/sci/ - Science & Math

>>9350022
Bumperino, also nice doubke dubs my man

いいえお兄ちゃん!これは日本語だよ

Sorry for only bumping and contributing but i have no idea about this topic although it seems interesting

>>9350022
Efficient in what?

>>9350022
definitely more efficient than agglutinative languages. easier to parse and understand therefore requires less energy of brain.

>>9350035
うるさいなバカ名無し

>>9350022
I doubt anybody here is qualified to answer your question since you probably need to know at least the basics of every language before you do.

my guess is that Esperanto is more efficient though

>>9350022
>huge amount of words (by far the most words of any language)
>of which a great portionare dead and never used
>huge amounts of synonyms and complicated words not even native speakers know of
>no general rules for spelling or pronounciation
>their our know rules
>melting pot of latin, germanic, french, nordic languages so mesh of words and sounds
>>most efficient
It's widely spoken due to the British Empire+ the US being a superpower, so that's nice, but it's far from the most efficient.

>>9350022
I wouldn't say so, because the same word can have drastically different meanings, then there's pointless redundancy, both in vocabulary and grammar.

>>9350032
Practise your Japanese please. Your construction is grammatically incorrect. What you said isn't "it's actually Japanese" but a nondescript "this is Japanese" (in context it can be easily mistaken as saying that your image of Mugi is the Japanese language, just an example to point out how wrong it is).

>>9350041
I couldn't disagree more. I speak an agglutinative language (Turkish), and perfectly equivalent sentences aggl. languages are usually much shorter, making them more efficient by definition.

I can speak four different languages, and from my personal experience English tends to more vague and equivocal due to the lack of cases and other complex grammatical features, whereas other languages are usually more precise.

>>9350078
Modern Turkish is an artificial language, you should be, if your language was 'organic' be speaking an almost Arabic dialect.

>>9350022
Since language exists to communicate information, that must be what you are referring to as being the most efficient. Yes, English is the most efficient language to communicate information. This image shows a ranking of this, the higher the number the more efficient the language. Source is the, "University of Lyon".

>>9350085
I would say its also one of the easiest to learn the rules to as well. Using tenses, constructing sentences is pretty easy. There are some weird exceptions that could be confusing to new learners, but there are just outliers.

>>9350084
Not the roach, but you are retarded.

>>9350102
You do know there was a reform from Ottoman Turkish, which was basically Arabic, to modern Turkish right? Because if not, you're the only retard here, wannabe roach.

>>9350022
No, that would be Ithkuil.

>>9350108
>Turkic language
>a semitic language
You do know that the reform was about the writing system, not the language itself, right? Plenty of languages have changed their writing systems.

Moron.

>>9350108
>thinks language = vocabulary

>>9350085
The sample size for that "study" was 59. So thank you for the garbage data anon.

>>9350119
>>9350122
>During the peak of Ottoman power, Persian and Arabic vocabulary accounted for up to 88% of its vocabulary,[3] while words of Arabic origins heavily outnumbered native Turkish words.[4]
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Turkish_language
Ah yeah, totally isn't Arabic. :^)

>>9350131
>Consequently, Ottoman Turkish was largely unintelligible to the less-educated lower-class and rural Turks, who continued to use kaba Türkçe ("raw/vulgar Turkish", as in Vulgar Latin), which used far fewer foreign loanwords and is the basis of the modern Turkish language.
>>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Turkish_language

>>9350068
Actually, you're in the wrong here. It's pretty obvious what he's referring to, and there isn't anything grammatically incorrect about the sentence. Please learn what "grammatically" means.

>>9350135
>Peasants matter
Sorry for amusing that >>9350078 was part of the intelligentsia, I just guess he's one of the many posers on /sci/. Who knew? :^)

>>9350131
>the majority of the words in English have a latin origin (either as proper latinate or as indirect imports through some other Romance language, chiefly French)
>therefore English is a Romance language
This is how retarded you are.

>>9350140
>*amusing = assuming

>>9350139
It's obvious you don't know a lick of Japanese.so don't opine on it.

>>9350140
ottoman turkish was a jargon, not a separate language.

>>9350142
>the majority of the words in English have a latin origin
No they don't...
This is how retarded you are.

>>9350145
It's obvious you don't know a lick of Japanese, so don't opine on it.

>>9350148
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_conquest_of_England#Language

>>9350148
You really are a clueless dumb-ass.
>>9350150
https://wp.stolaf.edu/japanese/ressource-projects/genki-i-ii-grammar-index/kore-sore-are-dore-genki-i-chapter-2/

>>9350084
Not true. Upper-class Ottoman Turkish was heavily influenced by Arabic (in terms of vocabulary, grammar remained virtually unaffected), but the average Turkish persons' speech back in the day was still way more Turkish than Arabic.

Atatürk got rid of many Arabic and Persian words, true, but that doesn't mean that Turkish is an "artificial language" at all. Most "new" Turkish words already existed but were considered archaic. Some words were made-up but they incorporated roots from other existing words.

Atatürk only replaced a thousand words, at best.

So, how exactly is Turkish an artificial language?

>>9350148
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_language_influences_in_English

>>9350159
That'll be all words, e.g. all Latin scientific words. Words commonly spoken I think are still mostly Germanic.

>>9350148
>No they don't...

>>9350166
>Words commonly spoken I think are still mostly Germanic.
The same was true of Turkish.

>>9350159
>He doesn't know what a majority is
Why don't we try one with actual numbers?
Oh look, I was right. That is unless, you don't actually know what majority is.
>This is how retarded you are.

>>9350159
And what's this supposed to prove? Where does it say his sentence is grammatically incorrect? Also, genki is a textbook, not a grammar guide. I'm done discussing with you.

Have a good day.

>>9350155 see >>9350179 and enjoy getting BTFO.

>>9350179
not sure if you are trolling or really retarted

>>9350162 see >>9350179.
>>9350168 see >>9350179.
BTFOing half of /sci/ over here, fun times.

>>9350179
do you realise that french is a latin language?

>>9350179
>Latin + French = 58%
Do you even know what "majority" means, moron? Probably not, since it comes from French.

>>9350174
not true. that only applied to the ottoman elite. "normal" people used way fewer arabic words, elite ottoman turkish was even unintelligible to them.

>>9350160 see >>9350140, I apologize for assuming well of the anon and should've just taken him as a Turkish hick.

>>9350188
You do realize that still doesn't make it Latin, just like Turkish isn't Arabic for the same reason.

>>9350190 see >>9350194 and still get BTFO, like a German U-boat.

>>9350194
you do realise that this was how the argument started? >>9350142

>>9350194
No one said it it, cretin. On the contrary, the argument was how English isn't a Romance language in spite of the majority of its vocabulary being of latin origin.

>>9350194
french descends from latin. turkish doesn't descend from arabic. turkish isn't even related to arabic, both languages belong to completely different language families. not only has turkish's grammar nothing to do with arabic, its vocabulary is also not really that much influenced by arabic.

>English was a mistake

>>9350198
>>9350200
>>9350201
Kek, so French is Latin when you want it to be, but Turkish isn't Arabic for the same reasons? Lol the fucking hypocrisy of /sci/ sophists is disgusting. Check and fucking mate you pricks.

>>9350206
shit nobody knows who claims what.

vocabulary =/= language

english is not a romance language
turkish is not arabic

/thread

>>9350194
>the cretin is a frogposter
The influx of mentally handicapped normalfags from /pol/ (and other sites) really ruined this board.

>>9350211
>Says a hypocrite
Suck a dick.

>>9350206
Go back to >>>/pol/ moron.

>>9350210
This whole thread was a mess.

>>9350213
I very much doubt you know what "hypocrite" means.

>>9350215
Pretty hilarious coming from the faggots who can't argue a consistent point.

>>9350220
You and your ilk, Q.E.D.

>>9350220
is it like hypotenuse?

>>9350224
No, it's closer to hippopotamus.

@9350222
The point was clear from the start and consistently argued for. It's just that you're retarded.

>>9350022
Its the universal language but its far from being efficient. German for example is more efficient because of its use of contractions to convey specific meanings for instance.

>>9350229
No, it wasn't. That's the funny thing, you claimed my mostly jocular point about Ottoman Turkish was so drastically wrong, simply because of vocabulary and then tried to claim English was a Romance language for the same reasons you riled against me.
That's the fucking definition of hypocrisy, you prissy little puke.

>>9350236
wrong

>>9350246
at least offer an argument to support your point otherwise your opinion holds no weight here.

>>9350256
Something something something Nazis.

>>9350126
Seems to be more data than you are bringing to the table, anon. You are welcome for that.

>>9350085
that's a shit study. 5 out 7 languages are european and related to each other, and show little variation in grammar (relatively speaking). a conclusive study would have examined morelanguages that aren't relate at all, like european languages, arabic, korean, finnish, turkish, etc.

>>9350245
>tried to claim English was a Romance language
It was a sort of reductio ad absurdum. I was attributing that argument to you, to illustrate how dumb it is.
>my mostly jocular point
>TL: I was only pretending to be retarded
I believe you.

>>9350284
It used only the top most spoken languages. Do you have another study that includes a larger sample size and more languages?

>>9350271
Garbage data is worse than no data. The rest of the methodology was also pretty inadequate actually comparing speech rapidity, not what the authors purport (the density of the information conveyed). It's an apples vs oranges comparison.
Shit study.

>>9350256
German words are much longer on average than english, using more letters to convey the same message. Not very efficient. They do have words for very specific thoughts though.

>>9350306
source: http://www.ravi.io/language-word-lengths

>>9350299
exceept it doesn't. hindustani, bengali, arabic, portuguese, russian, etc. are more spoken than some of the languages in that study, yet weren't featured at all.

>Do you have another study that includes a larger sample size and more languages?

I don't. I merely said that study isn't really conclusive. I made no other claims.

>>9350306
>>9350308
that's misleading because german words can be combined. e.g. a table leg is called TIschbein (Tisch + Bein = Tischbein). In German it's counted as a singular word, English thinks it's two separate words.

>>9350318
Same syllables, same amount of letters in that case. coefficient of letter efficiency is 1

>>9350319
um, didn't you understand my argument at all? the average length of german words is longer precisely because german words can be combined.

here's an example: Hausfrau, Wandfarbe

in Englisch gold paper, wall colour

--> english words are shorter because they are not combined.

>>9350336
meant to write Goldpapier, not Hausfrau.

>>9350022
Yes because all the rich white people speak it.

>>9350022
Grammar and spelling are less important for a native english speaker to understand you. Sure it will sound weird but it rarely becomes incomprehensible. This is a direct consequence of all its other flaws, it's a very forgiving language. Makes sense it's the go-to shared language of the globe honestly.

>>9350148
(You)

If we take into totality the conveyence of information and logical order of conveyed information, yes.

Problem with all languages including english is that words lack frame of reference which creates the concept of misunderstanding.
English, however, is the only language that at least attempts to meet the misunderstanding, while every other language creates flawed logic which confuses matters and communication even more and often to the point of driving their cultures to literal retardation.
Asian cultures that use symbol words derived from chinese (or simply just chinese itself) breed fuckhead autistic shitters who spend their lifetimes repeating half of all information spoken to them to make sure they understand which of the gorillion homonyms were just used while studying and learning to write and interpret all the various word characters and combinations which also takes a lifetime, the basic equivalent of if english had 52 more letters that sounded virtually identical to the established 26, with tens of thousands of more words considered common language spelled similarly to existing common words, but with different meanings. Non-synonymous homonyms and non-homonymic synonyms where
every other conversation breaks down to
>"went running and yada yiada blah bl-"
>>"oh you mean like X or...?"
>"yes, X, yada blah blah hit by a car-"
>>"oh my god, like Y? You got hit by a car?"
>"no, like Z, and blah shit yada James"
>>"oh JAMES got hit by a car like W"
>"yes james but no, not W but V"
>>"ah soudesune"
korean is honorific with a reduced typset from hangul in reading and writing, but falls prey to the same fucked up misinterpretation of too-similar pronunciations.

>>9350447
You consider a language that takes on the role of disambiguation, rather than leaving it to the context, to be more efficient? Seriously?
There's a reason we write '1+1=2' instead of Principia Mathematica-sized derivations in the language of set theory, even though the latter has a smaller alphabet.
In what sense is the latter more efficient?

>>9350022
Ne, esperanto estas la plej kompetenta lingvo,

>>9350566
English is 1+1= 2

Other latin languages are 2 = [math]\frac{1}{2}[/math] + 0.5 + 1

Asian languages are 0.999... = ([math]\frac{9}{10}[/math] + [math]\frac{9}{100}[/math])= 0.9 + ([math]\frac{9}{100}[/math] + [math]\frac{9}{1000}[/math])= 0.99 + ([math]\frac{9}{1000}[/math] + [math]\frac{9}{10000}[/math])= 0.999 +
•••

>>9350642
FUCK OFF YOU FUCKING NIGGER BACK TO /leftypol/ or /int/ fuck you and your gay, ugly cultureless, rootless language. Disgusting even looking at it you fucking fiend

>>9350447
Read more.

>>9350447
Might I suggest reading more?

>>9350022
"Efficient" means getting your intent across quickly?
In that sense, English is more efficient than German. A English sentence translated into German usually requires a larger text-block in German.
On the other hand, Chinese is a more "concise" language than English. One might even argue that Chinese is _too_ concise! It's loaded with homonyms which, when spoken, can often be distinguished by pitch. When written though, the reader has to rely upon context. It's very easy to make puns in Chinese. In fact, it's almost impossible _not to_!

>>9350648
Calm down sweetie

>>9350022
Often. The difference between English and most other languages is that English is based on word order rather than spelling. What this means is that the rules for spelling and conjugation are simple and can often be broken without consequence. Word order rules are much easier to glean through sheer practice. That's why there are so many crappy English speakers who are still intelligible even with the accent.

No
Latin>>>>the rest

>>9350022
Spoken, written, or digital?

>>9350677
Oh i read plenty.

>>9350022
Maybe, but... (((vsauce jingle))) for what...?

There are many languages - colloquial languages, sports languages, mathematical languages, programming languages, and general purpose human to human verbal languages. Some of them are better for certain purposes than others

So is there anything that makes languages unique? Well language is simply a method of information compression and communication between intelligent agents. From this perspective, network protocols are kinds of languages. The IP protocol for instance is very efficient for routing traffic over the internet. The TCP protocol language is great for streaming text which needs error correcting, like websites. The UDP protocol language is great for lossy information whose perfection doesn't matter much, like voice calls

What about body language? Is it a language? What about fashion based language? Signposts and symbols like a red barber shop pole?

Language is everything and nothing at the same time - something invented by us to describe the world

>>9350180
>hurr durr

>>9350022

The Romantic languages are more efficient as modifications of single words allow for more expression.

For example:

English: I eat dinner
Spanish: Cenar

However with longer phrases this efficiency diminishes...

English: I love to speak the Spanish language
Spanish: Me encanta hablar el idioma de Español

>>9351236

Whoops

*English: To have dinner
*Spanish: Cenar

>>9351240

Dude, dine.
~dine~
verb
eat dinner.
"we dined at a restaurant"

>>9350022
In terms of information efficiency, I recall it being the best or one of the best, by most metrics. However, I think highly agglutinative languages are better for overall efficiency and robustness of design.

>>9350041
Wrong. Easier to parse if your native language isn't very agglutinative, but not so otherwise. You're not processing more complexity or information in terms of grammar, it's just different. Languages tend to be roughly equivalent in this matter. Even a seemingly simplistic language is actually just as complex as any other, it will just rely more on contextual and cultural cues that convey grammar and information.

>>9351261

Nope, it's more than that.

English: We will dine
Spanish: Cenaremos

English ~3 words (1 for tense, 1 for 1/2/3rd person, one for action)
Spanish - 1 word, unless near-future (which requires three, e.g. voy a cenar)

>>9351267

Ok. My post still stands.

You forgot that english have a verb for "to have dinner" and I thought I'd bring it up.

>>9351267
Forgive me for being a layman. It's been a long time since I studied Spanish. Would the combinations of articles be considered formal enough to have a further effect in this context? For example: "Fue a la tienda." to "Fue al tienda.". Further complicating the question, in the example of: "Da me lo." to "Damelo.", would "Da me lo." even be considered correct anymore than a technical usage now?

This thread was a mistake.
God, I hate social sciences.

I distinctly recall a study being done on this subject, finding Vietnamese to be the most information-dense-per-syllable, followed by Mandarin Chinese, then English. The bottom two were Spanish and Japanese.

>>9351267
>we will dine
3 syllables
>Cenaremos
4 syllables

Wow so amazing and efficient!

>>9350148
>This is how retarded you are.

>>9351301
Found it.
http://www.ddl.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/fulltext/pellegrino/Pellegrino_to%20appear_Language.pdf

זות עברית, אנון.

>>9351304

>>9351306

>>9351307

>>9351277

In that regard, yep

>>9351286

>Layman
I've only begun studying it really (I began in February of this year). So I'm not too different.

>Conjugations confuse the matter

I suppose it would if you were examining efficiency purely from a text-based point of view. However in terms of time taken to speak and syllable-count this might not be so problematic.

All-in-all you'd probably want to try and find several translations of the text where the language had no impact or variance and then find how long it took to express this.

For example, bias may occur in some languages if the speakers of that language like to prattle on about certain aspects of the topic. Furthermore, if you tried to counter this by manually translating everything equally densely across the languages, then you've effectively controlled the dependent variable.

Maybe a hard-science textbook with several translations would be the best place to investigate this kind of thing.

>>9351302

In that example, sure, English technically has less syllables, but this is a matter of principle.

In principle, because Spanish only changes the end of a verb, usually only adding one syllable, if any, we'd expect Spanish to generally be more efficient than English.

>>9351304
Already brought up. The study's methodology is retarded and it has a small sample size.

>>9351311
And what of the question of formality? I see it as not only a matter of conjugations, but conjunctions as well. If combining an article or even multiple words together is formal enough for one language, then why not the use of the apostrophe in another to eliminate a syllable altogether?

>>9350055
I don't think you understand what efficiency means in this context. None of those complaints have anything to do with efficiency.

When it comes to the efficiency and shortness of the writing system: Abjads like the "alphabets' of the Semitic languages win. Writing vowels was a mistake.

>>9350022
I know that the way languages like French, Spanish, and Arabic use the male/female dynamic when it comes to the syntax of verbs and nouns is silly and inefficient and I'm glad that English doesn't do the same.

In Ithkuil, 'tram-mļöihhâsmařpţuktôx' means ‘on the contrary, I think it may turn out that this rugged mountain range trails off at some point.’ So, no English isn't the most efficient.

>>9352776
That's just an abbreviation for a domain-specific language

Quite frankly this question of efficiency is stupid. You can always add more words with arbitrarily complex meanings.
Look up any word's definition in the dictionary - it's long and elaborate like that. It's just that this one is different from our usual language in urban countries so it seems abstract when it's not

>implying there isn't going to be a shitload of bias in answers to this question

>>9350022
No you fucking idiot. Learn some linguistics. All languages are equally "efficient" in expressing thought.

>>9351312
No, we wouldn't expect Spanish to be more efficient than English.

>>9350022
No, computers can transfer information much faster than humans can.

>>9351305
*זאת

>>9350022
No language is

>>9350022

Ebonics is.

English: The breadth and scope of this sight inspires such wonderment and fascination in me that words seem hardly sufficient to express the level of astonishment overtaking my senses!

Ebonics: Shee-yit. (formal: Sheeee-yit, nigga.)

I love English and all, but I don't think it's as flexible as other languages. I'm fluent in English and Italian (not native in either), and I find some real nifty sentence structures in Italian don't carry over to English very well without having to rephrase or lengthen them.
I've also been studying moon for the past year and, while it's not the most efficient language, it's so convenient to be able to drop the subject, object, agent, etc. when the context makes them obvious already. Also, the amount of words and context-sensitive vocabulary, however overwhelming, is ultimately quite beneficial and makes expressing and understanding finer concepts easier.

>>9350022
很好张贴,朋友。

>>9354061
As a language nerd I'd love to see someone try to construct a language that is as expressive as possible. Efforts like esperanto are doomed to fail because they try to take away the stuff that makes languages awesome. Basically opposite-esperanto

>>9354164
Do you think that tablet is worth the price? Thinking of getting one

>>9354226
I bought it for 330$, for its current price I'd wait a little. I think it's fucking amazing at what it's for, but it's not a necessity. Writing on it feels so right.

>>9354235
Yeah I never even heard of it until the preorder was over. Guess I will wait it out thanks

>>9350085
>Information content 1.08
Who made this retarded metric?

>what is ithkuil

>>9354237
I hope it will make people realize how handy these things are, spawning competitors and further developments. Also cool to see something from my ultra-insignificant home-country actually do well.

Nobody mentioned lojban...

>arguing about efficiency when nobody has clarified what aspect is being measured

what makes a language efficient? the amount of space it takes up? syllables?

>>9350200
Just like Rotwelsch isn't semitic or iranian, just because 3/4 of the words are hebrew or gipsy.

>>9350159
That blue chunk is not greater than 50%

>>9350022
Your vocaloids suck
Go home filthy gaijin

>>9350022
Sanskrit.

>>9352776
>>9353549
>>9350109
>>9354243

Ithkuil anon here... Those aren't words with arbitrary meanings. The language is made up of multiple affixes that each together. All of these affix reflect grammatical categories that are actually found in various natural languages as well. For example:

Edhál - Water for nutrition
Aidhawél - Drink water!
Aidhás qo - He is drinking water
M-mraidhás qo - He will be drinking water
M-mraidhád qo - He will have drank water
Lam-mraidhád qo - It is a fair guess that he will have drank water
Lam-mraidhád oi qo - It is a fair guess that he will have drank the water all in one gulp
Lam-mraidhadá'kš oi qo - Damn it, it is a fair guess that he will have drank the water all in one gulp.

That is just an example I just created off the top of my head, but yeah, it isn't random. Something to note however is the languages goal isn't simply efficiency

Anyways, thank you. I will be shilling every week for $0.05 an hour. For questions and concerns, please contact me at dkawirl@gmail.com. Lojbanists are NOT invited, logbarian scum.

>>9355618
Well, I guess my Ithkuil is better than my English!

>*The language is made up of multiple affixes that each work together. All of these affixes

>>9350022
Probably not. English has heavily simplified over time due to its rapid spread. It's really a victim of its own success. More complicate but more efficient languages would develop when a society has been relatively isolated for a long amount of time.

>>9350022
pretty much any linguist will say that all languages are equal and all have the same capabilities as each other. in other words, no, english is not the most efficient language in the world, nor is chinese, spanish or icelandic simply because they all do the same thing with varying mechanics, functions and sounds. any idea that can be thought of can be expressed, no matter what language you speak

>>9350150
>It's obvious you don't know a lick of Japanese. So don't opine on it.