Re: Language comparison

Any comment on the *human* language aspect? That's really what I was
trying to inspire comment about. You seem to imply by analogy that for
human languages, there would be a similar spread of power between
languages geared for hackers and languages geared for "common users".
This is an ... interesting proposition; would you back it as applied
to human languages?

 - Sai

(Note: I wrote a private email to Sai replying in part to his argument)

The most substantial part of your argument seem to rest around
comparisons with computer languages so I replied on that point. The
validity of such a comparison is assumed since you assumed it in your
argument. If you are questioning the validity of the comparison then
your own argument falls apart as well, so we're back where we started.
However, I will reply with a view to natural languages.
 I was not arguing for a distinction between natural languages on the
basis of hackers versus users, although there are such divisions with a
natural language itself. The speech of scientists, engineers etc is
"in-speak" relevant to their profession, and the common user of the
language can't understand scientific or engineering works without first
learning the trade. I wasn't however implying such a split between
separate natural languages as the basis of difference. It's more
complicated than a two way split: the languages people speak are over
time shaped towards the requirements of the situations they find
themselves in. A very crude example is the way for example a language
spoken by a fishing culture will have a lot of works, metaphors etc
related to fish and fishing. But it's more than that. The important
thing to understand is that a language is generally good for the
purposes of its speakers. If it is not then it will either be altered,
or another language will take its place. You would say that I'm agreeing
with your argument, that some languages are better than others, but the
important point of what I'm saying is "It depends on the circumstances".
Fitness of a language is not a universal measure but can only be
evaluated when compared with the needs of a specific culture, and since
there is no universal measure of fitness no language can be said to be
better than any other in the absolute sense, only in the relative sense
of being well suited for a particular culture, situation or activity.
 If you say "I want the best language for bartering", I might accept
that you could rank languages according to their fitness to perform such
a task. But to say "I want the best language of all" is a meaningless
concept, just as the queen in snow white was asking a meaningless
question when she asked "Who is the fairest of them all?", because how
do you measure fairness? If she mean the literal "Who is the whitest of
them all?" we could objectively measure the colour of every woman in her
kingdom and answer the question, but if she meant "Who is the most
beautiful?" she'd need to define precisely how she wanted us to measure
it before we could answer. An awful lot of the notions we work with are
subjective, and to truly answer a question involving a subjective
quality such as "What is the best language?" You need to state a set of
criteria. The answer you get depends upon the criteria you state.
Without criteria the entire question means nothing whatsoever.

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