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Zega
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Zega
6,917 posts
Peasant

Why are there different languages? Why can't it just be one?

  • 43 Replies
Zophia
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Zophia
9,424 posts
Scribe

I've always found English pretty easy to learn, compared to the 5-7 other languages I've learned at least a few words or sentences from... But that might just be me.
Learning English is one of the best ways to ensure you'll be able to communicate internationally... Though local languages can be a good help if you're traveling...

I just hope no more languages stops being spoken completely.

Parsat
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Parsat
2,180 posts
Blacksmith

English is an easier language to learn practical sentences and quotes, but actually learning it is pretty hard.

I hope no language stops being spoken either. It's a very sad thing for me to see a person with heritage from another country who can't speak a word from that country's language. Sometimes globalization can be a pain.

Zophia
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Zophia
9,424 posts
Scribe


"mienai mirai ni okoru koto subete ni imi ga aru kara"

"There's meaning in everything that happens in the unseen future."

What you see is what you say.
Okay, help please? I don't know how to pronounce Japanese, since a lot of the words are pronounced completely different from the way they are written (at least the way I read the letters, Danish is fairly different from Japanese).
And I don't know what any of the individual words are translated to, nor what sentence structure you use... For all I know the sentence could be written backwards.

Let's take the same sentence in Danish, a language most foreigners say is rather difficult to learn:
Der er mening i alt der sker i den usete fremtid.
Gantic
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Gantic
11,889 posts
King

Chinese, Japanese, and Korean are not very complicated as languages go.


I'm sure that the grammar is much more difficult in the Germanic and Romance languages (all those conjugates, inflections and other stuff) which would be easier in East Asian languages. Learning to write the East Asian languages is more complicated than actually learning to speak them. Heck, it's equally difficult to learn to speak them correctly if you can't speak without stresses.
Parsat
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Parsat
2,180 posts
Blacksmith

I'm sure that the grammar is much more difficult in the Germanic and Romance languages (all those conjugates, inflections and other stuff) which would be easier in East Asian languages. Learning to write the East Asian languages is more complicated than actually learning to speak them. Heck, it's equally difficult to learn to speak them correctly if you can't speak without stresses.


I'd have to say that English grammar is the most complicated aspect of it as a whole. All those articles and what not make English more wordy than it needs to be. Writing looks hard, but it is actually no harder than English once you get the patterns. Korean, for example, follows a sort of phonetic alphabet. Japanese hiragana and katakana is mostly spelled as it sounds. And Chinese? Really, the pattern of every stroke has a universal pattern to it, left to right, top to bottom. The beauty of the written Eastern Asian word, especially in Chinese and its derivatives hanja and kanji, is that each word has an inherent aesthetic value. Is the difficulty of learning a language always more important than the actual beauty of the language?
Zophia
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Zophia
9,424 posts
Scribe

@Parsat:
You think there's a lot of articles in English?
Oh, German, Latin, Finnish...

Japanese hiragana and katakana is mostly spelled as it sounds.
That depends on how you hear it... Come on, the 'l'-like 'r's?

Not that I am criticizing your statement, just pointing at those things...

Is the difficulty of learning a language always more important than the actual beauty of the language?
Most definitely not. Japanese has some really beautiful sound qualities, especially when sung. Makes me wish I could understand it, but I don't have great language skills. I know Danish and English, and that's more or less it...

Danish is hard to learn, because a lot of sounds are not actually written, and some of the written are not pronounced... Oh silent 'h's and soft 'g's...
rico1993
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rico1993
29 posts
Nomad

well you can look at this two ways biblically and historically

biblically:humans tried to defy god by building a tower or sumthin to reach heaven so god made different languages to crush their attempt because they couldn't communicate

or historically:
the first languages started with the empires
roman empire's language was Latin and so many languages branched off

so on so forth with other empires

Cenere
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Cenere
13,656 posts
Jester

All new languages is hard to learn, if you do not have the ear for it.
I learned English quite easily, though I still have problems with pronouncing "Orange".
I had and still have quite some problems with German, as their articles... German does have sounds and words similar to Danish, but I still failed at learning it.
Latin is just evil about its articles...
Japanese is quite easy to pronounce, once you learn the soft r/l sound, and remmeber that su is pronounced ss in some words. Desu?

Drace
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Drace
3,880 posts
Nomad

English is the hardest to learn, if you were not born in an English speaking country you would have a hard time learning it.


I learned English in year of being here :P
Currently Im taking Latin in school and trying to learn Russian at home.

Latin is just evil about its articles...


Latin doesn't have articles =D
Gantic
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Gantic
11,889 posts
King

That depends on how you hear it... Come on, the 'l'-like 'r's?


and b's like v's! I really don't see a difference? It's makes perfect sense to me.


I'd have to say that English grammar is the most complicated aspect of it as a whole. All those articles and what not make English more wordy than it needs to be. Writing looks hard, but it is actually no harder than English once you get the patterns. Korean, for example, follows a sort of phonetic alphabet. Japanese hiragana and katakana is mostly spelled as it sounds. And Chinese? Really, the pattern of every stroke has a universal pattern to it, left to right, top to bottom. The beauty of the written Eastern Asian word, especially in Chinese and its derivatives hanja and kanji, is that each word has an inherent aesthetic value. Is the difficulty of learning a language always more important than the actual beauty of the language?


There are only two articles: a for indefinite and the for definite

I'm not commenting on the aesthetics of the word. The pattern of strokes does not so much create the beauty and balance so much as the weight of each stroke and the sum of all the parts. (It's why print doesn't look so great)

I'll delete everything else here that I wrote before and say that I just realized that I was putting this from and English to an East Asian language perspective but not gauging the East Asian language to English. Is it harder to some one who knows only English to learn Chinese or someone who only knows Chinese to learn English? I can't say since I've only met one person going from English to Chinese (and another going from Spanish).

---
If anyone wants to take a look into universal langauges, Lojban is a good one. It does not have the bias that Esperanto does, since Lojban is construted mostly from: English, Chinese, Hindi, Arabic, Russian, and Spanish.
Gantic
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Gantic
11,889 posts
King

and b's like v's!

I think I have that backwards.

[quote]Latin is just evil about its articles...

Latin doesn't have articles =D[/quote]

But it does have evil conjugation and declension.
tanstaafl28
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tanstaafl28
335 posts
Farmer

Why are there different languages? Why can't it just be one?

It used to be that people were scattered in very small isolated communities. Serious travel was extremely limited. Each community formed its own means of communication.

Kurgle
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Kurgle
163 posts
Nomad

I do not like the thought of an international language, it reminds me to much of 1984.

Drace
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Drace
3,880 posts
Nomad

But it does have evil conjugation and declension.


Oh its easy

Sing it!

-o
-s
-t
-mus
-tis
-nt
(2x)
ChopstickBoB
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ChopstickBoB
142 posts
Nomad

If there is an international language it will probably be English, since it is the 'language of buisnees.' I sort of hope it isn't though. Its a jumbled mutt of a language. I'd vote for either French or Italian. Both languages just sound so nice to my ears. I suppose that's the Latin origins.

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