Language Learning / Bilingual / Polyglot Thread

So, now I have a small question: If I use the singular they (for whatever reason), shall I use a singular or plural verb?
 
Webby's Boyfriend said:
So, now I have a small question: If I use the singular they (for whatever reason), shall I use a singular or plural verb?
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My instinct is to say it should be singular for consistency reasons, but then I realize that since the word itself is inherently plural it sounds deeply wrong with anything other than a plural verb
 
I have a theory that the more complex a writing system is, the smarter you get by learning it, and that the average IQ of different countries reflects this. It's not a perfect correlation because there's a million other factors, but I don't think it's a coincidence that every single country which uses Chinese Characters, or a derivative thereof, is above every single country that does not. South Korea is an edge case because Hanja is barely used and Hangul is so simple, but as far as I know Hanja is still taught to some degree.

It's 不 too 遅 to 始 作ing 英語 難er guys.
 
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Jon-Kacho said:
It's 不 too 遅 to 始 作ing 英語 難er guys.
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但 do 聪明er 国家 lead to 更complex scripts, 还是 the complex scripts lead to 上er 智商 citizens?
Although on a more serious note I would fully support doing the Japanese system and integrating the Asian script, especially for big derived words for abstract concepts.
 
Jon-Kacho said:
I have a theory that the more complex a writing system is, the smarter you get by learning it, and that the average IQ of different countries reflects this. It's not a perfect correlation because there's a million other factors, but I don't think it's a coincidence that every single country which uses Chinese Characters, or a derivative thereof, is above every single country that does not. South Korea is an edge case because Hanja is barely used and Hangul is so simple, but as far as I know Hanja is still taught to some degree.

It's 不 too 遅 to 始 作ing 英語 難er guys.
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The hypothesis that people with more complex native tongues are more intelligent certainly is nonsense. Sure, language influences how we think, but not in that way.

It would imply that the British became dumb during the later Medieval and earlier Modern Ages, when English transformed itself from complex synthetic grammar with a lot of inflection to a simple isolating grammar far easier to learn.
Dutch has lost a lot of inflection in the last centuries, does this mean the Dutch people became dumb?
Is a Frenchman more intelligent than an Italian because French spelling is so arbitrary and illogical, while Italians just pronounce all letters of their words?
German spelling rules were officially changed in the 90s, with simplification as a major reason for that, do you believe this caused an epidemia of mental disabilities in Germany?

African countries have the lowest IQ scores in the world, yet their Bantu languages are very complex (e.g. Swahili), while East Asian countries with high IQ scores, use very simple ones, contrary to popular misconceptions, Chinese grammar is minimalistic and very easy.

Corbin Dallas Multipass said:
It's a trick question, there is no singular they.
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The personal pronoun "they" has been used for centuries in the singular, just like the singular you.
 
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So, as far as I know, the singular they takes a plural verb too, just like the singular you.

We say "you are/have/walk" and not "you art/hast/walkst" when we address a single person, even though we would say thou art/hast/walkst when using the real 2nd person singular pronoun.

We should bring back "thou". I guess I will make thou/thee/thy/thine/thyself my pronoun and demand people to address me with it... sorry not it, I meant thou.
 
Chinese is a ton of fun to learn. Writing sentences in traditional script feels so rewarding after studying the characters for so long. However, it's miles harder than any of the romance languages I've studied. It's a shame that mainland China abandoned the traditional scripts around the 1960s.

If I'm being honest, I would have preferred to focus on Japanese rather than Chinese during my university years. I'm still planning on pursuing Japanese, but I'm grateful for my time learning Chinese.
 
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mindlessobserver said:
The most interesting thing I find about Language is how its the operating system of the mind. When you "think", you think in the language you learned as a child. Even when you speak another language, your brain automatically translates the foreign tongue you are speaking into the base language you learned as a baby. Which often leads to hilarious misinterpretations incidentally. More fun, deaf people who learn sign language think in sign language.
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I read something about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis lately, it claimes the languages we use influence how we think.

E.g. terms for colours can vary. A language may not have a word for "blue" and "yellow" as Anglophones imagine but three different independent ones for several shades of blue or something two terms, one representing a tone between English yellow and orange and the other a colour akin to a mixing of yellow and brown. E.g. this may influence an artist in which colours they chooses for a painting.

Many languages assign genders to nouns in an arbitrary way. Like I mentioned, those noun genders influence how people perceive entities, like imagining animals of unknown gender to speak with a male or female voice depending on the gender of their species' name and describing unanimate objects with attributes that reflect gender stereotypes. In German, autism is male, lolcows are female, girls are unanimate and a kiwi may be either male or female depening on if you mean the bird or the fruit.

And then, some have more specific and clear terminologies for some topics, often those reflect about the culture and environment of the speakers. Though the idea that Inuit have 200 words for snow has been discredited, Saami (spoken in Northern Scandinavia) still has 21 words for snow. Those are not synonymes, they are different forms of snow. E.g. Saami "kerni" is a thin ice crust upon snow, "rine" is snow on trees, "purga" snow circulating through the air and "vasme" a light new snow. Indonesian distinguishes between cooked and uncooked rice and were English distinguishes camels (two humps) and dromedaries (one hump), Somali has dozens of words for those animals, depending on gender, age, fertility, size etc.
 
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Jon-Kacho said:
I have a theory that the more complex a writing system is, the smarter you get by learning it, and that the average IQ of different countries reflects this. It's not a perfect correlation because there's a million other factors, but I don't think it's a coincidence that every single country which uses Chinese Characters, or a derivative thereof, is above every single country that does not. South Korea is an edge case because Hanja is barely used and Hangul is so simple, but as far as I know Hanja is still taught to some degree.

It's 不 too 遅 to 始 作ing 英語 難er guys.
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Well, was it the Zulus and the Xhosas with like 15 genders that conquered the Afrikaners with no genders or cases, or the other way around?
 
Crunchy Leaf said:
I took Japanese and it's a lot easier than Chinese since there's no tones, and it's the most-easily-accessible East Asian language after Chinese for a Westerner to learn.

Now, I have to ask everyone--do you prefer 'sneaked' or 'snuck'?
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Japanese is much more difficult to learn than Mandarin. It has the illusion of being easier because there are no tones and it has syllabaries to make early lessons easier. The language becomes absolutely nuts to master because of its complex grammar and contextual nature. Mandarin's main issue is writing. The tones are important but you seldom run into a situation when speaking where a native speaker will not guess what you mean by context. Even native speakers "mess up" the tones based on which region they are from. The writing is unavoidable. You need to learn hundred of characters to read even the most basic of children's books. You also need to learn many characters twice. The difficulty drops off dramatically after early lessons because the grammar is basically non-existent. Many people ditch reading altogether once they get past the basics since speaking is more useful.

The difference is seldom observed because foreign learners don't often progress beyond the very basic levels of any Asian language.
 
Datiko said:
Japanese is much more difficult to learn than Mandarin. It has the illusion of being easier because there are no tones and it has syllabaries to make early lessons easier. The language becomes absolutely nuts to master because of its complex grammar and contextual nature. Mandarin's main issue is writing. The tones are important but you seldom run into a situation when speaking where a native speaker will not guess what you mean by context. Even native speakers "mess up" the tones based on which region they are from. The writing is unavoidable. You need to learn hundred of characters to read even the most basic of children's books. You also need to learn many characters twice. The difficulty drops off dramatically after early lessons because the grammar is basically non-existent. Many people ditch reading altogether once they get past the basics since speaking is more useful.

The difference is seldom observed because foreign learners don't often progress beyond the very basic levels of any Asian language.
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I speak five languages total, with Hindi being one of them, and one of my two first languages (yes, children can acquire two first languages) . I find it far easier to translate Japanese to Hindi than English, because Japanese grammar is far more similar to Hindi. Hindi is quite contextual as well, and is structured similarly to Japanese.
 
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Datiko said:
You need to learn hundred of characters to read even the most basic of children's books. You also need to learn many characters twice. The difficulty drops off dramatically after early lessons because the grammar is basically non-existent.
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Chinese is heavily context dependent too. Not quite as much as Japanese, but trying to understand a native speaker for me is difficult because they drop subjects and objects because the verbs can "carry" them in their connotations. If you add this to a really long already complex sentence where verbs chain into each other, it's nigh on impossible to parse without intensive immersion and study.
And tones are way more important than you give them credit. Yes, different places have different tones, hence there's no one set "standard," but that doesn't mean it isn't important for understanding. It's like how british vowels are hard to understand for americans. Yes, they can get by, but it's still a barrier towards intelligibility. Add on something else like off-beat rhythm/stress (which is extremely underemphasized in Chinese classes), or poor pronunciation of vowels/consonants in foreign speakers, and the differences add up. And the different tones in different areas generally still (somewhat) map on to the standard set, they're just allomorphs, plus or minus a category or two. Tones carry more information than vowels, so they definitely should be strongly emphasized.
As for the two characters thing, it's actually not that bad. You can pick up traditional on the fly if you know simplified (and I'm assuming vice-versa). The characters are usually pretty similar. But even when they aren't context clues can help, because words are usually disyllabic, so if you can read one character, plus know the context, you can easily guess the second one. It would be like if someone cut off half of a word in English. Not that many things to guess for what dige— means, for instance, lol.
 
queerape said:
I speak five languages total, with Hindi being one of them, and one of my two first languages (yes, children can acquire two first languages) . I find it far easier to translate Japanese to Hindi than English, because Japanese grammar is far more similar to Hindi. Hindi is quite contextual as well, and is structured similarly to Japanese.
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That's interesting. I don't know anything about subcontinent languages.r.

wylfım said:
Chinese is heavily context dependent too. Not quite as much as Japanese, but trying to understand a native speaker for me is difficult because they drop subjects and objects because the verbs can "carry" them in their connotations. If you add this to a really long already complex sentence where verbs chain into each other, it's nigh on impossible to parse without intensive immersion and study.
And tones are way more important than you give them credit. Yes, different places have different tones, hence there's no one set "standard," but that doesn't mean it isn't important for understanding. It's like how british vowels are hard to understand for americans. Yes, they can get by, but it's still a barrier towards intelligibility. Add on something else like off-beat rhythm/stress (which is extremely underemphasized in Chinese classes), or poor pronunciation of vowels/consonants in foreign speakers, and the differences add up. And the different tones in different areas generally still (somewhat) map on to the standard set, they're just allomorphs, plus or minus a category or two. Tones carry more information than vowels, so they definitely should be strongly emphasized.
As for the two characters thing, it's actually not that bad. You can pick up traditional on the fly if you know simplified (and I'm assuming vice-versa). The characters are usually pretty similar. But even when they aren't context clues can help, because words are usually disyllabic, so if you can read one character, plus know the context, you can easily guess the second one. It would be like if someone cut off half of a word in English. Not that many things to guess for what dige— means, for instance, lol.
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All of the East Asian languages are contextual to a degree. Mandarin left most of it behind and its grammar is simple enough to not make it really difficult. I just don't think Japanese is easier than mandarin. There's a lot more to learn about social contexts, grammar, and other aspects that aren't present in Mandarin while forcing students to learn roughly the same number of characters. Japanese eases students in because of hiragana/katakana. Korean has a similar misconception of being "easier" because you can settle in really quickly because Hangul takes like 20 minutes to learn. The closest you get with Mandarin is learning in Taiwan because the curriculum there uses bopomofo. It gets you used to reading non-english which is a crutch HYP leaves hanging around.

Tones really aren't the biggest deal. Early on you learn a word as "Meaning, Hanzi, Tone" but once you get past the early levels you just kind of learn how the word sounds. Like a teacher can write the character on the board, say it, and you would be able to write the correct HYP. The accent difference is difficult because many people you speak to in China don't speak mandarin as a first language. They drag over dialect terms/pronunciations that make things confusing. I'd say its closer to an American speaking to a singlish speaker. At first its weird and sounds like a foreign language but you quickly get an ear for the differences and don't have any issues. Understanding any speaker of a language that isn't your first requires a lot of study. Not disputing that tho.
 
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Webby's Boyfriend said:
I read something about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis lately, it claimes the languages we use influence how we think.

E.g. terms for colours can vary. A language may not have a word for "blue" and "yellow" as Anglophones imagine but three different independent ones for several shades of blue or something two terms, one representing a tone between English yellow and orange and the other a colour akin to a mixing of yellow and brown. E.g. this may influence an artist in which colours they chooses for a painting.

Many languages assign genders to nouns in an arbitrary way. Like I mentioned, those noun genders influence how people perceive entities, like imagining animals of unknown gender to speak with a male or female voice depending on the gender of their species' name and describing unanimate objects with attributes that reflect gender stereotypes. In German, autism is male, lolcows are female, girls are unanimate and a kiwi may be either male or female depening on if you mean the bird or the fruit.

And then, some have more specific and clear terminologies for some topics, often those reflect about the culture and environment of the speakers. Though the idea that Inuit have 200 words for snow has been discredited, Saami (spoken in Northern Scandinavia) still has 21 words for snow. Those are not synonymes, they are different forms of snow. E.g. Saami "kerni" is a thin ice crust upon snow, "rine" is snow on trees, "purga" snow circulating through the air and "vasme" a light new snow. Indonesian distinguishes between cooked and uncooked rice and were English distinguishes camels (two humps) and dromedaries (one hump), Somali has dozens of words for those animals, depending on gender, age, fertility, size etc.
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But how much does your average Somali actually use those words?
English has lots of word for cattle. There's the young: a calf. There's a female that has not yet born a calf: a heifer. A female that has born a calf: a cow. An uncastrated male: a bull. A young castrated male: a steer. An older castrated male: an ox. There's even a word for an orphaned calf: a dogey. Does your average non-farmer English speaker know or use these words? No, they use 'cow'. Maybe bull or calf, but 'male cow' and 'baby cow' are used too and I bet more frequently.

Every language has lots of specific words, but they're not always importantly specific. I think a better English example is color--we have different words for red and light red (pink), and we very strongly perceive differences between those two colors. Maybe if pink were just 'light red' we wouldn't.
 
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Why do the English pronounce the "h" in herb?

Every English speaker knows that the letter h in the word "herb" is silent but for some reason the English always pronounce it. Every time I hear Brits say herb they fuck it up and pronounce the h for some stupid reason. Why do they make such an obvious grammatical mistake?
 
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h is a weak sound. It's very common for people to drop it. My guess is that English dropping it word-initial is just a change we're currently undergoing that hasn't fully spread to every dialect yet. But the original word had the h, so if you want to get pedantic technically the h is the "proper"™ pronunciation.
 
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