English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

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Mitch

00:00

@JasonMarsh English isn't special. German and other Indo-European languages have this problem too. Unfortunately when IE speaker learns another IE lang, the prepositions don't always translate one-to-one.

@JasonMarsh That's why NLP is such a difficult problem

Jason Marsh

Yeah, I feel like languages nowadays have scalability issues. It was designed thousand years ago who thought the world will not last for more than 500 years because religion or their ruler said something will happen to the world and it will be destroyed

Mitch

@JasonMarsh In English class for native English speakers, these kinds of things are never ever taught (if any kind of grammar is taught at all). For non-native learners, all sorts of time has to be spent to learn these weird patterns

@JasonMarsh no human language was ever designed

@JasonMarsh scalability in which direction? it seems like we can create new words (dictionary items) ad nauseam

3 hours later…

Feeds

03:07

Q: 'Downcast' or 'Low' which word to use?

I kept my eyes downcast. or I kept my eyes low. Which one is correct?

single-word-requests

Jason Marsh

03:51

Sorry I was AFK. I think it lacks in scalability because newcomers to the language face some significant learning curve to adapt to it. It has too many rules, which ESL people, like my self, sometimes have to scratch their head to understand it and very easy to forget later on.

It sometimes requires special learning techniques such as mnemonic memorisation to comprehend them permanently otherwise non-English speakers tend to forget them fairly quickly.

Let's say you want to deliver a message "Give me an apple". If you turn that into a function in software engineering, it becomes

`f(identity) => apple`

Humanity basically wanted to turn this into a speakable language such as English or Chinese and it became

"Give me an apple"

There is already a language design flaw here. First, you do not restate "me", because you are the one who is requesting an object from your opponent.

Also, specifying you want 1 apple with an article is redundant. Why don't you just numerically declare you want 1 apple? Everybody in the world knows what 1 is.

2 hours later…

Feeds

05:38

Q: What to use? comma or colon?

He bellowed outside: 'A disgrace! What have you got me?' Or He bellowed outside, 'A disgrace! What have you got me?' Comma or Colon? Please help!

single-word-requests

2 hours later…

Feeds

07:25

Q: What to use? 'looming out of' or 'looming on'?

Sparse hair looming out of his face. Sparse hair looming on his face. which one is correct? please help!

single-word-requests

2 hours later…

Cerberus

09:20

@terdon Good to know!

Melas (m.), melaina (f) is "black".

2 hours later…

Feeds

11:45

Q: A word for saying "waiting with good anticipation"?

What word would you choose for "waiting" for something good? As a header for a photo, I want to say: "Waiting for the winter." But it should be clear that I like winters and waiting for it with good excitement and want it to come already.

single-word-requests

M.A.R.

@terdon LOL, I never realized that "plant that cures gases"

2 hours later…

Feeds

13:35

Q: Single word for "being too much like a student"

To clarify, being too much like a student can mean one of the following: insistent on being "right" rather than flexible/diplomatic (at workplace) passively waiting to be assigned "homework" rather than actively participate (at workplace) overestimating what they can do with the knowledge gaine...

single-word-requests adjectives suffixes

Mitch

14:12

@JasonMarsh some languages do just that, drop the article or drop a copula to allow much shorter sentences (eg Russian). But I couldn't recommend Russian as an easy second language if you're worried about learning rules.

with languages, when one door opens, lots of windows can shut. Russian may be 'nice' (as far as you're concerned, but it has a byzantine verb conjugation system with lots of verb families and lots of exceptions.

And as far as world languages go, English (and probably moreso Mandarin) are pretty easy (with respect to syntax rules).

(it turns out, by coincidence, that both those languages have cultural difficulties, namely their difficult orthography situations: poor regularity in spelling for English, thousands of ideographs for Chinese)

@JasonMarsh I just want to repeat: there is no explicit design in human language. so 'language design flaw' is just not a thing in human language.

It seems that you may be interested in 'conlangs' (constructed languages) that attempt to address such language learning difficulties. Esperanto, Toki Pona, etc

Constructed language

A planned or constructed language (sometimes called a conlang) is a language whose phonology, grammar, and vocabulary have been consciously devised for human or human-like communication, instead of having developed naturally. It is also referred to as an artificial or invented language and in some cases a fictional language. There are many possible reasons to create a constructed language, such as: to ease human communication (see international auxiliary language and code), to give fiction or an associated constructed setting an added layer of realism, for experimentation in the fields of linguistics...

But note that other than Esperanto, there is very little acceptance of these in general human communities.

Back to language learning... every language is easy for native speakers, no matter how many supposed rules there are.

The following is a universal truth:

Sep 11 at 15:23, by Jasper

I think all languages are difficult once you know them well enough.

4 hours later…

Feeds

18:22

Q: Single word for "large integer"

Are there any single words that name concepts like "very large integer"? I would prefer a single word that could describe any integer from minus nine quintillion through nine quintillion. I wish to use this word in sentences like this: Pick a _____________. Pick another _____________. M...

single-word-requests numbers

1 hour later…

Feeds

19:46

Q: word fof asking for more than offered or "too much asking"

I know something that has helped me a lot sometime ago, and I could ask them for other favor, but I don't want, because it would be too much. In Chile we say someone is "patudo" when they ask for more than offered, like someone who stays for lunch the next day from a party, when offered only to p...

single-word-requests

1 hour later…

Færd

20:48

news.stanford.edu/2017/08/08/americans-weigh-nuclear-war

> Sagan said it suggests that the U.S. public’s support for the principle of noncombatant immunity is “shallow and easily overcome by the pressures of war.”

When considering the use of nuclear weapons, the majority of Americans prioritize protecting U.S. troops and achieving American war aims, even when doing so would result in the deliberate killing of millions of foreign noncombatants, according to Sagan and Valentino.

Sagan noted, “The most shocking finding of our study is that 60 percent of Americans would approve of killing 2 million Iranian civilians to prevent an invasion of Iran t…

Funny world we live in.

2 hours later…

Cerberus

22:25

@Færd An invasion attacking Iran, or an invasion by Iran?

1 hour later…

Feeds

23:50

Q: What adverb (that isn't a participal) means for eternal? (Eternally does Not work.)

What adverb (that isn't a participal) means for eternal? This adverb would only relate to eternal in time, and not necessarily infinitely in other ways. For example, "infinitely" means infinity in the quantity of intensity. The question is only about infinity in the quantity of time. Everything...