EPTHow does the language of a certain people show how advanced they are?
English
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nimysa
United States383 Posts
How does the language of a certain people show how advanced they are? | ||
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Ranix
United States666 Posts
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Athos
United States2484 Posts
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gchan
United States654 Posts
On the same token, thats what makes English so hard to learn for non-native speakers. English has rules, but more often than not, they are broken. In addition to that, English has also absorbed grammar, syntax, etc from other languages so it becomes a convuluted organization of words, sentences and paragraphs that come from many different backgrounds. If you are talking about advancement of technology, language probably has little correlation with it. You could probably loosely argue that when cultures started intermingling more in the last millenia, the languages that were more adaptive would better assimilate ideas and technology, but I doubt it's a very high correlation. There are probably other factors that were a lot more impactful. | ||
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Drium
United States888 Posts
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TheSchwA
United States248 Posts
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Husky
United States3362 Posts
In modern times, America and other English speaking countries are mostly modernized and advanced. I think English has 'stuck' because it uses a relatively simple alphabet which can easily be used to construct new words. Throw some consonants with a few vowels between them and you've got a new word. English is not limited by having to draw a new 'picture' everytime you want a new word, you simply write the letters in a new order. America is also one of the biggest consuming countries in the world so you are best off being able to do business with us. Those are my thoughts, I only speak English though sadly. | ||
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illu
Canada2531 Posts
Throughout this time, English' grammar got greatly reduced. One of the significant change was the omission of noun cases, as still used in French (Masculine/feminine problems). My dad has a book on the history of English grammar. I can try to get it sometimes and quote some of them for you. | ||
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Zurles
United Kingdom1659 Posts
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illu
Canada2531 Posts
On June 25 2009 11:34 gchan wrote: English is flexible because the originators aren't nazis about its purity. If you look at French or Chinese, compared to English, the languages have changed relatively little. That's because historically, the Chinese government and the French governments actively tried to preserve their languages. The English never did it to that degree. Thats why when the English "culture" became dominant during colonialization, it absored many words and mannerisms from other languages. For Chinese it's only partially true. What actually happened was that until about early 1900s, the written Chinese language was much different from the spoken one, for a variaty of reasons (think about this like Shakespearian English, but much worse). In fact, the way things were written was much different from the way people would speak. This made a lot of people to be illiterate in the old days, and only the few that were well-educated could read. In another word, for about 2000 years or so, the Chinese language was designed to be "difficult"; much of these maintained until today. There are some improvements, however. In mainland, starting with 1950s, there were many movements in simplying the language, for example through the use of "simplified Chinese" which greatly reduced the difficulty of the writing system (and reduced the number of illiterates). Another improvement was the invention of Hanyu Pinyi, a standard for romantizing Chinese writing using Latin alphabets, which was a big leap at the time. | ||
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illu
Canada2531 Posts
On June 25 2009 11:47 HuskyTheHusky wrote: In modern times, America and other English speaking countries are mostly modernized and advanced. I think English has 'stuck' because it uses a relatively simple alphabet which can easily be used to construct new words. Throw some consonants with a few vowels between them and you've got a new word. English is not limited by having to draw a new 'picture' everytime you want a new word, you simply write the letters in a new order. (this will mostly be a comparison with French, as I do not know any other Europian languages) More importantly, English has few irregular verbs, (for example, "go" is irregular because its past tense is "went" and past participle is "gone") comparing to say, French, which has many irregular verbs as well as many different forms for a single irregular verb. Furthermore English has no noun classes, that also exists in French. Basically in French all nouns are either "masculine", or "feminine", which reflect the kind of article that can go before it ("le" or "la"). But you cannot (in general) even tell if a noun is masculine or feminine just by looking at its spelling. | ||
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Ingenol
United States1328 Posts
Of course, the downside to this is that it makes English substantially more difficult to learn. | ||
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gchan
United States654 Posts
On June 25 2009 12:04 illu wrote: For Chinese it's only partially true. What actually happened was that until about early 1900s, the written Chinese language was much different from the spoken one, for a variaty of reasons (think about this like Shakespearian English, but much worse). In fact, the way things were written was much different from the way people would speak. This made a lot of people to be illiterate in the old days, and only the few that were well-educated could read. In another word, for about 2000 years or so, the Chinese language was designed to be "difficult"; much of these maintained until today. There are some improvements, however. In mainland, starting with 1950s, there were many movements in simplying the language, for example through the use of "simplified Chinese" which greatly reduced the difficulty of the writing system (and reduced the number of illiterates). Another improvement was the invention of Hanyu Pinyi, a standard for romantizing Chinese writing using Latin alphabets, which was a big leap at the time. Well, yes, but to answer the OP's question, the last 50 years of Chinese history is minute compared to the two millenia preceding it. Language in itself is slow to change, so I was pointing out the longer term trend. You also note out a good point about the spoken part of a language. I was simplifying "language" as only the written component because that is the part that is mostly passed through history. When speaking about the overall trend of the language in history, I think it's a more accurate descriptor than the spoken component. | ||
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konadora
Singapore66358 Posts
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riptide
5673 Posts
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poilord
Germany3252 Posts
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Zortch
Canada635 Posts
That is why if someone doesn't understand you speaking louder and more slowly allows them to better comprehend what you are saying. But really, it probably has a lot to do with major economic powers in the world as people have said. Money makes the world go 'round. | ||
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QuanticHawk
United States32100 Posts
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Cambium
United States16368 Posts
1. Great Britain raped everything and colonized everywhere 2. U.S.A. rapes everything That's pretty much the only reason. | ||
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Adeny
Norway1233 Posts
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disciple
9070 Posts
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MoltkeWarding
5195 Posts
For instance: the stylistic preference for active or passive case within a language has important socio-intellectual implications. The stylistic mutation of a verb-centered sentence structure to one padded with adjectival qualifiers represents not only aesthetic changes, but important mental ones too. This is a very troublesome topic, requiring immense background knowledge of lingustic history and comparative linguistics, because it is very difficult to reflectively analyse the language on which all our thoughts are dependent. | ||
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Caller
Poland8075 Posts
crap, mixing reality with anime. | ||
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MoltkeWarding
5195 Posts
French remained the dominant international language during the 19th century, when she was quickly overtaken by the United Kingdom and Germany in national power. As late as 1940, French held its own against German and English. If on the other hand, the British Empire were a decrepit, backward and mentally stagnant culture like China, English could never have expanded throughout the world, regardless of her military or material power. The rise of Latin, French, German, English, etc. could not have existed without cultural prestige. The French intellectual, the English gentleman, the German scientist, the Latin monk, Hollywood, all played roles at least as important as their armies and fleets. | ||
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paper
13196 Posts
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R3condite
Korea (South)1541 Posts
Adeny is right in how English spread and though Countries like China will become one of the major powers and Chinese would be good to learn for reference, a language that is ever changing and molding to fit the century will nvr be replaced by something as strict as Chinese. | ||
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p4ge
Canada160 Posts
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50bani
Romania480 Posts
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