• ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      There are parts of English that are simple and there are parts that are complex. Same as any language! The cool thing about linguistics is learning about the neat features of some languages. For example, Chinese doesn’t use articles!

        • bricklove@midwest.social
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          1 year ago

          Gendered articles probably not but having “a” vs “the” removes the need for additional cases (eg. I/me/my). Latin and Russian don’t have articles but they have more cases which have different suffixes that have to be applied to all nouns. Usually simplifying one part of language makes another part more complex. English has a very simple case structure but the word order is much more strict

          • azertyfun@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            Gendered articles, like all things relating to grammatical gender, can be useful to reduce ambiguity and therefore increase information density/redundancy. They’re basically the Roman languages’ way of retaining the usefulness of Latin cases without actual grammatical cases.

            “Ami” and “amie” are homophones in French (with some accents you might see /ami/ vs /ami:/, but in casual speech you’d likely miss it anyway). However “un ami” is different from “une amie”.

            So in French you’d say “hier je suis sorti avec une amie” which, to convey the same level of detail in English, requires a translation like “yesterday I went out with a female friend”.

              • piekay@feddit.de
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                1 year ago

                Because sometimes the same word can mean different things.

                German has „Der See“ and „die See“ (the lake and the sea) Or even more extreme: „Band“ can describe a music group, a book or a tape.

                You just reduce the need for context

                • Display Name@lemmy.ml
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                  1 year ago

                  “Die See” is only an exception. It’s origins are in the Platt languages bordering belgium and the netherlands iirc.

                  Don’t we talk about the usefulness of gender articles? There are some outliers. Adding gender articles increases the vocabularies by a factor of two but at what cost and what’s the real advantage? You can simply invent a new word for one of the “Bands” to reduce ambiguity in order to decrease the complexity of the language. I think you can compare it to irregular verbs. Those are just there for historic reasons, they don’t really serve a real purpose. Du/Sie is another example. It may be useful in some cases to maintain distance. Moreover we should get rid of the corner case “royal we” asap! Etc. The sooner we start the better.

                  • piekay@feddit.de
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                    1 year ago

                    Simplicity isn’t the goal of languages, but communication. England historically had a lot of different languages and dialects that tried communicating with each other, so the language got simpler to speak and understand.

                    German, Russian, Italian, etc. all existed in relatively homogenous so information density was far more important. Some languages use gendered articles, which also increases understandibility (if someone is mumbling a word you can still guess it).

                    Sie is actually a really interesting case, because it shifted meaning over time, from being a sign of respect, to being an indicator of closeness, but it still carries information.

                    "Lassen Sie mich in ruhe“

                    and

                    "Lass mich in Ruhe“

                    both translate to “leave me alone”, but the first one carries the information that these people don’t know each other and it might make sense to interfere.

                    And most importantly: your comparison to irregular verbs and idea to just change the word doesn’t make any sense. Gender is part of the word, so creating a new word would just be a waste of time, so it’s the same thing as just learning a new verb. Irregular verbs are a completely different thing since they don’t follow the rules of the language, so you have to learn two extra words, instead of just learning one and following the rules.

          • piekay@feddit.de
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            1 year ago

            I remember a study that gendered articles slightly increase understandibility among native speakers.

    • Stupidmanager@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      sure, how complex is: their, there, they’re. sure, they sound the same but there is no reason they’re difficult to use in their intended purpose.

      • RQG@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        English grammar is alright as far as languages are concerned. There is some bs but nothing exceptional.

        Pronounciation in the English language on the other hand is absolute insanity. If there are any rules besides grouped up exceptions then let me know.

        • CrabAndBroom@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          And reusing the same word to mean a plethora of completely unrelated things lol.

          EG:

          Jam = a fruit preserve, to play music, stopped traffic, a door that’s held open, to cram something into something else

          Set = a collection of something, to change an option on a device, when something gelatinous becomes more solid, when the sun goes down, a stage or movie background, a list of songs at a concert, to put something down, and about 50 other things

          Run = to move quickly, to enter a contest (ie run for President), to have something turned on (is that computer running, running a tap), to be a certain length (this films run time is 90 minutes), to be behind (this bus is running late), to be in charge of something (I’m running this place), a hand in poker, to be liquid (this egg is runny), a tear in a pair of tights

            • RQG@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Umziehen - to change clothes, to move to a new home

              aufziehen - to tease or ridicule someone, to wind up a clockwork, to raise kids

              abziehen - to leave, to scam someone, to pull something off something else

              herziehen - to gossip about someone

              Anziehen - to attract something, to put on clothes

              Yeah there are some of these for ziehen. You might be on to something. But for many generic verbs there are many variants with vastly different meanings. Like Machen - to make, or tun - to do, gehen - to go.

          • azertyfun@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            The real kicker is phrasal verbs. You can have alright conversational English without needing most of these “advanced” grammatical features, which is a big part of why English has a reputation of being easier to learn in school than other European languages like German or Dutch.

            It’s when you’re faced with a vocabulary list like “get up”, “get on”/“get off”, “get in”/“get out”, “get through”, “get on”/“get along”, “get by”, “get across”, “get away with”, “get back”, and a myriad of other which in your native language each get a dedicated verb that you realize that English is not simpler, the complexity is just further up the road.

            Also fun fact, if your native language is French, you can cheat and never use most of those, while accidentally using a much more formal/elevated register, because English has a habit of stealing French words when it wants to sound fancy.
            “Get in” = enter (entrer), “Get through” = traverse (traverser), “Get by” = survive (survivre), “get across” ~ communicate (communiquer), “get back” = return (retourner).

        • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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          1 year ago

          A lot of the problem is that we use Middle English spellings for a lot of words, but the pronunciation continued to change after the spellings were standardized.

        • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
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          1 year ago

          I wonder how much of that is due to french and how much from german/saxon dialects. French love mute consonants and wildly different vowel sounds.

          • BigNote@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            It’s all of the above and then some. A good read on the subject is John McWhorter’s “Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue.” It’s intended for a non-technical/popular audience and doesn’t get too deep into the weeds so you don’t need a degree in linguistics to follow it.

        • Wirrvogel@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          If there are any rules

          As far as I know the only rule is, that I (German) pronounce it always wrong.