adopted into Latin and then into all the later European languages.

A creative suffixing system

Languages which include diminutive, augmentative and other suffixes can express greater nuances of emotion. Examples include Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Greek.

For example, mujer (woman) > mujercita (adorable little woman) > mujerona (great big woman) > mujerzuela (disgusting slutty woman) > mujerío (derogatory: group of women); casa (house) > casita (little house); casota (great big house) > casucha (disgusting house); hombre (man) > hombrada (act of manliness).

High lexical purity

I don't care what the language progressives say, I see beauty and virtue in languages which are lexically conservative and form new terms using their own native roots as opposed to profuse lexical borrowing. English, German and Greek all have a vast and abundant wordstock, but I think that German and Greek have a better formed lexicon with greater native purity. English, a Germanic language, derives over 50% of its entire wordstock from foreign languages such as French (Romance language), Latin and to a lesser extent Greek (many original Germanic English words were displaced by foreignisms), whereas German and Greek have historically used their own native lexical roots and borrowed much less. I personally believe that lexically purer languages possess more coherence and form a greater basis for each respective unique cultural identity.

Please share your thoughts on the subject.

Post: #2

Only thing I disagree with is not taking words from other languages.

The only purpose of talking is to communicate. To that end, it doesn't matter which language the word originally came from, only that the current language now has it (and thus everyone speaking that language knows the word) and it can be fit into existing grammar (which isn't hard in English, due to Englishyness).

For example, Japanese has a verb "irusu". This means "pretending to not be home when someone knocks on your door". Since English has no "irusu", we should just take this word, same as we took "karaoke". They also have a single-word noun which means "the agony of defeat" (I forgot it). We should take that too. If there is no existing (or historical) word, and we have to use a mealy-mouthed phrase, we should just take words from other languages if it doesn't cause a conflict with an existing word or grammar rule.

Post: #3

Good thread idea.

I linked to an article in a previous thread that talks about some of these issues:

/thread-40325-...#pid829777

Regarding your points about a flexible compounding system, I've always liked that German allowed new words/concepts to be formed simply from joining two existing words, it seems pretty logical.

In terms of the future, I can't remember where I first read about this concept, but someone made a prediction that the languages of the far future will be ones that allow as little room for ambiguity as possible. This makes sense in a way if you consider that life is becoming more complex, technical, specialized, etc.

Post: #4

(07-04-2015 07:59 PM)LeBeau Wrote:  Regarding your points about a flexible compounding system, I've always liked that German allowed new words/concepts to be formed simply from joining two existing words, it seems pretty logical.

It doesn't seem that efficient though, since the words get longer and longer. English seems to go the "abbreviations become words" route, i.e. "Laser". I also sometimes refer to a USB as an "uzb" but it doesn't seem to catch on .

Post: #5

(07-04-2015 03:06 PM)Phoenix Wrote:  Only thing I disagree with is not taking words from other languages.

The only purpose of talking is to communicate. To that end, it doesn't matter which language the word originally came from, only that the current language now has it (and thus everyone speaking that language knows the word) and it can be fit into existing grammar (which isn't hard in English, due to Englishyness).

For example, Japanese has a verb "irusu". This means "pretending to not be home when someone knocks on your door". Since English has no "irusu", we should just take this word, same as we took "karaoke". They also have a single-word noun which means "the agony of defeat" (I forgot it). We should take that too. If there is no existing (or historical) word, and we have to use a mealy-mouthed phrase, we should just take words from other languages if it doesn't cause a conflict with an existing word or grammar rule.

Just to be clear, my conception of an ideal and optimal language doesn't necessarily exlude foreign lexical borrowings per se, but rather is opposed only to profuse borrowing, absurd lexical displacement and needless foreignisms. Even German and Greek, both lexically conservative languages, have incorporated some useful international words for domains such as philosophy, political theory, science and technology. However, English on the other hand was a whole different story. If you compare it to other modern Germanic languages, you will see that many native words that were extremely common in Anglisc (Old English) have been massively replaced by French and Latin borrowings. And the truth is that this phenomenon cannot only be attributed to the Norman invasion. During the timeframe of Middle English, many intellectuals of the day believed in the absurd notion that French-Latin words were somehow inherently superior to the original native wordstock and began to incorporate foreignisms profusely and abritrarily. Many perfectly good original words were gradually replaced for no good reason. This is why today you can rarely ever write an English sentence without about half of the items being of Latin origin despite the Germanic roots of English.

Why does this bother me? This is a question you may ask. For me, it is more of a question of culture and esthetics, although I see some practical reasons too. First, I believe that language is intrinsically linked to cultural identity and so the native wordstock which forms the core foundation of any language ought to be preserved, embraced and given priority. Second, the arbitrary intake of alien words may be a detriment to mutual understanding. Think of undereducated English speakers who use big grandiose latinate words without understanding their real meaning or the growing generational gaps in Japan where new and unnecessary gairaigo terms are impairing communication between different sectors of society. My personal ideal is that at least 80% of a language's wordstock be native. That is what I personally consider a healthy language.

As for the incorporation of new concepts, many conservative languages use lexical calques. They translate the new idea literally using their own native roots. This way they are easy to understand for all native speakers and add new creativity to the language. Examples:

Brainwashing was calqued from Chinese '洗脑 (xǐ nǎo)', 洗脳 (sennou) in Japanese

Wisdom tooth was calqued from Latin 'dens sapientiae'

Milky Way was calqued from Latin 'Via Lactea', in turn calqued from Greek 'Galaxías Kýklos', literally "milky circle"

As for 居留守 (irusu), "pretending to be away from home", it could be calqued into English as 'faux-absentism', 'misabsence' or 'fakeout'; for example, "I called for Johnny, but he was avoiding me and played fakeout again" or "That crazy hoe was beating at my door again, but I just used some faux-absentism and she eventually left me alone". It could be calqued into German as 'Falschabwesenheit' with the adjective 'falschabwesend'.

(07-04-2015 07:59 PM)LeBeau Wrote:  Good thread idea.

I linked to an article in a previous thread that talks about some of these issues:

/thread-40325-...#pid829777

Regarding your points about a flexible compounding system, I've always liked that German allowed new words/concepts to be formed simply from joining two existing words, it seems pretty logical.

In terms of the future, I can't remember where I first read about this concept, but someone made a prediction that the languages of the far future will be ones that allow as little room for ambiguity as possible. This makes sense in a way if you consider that life is becoming more complex, technical, specialized, etc.

I personally feel that Greek has the best and most logical compounding system and that may be the reason why it was able to give birth to so many innovative abstract terms which for the most part didn't exist in other European languages. The most basic formula was:

1) Remove nominative ending of first noun (masculine -os is reduced to -o; neuter -on is reduced to -o)
2) Attach second noun directly onto the first stem
3) A suffix such as -ía can be attached to the final noun to form abstract states, concepts or actions

For example, taúros (bull) > taúro + mákhe (fight, combat) + -ía (abstract state of concept) = tauromakhía (action of bull fighting)

This type of compounding system can be maintained in languages like Greek, Latin, Sanskrit and the Romance Languages which still retain the original Indo-European noun suffixing system (Greek: -os; Latin; -us; Sanskrit: -ah; Spanish: -o; ect.) The phonotactic structure of basic nouns in these languages is generally root + noun gender suffix, for example, kosmos; mundus; lokah; mundo. It is so easy to form new compounds such as Kosmotheoría (beholding of the world; worldview) and then new derivatives such as Kosmotheorikós/kosmotheóricus (pertaining to one's beholding of the world/worldview). Languages like English on the other hand, which has lost its original noun endings, tends to have short one-syllable nouns that can end abruptly in any consonant and so such systematic way of compounding is lost and is therefore more awkward and chaotic. On the other hand, the Greek-Latin compounding phonotactics are much smoother and euphonious.

In conclusion, I believe that it is this original noun suffixing structure and compounding system typical of conservative IE languages that gave Greek and Latin a creative advantage and allowed for them to establish themselves as superior abstract languages. Because of this system, these languages were able to build new terms using their own native roots and so didn't have to depend on foreign imports unlike other languages with a less flexible compounding system.

Post: #6

(07-04-2015 03:06 PM)Phoenix Wrote:  Only thing I disagree with is not taking words from other languages.

The only purpose of talking is to communicate. To that end, it doesn't matter which language the word originally came from, only that the current language now has it (and thus everyone speaking that language knows the word) and it can be fit into existing grammar (which isn't hard in English, due to Englishyness).

For example, Japanese has a verb "irusu". This means "pretending to not be home when someone knocks on your door". Since English has no "irusu", we should just take this word, same as we took "karaoke". They also have a single-word noun which means "the agony of defeat" (I forgot it). We should take that too. If there is no existing (or historical) word, and we have to use a mealy-mouthed phrase, we should just take words from other languages if it doesn't cause a conflict with an existing word or grammar rule.

Japanese is actually a good example.
Katakana is the alphabet used for western adaptations of words that the Japanese never had until their discovery e.g. orange juice.
Kanji is used to all of the Chinese characters that were incorporated into their language through the ages. It's remarkably adaptable.

Post: #7

There's so much to love about Japan and its culture. The Japanese are a weird (really weird), wonderful and incredibly intelligent society. For my foreign language classes in highschool I decided to forgo the Italian I was getting somewhat proficient with to take up Japanese.

I actually adore the language and developed a bit of love for the sheer strangeness of the culture. I specifically remember chastising my buddy for trying to make fun of it.

It's been a while, but I recall that the structure is very logical once you understand it. The 3 separate alphabets bugged me a little back then but less so now that I have a deeper understanding why its that way

I also remember my fugly ass old white nerdy Japanese teacher having a hot ass slim Japanese wife who was the sweetest thing ever the one time I met her. That may have biased my views slightly

English is an incredibly expressive language with ways to give meaning to any thought or idea, no matter how abstract, even when the specific words don't exist.

That being said it is an absolute bastard of a language with the only consistency being the constant inconcistency in rules. This is the outcome of several attempts to replace it, so I guess the flexibility in reality is a serious motivator of longevity. No one in their right mind would call English sexy though. I shudder to think how filthy it must have sounded with all the gutteral gargling that would have been going on prior to the Normandy invasion

Post: #8

(07-05-2015 07:59 AM)Lumbre Wrote:  I believe that language is intrinsically linked to cultural identity and so the native wordstock which forms the core foundation of any language ought to be preserved, embraced and given priority. Second, the arbitrary intake of alien words may be a detriment to mutual understanding. Think of undereducated English speakers who use big grandiose latinate words without understanding their real meaning or the growing generational gaps in Japan where new and unnecessary gairaigo terms are impairing communication between different sectors of society. My personal ideal is that at least 80% of a language's wordstock be native. That is what I personally consider a healthy language.

(07-05-2015 08:08 AM)Hardy Daytona Wrote:  Katakana is the alphabet used for western adaptations of words that the Japanese never had until their discovery e.g. orange juice.

Yeah I agree that the local language should always use itself if it can. If I recall correctly, Iceland always tries to generate a local word for new cultural additions (e.g. I think "calculator" is rendered as "number prophetess"). That it clearly the most effective way to keep the language coherent.

On Japanese, I think the Kanji and the most of the Katakana aspects are a bad idea. Basically, Japanese is a mixture of the original Japanese and Chinese linguistic imports. This is why half of the readings of the Chinese symbols are Japanified pronunciations of old Chinese, and half are the local Japanese word meaning the same thing as the symbol. It's a friggin mess, to be frank, and as I recall they did have the discussion a long time ago about doing away with Kanji, but the conservatives won out. Korea does fine without logograms and with a single alphabet, and so would Japanese if they'd just stuck with hiragana.

Also the overreliance or almost fetish-status of katakana contributes to the mess. Katakana words always take them longer to say because they have to turn the stress-timed English into syllable-timed Japanese. And most of the time they are completely unnecessary. Do they seriously not have a word for "seat" and "belt" that they need to say "shiitoberuto"?

Also, does anyone know why English dropped the "thy and thine" stuff? It seems like it would solve the ambiguity of "there/their" "your/you're".

Post: #9

Duh, the hotter the chicks, the more superior the language.

Post: #10

Post: #11

(07-05-2015 10:56 AM)Phoenix Wrote:  

(07-05-2015 07:59 AM)Lumbre Wrote:  I believe that language is intrinsically linked to cultural identity and so the native wordstock which forms the core foundation of any language ought to be preserved, embraced and given priority. Second, the arbitrary intake of alien words may be a detriment to mutual understanding. Think of undereducated English speakers who use big grandiose latinate words without understanding their real meaning or the growing generational gaps in Japan where new and unnecessary gairaigo terms are impairing communication between different sectors of society. My personal ideal is that at least 80% of a language's wordstock be native. That is what I personally consider a healthy language.

(07-05-2015 08:08 AM)Hardy Daytona Wrote:  Katakana is the alphabet used for western adaptations of words that the Japanese never had until their discovery e.g. orange juice.

Yeah I agree that the local language should always use itself if it can. If I recall correctly, Iceland always tries to generate a local word for new cultural additions (e.g. I think "calculator" is rendered as "number prophetess"). That it clearly the most effective way to keep the language coherent.

On Japanese, I think the Kanji and the most of the Katakana aspects are a bad idea. Basically, Japanese is a mixture of the original Japanese and Chinese linguistic imports. This is why half of the readings of the Chinese symbols are Japanified pronunciations of old Chinese, and half are the local Japanese word meaning the same thing as the symbol. It's a friggin mess, to be frank, and as I recall they did have the discussion a long time ago about doing away with Kanji, but the conservatives won out. Korea does fine without logograms and with a single alphabet, and so would Japanese if they'd just stuck with hiragana.

Also the overreliance or almost fetish-status of katakana contributes to the mess. Katakana words always take them longer to say because they have to turn the stress-timed English into syllable-timed Japanese. And most of the time they are completely unnecessary. Do they seriously not have a word for "seat" and "belt" that they need to say "shiitoberuto"?

Also, does anyone know why English dropped the "thy and thine" stuff? It seems like it would solve the ambiguity of "there/their" "your/you're".

Exactly. This is the reason why I support purist tendancies in the coinage of new vocabulary. The lexical coherence is a huge advantage. Having taken this stance, I am as a salmon fighting to make his way upstream against a fierce and overwhelming tide of linguistic liberalism. If I were to engineer my own language, it would surely hold lexical purism as its core tenet, embrace calquing as its foremost method of coinage and only incorporate foreignisms for special concepts unique to a particular culture such as hashi, samurai and karate.

I totally agree with what you say about katakana words in Japanese. They are awful. They are being adopted into the language for no good reason other than their fetishistic value as Western words and they totally throw into confusion the rythm of the pronunciation with their abnormal length and clusterous sound quality. The vast majority of them are wholly unnecessary and only serve to complicate the language needlessly. I strongly desire that a future generation of hot-blooded Japanese patriots purges them all together.

Shiito-beruto (seatbelt) could be expressed in real Japanese as 椅子の帯 (isu no obi) or 安全帯 (anzentai) and common foreignisms like taimu-toraberu (time travel) and aidoru (celebrity idol) could be calqued as 時間旅行 (jikan-ryokou) and 偶像少女 (guuzou-shoujo) respectively. I once walked into a supermarket and saw a banner with doggu-fuudo (dog food)! That was just too much! What's wrong with 犬用の食料 (inu-you no shokuryou)!

I have spoken about my concern with the excess of foreign katakana words on Japanese forums. The response I get is kinda funny. When I pretend to be a Japanese person, people normally say that I am a noble person who wishes to honor his own culture and language. When I openly say that I am a foreigner and start the same debate, people usually accuse me of being dumb and ignorant of Japanese culture! Their attitude is like "how dare some asshole foreigner have an opinion on our unique and so infinitely different Japanese language"!

Kanji compounds are a different story. They are the building blocks of learned and philosophical vocabulary whether we like it or not. They form about 50% of all Japanese words and so it's too late to change them. Reading technical Japanese without kanji its extremely taxing due to the countless ambiguities. Korean is so because of the lack of hanja (I don't speak Korean, but people who do tell me so). If you want to wield an awesome vocabulary in Japanese, the best way is to embrace kanji and study them obsessively!

As for the abandonment of thy/thine ect., English was once a grammatically complex and highly inflected Germanic language like Icelandic and to some extent German today, but from about the 13th century the grammar became gradually simplified and more ambiguities arose. It is thought that English lost its nominal case endings and many of the complexities of its original grammar firstly because of the Norman Invasion and secondly through contact with Norse speakers in the northern regions. The idea that "less is more" is not always true. Sometimes complexities in grammar remove ambiguity and make a language much more efficient.

Post: #12

(07-05-2015 10:00 AM)Architekt Wrote:  English is an incredibly expressive language with ways to give meaning to any thought or idea, no matter how abstract, even when the specific words don't exist.

That being said it is an absolute bastard of a language with the only consistency being the constant inconcistency in rules. This is the outcome of several attempts to replace it, so I guess the flexibility in reality is a serious motivator of longevity. No one in their right mind would call English sexy though. I shudder to think how filthy it must have sounded with all the gutteral gargling that would have been going on prior to the Normandy invasion

Japanese too is absolutely stacked lexically. It's vocabulary is just so exhaustive. When you get into the highest realms of kanji compound words, the precision and lexical creativity of the refined language will blow your mind. You can study Japanese for years, even a decade, and you will still encounter new words in deep texts from time to time. There seems to be a word for every little minute detail, even if those words are not necessary common in everyday speach.

For example, take the obscure compound word 葉漏れ日 (hamorebi). It is a crisp single word which means "sunlight that shines through the leaves of a tree". Not common in everyday conversation, but extremely precise and poetic.

As for English, the inconsistency stems from the reality that so many foreign elements have been forced into the language. Spelling rules are so varied due to the fact that the intellectual class were so obsessed with preserving the original spellings and etymologies of the great mishmash of foreign words. This is one of the reasons why I emphasize the importance of lexical purism during the formative period of a language.

I doubt that Norman French bore much influence on the pronunciation of Middle English. The truth is that the language of the invaders was only spoken by the upper classes and so the vast majority of folk would naturally pronounce its foreign imports with a thick local (Germanic) accent. Not all Germanic languages sound so harsh and gutteral like German and Dutch. Try listening to Swedish and you may see that it sounds suprisingly smooth.