   English bashing rant, human languages
  Is it just me, or is the entire internet completely illiterate? Every time I venture beyound the walls of GameDev, I'm greeted by huge mobs of third-grade school children. Or at least I would think, except they're reporting news, writing game reviews, and typing up scientific documents.Instead of blaming the people, I thought I would be an ass and blame the language. There are many problems, but I think two of them are mostly to blame for illiteracy.Problem #1: Too many words representing the same meaning.Giant, huge, enormous.Add, increase. (or subtract, decrease)Further, farther. (WTF is this? One character makes or breaks a sentence?)Effect, affect. (again, WTFBBQ)Less, fewer.Good, nice.Me, I, myself.Ponder, think.These are just a few off the top of my head, in the exact order I thought of them, without having to resort to a different word. Randomly considering any word brings at least one or two other words to mind which mean exactly the same thing. If you try thinking outside of the box, there's no use for them. Maybe we should change the name from English to Synonymish. [/assmode]My guess is that too many languages clashed together at once, and no one had the time to choose (pick) which words to keep and which words to trash. Eventually, perhaps, we started using different words of the same meaning in different context. I'm guessing, but I can't imagine many other reasons.Problem #2: Misspelled correct spelling.This is the one I'm curious about. The english alphabet is pretty straight-forward. Learn the sounds of the characters or character combinations, then sound them out to spell the word or vice versa. But why do we go and break the rules so often? I can understand that we may have learned crazy-spelled words from other languages, but how exactly did they get inverted to begin with?If the correct spelling is "fence" or "whence", should the correct spelling be "sense" or "dense"? The number of instances of these types of "flaws" are insane. How can we expect anyone to spell words correctly if the spelling follows absolutely no logical behavior? Is this mainly due to foreign language (foreign to England and/or America) words conflicting? Germany spells us as Amerika. That works okay. So why did we opt to destroy our own language?No bold header for the endingFinally, I wonder if all languages around the globe mutter "ooh" for cold reactions and "ahh" for hot reactions (how many animals sound out "ooh ooh ahh"?). How many regions use eek/ouch/ahh/ooh to express injury unintentionially? How many of our words are as old as human mouths? If some of our primitive words are the same, it's likely that all of the world's languages started in the same place. I'm extremely curious to know how much we learned while together, and how much we learned after we seperated.I also wonder what type of language we could/would invent today if we decided to completely stop using other languages (except to correct errors). Too much hassle?Sorry for wasting space. Just bored.   
Quote:Original post by KestIs it just me, or is the entire internet completely illiterate? Every time I venture beyound the walls of GameDev, I'm greeted by huge mobs of third-grade school children. That sounds about right.Quote:Problem #1: Too many words representing the same meaning.Giant, huge, enormous.Add, increase. (or subtract, decrease)Having more words makes the language more expressive and more interesting. What would poets do with only one word for "big" ? They'd be stuck.Again, these synonyms aren't necessarily strictly synonyms but have subtle differences. I like using the right word, it make me satisfied.Quote:Effect, affect. (again, WTFBBQ)Effect and affect are entirely different words which have correct contexts for usage.Quote:Less, fewer.Again, although often abused, these are different words.Quote:Good, nice.You just don't get it, do you?Quote:Me, I, myself.Basic parts of language. Other languages have equivalents or in some cases more. "Me" and "I" are different to distinguish the case they're used in. This happens equally in (for example) German.Quote:These are just a few off the top of my head, in the exact order I thought of them, without having to resort to a different word. Randomly considering any word brings at least one or two other words to mind which mean exactly the same thing.No, they don't. They don't mean exactly the same thing, they just have similar meanings.Quote:My guess is that too many languages clashed together at once, and no one had the time to choose (pick) which words to keep and which words to trash. Eventually, perhaps, we started using different words of the same meaning in different context. I'm guessing, but I can't imagine many other reasons.My understanding is that something like that happened, yes. More likely, English wasn't just invented one day by a bloke who said "I know, we shall stop speaking French, Latin etc, and have a new language called English", but rather just gradually emerged.Quote:But why do we go and break the rules so often? I can understand that we may have learned crazy-spelled words from other languages, but how exactly did they get inverted to begin with?Words didn't  used to have official "correct" spellings, you could basically spell any word however you liked. Then along came various guys trying to sell dictionaries and proclaimed that theirs was the best (this happened independently in England and the USA). They somehow got theirs adopted.Quote:If the correct spelling is "fence" or "whence", should the correct spelling be "sense" or "dense"? The number of instances of these types of "flaws" are insane...While it is generally true that English spellings aren't very consistent, it does happen in other languages too (although English is probably the worst).Mark   ;Quote:English goes stalking down dark alleys looking for other languages to mug, so it can rifle through their pockets for loose vocabulary.Quote:Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to?;  Double plus good.   ;  The worst thing is everyone using horrible US spellings [wink]. I don't really mind except when somebody tries to correct my spelling with a US version. Or when using code/resources with US spellings for variables/file-names - it can be hard to track down why "File: coloreditems.bmp couldn't be loaded" get's shown. Especially at 2am!   ;Quote:Original post by markrHaving more words makes the language more expressive and more interesting.And less practical. I follow you, though.Quote:Quote:Effect, affect. (again, WTFBBQ)Effect and affect are entirely different words which have correct contexts for usage.Just to make sure I'm understood, I know they're different words, as I do for all combinations under problem 1. But we could use either in any situation and make that communication understood entirely. We could invent brand new words for all of these meanings to add some tiny additional flavor, but I'm guessing that is mainly why our language is rolling down hills. If most of the population cannot communicate, we have a problem beyound the importance of flavors.Quote:Quote:Less, fewer.Again, although often abused, these are different words.Absolutely. That's the problem. They have the same meaning.   ;  You have the problem reversed. Illiteracy is the reason why people misuse all those words and think they're interchangeable, not the consequence.   ;Quote:Absolutely. That's the problem. They have the same meaningI see where you're coming from. I was just thinking that they are different words, one for unquantifiable and one for quantifiable (sp? :p) amounts. It makes sense, but indeed in Dutch we don't make that distinction. It's just always 'minder'. But then again, we've got people coming up with new words, like 'weiniger', which would translate to 'littler'...Quote:Too many words representing the same meaningMaybe, but when you take a look at latin or greek, they have the opposite problem. Xenos for example means both 'friend' and 'stranger', gero can mean anything from 'do' to 'behave' to 'carry a child' (I believe even 'make war'?). If I would have to make a choice, I'd go for English. Better to have too many words at your disposal, than leaving everything you say and write open to interpretation and debate on at least 3 words per sentence... not counting special proverbes :)   ;  Do you want to have fewer words, or think that lesser differencies between words are unimportant? No, seriously, even I, with my gathered-on-the-net English would never have said that meaning is same. "less" and "lesser" is used when comparing things by some continuous value that is not counted, "few" and "fewer" when comparing counts. I just know that, not from some book or dictionary.   ;  i do not have any problems with multiple words for nearly the same things: that only makes a language more interesting and expressive.however, i do agree pronuncation in english is hell. you simply cannot infer from looking at the words what random way to pronounce it they have come up with now.im able to form sentences quite fluently, but actualy pronouncing them will probably make me look like a complete idiot.   