Error rate, Circumlocution, and Cappucino
| From: | Paul Bennett <paul-bennett@...> |
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| Date: | Monday, September 26, 2005, 21:40 |
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Am I alone in hating this kind of linguistic journalism completely lacking
any kind of linguistic know-how?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4248494.stm
However, the (mostly lay) commentary at
http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=1684424 has put me in
mind of a few questions. One commenter argues that English tolerates a far
higher error rate (while remaining understandable) than French -- whether
this relates to grammatical, morphological, lexical or pronunciation
errors (or something entirely else) is not stated.
What can you say about the acceptable error rate within your conlang(s)?
Does it easily tolerate sloppy grammar, or unusual accents, or poor
articulation?
The main thread of the arguement is that other languages are clearly
superior to English due to the fact that they have words for things you
cannot express in English -- ignoring the fact that the article itself
expresses each term in English quite clearly. The commentary on Fark.com
also provides several English examples shorter and simpler than the
foreign examples in the article.
What monomorphemic (or compound) words in your conlang(s) need to be
circumlocuted in English? Likewise, what single words in English (or your
native language) have to be circumlocuted in your conlang(s)?
Quick Japanese question, to finish with: The Fark.com peanut gallery claim
that Cappucino is very difficult to pronounce in Japanese. It seems to me
that it fits the profile for a Japanese word exceptionally well: カプッチ
ノ, ne?
Paul
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