Learning languages is both easier and harder than most people think. I know two: English and Spanish. My knowledge of Spanish is rapidly rusting from lack of use, so I won't trust my own capabilities to translate it.
On the easy part, it's about learning new labels for things, aka "Vocabulary," and the way the words fit together, or "grammar." Unless it has some odd features, like a different relationship to time, or something along those lines, but most of the top twenty I listed don't suffer that.
If you take a class, they start off with some handy phrases to introduce yourself.
Hello, my name is [my name].
Hola, me llamo [my name]. (Ola, may yamo [my name].
Hallo, ist mein Name [My name]. (Hallo, ist mine na-me [my name].)
你好，我的名字是 [My name]. (Ni Hao, Wo Jiao [my name].)
こんにちは、私の名前は[My name]ある. (Konichiwa, watashi wa [My name] des.)
Здравствулте!, Меня зовут [my name]. (ZDRASt-vooy-te. menya zavoot [my name].)
Having managed that much, research into vocabulary and grammar can begin.
On the hard end of this, sometimes the grammar or other features can be really strange. Or, sometimes in slightly related languages there are "false friends" that seem like one word, but would be understood completely differently in the new language.
As an example of grammatical weirdness, (at least from the perspective of English speakers), Russian, the last language on that list I just gave you, has noun declension. One can actually arbitrarily rearrange the words in a sentence and still be understood, if maybe a little odd sounding, but one must modify nouns to explain how they fit in the sentence. Like "The cat ate the rat" would have a modification to "cat" to show that it's doing the eating, and "rat" to show that it's being eaten. Presumably Russian speakers find it equally baffling to not have to do this. (Or perhaps some other feature of English is equally confusing?)
Or tonal languages. The third language I listed there, Chinese, is tonal, and words must be spoken at the correct pitch or they become completely different ones. The syllable "ma" is "horse," "Mother" or "?" depending on what tone it's said at. Baffling for English speakers, though not terrible to adjust to. Meanwhile, Chinese speakers tend to be baffled by English's overcomplicated grammar.
Mad Engineering proposes language tapes that drill a person on phrases, using recordings from native speakers. At least, to start with. Vocabulary must be drilled, grammar studied, and common pitfalls avoided.
Common pitfalls include:
* Translating everything back to your own native language before responding, which will be obvious because you will be 5 minutes late in all responses. You learned your native language by attaching labels to ideas. Your second language should be attached to those ideas as well, not your first language.
* Trying to relate it to your native language, because it isn't. Your native language's grammar doesn't apply. Mnemonics are a phenomenally bad idea. One language teaching book had the example of a (fake and invented for demonstration) foreign word of "patsa." One should not substitute "pasta" to remember it. (That being a real word in English.) Because the substitute is wrong. (I hear many many stories of English teachers in Japan who say they always has a student who does this, and winds up with a barely understandable "katakana English." And then whines when teacher refuses to do the same.)
* Not practicing. What you don't keep fresh, rots and rusts.
* Trying to do too much too soon. You'll have to spend a lot of time fumbling before you can be fluent.
As hard as I've painted learning another language, it is a rewarding procedure. It opens new worlds of thoughts and people to you that were inaccessible before. And if you gain nothing else, a profitable life of a translator could serve you well, I suppose.
Showing posts with label Linguistics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Linguistics. Show all posts
Monday, April 19, 2010
Thursday, November 26, 2009
The Forbidden Experiment
In the ancient world, people speculated that humans had one original language, lost from most people due to being parented in their parent's native tongue. They figured that a baby raised without language used would speak this original language, which could then be compared to existing ones.
So, many people tried it. They would raise sets of babies whose caretakers were forbidden from talking to them. the results were startling.
There was no primal language. Many of the children just plain outright died. While the new-age psychology book that first taught me about the Forbidden experiment claimed that they had felt unloved and willed themselves to die, this seems an unlikely explanation for the phenomenon. More likely, the infant did not manage to communicate its needs well enough and wound up infected or malnourished. The survivors grew up incapable of understanding language, and with it, civilization. The caretakers had handfuls of feral children who had the intellectual capacity of a puppy at best. An embaressingly human-shaped puppy who tended not to grasp ideas like not pooping on the floor, and wearing clothes in front of other people.
This is why it is now called the forbidden experiment -- it has an awful human toll, and proved that the base hypothesis was blatantly wrong. Other developments since that have concerned people who could not learn language for other reasons -- the deaf, and neglected feral children recovered from the wild.
Studies of deaf children confirms the original discovery: there is no natural human language, and we need exposure to it at a young age to understand it at all. Also, children with no language exposed to each other, tend to invent some form of language. This gives me my hypothesis on language.
My hypothesis is that language was invented some ten million times, independently, across the globe, wherever humans gathered. Languages have since been refined by exposure to neighboring languages, by grammatical simplification over time, and mispronunciations and misspellings becoming correct by force of habit. Languages have been abandoned, amalgamated, and mutated since then, to fit the needs of the people who speak them.
A scholar of ancient languages has confirmed to me that older languages are in fact clunkier in nature. Their grammar involves obtuse and excessively complicated rules. They are unreasonably lengthy, and often awkward in construction. So the trend in language is one of improvement.
So, many people tried it. They would raise sets of babies whose caretakers were forbidden from talking to them. the results were startling.
There was no primal language. Many of the children just plain outright died. While the new-age psychology book that first taught me about the Forbidden experiment claimed that they had felt unloved and willed themselves to die, this seems an unlikely explanation for the phenomenon. More likely, the infant did not manage to communicate its needs well enough and wound up infected or malnourished. The survivors grew up incapable of understanding language, and with it, civilization. The caretakers had handfuls of feral children who had the intellectual capacity of a puppy at best. An embaressingly human-shaped puppy who tended not to grasp ideas like not pooping on the floor, and wearing clothes in front of other people.
This is why it is now called the forbidden experiment -- it has an awful human toll, and proved that the base hypothesis was blatantly wrong. Other developments since that have concerned people who could not learn language for other reasons -- the deaf, and neglected feral children recovered from the wild.
Studies of deaf children confirms the original discovery: there is no natural human language, and we need exposure to it at a young age to understand it at all. Also, children with no language exposed to each other, tend to invent some form of language. This gives me my hypothesis on language.
My hypothesis is that language was invented some ten million times, independently, across the globe, wherever humans gathered. Languages have since been refined by exposure to neighboring languages, by grammatical simplification over time, and mispronunciations and misspellings becoming correct by force of habit. Languages have been abandoned, amalgamated, and mutated since then, to fit the needs of the people who speak them.
A scholar of ancient languages has confirmed to me that older languages are in fact clunkier in nature. Their grammar involves obtuse and excessively complicated rules. They are unreasonably lengthy, and often awkward in construction. So the trend in language is one of improvement.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Autotranslator
Japanese blogger Chikirin writes that he would like to see automatic translations of everything on the internet to allow multinational communication, in an article that he kindly translated into English. He believes that this would facilitate world understanding and peace.
I'm more skeptical. I question the logistics of it. Sure, there's babelfish and google translator, but they're often tripped up by slang, idioms, and puns. Running this very page through services like that shows that they trip up on words like "Just" and "Kinda" (slang misspelling for "kind of", meaning "slightly.") Also, they can't do anything for graphics, because computers generally have comparatively poor visual recognition. (OCR can often fail because the page was tilted a mere 2 degrees.) You'd be shocked at how many pages use "navigation buttons" that consist of an image of a word, because the page designer liked it that way.
Secondly because communication doesn't necessarily make peace. How much worse would trolling become when nationalism is added to the mix? I still have memories of when the Beijing Olympics inspired nationalistic Chinese young people to go post puff-pieces about their favorite country and then recoil in horror when these got less than glowing reviews. (or even got outright trolled instead.) How many discussions would bog down to "China sucks" "No, japan sucks" "No, USA sucks" "No, Poland sucks" and so on until the heat death of the universe?
thirdly, Chikirin says that "only the important information is translated, what about the trivial?" The trivial information is typically not translated exactly because it is trivial. Good translation takes effort, and it's not really worth anyone's time to translate quite a bit of the internet. Human time is limited, and machine translations are at best stilted, and like I pointed out above, often just plain wrong.
Worse if you want to translate all the video, too, because Speech recognition has a hidden problem: The computer's never quite sure of what it is that you're saying, but is making the best probable guesses. Thus compounding any possible misunderstandings.
I'm more skeptical. I question the logistics of it. Sure, there's babelfish and google translator, but they're often tripped up by slang, idioms, and puns. Running this very page through services like that shows that they trip up on words like "Just" and "Kinda" (slang misspelling for "kind of", meaning "slightly.") Also, they can't do anything for graphics, because computers generally have comparatively poor visual recognition. (OCR can often fail because the page was tilted a mere 2 degrees.) You'd be shocked at how many pages use "navigation buttons" that consist of an image of a word, because the page designer liked it that way.
Secondly because communication doesn't necessarily make peace. How much worse would trolling become when nationalism is added to the mix? I still have memories of when the Beijing Olympics inspired nationalistic Chinese young people to go post puff-pieces about their favorite country and then recoil in horror when these got less than glowing reviews. (or even got outright trolled instead.) How many discussions would bog down to "China sucks" "No, japan sucks" "No, USA sucks" "No, Poland sucks" and so on until the heat death of the universe?
thirdly, Chikirin says that "only the important information is translated, what about the trivial?" The trivial information is typically not translated exactly because it is trivial. Good translation takes effort, and it's not really worth anyone's time to translate quite a bit of the internet. Human time is limited, and machine translations are at best stilted, and like I pointed out above, often just plain wrong.
Worse if you want to translate all the video, too, because Speech recognition has a hidden problem: The computer's never quite sure of what it is that you're saying, but is making the best probable guesses. Thus compounding any possible misunderstandings.
Monday, April 20, 2009
In Your Language, and in Mine
The "Mad" of mad engineering is a callback to the stock "Mad Scientist," who operated by cranky, deranged theories, and disregarded things like common sense, and if the villain of the piece, morality. However, the term "Mad" has drifted since that time. Then it meant "Insane," now it means "Angry." Many a joke about "I'm not a mad scientist, I'm an angry scientist" has been bandied about.
In any case, people have been reading my blog whose browsers report that English is not their native language. As much as I would like to see this blog translated into other languages, I speak only one language other than English, and not quite well enough to have confidence in my own translation work.
But with some help from Yahoo's Babelfish, and the ever handy ZhongWen, I was at least able to determine a way to translate the blog's name. I will show it in the top registering languages to provide a little sample of each language and how it works.
Spanish
Translation: Ingeniería Insana
Back-Translation: Insane Engineering
Spanish is a Latin-based language that uses a different word-order than English. Adjectives go after the noun that they modify. Also, nouns and verbs must agree in a "gender" property, set arbitrarily by the noun. "Ingeniería" ends in an a and is therefore feminine.
1st Alternative: Ingeniería Loca
Back-Translation: Crazy Engineering
2nd Alternative: Ingeniería Rara
Back-Translation: Strange Engineering
German
Translation: VerrückterTechnik
Back-Translation: InsaneEngineering
German is agglutinative, that is that it combines related words into very very large ones.
Alternative: WütendeTechnik
Back-Translation: AngryEngineering
Portuguese
Translation: Engenharia Insana
Back-Translation: Insane Engineering
Portuguese is very similar to Spanish, based on Latin, and with Adjectives after the nouns that they modify.
Chinese
Note: If you don't have a Chinese-language font installed, the characters below will probably appear as garbled gibberish. But if you don't have a Chinese-language font, it's probably because you don't know Chinese in the first place, and can safely ignore it. Pinyin is the official latinization transcription system, so go with that.
Simplified Chinese: 疯狂的工程学
Traditional Chinese: 瘋狂的工程學
Mandarin Pinyin: Kuang2 De5 Gong1 Cheng2
Back Translation: Crazy Engineering
Chinese is tricky, in that it consists of many hundreds of "dialects" that are more different than Spanish and Portuguese above, some as far away as German vs. Spanish are. Almost all the dialects are tonal, and require the word be pronounced at the right pitch to convey the correct meaning. The wrong tone results in a different word altogether.
In the "Mandarin" dialect spoken most commonly in China, these characters would be read as I described, with the "Kuang" and "Cheng" starting at a mid-level pitch and rising, the "De" spoken at a mid-level pitch and holding steady, and the "Gong" spoken at a high pitch that remains steady. There's also a tone that starts high and falls ("4") and a tune that goes down and then up halfway through ("3"). Other dialects have even more tones.
Written Chinese is semi-ideographic. Each symbol represents a certain concept, although they can and do modify each other extensively. Also, the mainland region made an attempt to simplify the writing of the characters to improve literacy, as each would now be easier to write, whereas the island of Taiwan insisted on maintaining the traditional style.
The "Kuang" character depicts a dog uncontrolled by leashes, and also hypothetically rabid. It is used in many terms to describe insanity. The "De" depicts sunlight and a ladle, and connects the two ends that would normally be read as completely separate concepts.The "Gong" and "Cheng" are the standard way to say "Engineering." The "Gong" depicts a carpenter's square, and by extension all precision work. The "Cheng" shows rice grains distributed out in measured portions. Somehow, precisely measuring rice as to fairly divide it must have been a really common use for engineering in ancient China.
1st Alternative Simple: 话的工程学
1st Alternative Traditional: 亂的工程學
1st Alternative Pinyin: Luan2 De5 Gong1 Chen2
1st Back-Translation: Chaotic Engineering
2nd Alternative Simple: 怪的工程学
2nd Alternative Traditional: 怪的工程學
2nd Alternative Pinyin: Guai2 De5 Gong1 Chen2
Back-Translation: Weird Engineering
Japanese
Translation: 非常識工学
Back-Translation: Insane Engineering
Japanese was first written with Chinese characters, because the ancient Japanese found Chinese civilization to be amazing and wonderful. Unfortunately for them, the script meshed poorly with Japanese as a spoken language, and "Hiragana" and "Katakana" were made to fit in the necessary grammatical glue. Today, "Hiragana" is used for grammatical glue, and "Katakana" is used for loan-words, to indicate their non-Japanese origin.
Japanese and Chinese share enough characters that a Japanese person could probably read a simple Chinese newspaper. The reverse is less true, as any loan-words would rapidly trip-up a Chinese reader.
Maori
Translation: Puutaiao Poorangi
Back-Translation: Crazy Science
Maori is a Polynesian language, distantly related to Hawaiian. It is undergoing a resurgence in popularity in New Zealand, where it was widely spoken in the past and is now widely spoken again.
French
Translation: Technologie Fou
Back-Translation: Crazy Technoloogy
French is a Latin-based language, but made some different choices over the ones made by Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian. It is rather rigidly defined by the Acadamie Francais, or "French Academy."
In any case, people have been reading my blog whose browsers report that English is not their native language. As much as I would like to see this blog translated into other languages, I speak only one language other than English, and not quite well enough to have confidence in my own translation work.
But with some help from Yahoo's Babelfish, and the ever handy ZhongWen, I was at least able to determine a way to translate the blog's name. I will show it in the top registering languages to provide a little sample of each language and how it works.
Spanish
Translation: Ingeniería Insana
Back-Translation: Insane Engineering
Spanish is a Latin-based language that uses a different word-order than English. Adjectives go after the noun that they modify. Also, nouns and verbs must agree in a "gender" property, set arbitrarily by the noun. "Ingeniería" ends in an a and is therefore feminine.
1st Alternative: Ingeniería Loca
Back-Translation: Crazy Engineering
2nd Alternative: Ingeniería Rara
Back-Translation: Strange Engineering
German
Translation: VerrückterTechnik
Back-Translation: InsaneEngineering
German is agglutinative, that is that it combines related words into very very large ones.
Alternative: WütendeTechnik
Back-Translation: AngryEngineering
Portuguese
Translation: Engenharia Insana
Back-Translation: Insane Engineering
Portuguese is very similar to Spanish, based on Latin, and with Adjectives after the nouns that they modify.
Chinese
Note: If you don't have a Chinese-language font installed, the characters below will probably appear as garbled gibberish. But if you don't have a Chinese-language font, it's probably because you don't know Chinese in the first place, and can safely ignore it. Pinyin is the official latinization transcription system, so go with that.
Simplified Chinese: 疯狂的工程学
Traditional Chinese: 瘋狂的工程學
Mandarin Pinyin: Kuang2 De5 Gong1 Cheng2
Back Translation: Crazy Engineering
Chinese is tricky, in that it consists of many hundreds of "dialects" that are more different than Spanish and Portuguese above, some as far away as German vs. Spanish are. Almost all the dialects are tonal, and require the word be pronounced at the right pitch to convey the correct meaning. The wrong tone results in a different word altogether.
In the "Mandarin" dialect spoken most commonly in China, these characters would be read as I described, with the "Kuang" and "Cheng" starting at a mid-level pitch and rising, the "De" spoken at a mid-level pitch and holding steady, and the "Gong" spoken at a high pitch that remains steady. There's also a tone that starts high and falls ("4") and a tune that goes down and then up halfway through ("3"). Other dialects have even more tones.
Written Chinese is semi-ideographic. Each symbol represents a certain concept, although they can and do modify each other extensively. Also, the mainland region made an attempt to simplify the writing of the characters to improve literacy, as each would now be easier to write, whereas the island of Taiwan insisted on maintaining the traditional style.
The "Kuang" character depicts a dog uncontrolled by leashes, and also hypothetically rabid. It is used in many terms to describe insanity. The "De" depicts sunlight and a ladle, and connects the two ends that would normally be read as completely separate concepts.The "Gong" and "Cheng" are the standard way to say "Engineering." The "Gong" depicts a carpenter's square, and by extension all precision work. The "Cheng" shows rice grains distributed out in measured portions. Somehow, precisely measuring rice as to fairly divide it must have been a really common use for engineering in ancient China.
1st Alternative Simple: 话的工程学
1st Alternative Traditional: 亂的工程學
1st Alternative Pinyin: Luan2 De5 Gong1 Chen2
1st Back-Translation: Chaotic Engineering
2nd Alternative Simple: 怪的工程学
2nd Alternative Traditional: 怪的工程學
2nd Alternative Pinyin: Guai2 De5 Gong1 Chen2
Back-Translation: Weird Engineering
Japanese
Translation: 非常識工学
Back-Translation: Insane Engineering
Japanese was first written with Chinese characters, because the ancient Japanese found Chinese civilization to be amazing and wonderful. Unfortunately for them, the script meshed poorly with Japanese as a spoken language, and "Hiragana" and "Katakana" were made to fit in the necessary grammatical glue. Today, "Hiragana" is used for grammatical glue, and "Katakana" is used for loan-words, to indicate their non-Japanese origin.
Japanese and Chinese share enough characters that a Japanese person could probably read a simple Chinese newspaper. The reverse is less true, as any loan-words would rapidly trip-up a Chinese reader.
Maori
Translation: Puutaiao Poorangi
Back-Translation: Crazy Science
Maori is a Polynesian language, distantly related to Hawaiian. It is undergoing a resurgence in popularity in New Zealand, where it was widely spoken in the past and is now widely spoken again.
French
Translation: Technologie Fou
Back-Translation: Crazy Technoloogy
French is a Latin-based language, but made some different choices over the ones made by Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian. It is rather rigidly defined by the Acadamie Francais, or "French Academy."
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
The Doom of Languages
According to many sources, including this helpful one from China, many of the world's languages are disappearing. There are mixed feelings about this, with some applauding the increased interoperability of world communications, and others lamenting the permenant loss of the history and culture that the now dead languages represent.
Almost all the dying languages are obscure village languages, dumped in favor of more business-present ones. It's easier to get a job if you can advertise your expertise in, say, Spanish over, say, Nahautl. (Nahautl is the native language of the Aztecs. It still exists, but is seriously being displaced in favor of Spanish.) Also, the internationally favored languages have greater cultural impact. America's endless supply of movies gives English an intense push worldwide. English is also preferred in India, which has an amazing 300 languages. English is preferred in India for two reasons. One being that it isn't really anybody's native language, so everyone is equally inconvinienced by learning it. The other being that the previous British domination of India gave everyone an equal chance to learn it. Many of India's 300 languages are amoung the endangered, although I definitely see Hindi, Gujarati, and Bengali surviving.
Although the Chinese source proclaimed all Chinese languages to be doomed, I must disagree. Two Chinese languages, Mandarin and Cantonese, will definitely survive. Yes, English is favored in China for the business presence, the extensive Internet presence, the movie presence, and the fact that it is the official air-traffic language by international fiat. However, those two languages have so many speakers that it would actually serve me, in America, good enough reason to learn them.
Here's my list of top twenty languages that I believe will survive at least another thousand years, making them effectively immortal, and why:
1. English
English is the native language of America, the UK, Canada, and Australia. All of these countries enjoy massive international prestige. The culture of these four nations is also highly valued worldwide, especially due to America's export of movies, music, and culture in general. Much of the Internet is also in English. In addition to all of this, English is favored in international business, and like I mentioned, English is the language of air-traffic control by international fiat.
English is quite famous for being flexible, and quite willing to absorb words from other languages.
2. Mandarin Chinese
Known as "Putonghua" internally, this Chinese language is the native language of northern China, and is the primary government language in China. It has 500 million native speakers and is well known by a number of other Chinese speakers. Anyone wanting to do business in China had better know it.
3. Cantonese Chinese
This Chinese language developed in southern coastal China. I'm classifying it as a language because it's more different from Mandarin than Spanish is from French. Yes, they use the same writing system, and quite a few phrases are quite similar. Yes, quite a bit of Chinese thought classifies it as a dialect of Mandarin. It's spoken in Hong Kong, which has an immense economy, and 105 million people speak it. Again, anyone wanting to do business in China had better know it.
4. Japanese
While Japanese is only natively spoken in Japan itself, Japan's immense export of culture has taught it to nerds worldwide. Japan also has a very large economy. Very large indeed.
5. Spanish
The Hispanosphere stretches straight from the tip of south America all the way up into the Mexican border with the United States. Meaning, almost all of the South American continent's nations use Spanish as their native language, as well as the Central American region, and southern North America. In addition, a large number of Spanish speakers desire to move to the United States, so any American in the southwestern region should learn Spanish as well.
6. French
French used to be the universal language of diplomacy and trade. The term "lingua franca" literally means "French language." Then, much to the fury of the French, it fell out of favor for some reason. It is still quite well known in any region that France ever had anything to do with. This includes enormous swaths of northern Africa, southeastern Asia, eastern Canada, and the middle east. French also has a large cultural prestige worldwide.
7. German
Spoken mostly in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, it would be a wise language for an international businessperson to learn. The German economy is enormous. German also has some cutural prestige.
8. Arabic
Arabic is the official language of Islam, and anywhere that Islam goes, Arabic goes with it. Arabic is an official language in almost all of northern Africa, the middle east, and many parts of southern Asia.
8. Russian
Russia is huge. Russia also interacts with its huge neighbors. Lastly, Russian influence is found in many languages in eastern Europe, giving people wanting to learn those too a leg up. Russia also has a reasonably big economy, although it got hurt in recent years.
9. Hindi
Hindi is India's most populous language. Urdu is very similar. (Although the two are slowly further diverging. Hindi prefers to dig though the ancient Indian language of Sanskrit for further terminology, whereas Urdu prefers Arabic for this purpose.)
10. Portuguese
Portugal doesn't appear much in the news these days, but their former colony, Brazil, does.
11. Icelandic
Even if every Icelandic person abandoned this language in favor of English, historians would preserve it, as it draws from the very root language of English, German, Norweigian, Swedish, and Danish. Icelandic has literally not changed in a thousand years, which is rare for a language.
12. Esperanto
Esperanto is nobody's native language, and was invented by a Polish linguist to solve the problem of five different linguistic groups wanting to communicate, but none of them satisfied with any party having the advantage of using their own native language. It flopped there, but is favored in Asia as..well, nobody's language that draws from every European language. Therefore, if you know Esperanto, learning any European language is easy. Also, Esperanto has no irregular verbs due to it being artificial. No irregular verbs makes it that much easier to learn.
13. Norwegian/Danish/Swedish
These three languages are connected, and I'm not sure which one deserves the place. Will they combine into each other, or diverge further?
14. Finish
Finish is unrelated to the languages of any of Finland's neighbors, which is strange. Finland is starting to experiment with cultural exportation.
15. Dine
Better known as "Navajo," because it is the native language of that tribe. Quite famous from its cryptographic use in World War II.
16. Dutch
English might be ubiquitous in both the Netherlands and Belgium, but I don't see either one giving up on Dutch.
17. Hebrew
Hebrew died down to just the liturgical language of Judaism in the past, but underwent a revival from the founding of Israel.
18. Farsi
Increasing Iranian influence will increase the influence of this Iranian language.
19. Polish
Poland was conquered for much of the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th. When officially restored, the Polish people were quite nationalistic about it.
20. Latin
Latin is officially dead and possibly no longer pronounced correctly, but is an official liturgical language of the Catholic church, the ancestor of many European languages, present in many legal terminologies, and lastly, "Quid quid latine dictum sit, altum videtur."
Almost all the dying languages are obscure village languages, dumped in favor of more business-present ones. It's easier to get a job if you can advertise your expertise in, say, Spanish over, say, Nahautl. (Nahautl is the native language of the Aztecs. It still exists, but is seriously being displaced in favor of Spanish.) Also, the internationally favored languages have greater cultural impact. America's endless supply of movies gives English an intense push worldwide. English is also preferred in India, which has an amazing 300 languages. English is preferred in India for two reasons. One being that it isn't really anybody's native language, so everyone is equally inconvinienced by learning it. The other being that the previous British domination of India gave everyone an equal chance to learn it. Many of India's 300 languages are amoung the endangered, although I definitely see Hindi, Gujarati, and Bengali surviving.
Although the Chinese source proclaimed all Chinese languages to be doomed, I must disagree. Two Chinese languages, Mandarin and Cantonese, will definitely survive. Yes, English is favored in China for the business presence, the extensive Internet presence, the movie presence, and the fact that it is the official air-traffic language by international fiat. However, those two languages have so many speakers that it would actually serve me, in America, good enough reason to learn them.
Here's my list of top twenty languages that I believe will survive at least another thousand years, making them effectively immortal, and why:
1. English
English is the native language of America, the UK, Canada, and Australia. All of these countries enjoy massive international prestige. The culture of these four nations is also highly valued worldwide, especially due to America's export of movies, music, and culture in general. Much of the Internet is also in English. In addition to all of this, English is favored in international business, and like I mentioned, English is the language of air-traffic control by international fiat.
English is quite famous for being flexible, and quite willing to absorb words from other languages.
2. Mandarin Chinese
Known as "Putonghua" internally, this Chinese language is the native language of northern China, and is the primary government language in China. It has 500 million native speakers and is well known by a number of other Chinese speakers. Anyone wanting to do business in China had better know it.
3. Cantonese Chinese
This Chinese language developed in southern coastal China. I'm classifying it as a language because it's more different from Mandarin than Spanish is from French. Yes, they use the same writing system, and quite a few phrases are quite similar. Yes, quite a bit of Chinese thought classifies it as a dialect of Mandarin. It's spoken in Hong Kong, which has an immense economy, and 105 million people speak it. Again, anyone wanting to do business in China had better know it.
4. Japanese
While Japanese is only natively spoken in Japan itself, Japan's immense export of culture has taught it to nerds worldwide. Japan also has a very large economy. Very large indeed.
5. Spanish
The Hispanosphere stretches straight from the tip of south America all the way up into the Mexican border with the United States. Meaning, almost all of the South American continent's nations use Spanish as their native language, as well as the Central American region, and southern North America. In addition, a large number of Spanish speakers desire to move to the United States, so any American in the southwestern region should learn Spanish as well.
6. French
French used to be the universal language of diplomacy and trade. The term "lingua franca" literally means "French language." Then, much to the fury of the French, it fell out of favor for some reason. It is still quite well known in any region that France ever had anything to do with. This includes enormous swaths of northern Africa, southeastern Asia, eastern Canada, and the middle east. French also has a large cultural prestige worldwide.
7. German
Spoken mostly in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, it would be a wise language for an international businessperson to learn. The German economy is enormous. German also has some cutural prestige.
8. Arabic
Arabic is the official language of Islam, and anywhere that Islam goes, Arabic goes with it. Arabic is an official language in almost all of northern Africa, the middle east, and many parts of southern Asia.
8. Russian
Russia is huge. Russia also interacts with its huge neighbors. Lastly, Russian influence is found in many languages in eastern Europe, giving people wanting to learn those too a leg up. Russia also has a reasonably big economy, although it got hurt in recent years.
9. Hindi
Hindi is India's most populous language. Urdu is very similar. (Although the two are slowly further diverging. Hindi prefers to dig though the ancient Indian language of Sanskrit for further terminology, whereas Urdu prefers Arabic for this purpose.)
10. Portuguese
Portugal doesn't appear much in the news these days, but their former colony, Brazil, does.
11. Icelandic
Even if every Icelandic person abandoned this language in favor of English, historians would preserve it, as it draws from the very root language of English, German, Norweigian, Swedish, and Danish. Icelandic has literally not changed in a thousand years, which is rare for a language.
12. Esperanto
Esperanto is nobody's native language, and was invented by a Polish linguist to solve the problem of five different linguistic groups wanting to communicate, but none of them satisfied with any party having the advantage of using their own native language. It flopped there, but is favored in Asia as..well, nobody's language that draws from every European language. Therefore, if you know Esperanto, learning any European language is easy. Also, Esperanto has no irregular verbs due to it being artificial. No irregular verbs makes it that much easier to learn.
13. Norwegian/Danish/Swedish
These three languages are connected, and I'm not sure which one deserves the place. Will they combine into each other, or diverge further?
14. Finish
Finish is unrelated to the languages of any of Finland's neighbors, which is strange. Finland is starting to experiment with cultural exportation.
15. Dine
Better known as "Navajo," because it is the native language of that tribe. Quite famous from its cryptographic use in World War II.
16. Dutch
English might be ubiquitous in both the Netherlands and Belgium, but I don't see either one giving up on Dutch.
17. Hebrew
Hebrew died down to just the liturgical language of Judaism in the past, but underwent a revival from the founding of Israel.
18. Farsi
Increasing Iranian influence will increase the influence of this Iranian language.
19. Polish
Poland was conquered for much of the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th. When officially restored, the Polish people were quite nationalistic about it.
20. Latin
Latin is officially dead and possibly no longer pronounced correctly, but is an official liturgical language of the Catholic church, the ancestor of many European languages, present in many legal terminologies, and lastly, "Quid quid latine dictum sit, altum videtur."
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Newspeak
In George Orwell's 1984, the nation of Oceania, where the novel takes place, comprises what in our world is the United States, Australia, England, the rest of the Americas, and a few other areas. The novel is set in London. The mostly English speaking nation is under a totalitarian dictatorship that seeks to replace English with a more significantly impoverished language, Newspeak, which would lack the linguistic tools needed to even contemplate rebellion. English is slowly phasing out as an irrelevent "Oldspeak," with the implication of being obsolete.
In this new language, old documents that would inspire rebels will be reduced to laughably contradictory piles of nonsense, say the literature students. I disagree, as I reject the Sapir Worf Hypothesis, and believe that some meaning can still be preserved. As an example of this, I'm going to translate the declaration of independence into Newspeak, a task the Sapir-worf followers have deemed impossible. (Because statements like "All men are created equal" would turn into the obviously and hilariously wrong "All mans same.")
I promise to change this translation if anyone finds a word that doesn't exist in Newspeak (like if "unhear" would be "unlisten" instead), or would produce a nonsensical result ("Enjoy" meaning "suitable to government").
FIRST EDIT: Oops, "honor" doesn't exist. Replacing.
SECOND EDIT: "Listen" has been replaced with "hear" to mean "auditory understanding." All instances of "unlisten" replaced with "unhear."
THIRD EDIT: "Army?" More like "Forces." Also, "hero" is a better description for what the politicians offer their new country. The oldspeak "stupid" replaced with newspeak "unreason."
In this new language, old documents that would inspire rebels will be reduced to laughably contradictory piles of nonsense, say the literature students. I disagree, as I reject the Sapir Worf Hypothesis, and believe that some meaning can still be preserved. As an example of this, I'm going to translate the declaration of independence into Newspeak, a task the Sapir-worf followers have deemed impossible. (Because statements like "All men are created equal" would turn into the obviously and hilariously wrong "All mans same.")
Sometimes government ungood. People need destroy government when government work ungood. Position is not as natural, but should made as natural. When people leave government, they should say why, and government stopping is ungood.
We Bellyfeel this: All mans should same powers. All mans should have power to live, to do things, and try to be happy. State exists to give this, state power comes from all mans, and mans has power to change it or replace it. Mans should replace unbellyfeel state speedwise.
England coldplus unbellyfeel mans for a long time. We tell world.
King unaccept good laws we need.
King stop congress make law because unreason rubbish.
King make congress meet in unreason place.
King make congress go home for unreason.
King stop election, because he is a jerk.
King let foreign jerks in, and not let us stop it.
King stop court from make justice.
King make judge obey unreason rule.
King's thugs slept in our bed and ate our food. We unenjoy!
King make forces bother us.
King make forces rules follow over ours.
King let forces kill us, king ungoodful stop punish.
King not let us buy. Ungood!
King make ungood taxes we unenjoy.
King ungood punish for unreason.
King take us strange places for unreason punish.
King make arbitrary unreason rules near us too.
King take away our law.
King unlet us talk about law.
King unstate us, war unwith us.
King destroy our boats, ruin beach, destroy our towns, and killed us.
Now king send large foreign forces to kill us. How unmanful ungood!
King push riot on us, push riot on Indians.
We ask King stop humbleful, King unstop. What ungoodwise person!
We ask fellow British help, because we think they good manful. They unhear. Therefore, we war them until they hear.
Because this, we, who represent United States of America, say we are new state, unconnected England. This as should be. We unhear English King. We have power to War, Peace, Friend, Sell, and do all other state things. We promise do hero to protect United States.
I promise to change this translation if anyone finds a word that doesn't exist in Newspeak (like if "unhear" would be "unlisten" instead), or would produce a nonsensical result ("Enjoy" meaning "suitable to government").
FIRST EDIT: Oops, "honor" doesn't exist. Replacing.
SECOND EDIT: "Listen" has been replaced with "hear" to mean "auditory understanding." All instances of "unlisten" replaced with "unhear."
THIRD EDIT: "Army?" More like "Forces." Also, "hero" is a better description for what the politicians offer their new country. The oldspeak "stupid" replaced with newspeak "unreason."
Monday, September 15, 2008
The Password is Shiboleth
It is recorded that the tribe of the Hebrews, the ancestors of modern Israel, were at war with an enemy that was ethnically similar to them, and tried to infiltrate them. Since spying was a big problem, a lot of effort was put into a solution, which was also dutifully reported. The Hebrews noticed that their enemy lacked a sound in their language that the Hebrews did have: what is “SH” in modern English. This group substituted “s.” And so they asked any suspected spy to pronounce a word with that sound in it, and if he couldn't do it, they killed him. This test of ferreting out by some word or action that an outsider cannot readily reproduce is now known by the word that the Hebrews did for their test, “shibboleth.” “shibboleth” means either “ear of corn” or “torrent of water” in Hebrew. The best the infiltrating group could manage was “sibolis,” and someone pronouncing it that way tended to be stabbed on the grounds that they were a spy.
Wikipedia records the use of shibboleths in war, because the cost of being infiltrated by an enemy group is quite high. They give the quick examples of the world war II, such as American example “Flash. Thunder. Welcome.” (America does have people of German and Japanese origin.) The sentence would have been pronounced by a German speaker as “Flash. Thunder. Velcome.” and by a Japanese speaker as “Frash. Thunda. Wercome.” A group approaching while shouting an “enemy” pronunciation would have been fired upon. The Australians had a similar shibboleth designed to root out Japanese speakers, since the German army was too far to menace Australia. They used “Wooloomaloo,” which would be incorrectly pronounced “Wurumaru.”
I speak English, American style, and Spanish. This is quite understandable for me, since I am an American of southwestern origin, English being America's standard language, and Spanish being the most common language of America's southern neighbor, Mexico.. It has left me wondering which shibboleths I could manage, and which ones I couldn't. Also, if there are anti-American shibboleths in most languages. I note that I can reproduce a few sounds that don't exist in my own native language, such as “ж” (which is a guttural sound vaguely like clearing your throat and would be badly approximated by the English “ch” ) which is odd. I may have picked this up from one of my father's friends who spoke Hebrew, Yiddish, or Greek, all languages which do have this sound.
I can immediately think of one anti-English shibboleth offhand. Korean has a sound that is halfway between what is “k” and “g” in my language. I cannot manage to make this sound, and so a word or phrase with one or more instances of this would make a good anti-American shibboleth. A person who was raised speaking English would fail the test, even if they were ethnically Korean.
Spanish (and I think also French) speakers have a “rolled R” that is hard for English speakers to reproduce. German has “ж.” Russian is a little short on concents, and has yet more “ж.”. A few African languages have a “throat click.” The Nordic languages have a few vowels that aren't in English, like “Ø.” Finnish has an especially easy time of this, and has a shibboleth that literally can't be said by anyone whose native language is anything other than Finnish. (It's their word for “steamroller.” It involves several “Øs,” a “hj,” and several other sounds that involve bending the mouth in ways that my mouth distinctly will not bend. A non-native speaker can manage a close enough representation to be understood.)
Speakers of many Asian languages will have a harder time coming up with shibboleths, because most sounds in their languages also exist in English. Speakers of the two big Chinese languages can hope to confound with their tonal system (in which, say “shi” with a rising tone means something differently than “shi” with a falling tone. ) Mandarin Chinese, spoken in northern China, has four distinct tones, and Cantonese Chinese, common in southern China, has six. A tonal based shibboleth is a bad idea, because the tones aren't hard to imitate for speakers of nontonal languages, such as English. A novice speaker might mix them up, but would still manage if their life was on the line. Thai and Vietnamese have some odd letters recorded, but I haven't heard enough of these languages spoken to determine if they represent sounds that aren't in English.
Japanese speakers would have a very hard time coming up with an English detecting shibboleth, since every sound in Japanese is also in English, while the reverse is not true. (although the sound transcribed as “r” is actually halfway between “r” and “l,” but that wouldn't be terribly effective due to an English “r” and an English “l” both being heard as the “r” sound in Japanese.) The only angle I could think of is that Japanese is sensitive to vowel length, in which “tan” and “taaaaan” are two different words. They would have to write a sentence where getting the vowel lengths wrong would have an immensely humorous (or nonsensical) implication.
The last thought is that a shibboleth need not be a word, but could also be an action. There was a supposed anti-Jewish shibboleth practiced by the nazis in which they would leave a person in a room with coffee and sugar cubes. They seemed to believe that a non-Jewish German person would put the cube in the coffee, stir, and then drink it, while a Jewish person would put the cube in their mouth and then drink the coffee. I disbelieve the truth and effectiveness of the test because I have never heard of any person, Jewish or otherwise, performing the second action. In fact, I know several Jewish people personally, and given a cup of coffee and a sugar cube, they all put the cube in the coffee, stir, and drink, although this may be because I was born at least a generation after the nazis, who murdered everyone who put the cube in their mouth, Jewish or otherwise. And anyone they thought was Jewish. And anyone who disagreed with their murderous policies. And anyone they disliked and could get a hold of, period.
Verbal shibboleths work because of the tenancy of adults to either mishear or be unable to reproduce any sound not present in a language they learned in early childhood, but action shibboleths only work if the subject is unaware of being tested and is unaware of the potential implications of their action. And of course, the main problem with a war shibboleth is that it detects a person's native language and/or culture, but not their true loyalty. The “Flash Thunder Welcome” test would be “failed” by an American soldier of German Jewish origin or Japanese origin, despite the total loyalty of this hypothetical man to the United States. It is recorded that some American soldiers of German Jewish origin did in fact have to quickly explain their loyalty to the United States by other means.
Are there any shibboleths to detect members of your group from other groups? Or the other way around?
Wikipedia records the use of shibboleths in war, because the cost of being infiltrated by an enemy group is quite high. They give the quick examples of the world war II, such as American example “Flash. Thunder. Welcome.” (America does have people of German and Japanese origin.) The sentence would have been pronounced by a German speaker as “Flash. Thunder. Velcome.” and by a Japanese speaker as “Frash. Thunda. Wercome.” A group approaching while shouting an “enemy” pronunciation would have been fired upon. The Australians had a similar shibboleth designed to root out Japanese speakers, since the German army was too far to menace Australia. They used “Wooloomaloo,” which would be incorrectly pronounced “Wurumaru.”
I speak English, American style, and Spanish. This is quite understandable for me, since I am an American of southwestern origin, English being America's standard language, and Spanish being the most common language of America's southern neighbor, Mexico.. It has left me wondering which shibboleths I could manage, and which ones I couldn't. Also, if there are anti-American shibboleths in most languages. I note that I can reproduce a few sounds that don't exist in my own native language, such as “ж” (which is a guttural sound vaguely like clearing your throat and would be badly approximated by the English “ch” ) which is odd. I may have picked this up from one of my father's friends who spoke Hebrew, Yiddish, or Greek, all languages which do have this sound.
I can immediately think of one anti-English shibboleth offhand. Korean has a sound that is halfway between what is “k” and “g” in my language. I cannot manage to make this sound, and so a word or phrase with one or more instances of this would make a good anti-American shibboleth. A person who was raised speaking English would fail the test, even if they were ethnically Korean.
Spanish (and I think also French) speakers have a “rolled R” that is hard for English speakers to reproduce. German has “ж.” Russian is a little short on concents, and has yet more “ж.”. A few African languages have a “throat click.” The Nordic languages have a few vowels that aren't in English, like “Ø.” Finnish has an especially easy time of this, and has a shibboleth that literally can't be said by anyone whose native language is anything other than Finnish. (It's their word for “steamroller.” It involves several “Øs,” a “hj,” and several other sounds that involve bending the mouth in ways that my mouth distinctly will not bend. A non-native speaker can manage a close enough representation to be understood.)
Speakers of many Asian languages will have a harder time coming up with shibboleths, because most sounds in their languages also exist in English. Speakers of the two big Chinese languages can hope to confound with their tonal system (in which, say “shi” with a rising tone means something differently than “shi” with a falling tone. ) Mandarin Chinese, spoken in northern China, has four distinct tones, and Cantonese Chinese, common in southern China, has six. A tonal based shibboleth is a bad idea, because the tones aren't hard to imitate for speakers of nontonal languages, such as English. A novice speaker might mix them up, but would still manage if their life was on the line. Thai and Vietnamese have some odd letters recorded, but I haven't heard enough of these languages spoken to determine if they represent sounds that aren't in English.
Japanese speakers would have a very hard time coming up with an English detecting shibboleth, since every sound in Japanese is also in English, while the reverse is not true. (although the sound transcribed as “r” is actually halfway between “r” and “l,” but that wouldn't be terribly effective due to an English “r” and an English “l” both being heard as the “r” sound in Japanese.) The only angle I could think of is that Japanese is sensitive to vowel length, in which “tan” and “taaaaan” are two different words. They would have to write a sentence where getting the vowel lengths wrong would have an immensely humorous (or nonsensical) implication.
The last thought is that a shibboleth need not be a word, but could also be an action. There was a supposed anti-Jewish shibboleth practiced by the nazis in which they would leave a person in a room with coffee and sugar cubes. They seemed to believe that a non-Jewish German person would put the cube in the coffee, stir, and then drink it, while a Jewish person would put the cube in their mouth and then drink the coffee. I disbelieve the truth and effectiveness of the test because I have never heard of any person, Jewish or otherwise, performing the second action. In fact, I know several Jewish people personally, and given a cup of coffee and a sugar cube, they all put the cube in the coffee, stir, and drink, although this may be because I was born at least a generation after the nazis, who murdered everyone who put the cube in their mouth, Jewish or otherwise. And anyone they thought was Jewish. And anyone who disagreed with their murderous policies. And anyone they disliked and could get a hold of, period.
Verbal shibboleths work because of the tenancy of adults to either mishear or be unable to reproduce any sound not present in a language they learned in early childhood, but action shibboleths only work if the subject is unaware of being tested and is unaware of the potential implications of their action. And of course, the main problem with a war shibboleth is that it detects a person's native language and/or culture, but not their true loyalty. The “Flash Thunder Welcome” test would be “failed” by an American soldier of German Jewish origin or Japanese origin, despite the total loyalty of this hypothetical man to the United States. It is recorded that some American soldiers of German Jewish origin did in fact have to quickly explain their loyalty to the United States by other means.
Are there any shibboleths to detect members of your group from other groups? Or the other way around?
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