Re: Language superiority, improvement, etc.

At 1:00 am -0400 13/10/98, Leo J. Moser wrote:
>Leo Moser adds some comment:
>
>In a message Mike Farris wrote:
>
>>  Actually there is no conflict. As a practicing linguist, I can say the
>>  following: All natural languages are of more or less equal complexity and
>>  efficiency in their sum total.
>
>I know this is the perceived wisdom. And it was surely an important
>attitude after the 19th Century tendency to talk of "primative languages"
>etc. Yet I find it hard to believe in theory.
I have much respect for Leo's insights generally, but on this one I really
have to disagree.  I am one with Mike Farris on this.

This has cropped before certainly on Auxlang (where. e.g., inter alia the
'superiority' of English over Vietnamese was mentioned) & I believe it has
occurred before on Conlang.  I've replied passionately on this, I know, on
Auxlang, and I make no apology.  If language A is inferior to language B,
why is it so? Because the culture of the speakers of language A is inferior
to the culture of the speakers of language B?  Why? Obvious, isn't it? The
speakers of language A are racially inferior.

Now, I must stress, I do _NOT_ impute such ideas to Leo.  But, I'm afraid
this _is_ the conclusion the doctrine of 'linguistic superiority' seems so
often to imply.  And living on an offshore island off the continent of
Europe, I'm only too well aware what this can & has led to.  And although
the horrors of the 1930s & 1940s have gone, "ethnic cleansing", alas, is
still going happening on my continent.

I still remember being told by a schoolmaster in the 1950s that Hebrew was
a primitive language - and that was comparing Hebrew with the superior
[IndoEuropean] Classical Greek & Latin.  IMHO that is absolute tosh, and
dangerous tosh at that.

But I do not hold to Mike's opinion solely out of a passionate loathing of
racism, but for, I believe, sound & solid linguistic reasons.

>Let's imagine that some dialect
>area of Japan had had a different political history (we could take Okinawa
>or an imaginary "independent state of Nagano") and had opted to go with
>romanization. Wouldn't the resultant language be "of less complexity"
>than that of the rest of Japan?
With respect, this has to do with the outward way the language is written,
_NOT_ with the language itself.  I cannot, of course, speak for Mike, but I
guess that he means the actual language used by the speakers of the
language, not the accidental way it which it has come to be written.

I choose to write this email in the Roman script, following a fairly
conventional form of spelling, for purely practical reasons.  But my
language will remain *just the same* whether I chuze sum soe-kauld fonetik
spelling, or want to write it in Pitman or Gregg shorthand (as I have
done), in Speedwriting, or in Cyrillic script or in (a modified form of)
Runes, in the Shavian alphabet, the Arabic or Hebrew scripts, or some form
of cuneiform.  As Mark Line once observed in a similar debate in the past,
the way the language is written has as much to do with the linguistic
structure of the language as a sea-scape has to do with oceanography.

>>  However, each language tends to do some things better than others. In other
>>  words, anything you can say in one language, you can say in any other.
>
>Only in a most general sense. I'm not sure everything is really
>translatable.
Yes, of course, good verse is notoriously difficult to translate.  I've not
found a translation of Vergil's Aeneid that I think is satisfactory.  Does
that mean Classical Latin is superior to English?

Not at all. The things that make certain types of translation so difficult
relate to extra-linguistic features: the use of particular words within a
particular milieu with all the 'extra meanings' it has acquired.  The way
the poet or writer has used the native rhythms & sounds of the language to
enhance the meaning & produce contrapuntal & other 'musical' effects.  This
has nothing to do with the language per se but with the craft & skill of
the writer in exploiting what her/his language possesses.  &c. &c.

>>  But
>>  what's easy and elegant to say in one language, is convoluted and difficult
>>  in another (and vice versa). The two spoken languages I know best
>>  (American)English and Polish definitely have different strengths and
>>  weaknesses, but overall which is better??? The question is meaningless,
>>  you'd have to define "better" first (and if you think that's easy, just try
>>  it).
>
>Fully agree.
And so most emphatically do I.

[snip]
>>  So, in summary. Every language handles some things well and other things
>>  less well, but when you add up the plusses and minuses, they come out
>pretty
>>  even.
>>  Amikel,
>>  Mike Farris
>
>I've said much the same in the past, but now have doubts.
I've said so also in the past, and still hold to it.

>Do we
>say this on the basis of empirical data, or on the basis of
>logical theory?
Both, I should hope.

>This would be very difficult to establish empirically.
Why?

>In terms of logic, I have serious doubts we can say this.
>
>Let's split English into two imaginary (theoretical) languages.
>They are different only in one spells a word "through," the other
>spells it "thru."  Is not the latter going to be slightly "better" i.e.,
>more efficient and more logical?
No way!  In the part of Britain where I lived for 22 years "thru" suggests
the pronunciation [Triw] which is the way that "threw" is pronounced there
(South Wales) and _not_ [Tru:] which is the way "through" is pronounced.
Therefore, I see nothing more efficient is spelling 'through' as 'thru' -
indeed, quite the reverse as it suggests the wrong pronunciation for those
who distinguish "threw" & "through".

But, as I have said, I consider this to be quite irrelevant.  Whether I
write 'thru', 'through', 'throo' or spell it in the Greek letters
theta-omicron-upsilon has nothing to do with my language as such.  Indeed,
we might conclude that the English of South Wales is more "efficient" than
that of much of Britain & the whole of North America in that it does _not_
make "threw" and "through" homophones!

>Or say there are two imaginary versions of English, one has
>the word "tomato" the other calls the same fruit "poison-apple."
>Would not the latter be an "inferior language," because it would
>foster a tendency not to use a valuable dietary product?
On the other hand Italian is superior than English, I suppose, because the
fruit is an "apple of gold" 'pomodoro'   ;)

One would want to know why the product was called "poison-apple".  Maybe it
was associated with the Sleeping Beauty story, and everyone knew it wasn't
really poisonous.

>Or imagine versions of English where:
>1.  The word "awful" did not have contradictory meanings --
>2.  "Tag questions" were no more complex than in French
>3. The past and present of "to read" were not spelled the same.
>4. Plurals were as regular as in Spanish.
>  ... etc.
3 is IMHO quite irrelevant.  I can imagine versions of English which have
these minor "improvements", but who knows what other "inefficiencies" they
might have?  In any case, I doubt whether we'd get much agreement about
what is an 'improvement' or an 'inefficiency'?  Look at all the petty
squabbling on that other list over what is and is not considered an
'improvement' or 'reform' of Novial.  One thing that those tedious debates
showed is that one person's reformation is another person's deformation.
If we can't even agree on this with respect to an artificial language, then
what hope have we with natlangs.  To mind, these 'improvements' or
'deficiencies' are very superficial and subjective.

>If small matters CAN lead to differences in language ease and
>efficiency,  it seems likely that we are being inaccurate to say
>all languages are the same in their usability in effective communication
Sorry - it is genuinely with reluctance that I find myself so emphatically
opposed to Leo's on this, but I do so.

Ray.