(Fun) facts about different languages

[aa-dav]

In the neighboring forum topic, the difference between languages was mentioned. As far as I understand, this forum has a fairly international composition of participants and it seemed interesting to me to create this topic where everyone can share their interesting observations about the difference between English and their native language.

I'll start with 'they say...' phrase structure in English.
At first it was very strange for me. Who are 'they'? Why we don't mention them before?
Reason is: my native languge has complex system of postfixes and prefixes.
This has a penalty: statistically every phrase is longer 10-30% than in English.
But on the other hand prefixes and suffixes effectively bind role of the words in the sentence and there is high potential for free words order. Changing order of words in sentence can shift stresses on particular word, but not change overall meaning.
But also omitting of words is highly exploited.
So, we say 'Say[suffix meaning plural subjects + present continuous] ...'. Without noun, but with suffix binding, this phrase automatically becomes something like '(Some people not important here) say ....' or mentally 'Process of saying by multiple people is in progress and they say ...'.
So it was interesting to meet strict English word ordering.

Maybe you have something fun or intreresting to share too.

[creaothceann]

German is considered to be a harsh-sounding language, yet in English the word "archive" is much harsher ("arc hive") than the German "Archiv".
The h in "ch" is not silent, it's pronounced like in "charm" or "china" - so there's also a difference between "Nacht" (night) and "nackt" (naked).

[segaloco]

As a native English speaker I have often marveled at the concepts laid much more bare in other languages. One in particular that demonstrates this is Japanese. The particle system by which certain very distinct, non-conjugated syllables indicate the precise part of speech a word conveys. English is so confusing in that a given word or homonym can play so many roles. But that is the nature of English being a bastard tongue made up of various waves of Romantic and Gothic influence on top of a Celtic substrate. It does make me sad as an English speaker also with ties to old pre-Roman Brittonic culture heritage-wise that so little of the original Brittonic tongue exists in modern English. The French are slightly more fortunate in that more Gaulish exists in modern French, but outside enclaves and the edges of the British world, the Celtic tongues have had it quite rough. Curse the Romans and their roughshod erasure of so much European culture. I have the belief that if Rome had never happened, the concept of a pan-European cultural homogeney would have never taken root and ancient European tribal cultures would have prevailed, avoiding the age of European imperialism and the establishment of the modern state of affairs. I yearn to commune with druids and mystics, not clerks and bureaucrats.

[Oziphantom]

So it was interesting to meet strict English word ordering.

Do you know the `opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose` hidden rule of describing something in English?

[aa-dav]

So it was interesting to meet strict English word ordering.

Do you know the `opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose` hidden rule of describing something in English?

Yes, I've heard about it several years ago, but never tried to memorize.
There are much simpler things I cannot memorize.
For example: after many many years of lazy English learning I am still weak in articles (the, a(n)).
I've seen interesting idea in lessons some time ago: it's like English tends to give adjective to any noun, so if there is no real adjective you have to insert article which is substiute for adjective "this" (the) or "one" (a). IMHO, it's interesting point which is in accordance with "strict word order" rules. However AFAIK there are a lot of exceptions.

[Drag]

I'm currently leaning Swedish, and the words "på" "i" "om" "att" "av", etc, often give me trouble. Same with remembering whether a word is "en" or "ett", and when it's an "ett" word, whether the definite plural is "-en" or "-arna" (i.e., like an "en" word anyway).

Jag har fortfarande roligt när jag lär mig det, men jag behöver mer övning.

I also noticed a lack of the English "th" sound, and now that I'm needing to do mouth gymnastics to produce the correct sounds in Swedish, I fully understand why English learners have difficulty with some of the sounds we make.

[tepples]

But that is the nature of English being a bastard tongue made up of various waves of Romantic and Gothic influence on top of a Celtic substrate. It does make me sad as an English speaker also with ties to old pre-Roman Brittonic culture heritage-wise that so little of the original Brittonic tongue exists in modern English.

Use of do as an auxiliary comes to my mind quickest. "Brittonicisms in English" on Wikipedia claims that other Celtic vestiges in English include these:

• Widespread use of progressive aspect formed from be plus a gerund (such as is going)
• Having only one form of the (which also parallels Hebrew ha and Arabic al
• Use of go to mean "become" (as in go crazy)
• Forming tag questions as a negative question with be or do instead of a bare negative (doesn't he? or isn't it?, not *no?)

Do you know the `opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose` hidden rule of describing something in English?

I've read that in Hebrew, the order is the exact opposite because Hebrew nouns precede adjectives.

I also noticed a lack of the English "th" sound, and now that I'm needing to do mouth gymnastics to produce the correct sounds in Swedish, I fully understand why English learners have difficulty with some of the sounds we make.

Celtic languages, Arabic, and Biblical Hebrew have the dental fricative "th" sound as well, though it's been lost in standard Israeli Hebrew as part of the influence that European immigrant speakers have had on the revival of Hebrew. The old begadkefat lenition rule in Hebrew, which turned postvocalic B, G, D, K, P, and T sounds into fricatives, now affects only B, K, and P. In fiction, dental fricatives tend to appear in languages of gracile or prey species, such as Tolkien's elves and Adams' rabbits.

[aa-dav]

Yeah, sounds of letters are huge topic.
If someone looks at the russian alphabet it can be thought that in Russian (almost) twice as many vowels as in English (33 letters in total).
However situation is quite opposite.
Russian vowels are (almost) doubled by "shortcut" letters joined with sound "y" (first sound in (y)es). a-ya, o-yo, e-ye, u-ju and so on. This
It's just "hard i" + base vowel. If you take attention to mouth configuration in this first sound in word "yes" - it is like 'i' stressed and hardened by muscles to sound very distinct.
So, russian alphabet can drop out (almost) half of the vowels and place 'й' (this first sound in '(y)es' - it has own letter) in front of 'base vowels'.
Reality is opposite: it is English who has doubled vowels in comparison to Russian!
This doubling is based on lasting: i vs ee and so on. Russian ear is unable to hear difference. Neuronetworks of brain aren't trained. Longevity of vowel never was important here.
I just can't hear difference in live speech till present days.
But it is not end of the story: in fact Russian language has (almost) doubled count of consonants. They are multiplied by 'soft' and 'hard' variants.
Word mat means 'obscene words', but word mat' (there ' sign softens previous consonant) means 'mother'.
And as far as I understand English ear has the same problem here: it is not trained to see the difference.
Why they are not doubled in alphabet? Because we do it in strange way: by placing 'doubled vowels' after consonants. This converts consonant to soft variant and vowel to base vowel. Wow. Why it is so unlinear taking into account threre is 'soft sign' 'ь' which function is the same without using vowel at all?

[aa-dav]

It was also fun to discover 'long time no see' idiom in English.
AFAIK it was derived from contacts with Chinese.
But again - it is very similar in structure with Russian practice of omitting as many words as possible.
"Давно не виделись" - literally "(Long time ago) no see[plural+past continous suffix]".
It's almost "long time no see"!
WTF

[creaothceann]

it is very similar in structure with Russian practice of omitting as many words as possible

Seems to be also a thing in Japanese and other eastern languages.
I've noticed it when watching clips of JP vtubers - they say two or three words, and the subtitles expand that at least 3x, with different clippers using different words to fill in the blanks.

[segaloco]

it is very similar in structure with Russian practice of omitting as many words as possible

Seems to be also a thing in Japanese and other eastern languages.
I've noticed it when watching clips of JP vtubers - they say two or three words, and the subtitles expand that at least 3x, with different clippers using different words to fill in the blanks.

In my limited understanding of Japanese it seems certain particles (は for instance) will establish a concept for the following sentences without having to repeat the subject. Unless a given part of speech is then given again with its respective particle (は, を, に, etc.) then it is assumed if a subsequent sentence is missing that part of speech it is carried from the last.

This comes up much more in colloquial English speech than written English though. Written English is so painfully formal compared with conversational English. We drop a lot more words than we realize, I wonder if various languages were analyzed for how different their written and spoken vernaculars are where English would factor in...

[aa-dav]

Seems to be also a thing in Japanese and other eastern languages.

Very good point! Examples in the end absolutely fits in russian language logic.
I remembered another one thing - at the time I began to learn English another thing puzzles me: why so many 'is'es?
Russian language doesn't like verb 'is'. 'Weather fine' instead of 'Weather is fine'. 'He puzzled' instead of 'He is puzzled'. Again, this is possible because of suffixes which don't allow to confuse between noun, verb or adjective. If there is no verb - it is 'is'. By default.
Context rules. Everything you may derive from context is important:
- Did you see your brother?
- Visited him yesterday (I visited him yesterday)
- How he? (How is he?)
- Already healthy (He is already healthy)
- Said[singular-male-past-suffix] anything? (Did he said anything?)
- Going[he-she-it-suffix] to us tomorrow ([He said] He is going to visit us tomorrow)
- And wife? (What about his wife?)
- Said[singular-female-past-suffix] need to work (She said she needs to go to work)
And so on.
I suppose every language with rich set of suffixes/prefixes follow this idea.

[aa-dav]

Written English is so painfully formal compared with conversational English. We drop a lot more words than we realize, I wonder if various languages were analyzed for how different their written and spoken vernaculars are where English would factor in...

Interesting. In Russian my example above is absolutely normal in both - conversational and written language. They are the same in this details.
Can such dialog exist in English conversation?

[segaloco]

Can such dialog exist in English conversation?

To each their own but my text-based and spoken vernacular are quite different. I don't know if this is a feature of English or of me, but I find frequently that conversation in person, especially with close friends, does not resemble sentences so much as just a meandering series of words that gets a point across. Oh to communicate without words, that is my favorite. Either way a subject carries without formal mention, much like Japanese imo.

But in a text-based medium I at least feel more compelled to structure things a little given the permanence and audience. When talking among friends you aren't figuring out how to make your conversation understandable or palatable to others. There are all sorts of formalities dropped, and I often wonder if English as a language just has a much more drastic contrast between "familiar" and "formal" speech. In Spanish of course you have the tu vs usted situation which really comes down to ego and personal sentiment, rather than what you're saying being intelligible or not. I have always understood it as the subtle difference between "a person" and "some guy" in English. One is neutral, the other can carry any number of connotations. That's a difficulty in learning other languages, you can know the meaning of a word but totally miss the connotation and implication.

In any case both Japanese and Spanish (by extension Romance stuff?) seem a little more efficient and personable, but thats from the outside looking in with Japanese and experiences in the past with Spanish.

As an aside aa, while I know little to no Russian or any other language that uses the Cyrillic alphabet, I do know the script itself. A friend of mine in high-school was from Russia and I learned the Cyrillic alphabet so we could pass notes in Cyrillic (but English) and the teacher couldn't read them if they grew suspicious (А литтл сомтинг лайк тис). One of these days I would love to complete the circle and learn one of the Slavic languages, but I need to focus on Japanese or I'll never be satisfied.

[aa-dav]

One of these days I would love to complete the circle and learn one of the Slavic languages, but I need to focus on Japanese or I'll never be satisfied.

It's also interesting, what old slavic language(s) has one thing which modern Japanese has: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavic_li ... _pleophony

During the Common Slavic period, a tendency known as the law of open syllables led to a series of changes that eliminated closed syllables. By the Old Church Slavonic period, every syllable, without exception, ended in a vowel.

This left marks in modern Russian language. There are bunch of words with similar meanings, but different vowels compositions.
Examples:
СТОРОЖ (keeper) / СТРАЖ (guardian)
ГОРОД (city) / ГРАД (city (archaic)) (original ОГОРОД - something fenced)
СТОРОНА (side/distant territory) / СТРАНА (country/state)
ГОЛОВА (head (body part)) / ГЛАВА (head (of organization))
This is weak evidence of how the Russian language got rid of open syllables.