Language issues
May. 3rd, 2004 01:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
letnja_kishaНу какую бы мне систему придумать с языками? А то как ни соберусь в ЖЖ писать, все мучаюсь - на каком языке писать?
This won't be terribly interesting to people not somehow involved with languages and/or linguistics, but there are discussions about languages going on in LJ from time to time, so I thought I'd put this in.
1. There this one discussion going on here: http://www.livejournal.com/community/linguists/48381.html?nc=36 about linguists and languages they speak. Most people say that they find the question "So how many/what languages do you speak?" annoying, since linguists are people studying language structure (and other things)in general, and some of them don't speak anything but their native language, or their native language and English. While in general I agree that linguistics per se is a study of language in general, and not one particular one, it's interesting to see linguists who know only their native language (usually, English). My personal interest in linguistics came exactly from learning languages - and from speaking them. And although linguistics research gives me immense pleasure, there is nothing like learning how a language works just by speaking it!
2. Language/dialect. Many times I had heated discussions with people about distinctions between a language and a dialect. Russian/Ukranian, Russian/Belorussian, Serbian/Croatian, Serbian/Bosnian and others. I will say this: distinction between a language and a dialect is purely a political one. "Language is a dialect with a navy" (not sure if that's the right wording). Some languages have very few differences and yet they are called different languages (for example, Bosnian and Serbian - although I fully respect the right of Bosnians to have their own language). Some dialects are so different that two people speaking them will be unable to understand each other, and yet these two are called dialects (as for example, in China - Cantonese and Mandarin are mutually unintelligable). So while linguistically I agree that Bosnian is very close to Serbian to the point that otherwise I would consider them the same language, I still think it's a question of politics, and in political terms I believe that Bosnians should have their own language if they want to.
3. One language harder than another. Another issue that came up several times is whether one language is harder than another one. Suppose we have language A and language B. I believe that abstract discussions in terms of "A is harder than B" or vice versa are non-sensical. Usually, these statements are put in the form of "A is harder than B because A has 123 verb tenses" or "B is harder than A because there are tones in B". Well, all that is irrelevant, really, because how can one really compare verb tenses and tones? It is possible to compare two languages for their difficulty when talking about learning those languages and with respect to a particular person who is learning them, since that particular person will have a mother tongue C, which we can compare with A and B for presence/absence of particular features. Such as: an English speaking student will have more trouble with Russian than with Spanish, because 1) Russian has cases, E+S don't, 2) R has a different alphabet from E+S, 3) roots of the words in Russian are mostly Slavic, mostly Roman in E+S, 4) there's aspect of verbs in R, no such thing in E+S, and so on.
This won't be terribly interesting to people not somehow involved with languages and/or linguistics, but there are discussions about languages going on in LJ from time to time, so I thought I'd put this in.
1. There this one discussion going on here: http://www.livejournal.com/community/linguists/48381.html?nc=36 about linguists and languages they speak. Most people say that they find the question "So how many/what languages do you speak?" annoying, since linguists are people studying language structure (and other things)in general, and some of them don't speak anything but their native language, or their native language and English. While in general I agree that linguistics per se is a study of language in general, and not one particular one, it's interesting to see linguists who know only their native language (usually, English). My personal interest in linguistics came exactly from learning languages - and from speaking them. And although linguistics research gives me immense pleasure, there is nothing like learning how a language works just by speaking it!
2. Language/dialect. Many times I had heated discussions with people about distinctions between a language and a dialect. Russian/Ukranian, Russian/Belorussian, Serbian/Croatian, Serbian/Bosnian and others. I will say this: distinction between a language and a dialect is purely a political one. "Language is a dialect with a navy" (not sure if that's the right wording). Some languages have very few differences and yet they are called different languages (for example, Bosnian and Serbian - although I fully respect the right of Bosnians to have their own language). Some dialects are so different that two people speaking them will be unable to understand each other, and yet these two are called dialects (as for example, in China - Cantonese and Mandarin are mutually unintelligable). So while linguistically I agree that Bosnian is very close to Serbian to the point that otherwise I would consider them the same language, I still think it's a question of politics, and in political terms I believe that Bosnians should have their own language if they want to.
3. One language harder than another. Another issue that came up several times is whether one language is harder than another one. Suppose we have language A and language B. I believe that abstract discussions in terms of "A is harder than B" or vice versa are non-sensical. Usually, these statements are put in the form of "A is harder than B because A has 123 verb tenses" or "B is harder than A because there are tones in B". Well, all that is irrelevant, really, because how can one really compare verb tenses and tones? It is possible to compare two languages for their difficulty when talking about learning those languages and with respect to a particular person who is learning them, since that particular person will have a mother tongue C, which we can compare with A and B for presence/absence of particular features. Such as: an English speaking student will have more trouble with Russian than with Spanish, because 1) Russian has cases, E+S don't, 2) R has a different alphabet from E+S, 3) roots of the words in Russian are mostly Slavic, mostly Roman in E+S, 4) there's aspect of verbs in R, no such thing in E+S, and so on.
