Re: OT: English and schizophrenia

On Sat, 4 Aug 2001 11:41:37 -0500, Danny Wier <dawier@...> wrote:

>I posted this to a mental health discussion board.  I'll share this
message with
>y'all, and if you're on AUXLANG, pass it on because I'm not crossposting it
>there, sorry.
>
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
>"English: a schizophrenic language?"
>Written 4 August 2001 by LudwigVan, a single plum floating in perfume
served in
>a man's hat.
>
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
>The world wants to learn it. In most countries of the world it's a status
>symbol. It's the unofficial official language of the Internet.
>
>But it's also one of the world's most difficult languages to learn. And in
my
>opinion, its contradictory and arbitrary rules can cause mental confusion.
>(Dyslexia is highest in English-speaking countries, I read.)
I thought contradictory and arbitrary rules were common to all languages,
except Loglan, Lojban and correlates, in which what is contradictory and
arbitrary is the assumption that human beings can dismiss contradiction and
arbitrariness...

>First, orthography (phonetic-spelling rules). The word "read" is actually
two
>words: one pronounced like "reed" and one like "red". Whereas the other
>languages in the "Big Six" list have predictable rules concerning letters
and
>letter combinations and the sounds they represent (Spanish, Russian,
Arabic,
>Hindi -- Chinese has a different complexity in that is uses thousands of
>ideograms instead of a couple dozen phonetic symbols), English can use many
>letters and letter combinations to represent one sound, and one letter or
>combination can be many. The most extreme example is "ough" (though,
through,
>rough, cough, ought, bough) which can have up to six consonant sounds, and
even
>plain "a" has five (cat, make, care, father, pizza). You have the non-
rhyming
>pairs: tomb/comb, dear/bear, fine/machine, meat/great, do/go,
father/rather...
>you get the idea.
I am sure that English ortography was invented by the Devil in one of his
worst days, but language is language, ortography is ortography.

>In fact, the author George Bernard Shaw once spelled "fish" like this:
GHOTI. GH
>from "cough", O from "women", TI from "nation".
>
>Now on to grammar. English has a very large number of irregularities in
both
>noun/adjective and verb grammar. Though it is simple in some ways (verb
>conjugation: where English has "I say", "you say", "he/she/it says",
Spanish has
>"digo", "dices", "dice"), you have a lot of exceptions to the rules. Past
tense
>for example. While "talk" becomes "talked", "sing" becomes "sang" and not
>"singed". And "bring" becomes neither "bringed" and "brang", but "brought".
>There are dozens of verbs like that. Also, you got the weird plurals: "cat"
>becomes "cats", but "mouse" becomes "mice", "goose" becomes "geese", while
>"sheep" remains "sheep" and "fish" is still "fish". And "child" is
not "childs",
>but "children".
English verbs have usually 4 forms (and two of these are usually equal).
Portuguese verbs have over 60, and I'm not sure that the number of
irregular verbs in Portuguese is lesser than in English. Other Latin
languages are much like this.

English uses to borrow nouns along with their particular number flexions.
Indeed, English can borrow words without changing them too much, except for
the phonological restraints. This causes a lot of irregularities, and adds
a lot for English ortographic craziness.

One other cause of ortographic chaos in English is its vowel system, with
the (for non-English native speakers) weird opposition between lax and
tense. AFAIK, none of the other widely spoken languages, or any other
European language makes this opposition. Moreover, lax vowels tend to seem
all the same schwa to non-English speakers (and this is responsible for the
general feeling that "English is essentially [insert your choice language]
spoken while chewing a very hot potatoe"). Some other phonemes are
difficult for most foreigners too, as both "th" pronouciations, "ng",
sylabic "l" and "r", cacuminal "r". If I compare English to other Western
Europe languages, it seems to me to have more weird sounds than any other -
even when French ("r", "u"), Italian (double consonants) or German
(umlauted vowels, "ch", glottal oclusion) have sounds with no correspondent
in Portuguese, they seem more pronounceable, less alien than English
oddities (but, since I'm a native speaker, I have no way to evaluate the
impact of Portuguese nasal diphtongs on those who aren't).

But English grammar is not a real problem in any way I can see.

>Finally, the vocabulary. English has a lot of synonyms, or words with the
same
>meaning (or almost the same meaning). This is because the language is
always
>eating up words from other languages. It all started when the Anglo-
Saxons, two
>Low German-speaking nations, were invaded by Vikings, thus all the
Scandinavian
>words. Then the Normans from France conquered England in 1066. The result:
Old
>English was a pure Germanic language, but Middle English was a hybrid of
Romance
>and Germanic. When Modern English emerged, Latin and Greek came in from
>classical literature -- as Shakespeare and the King James Bible testify.
When
>British world trade and colonialism peaked, one could find Arabic,
Afrikaans,
>Hebrew, Russian, Indic languages, Chinese, Malay, Yiddish, Romany (aka
Gypsy)...
>in the language. As the American nation grew, American Indian words of all
kinds
>were inherited, not to mention the language of our main competitor for
>territory, Spanish. What makes things worse is that the original spelling
of the
>word has often been preserved, thus adding to the complexity of English
>phonetics and spelling.
All languages do that. Portuguese is a mix of Latin, Arab, French, Greek,
Tupi-Guarani, a bunch of other indigenous and African languges, and, of
course, English. The difference is that Portuguese and most other languages
change the spelling to fit their phonological/ortographic requirements
(Italian "ciao", Portuguese "tchau"; English "football",
Portuguese "futebol"), while English, except of dismissing diacritics,
doesn't.

>And there you have the beast: a twisted, confused and identity-starved
language
>wants to take over the world and create the biblical Babel.
Or to destroy it?

>And maybe this does have something to do with mental illness. Language is
one of
>the most dear things to an individual and to a culture. To deprive one of
the
>right to communicate in their own language (which English-speaking peoples
have
>had no trouble doing to many) is to deny one's freedom and dignity. Most
>countries have a national language, or maybe a few, just like they have a
>national religion, or maybe a few. We not only communicate in language, we
think
>in it.
But, in this case, mental illness isn't related to English, but to the
supression of the native language. Best modern example, besides of Ireland,
would be Catalan/Basque/Gallego active supression by the Spanish
dictatorship under Franco. Data from mental institutions on both countries
are probably accessible...

Or mental illness in Ireland can be caused by Irish government efforts to
reinstate Gaelic as a national language?

>So what should we do? Create an artificial "Basic English", which someone
has
>actually proposed? Learn Esperanto?
Please, no!

>Return to Latin which Western Civilization
>used without dispute until the Reformation? I don't know. Maybe this is
another
>paranoid ramble of mine. Or maybe I have a point here.
>
>And I do believe one can be conditioned to be delusional with enough
>brainwashing.
>
>The floor is now open. Please watch your step.
Most probably we will maintain the system we are used to: some hundreds of
different national languages and English as an international auxiliary.

Luís Henrique

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