hakase comments on If you come to Australia, you should learn to speak Australian

[–] hakase@lemmy.zip 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (4 children)

That's... not how any of this works.

Out of all of the languages in the world, English is the best at accommodating foreign vocabulary and grammar.

I'm gonna need to see a peer-reviewed source for this. Depending on how you quantify it, I could see an argument for English being "better" at adapting and accommodating foreign vocabulary due to the fact that it often doesn't have to make any overt morphological changes, but plenty of phonological accommodation still has to happen, and English's penchant for dipthongs means that many words don't sound anything like they did in their source language once they've been adapted. So, not only is "best" ill-defined, but it also likely doesn't apply to English.

Also, all languages borrow - the fact that English has more loanwords than many other languages is due to historical accident, not any natural inclination of the language itself. Being the language of a global empire and then the lingua franca for international communication gave English the opportunity to borrow more words - any other language under the same circumstances would have done the exact same thing, whether they had English's history of conquest or not.

the result of all of this is that English is a hodgepodge of Celtic, Latin, proto-Germanic, Old Norse, French, and whatever the people of England spoke before the Celts arrived

This is kind of technically true, but very misleading. English is still very much a Germanic language in grammar and core vocabulary - the vast majority of the 200 most often-used words in the English language, which themselves comprise around 60% of the English corpus, are native English words, for example.

Even the most frequent 1000 words [are 83% English in origin][(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign-language_influences_in_English).

90% of the language is loanwords.

This is incorrect - by most guesses, and as far as we can tell, 70%-75% of the English corpus is loanwords.

This is also nowhere near the language with the highest percentage of loanwords. Armenian is estimated to be close to 90%, for example (though, again, native Armenian words make up a large percentage of the core of the corpus - this is the usual pattern when it comes to borrowings).

So I would say that in order to be fluent in English, you have to know at least a little bit of Celtic, Latin, German, Norse, and French.

This isn't how language works. Once a word has been borrowed, it become a part of that new, self-contained linguistic system completely divorced from its original form and usage in the source language going forward. We know this is the case both because it usually must undergo phonological changes in the adaptation process (often to the point where it's unrecognizable to speakers of the source language), but mostly because once it's borrowed, the meaning is free to (and often does) change from what it was in the source as well. Not to mention the fact that given enough time uninformed speakers usually have no idea which words are native and which are borrowed.

A fluent monolingual English speaker would be just as mystified by a person speaking Icelandic as they would by a speaker of Warlpiri, because having a few thousand-year-old Norse borrowings doesn't give English speakers any intuition whatsoever into Icelandic as a cohesive linguistic system.

I think Anglos have no bloody excuse for being unwilling to learn a new language.

The vast majority of them have no reason to, and would see no benefit from doing so. I say this as someone who does speak another modern language, and who reads ~10 ancient ones passably.

there isn’t an Anglo alive without any talent for learning new languages

Once again, technically true, though likely by accident. Current consensus on language acquisition is that, while aptitude for learning new languages does seem to decline over time, all speakers do likely retain the ability to learn new languages throughout their lives. English speakers see no benefit here over speakers of other languages.

It came free with your English!

Again, this is false, because that's not how language works, for the reasons noted above.

Note that this isn't me making a statement about your overall point in this post. I think it's great to learn new languages - it's part of why I became a linguist - I'm just trying to correct some of your misconceptions both about English in particular and about language in general.

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[–] Grail@multiverse.soulism.net [S] 2 points 4 months ago (3 children)

all languages borrow equally easily

Japanese is famously bad at loanwords. Compare アイスクリム (aisukurimu) to coup de gras or schadenfreude. English's loanword game is leagues ahead.

English is still very much a Germanic langauge in grammar and core vocabulary

Yeah, cause of those good old Angles and Saxons who colonised England and brought along their weird foreign words. I have a feeling your "most common native words" are just words that have been in English for a few thousand years. I'm talking about a longer timescale, here. Look at this source which contradicts yours:

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

Few English words are definitively known to come directly from Brittonic, the language of the Celtic inhabitants of Britain prior to the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain.

Your claim that English is mostly made up of native words is true if we consider Britons, Gauls, Romans, Angles, and Saxons living in England to all be one culture. And by 1066, they sure had become a single culture. But it's a very silly way to argue against My point that nearly all of the language comes from foreigners integrating their own languages with that of the last batch of settlers. It's very "card says moops", if you know that reference.

Anyway, as a native English speaker, your life gets a lot easier when you bother to pay attention to all the foreign languages you use on a daily basis. If you pay attention to the Latin and Greek we use all the time, then you probably know what the word "aquectomy" means, even though I just made it up. You probably know it's a similar procedure to exsanguination, which is another word you'd be able to guess the meaning of if you pay attention in school. And if you're a law student, you'll ipso facto be using even more Latin.

And even the most dull-minded Anglos pick up at least the basics. Look at JK Rowling, she's a grown woman with the mind of an 11 year old private school bully, but she still filled her books with fake latin that her kid readers could understand. That's English for you, the kids are all multilingual.

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[–] hakase@lemmy.zip 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

Japanese is famously bad at loanwords. Compare アイスクリム (aisukurimu) to coup de gras or schadenfreude. English’s loanword game is leagues ahead.

If Japanese is so bad at loanwords, why is 70% of Japanese's vocabulary loanwords, almost exactly the same as English? (~60% Chinese borrowings, ~10% later gairaigo (~80% of which is from English), 30% native Yamato words)

Like I said, English is no better at borrowing words than other languages are, and your own example proves that. (Also, note that there's a long vowel in アイスクリーム)

I have a feeling your “most common native words” are just words that have been in English for a few thousand years. I’m talking about a longer timescale, here.

I'm a historical linguist by profession - I highly doubt your timescale is longer than mine, and I doubt that the cutoff for the data being considered for these lists is later than Pre-Old English.

Also, there are a few problems for your argument when talking about a longer timescale:

If your argument is that English is itself particularly good at borrowing words due to its history of colonization or whatever, why are you interested in loans dating from before that colonization, or before "English" existed as a separate entity from Northwest Germanic (or Proto-Indo-European, for that matter)? You can't have it both ways.
If we're making our timescales arbitrarily long (which is perfectly fine with me), we quickly arrive at the conclusion, "We have no idea how much of any language is composed of borrowings", in which case, again, English is no better at borrowing than any other language is.

Look at this source which contradicts yours: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Brittonic_origin

You'll have to explain how this source contradicts me, or how it relates at all to what we're talking about, for that matter.

Your claim that English is mostly made up of native words is true if we consider Britons, Gauls, Romans, Angles, and Saxons living in England to all be one culture.

This is completely unnecessary for my claim to be true. You may want to read this Wikipedia article closely for some basic information on this topic.

card says moops

Again, I'm a linguist by trade - I'm perfectly happy to go into as much detail as you'd like. You're the one who hasn't defined the terms of your assertion that "English is the best language at borrowing":

What, specifically, does it mean to you for a language to be "good at borrowing"?
How, exactly, are you defining "borrowing" for this argument, and what dataset are you basing it off?

As soon as you give me some details about what you're actually arguing, I'm more than happy to be more specific in addressing your assertions.

Your life gets a lot easier when you bother to pay attention to all the foreign languages you use on a daily basis. If you pay attention to the Latin and Greek we use all the time, then you probably know what the word “aquectomy” means, even though I just made it up. You probably know it’s a similar procedure to exsanguination, which is another word you’d be able to guess the meaning of if you pay attention in school.

How does any of this make the life of the average English speaker easier? What average English speaker needs to even know what exsanguination means?

This is just linguistic snobbery masquerading as concern.

That’s English for you, the kids are all multilingual.

Being able to make up fake Latin isn't what "multilingual" means. Many English-speaking children are multilingual, but the vast majority of those are from families in which at least one parent has a heritage language of their own.

In 2016, for example, at least 22% of American children also spoke a language other than English at home (https://www.aecf.org/blog/the-number-of-bilingual-kids-in-america-continues-to-rise).

Since your definition of "multilingual" doesn't match any that I've ever seen in the literature you have to define exactly how you're using it for us to actually have a productive conversation. And, if your definition is "my native language has loanwords", then every child in the world is multilingual, which, again, goes against your argument that English is somehow special in this regard.

I'm happy to have a more detailed, technical discussion if that's what you'd prefer, but if you're going to reject the definitions widely used in the linguistics community, then you need to at least define your own terms first so that I can address them.

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[–] Grail@multiverse.soulism.net [S] 2 points 4 months ago (1 child)

What I mean is, English's spelling, pronunciation, and grammar rules seem to Me to be highly optional in comparison with other languages I know a few things about. It's a less consistent language. English has tons of words that you'll mispronounce if you only read them, because they don't follow the majority convention. See: epitome, and all the many words that have the "ough" substring and use it to mean different sounds.

Compare that to French, where a government agency controls the spelling and pronunciation to make sure all the words are properly French enough. Or Japanese, where the structure of hiragana and katakana reduces the number of vowels that can be used. And sure, Japanese has Kanji, which is just as ridiculous as English, but Kanji's chaos only exists in written Japanese, while English has all that pronunciation weirdness.

For a long time, I believed that inconsistency in English was a deficit, and that's a common opinion from Anglos and adult learners alike. But then I learned the history of that inconsistency, about the many different groups that settled England, and I formed a new belief: it's an adaptation. You know, I used a bit of evolutionary biology. "What niche does this trait help to fill?" And this inconsistency means that English speakers are really good at adapting to new words with new rules. We do it all the time.

You know, I've followed Spanish gender discourse a bit, and it's a bit embarassing for the Spanish speakers. The average Spanish speaker views gender-neutral language like "latinx" as Anglo meddling in their culture, and rejects it as a form of cultural imperialism. But as far as I can tell, "latinx" originated on Spanish geek message boards, as a math joke. Now, English speakers get really upset about changing their language to be more inclusive too. But for many Spanish people, changing their language feels like being colonised by the British. Now, the renaissance of neopronouns and identity terms in English might just be a function of population size. But I dunno, Arabic and Mandarin have a lot of speakers too. I can't shake the feeling that the transphobic hispanics are hitting on something valid: maybe English is better at changing for queer people.

How does any of this make the life of the average English speaker easier? What average English speaker needs to even know what exsanguination means?

I think any fan of Vampire: The Masquerade would do well to learn it. Which, I know, is a bit flippant. But that's where I learned it. And I genuinely think geek culture is comparatively full of Latin and Greek, what with all the science fiction and fantasy and mediaeval words. You just pick up that stuff if you read a lot of books or play a lot of games, it's part of life.

And I don't know if you've noticed, but Japanese nerds know a suspicious amount of German!

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[–] hakase@lemmy.zip 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

What I mean is, English’s spelling, pronunciation, and grammar rules seem to Me to be highly optional in comparison with other languages I know a few things about. It’s a less consistent language.

English having "highly optional" pronunciation and grammar rules is not considered to be true by linguists, so you'll have to give me an example of what you mean. All languages have exceptions and idiosyncracies, and none are considered to be more or less "consistent" (whatever that means) than any other. They may have very different systems, but all of those systems are considered to contain about the same amount of total complexity.

English has tons of words that you’ll mispronounce if you only read them, because they don’t follow the majority convention. See: epitome, and all the many words that have the “ough” substring and use it to mean different sounds.

This is a common misconception among people learning to look at language through the eyes of a linguist that always takes a while to fully wrap their heads around: writing is not language.

Writing is just a conventional way of encoding language, nothing more. Writing systems and spelling rules are historical accidents, and linguists ignore them completely when doing linguistic work. All we're concerned with is grammar, the unconscious system of rules that govern a native speaker's spoken (or signed, in the case of signed languages) output, and paying attention to orthography (writing) only makes that internal system harder to access. This is why linguists created the International Phonetic Alphabet to write the sounds of all languages in a (mostly) consistent manner, completely ignoring writing conventions.

The most straightforward way to show that spoken language and writing are completely separate and almost unrelated systems is the following: all human children acquire a native language automatically and seemingly without effort if they're exposed to it as an infant, but writing systems and spelling conventions must be explicitly taught once they're older.

"Acquisition" vs. "learning" is the difference between learning to walk and learning to build a birdhouse. When children reach the appropriate developmental stage, they will learn to walk, automatically, whether their parents help them or not. And, once they've learned to do so, they cannot explain how they do it to anyone else - they just do. Language is the same way - it's an innately programmed unconscious behavior, an "instinct" as Steven Pinker famously put it.

Building a birdhouse, on the other hand, is not something that happens automatically - it's a process that must be explicitly taught by someone else, and once the person has learned to do so they can also explain the process to others.

So, for these reasons I have to disagree that English is any "better at loanwords" than any other language. Linguistically speaking (that is, completely ignoring writing systems), English could maybe be considered "better" at some aspects of loanwords (its less complex morphology allows for adaptation without adding any new "word-pieces" - see Spanish having to fit borrowed verbs into its -ar-conjugation class, for example), but it's much worse at other aspects. For example, English's less common vowel phonology often makes loanwords sound very different than they do in their original language - we need go no further than Japanese, where straightforward ka-ra-o-ke becomes in English the monstrosity "kerree-owkee".

I'm not a sociolinguist, so I don't feel comfortable speaking authoritatively on gendered language discourse, but what I would suggest is that if English is better at adapting for queer people, that's much more likely to be due to the culture of the speakers than due to the architecture of the grammar, in my opinion.

Finally, if any of this has been interesting to you and you'd like to learn more about looking at language from a linguist's perspective, I highly recommend Steven Pinker's very readable bestseller "The Language Instinct" as a starting point.

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