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Ras Het posted:Countdown to that one bloke popping by to make miniscule corrections to the Breton part. And to add pictures of vandalized roadsigns
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Jul 5, 2013 08:02
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PittTheElder posted:The world would be an easier place if we all just spoke one language - preferably English, because I already know that one. No, English is awful, spelling is too different from pronunciation(and all those th and ae sounds, ugh) and verbs have too many tenses for no reason. Esperanto tried, but it's not much more wide-spread than Klingon  A map of world writing systems, Inuktitut looks pretty cool 
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Jul 5, 2013 08:24
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ekuNNN posted:The state of Celtic languages: I had totally forgotten about that one year where Cardiff and Swansea swapped place for kicks.
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Jul 5, 2013 08:40
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It is relatively easy to express meaning in English even with relatively minimal grammar. Also to be honest, it has already made too many inroads in too many countries around the world. The total number of native English speakers is quite small, but there is a massive amount of secondary/tertiary speakers. It is doubtful for example, India which will soon be the most populous country in the world would give up its lingua-franca. If you wanted to stop it, you're about 20 if not more years too late. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 08:47 on Jul 5, 2013 |
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Jul 5, 2013 08:43
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Pyromancer posted:No, English is awful, spelling is too different from pronunciation(and all those th and ae sounds, ugh) and verbs have too many tenses for no reason. Esperanto tried, but it's not much more wide-spread than Klingon If someone really wanted to make English the Universal language the most difficult bit, as I see it, would be deciding which English.
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Jul 5, 2013 09:19
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Jerry Cotton posted:If someone really wanted to make English the Universal language the most difficult bit, as I see it, would be deciding which English. Probably standard American English at this point, but English will likely be guided by local attitudes and accents in every country it is in, more or less what is already happening right now.
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Jul 5, 2013 09:27
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Jerry Cotton posted:If someone really wanted to make English the Universal language the most difficult bit, as I see it, would be deciding which English. The question is really which forms of English (and indeed which other languages) will contribute the most to Panglish.
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Jul 5, 2013 12:29
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Ardennes posted:It is relatively easy to express meaning in English even with relatively minimal grammar. This is a pretty bizarre argument that a lot of people make. It's not as if there's something magic about English, you can reduce any language's grammar to its basics for simple second language communication.
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Jul 5, 2013 13:05
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Ras Het posted:This is a pretty bizarre argument that a lot of people make. It's not as if there's something magic about English, you can reduce any language's grammar to its basics for simple second language communication. English does have fairly limited inflection (it's no Chinese though!)
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Jul 5, 2013 13:09
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PittTheElder posted:Not particularly. I've just never heard a good reason why amongst a group of people, two languages would be better than one. Because languages contain culture. The value inherent in language is the stored information about the way a group of people think about themselves and the world, because of how they've unconsciously chosen to name and talk about things, and how the language has evolved with the people over time. Language is not just a system of communication - it is also a window on the collective mind of a people.
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Jul 5, 2013 13:56
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eSports Chaebol posted:English does have fairly limited inflection (it's no Chinese though!) Inflection can be one of the easiest things to chop off though so this is a moot point.
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Jul 5, 2013 14:00
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eSports Chaebol posted:English does have fairly limited inflection (it's no Chinese though!) As Jerry Cotton observed, that's irrelevant. And expanding on that, English has incredibly complex and strict rules on word order and preposition use, which can also be largely ignored for pidgin-type communication.
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Jul 5, 2013 14:05
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shiffty posted:Well, univbee never stated what was necessarily on the maps, information from them regarding defense systems could still be applicable today if that were on the maps and it was to be believed that the defenses could still be used today, or for other maps the university may have had. Regardless, universities are prime espionage targets for a variety of reasons and it isn't unreasonable for them to control information within the university as univbee's had. The story was told to me in 2006-2007 without saying when exactly it happened. They'd had the maps since I believe not long after they were brand new, assuming the story isn't a crock of poo poo it could have happened when Mao was in power, which would not have been a good time.
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Jul 5, 2013 14:05
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Especially on coastal regions, certain types of military structures in 'old' countries may have been in place for 100-150 years easily. Not that you'd necessarily see them in any great detail on a non-military map.
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Jul 5, 2013 14:10
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It's been a while so some of my details might be wrong, but the assignment we had to do with them was basically "you are assigned one of the maps, find the most recent equivalent map you can and talk about what changed and why you think those changes happened." Mine had a new railroad leading to a forest which had shrunk in size, so I wrote my hunches about the railroad being for logging trains, that kind of stuff. Of course, some maps were omitted from the assignment, because doing Tokyo for that assignment would have been suicide, and some maps were almost entirely ocean. Someone with that level of detail, especially pre-internet, could have definitely made some educated guesses about military stuff, especially since these maps were from immediately after World War II.
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Jul 5, 2013 14:15
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icantfindaname posted:I'm sorry, I honestly can't believe that a topographical map that's probably 70 years old is worth anything at all to a modern intelligence agency. That whole scenario reeks of "drat dirty Chinamen spying on ARE COUNTRY". This isn't 1950, China is a mostly modern country and I have a feeling if they want 70 year old topographical maps they can get them. Also Japan isn't a police state, if you want to go to Japan and look around you're free to. If anything the idea of students hoping to sell it on the black market sounds more reasonable. University students might have stolen it anyway without thinking it through that clearly. Hating Japan and copying other people's work are both beaten into kids' heads by the Chinese education system. I wish I was joking even a little bit.
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Jul 5, 2013 16:58
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Pyromancer posted:No, English is awful, spelling is too different from pronunciation(and all those th and ae sounds, ugh) and verbs have too many tenses for no reason. Esperanto tried, but it's not much more wide-spread than Klingon No, it's not awful. This opinion is way too popular with people who don't know anything about languages but it gets passed around. I don't know what you know but English is not awful. It has advantages and disadvantages. Would you prefer German where everyone would have to learn how to use cases? Or Chinese where the writing system is so hard that literacy hovered around 4% until the 20th century? Or Japanese where we have to learn two syllabaries and modified Chinese and with all that it still can't handle a consonant cluster? People talk poo poo about English but aside from the spelling there's nothing particularly wrong with it becoming a world language. It's not especially wonderful or especially awful.
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Jul 5, 2013 17:22
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Jerry Cotton posted:If someone really wanted to make English the Universal language the most difficult bit, as I see it, would be deciding which English. Yeah, that's the important part. I don't think a universal language throughout the world is a realistic outcome anytime soon. There would be tons of dialects that wouldn't disappear, because you're still dealing with people in a local group. I was watching a documentary about Liberia not too long ago, and even though they're all technically speaking English, the accent made it drat near unintelligible to me without subtitles. Renaissance Robot posted:Because languages contain culture. The value inherent in language is the stored information about the way a group of people think about themselves and the world, because of how they've unconsciously chosen to name and talk about things, and how the language has evolved with the people over time. Well sure, but (random example) if everyone in China decided that they were going to speak German from now on. They begin massive education programs to get everyone speaking the new language. Would there really be much of a loss of culture from that shift? I wouldn't expect there to be one. Concepts that are expressed in one language can always be expressed in another, or even the old word kept and slotted into the new language. English has tons of that.
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Jul 5, 2013 17:32
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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PittTheElder posted:Well sure, but (random example) if everyone in China decided that they were going to speak German from now on. They begin massive education programs to get everyone speaking the new language. Would there really be much of a loss of culture from that shift? China might not be the best example of mass cultural changes not being destructive.
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Jul 5, 2013 17:35
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It is impossible to translate between languages with the same meaning. At best you're doing a best-fit conversion and you're still losing a ton of nuance and indeed, culture. If you have any knowledge of another language, preferably one of a different family, you'll realise how obvious this point is.
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Jul 5, 2013 17:59
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Vegetable posted:It is impossible to translate between languages with the same meaning. At best you're doing a best-fit conversion and you're still losing a ton of nuance and indeed, culture. If you have any knowledge of another language, preferably one of a different family, you'll realise how obvious this point is. A ton of nuance will be lost eventually anyway. That's why modern editions of that Shakespeare dude's plays have more explanatory bits than lines of the actual plays. Same goes for any language that's been around long enough, of course. Change can be gradual or it can be rapid but it's inevitably drastic. (I'm not advocating one way or the other, death is certain etc. so why bother?)
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Jul 5, 2013 18:04
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PittTheElder posted:Well sure, but (random example) if everyone in China decided that they were going to speak German from now on. They begin massive education programs to get everyone speaking the new language. Would there really be much of a loss of culture from that shift? I wouldn't expect there to be one. Concepts that are expressed in one language can always be expressed in another, or even the old word kept and slotted into the new language. English has tons of that. There would be significant loss because the next generation of Chinese would lose the ability to read Romance of the Three Kingdoms and other works of Chinese literature with their original nuance. Instead they could read Heidi and Götz von Berlichingen, which are much less relevant to Chinese culture for obvious reasons. Even Shakespeare's plays, in my opinion, keep their original meaning and beauty best in annotated English rather than any translation to a modern vernacular. There's also the loss of nuance from removing the Chinese language, which could arguably change the thought patterns of many people. There's a generational gap in many countries where locals were forced to learn a new language from the dominant culture. My great grandmother was beaten in school for speaking Cajun French. Despite the benefits that would result from everyone being able to communicate with each other, there's a clear culture loss and generational gap because some people would end up with the new language as their dominant one while others would resist the change.
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Jul 5, 2013 18:44
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Arglebargle III posted:People talk poo poo about English but aside from the spelling there's nothing particularly wrong with it becoming a world language. It's not especially wonderful or especially awful. The vast vowel inventory causes considerable difficulties for learners.
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Jul 5, 2013 18:44
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Behold the world's weirdest languages. http://idibon.com/the-weirdest-languages/ quote:The World Atlas of Language Structures evaluates 2,676 different languages in terms of a bunch of different language features. These features include word order, types of sounds, ways of doing negation, and a lot of other things—192 different language features in total. quote:The 25 weirdest languages of the world. In North America: Chalcatongo Mixtec, Choctaw, Mesa Grande Diegueño, Kutenai, and Zoque; in South America: Paumarí and Trumai; in Australia/Oceania: Pitjantjatjara and Lavukaleve; in Africa: Harar Oromo, Iraqw, Kongo, Mumuye, Ju|’hoan, and Khoekhoe; in Asia: Nenets, Eastern Armenian, Abkhaz, Ladakhi, and Mandarin; and in Europe: German, Dutch, Norwegian, Czech, and Spanish. In the top ten, after many languages you have never heard of, German makes a surprise appearance as #10. The world's least weird language is apparently Hindi.
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Jul 5, 2013 19:06
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From what I've seen of Mandarin it's not really that terrible to speak (writing's a different story) - the grammar order is in roughly the same order as English is and the tones seems reasonably easy compared with other languages in the region.
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Jul 5, 2013 19:27
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Jul 5, 2013 19:58
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PittTheElder posted:Well sure, but (random example) if everyone in China decided that they were going to speak German from now on. They begin massive education programs to get everyone speaking the new language. Would there really be much of a loss of culture from that shift? I wouldn't expect there to be one. Concepts that are expressed in one language can always be expressed in another, or even the old word kept and slotted into the new language. English has tons of that. ARE YOU loving WITH ME???? Before we talk about speaking or even parsing language, have you noticed all those weird symbols on Chinese food cartons and the neon signs on the Hong Kong levels of cool action video games? "Nah, not much of a loss," you say, distractedly shoveling three and a half thousand years of cultural production into the loving garbage
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Jul 5, 2013 21:28
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The idea that "language is just symbols" is so bizarre to me. Language is one of the most important connections to a culture and history that we have. Attempts to stamp out a culture almost always involve language suppression. For content- http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/geography-iv-cartography-of-persia- Ancient times. The world’s oldest known topographical map is a Babylonian clay tablet from about 2300 B.C.E. found at Nuzi in northeastern Iraq (Figure 1). It is a relatively advanced picture map, showing two ranges of hills, as seen from the side, and the rivers they flank, by a series of parallel lines. The site covered by this map may have lain between the Zagros mountains and the hills running through Kirkuk (Harvey, pp. 49-50; Harley and Woodward, I, p. 114; Figure 1). The famous Babylonian world map from about 600 B.C.E., preserved in the British Museum, shows a number of cities and places in ancient Persia (Harley and Woodward, I, pp. 111-12).  az jan jananam fucked around with this message at 21:42 on Jul 5, 2013 |
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Jul 5, 2013 21:37
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Arglebargle III posted:No, it's not awful. This opinion is way too popular with people who don't know anything about languages but it gets passed around. I don't know what you know but English is not awful. It has advantages and disadvantages. Would you prefer German where everyone would have to learn how to use cases? Or Chinese where the writing system is so hard that literacy hovered around 4% until the 20th century? Or Japanese where we have to learn two syllabaries and modified Chinese and with all that it still can't handle a consonant cluster? People talk poo poo about English but aside from the spelling there's nothing particularly wrong with it becoming a world language. It's not especially wonderful or especially awful. I don't think what he said was any dumber or weirder than your complains about case or Japanese phonotactics. In any case a language is only weird or difficult in reference to a learner's first language.
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Jul 5, 2013 22:02
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Ras Het posted:In any case a language is only weird or difficult in reference to a learner's first language. Well, spoken languages yes, written languages no. I mean some writing systems may take considerably more time to learn than others, even for 'natives', so they can be considered more difficult. (I'm assuming they were talking about 'total conversion' which would include both.) 3D Megadoodoo fucked around with this message at 22:10 on Jul 5, 2013 |
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Jul 5, 2013 22:08
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swamp waste posted:ARE YOU loving WITH ME???? Before we talk about speaking or even parsing language, have you noticed all those weird symbols on Chinese food cartons and the neon signs on the Hong Kong levels of cool action video games? "Nah, not much of a loss," you say, distractedly shoveling three and a half thousand years of cultural production into the loving garbage So the symbols themselves are important as well now? If all English speakers (or all writers of languages using a Latin alphabet I suppose) decided to switch from our current Latin alphabet to some new (let's say completely invented alphabet), does that make Latin characters cultural trash? Because I don't see why it would.
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Jul 5, 2013 22:14
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edit: I'm not going to backseat moderate. Sorry.
Baloogan fucked around with this message at 22:24 on Jul 5, 2013 |
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Jul 5, 2013 22:18
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PittTheElder posted:So the symbols themselves are important as well now? If all English speakers (or all writers of languages using a Latin alphabet I suppose) decided to switch from our current Latin alphabet to some new (let's say completely invented alphabet), does that make Latin characters cultural trash? Because I don't see why it would. From an archaeological perspective, it might well do that. There's not a phenomenally large amount of examples of that process that I can produce off hand, but if we look at the development of cuneiform script, there is an example of exactly that happening. With the elaboration and development of the script, earlier formulations are found in increasingly rural 'backwoods' contexts. Essentially, the alphabet changed due to the actions of a fairly limited set of scribes. Those working directly with the central government elite used a much more complicated script, scribes in rural and what I guess can be called colonial, contexts used a simplified one. Whether that was because of proximity or a rural/urban elite divide, I don't know, but there's a very strong indication that script did indeed become 'cultural trash'. A more recent example would be metric/imperial changeovers, especially in England. There, a simple change between using / to denote between shillings and pennies and a . to separate pounds and pence did create a cultural change where in the space of less than a generation, one was utterly discarded as an obsolete, old fashioned piece of 'cultural trash'. The complete abandonment of a notation or alphabet can create a strong cultural signal and can actively discard systems in favour of new ones. One system is relegated in favour of another, and the old system becomes the state of the old fashioned, rural or simply old. Actually, I'll go further than saying it might do, if say the western Latinate alphabet was discarded overnight in favour of say Cyrillic, Latin script would become 'trash' - an artefact of an ancient system, ignored (actively) by society. From an outsider viewpoint, it would remain important as a historical phenomenon and would still exert effects on society, but from the emic view, it would be cultural trash.
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Jul 5, 2013 23:20
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PittTheElder posted:So the symbols themselves are important as well now? If all English speakers (or all writers of languages using a Latin alphabet I suppose) decided to switch from our current Latin alphabet to some new (let's say completely invented alphabet), does that make Latin characters cultural trash? Because I don't see why it would. Yes they are. I take it you don't know much about Chinese poetry? In English poetry rhyme schemes and meter is important because English poetry is meant to be spoken. In Chinese poetry brush strokes and calligraphy are more important than meter and rhyming because it's meant to be read. Chinese is interesting in that there are many different spoken dialects, some of which are so different they might as well be different languages, yet it has one unified written language. The result is that poetry, the highest traditional art form in China, has a completely different emphasis than Western poetry. A lot of the artistry of a Chinese poem is lost when you translate it to English (or German) because how do you translate brush strokes? And that's just one example if why characters are important. I'm on my phone or I'd give you others.
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Jul 5, 2013 23:48
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Vegetable posted:It is impossible to translate between languages with the same meaning. At best you're doing a best-fit conversion and you're still losing a ton of nuance and indeed, culture. If you have any knowledge of another language, preferably one of a different family, you'll realise how obvious this point is. This cannot be overstated. You'd lose worlds of thought. I mean, poo poo, just consider simple things like connotations, etymology, etc. “Table”, as in a piece of furniture, for instance, activates a bunch of brain-space (maths, data) that literal translations of it in other languages (“bord”, “стол”, whatever) do not, and vice versa (nautical terms and bureaucracy respectively). Add to that different ways of actually, like, constructing sentences and poo poo, what with different grammar, punctuation in writing, idioms and so on, and you've got a right mess on your hands. That said, I certainly wish I'd grown up speaking English as my first language instead of my lovely lilliputian one, what with its (English) primacy in academics and all. You fuckers get so much for free. e: It's goddamn ugly though. English I mean. It's like you guys had this beautiful, pure, pristine Germanic language but then decided to poo poo all over it for some reason <  >
Cake Smashing Boob fucked around with this message at 00:29 on Jul 6, 2013 |
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Jul 5, 2013 23:52
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Hey guys this is a really interesting discussion but if its ok I'm gonna post some maps instead.             Source
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Jul 6, 2013 00:11
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You've got to be working under some really hosed up definitions to end up with a map looking like this: Or this: Constitution as in what? Founding document? Body of law? Under what definition does the UK (uncodified constitution) end up blue, but other nations with equally good legal protections and statutes red? And then there's the second one which in addition to having all the problems of the first one is pretty much a map on specificity masquerading as a map on disabled children and their rights. A bad map. e: This, for example, wouldn't cut it for the purposes of the second map: Constitution of the Gender-queer Socialist Republic of Pretendostan posted:Article 1: Cake Smashing Boob fucked around with this message at 02:08 on Jul 6, 2013 |
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Jul 6, 2013 01:21
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In addition to what Benito Hitlerstalin said, smoking is definitely banned on campuses in California. I don't know about other states, though, does every state have to have it on the books for it to qualify as a subnational-level law?
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Jul 6, 2013 01:54
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Yeah they are some silly maps in some cases. Also a bit of an insinuation that 'subnational level' laws aren't as good somehow. Also for one like... Breastfeeding breaks at work in Australia - Yeah OK I have never heard of mandated ones, but I think Australia has sufficiently tight laws on how we deal with staff that if anyone felt discriminated based on this they would have some clear rights and paths they could take to rectify it.
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Jul 6, 2013 02:04
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Also in Canada the drinking age in 11 of the 13 provinces and territories is 19, but they've put 18 there as the entirety of the country.
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