# Language Difficult Level Variation



## Meyer Wolfsheim

Hello everyone,

I remember reading about how the U.S. Defense Department gives a level of difficulty in how long it takes to become fluent in a foreign language if one's native language is English.  For example, Spanish is a level I language, Hebrew is a level II and Arabic is a level 3.  The higher the level, generally the more hours needed to gain a level fluency.  

My question is, are there some languages which might be level 3's for English but the other way around English is a level 2 or even level 1 language.  The real question is given two natives of two different languages, is it possible that one native might find it much more easier to the learn the language of the other?  

I know this is true for English-German.  German is practically a level II language according to the defense department but I am pretty sure English would be a level I language for a German speaker.  Does anyone know of a larger margin possible?  Like there being a language which is level 3 for English but that same language as English as a level 1.  

(I know the whole "level" system is not really a standard, but I am using it to give some tangibility to my question).


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## Frank06

Hi,

Just an attempt to provide some extra background information. 
It's this list (or this kind of list), no?

Frank


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## Alxmrphi

I think you have to bear in mind the level of complexities, considering a language like Tsez, a Caucasion language (spoken around here) with a massively complicated morphological & phonological structure, it is believed to have 64 noun cases (unlike English), some of which are locative cases that distinguish between location / direction and orientation (unlike English)

There are four genders (unlike English) and there are categorisations like things that are flat / pointed, one class that contains animals and some other ideas, the gender markers are attached to the verbs, adjectives, adverbs and prepositions, not the actual nouns! This only occurs if the noun begins with a vowel, otherwise no gender marker.

I hope I'm illustrating the point I want to, a language which is full of _specifics_ when it comes to how to speak / write it cause a massive mental block in the method of learning it, taking the idea of irregular case endings and irregular plurals, gender markings that go in specific places depending on the character of the noun is something that's unheard of in English. Yes we have our zero-plurals and select words which form a plural with -en rather than -s.

We don't have to explain as a necessity how we came to know about the information we're reporting (evidential marking) or specify certain endings depending on if if the verb is transitive / intransitive (ergativity) so it's easy to follow one way of working in one language, realising these distinctions don't have to be made, which would (IMO) be a lot easier for a speaker of this language when learning English, whereas taking a sentence/concept where you don't draw any distinction normally, and learn how to use the grammar to categorise it so finely into Tsez is basically rewriting how you view what you say, on the contrary the Tsez speaker can still make these distinctions as they've been brought up to do, but realise when putting it into English no distinction needs to be made between a lot of concepts, i.e. nouns that are pointy or flat are viewed differently (different case endings / gender in Tsez, can all follow the rule, like all other nouns, of having the definite article "the" and forming a plural with -s in English) whereas conscious effort on the part of the English speaker would be needed to put nouns into groupings they've never needed to before, and use correctly all the different grammatical elements in the right way.

So from the view point of 2 people who are past the age 'of critical development' when it comes to becoming fluent in another language, let's just say 20 year olds... who have no prior knowledge of the other language, it would be so much more difficult for the English speaker to learn Tsez rather than for the Tsez speaker to learn English, without even going into the fact of published literature on the topic which would make the Tsez speaker's journey learning a lot easier given the vast amount of learning-material out there than a bunch of linguistic papers based on Tsez.

So in short I would say it's fairly common where languages have detailed specifications that we aren't used to in (Indo-)European, that require specifics in ideas we don't even think about, there can easily be a sequence where it's easier for one person to learn a language than the other, for the Tsez speaker forming a plural is virtually "_add an -s to the word_" in then the very few limited rules on vowel-final words and y-final ones, but for the English speaker it's a significantly larger task.

Is that the sort of thing you were asking about?


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## Hulalessar

Meyer Wolfsheim said:


> The real question is given two natives of two different languages, is it possible that one native might find it much more easier to the learn the language of the other?



Intuitively one feels that it ought to be the case that each would find the other's language equally easy/difficult



Meyer Wolfsheim said:


> I know this is true for English-German.  German is practically a level II language according to the defense department but I am pretty sure English would be a level I language for a German speaker.  Does anyone know of a larger margin possible?  Like there being a language which is level 3 for English but that same language as English as a level 1.



English speakers may regard German as more complex than English, but in fact it is only so in some aspects; in others English is more complex than German.


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## Hulalessar

Alxmrphi said:


> So from the view point of 2 people who are past the age 'of critical development' when it comes to becoming fluent in another language, let's just say 20 year olds... who have no prior knowledge of the other language, it would be so much more difficult for the English speaker to learn Tsez rather than for the Tsez speaker to learn English, without even going into the fact of published literature on the topic which would make the Tsez speaker's journey learning a lot easier given the vast amount of learning-material out there than a bunch of linguistic papers based on Tsez.
> 
> So in short I would say it's fairly common where languages have detailed specifications that we aren't used to in (Indo-)European, that require specifics in ideas we don't even think about, there can easily be a sequence where it's easier for one person to learn a language than the other, for the Tsez speaker forming a plural is virtually "_add an -s to the word_" in then the very few limited rules on vowel-final words and y-final ones, but for the English speaker it's a significantly larger task.



I think it is important to distinguish between complexity and difficulty. Complexity, assuming it can be measured, is objective, whilst difficulty is subjective. Most, but not certainly not all, linguists believe that all languages are more or less equally complex.

When it come to learning a language, how difficult it is to learn for a given speaker may depend upon whether from his point of view the difficulties are such that they have to be overcome early on or whether they are spread out. As someone put it, with some languages you seem to have to know everything before you can say anything. I think this probably applies to languages lying at the extreme ends of the analytic/synthetic spectrum. When you start learning a highly analytic language you can feel it is difficult to get hold of because of an apparent lack of rules - you sort of just have to know how to say something. When you start learning a highly synthetic language you can feel it is difficult to get hold of because there seem to be too many bits you need to juggle before you can say something.

As Sapir said:

When we pass from Latin to Russian, we feel that it is approximately the same horizon that bounds our view, even though the near, familiar landmarks have changed. When we come to English, we seem to notice that the hills have dipped down a little, yet we recognize the general day of the land. And when we have arrived at Chinese, it is an utterly different sky that is looking down upon us.


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## Alxmrphi

> Most, but not certainly not all, linguists believe that all languages are more or less equally complex.


Yeah, that is a fairly common theme among linguists in really hammering through trying to break the old prejudices about dialectal variations and stereotypes to languages of less civilized people, but in my short life in all things linguistic I am finding an underlying theme which really understands this view of languages being equally complicated and, well going aside from the '_prejudice-breaking_' to the point of '_we all know there's nothing wrong with a variation, it's different and beautiful in itself_' and they're tackling the question on a more systematic basis.

What I was paying attention to was Meyer's specific question regarding the classification of the languages, where they (US State Department) have based it on estimating the amount of study time to be able to be considered competent, then labelling it as a level 1/2/3, I wasn't specifically focusing on the broader linguistic debate on "_Can one language be more complicated than another?_", I think in the example I cited it really would be the case where one language is harder to learn than another.

I kind of adopted the opinion of the linguist John McWhorter when I listened to one of his lectures about this topic (including the example with Tsez) and his comparison of a very very basic Indonesian language (Riau Indonesian), what he said was:

"However, there's a truism in linguists, that I think is gradually breaking down, but still, students are exposed to it, which is that all languages are equally complex. If you look into language study you are highly likely to find somebody quite authoritatively saying '_All languages are equally complex_' and so if English doesn't have as many endings as German then we have a wrinkle in the fact that we have to say '_*Do* you want to go?_'. That use of '_*do*_' is very peculiar in English. It's often thought that for some reason languages balance out in terms of complexity, but then notice as I've mentioned there are 6,000 languages in the world, most of them, are not even documented in any real way. No linguist has occasion to study thousands of languages. Generally when it is said that all languages are equally complex, it is not an _important_ point, you'll usually find it's said in the introduction or something and really, no linguist in the world has looked at all languages to assess that. That's usually said because it's a very '_politically-correct_' view of languages, esp. since most of the world's languages are spoken by people who are not in tortured first-world, over-developed cultures like ours. But the truth is, all languages are complex, but they're not all equally complex, and this is becoming clearer and clearer to a small group of linguists who are actually looking at the issue."

So then he goes on to compare Riau Indonesian for it's massively simple morphology, free word order, context-based language of utterance to express a point, and contrasts it with a lot of the examples I've mentioned with Tsez.

I completely agree on your point about separating complexity from difficulty, I don't believe difficulty should enter into this discussion given it's completely subjective nature, I didn't intend to use that term and don't think I did so, point noted but I was focusing on complexities (just clearing that up). I think the recent study of less-known languages has led many linguists to actually deduce these languages where the community of speakers have been isolated or not mixed very much with other distant speakers have highly complex languages, and given this general understanding it's really paved the way for the general assumption of languages being equally complex to be challenged. 

I am of this opinion and I have absolutely no problem with anyone who disagrees with me, as I'm not flag-waving my theory as _the correct one_, just _my one_. I've given my reasons and I hope if anyone does disagree, their reasons can be put out there as well. I'm also trying to find out some quotes from Prof. Seth Lerer in one of his lectures where he talks in a similar fashion about this topic (quotes from separate sources is always better than just one source... but it's almost 1am!)


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## Meyer Wolfsheim

More or less the difficulty in learning another language.  But why should a speaker of language A be able to learn the language of speaker B easier than speaker B can learn speaker A's language?  There is obviously some kind of inequality here.  It would thus seem that some languages naturally give their natives a better grasp on grammar and linguistics than others.  This in my mind leads to the idea of there being a hierarchy or superiority of some sort within human languages, as a native English speaker is certainly not on the same level as his German counterpart.


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## Mahaodeh

Meyer Wolfsheim said:


> For example, Spanish is a level I language, Hebrew is a level II and Arabic is a level 3.



I wonder if this refers to Standard Arabic or to collequal Arabic.



Meyer Wolfsheim said:


> My question is, are there some languages which might be level 3's for English but the other way around English is a level 2 or even level 1 language.



For Arabic natives it depends highly on the level of English you are looking for. Do you mean general English with the occasional grammatical mistakes? In this case it would be a Level I for a native Arabic speaker. If you mean a higher level of competency where one would not make any mistakes and pronounces all the letters exactly like natives, then it would be a Level 2.



Meyer Wolfsheim said:


> The real question is given two natives of two different languages, is it possible that one native might find it much more easier to the learn the language of the other?



I think it is. Some languages are more complex so they found the other easier because it's simpler.

-----

Having said that, one must keep in mind that many may find English easier anyway because currently it's the most widespread language and most countries teach it to their students as a second language. Being so widespread makes it easier for them to learn it.


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## Alxmrphi

> More or less the difficulty in learning another language. But why should a speaker of language A be able to learn the language of speaker B easier than speaker B can learn speaker A's language? There is obviously some kind of inequality here. It would thus seem that some languages naturally give their natives a better grasp on grammar and linguistics than others. This in my mind leads to the idea of there being a hierarchy or superiority of some sort within human languages, as a native English speaker is certainly not on the same level as his German counterpart.


Certainly not '_a better grasp on grammar and linguistics_', this is not true, a different one perhaps but the more complex doesn't mean the better, this is not how it should be viewed. Usually through language mixing languages become streamlined and a lot of seemingly redundant features lose out and disappear.

Imagine this example, what I mentioned before was evidential marking, it's a good example to use in this discussion, evidential marking is when you have to use grammar in order to say how you came to know the information that you do.

There's a language spoken in the Amazon called Tuyuca which is a good example to use, and the example I remember (I'll have to go and find it for the details..)

Ok in* Tuyuca* to say "He's chopping trees" it's:
*Kiti-**gi* *tii*
*Chop trees*-*he** ending (variable)*

Well, it's not completely correct because you need to express how you came to know that he is chopping trees.

If you *heard it* then it's *Kiti-gi tii-gí*, (*gí* means you heard it)
If you *saw it *then it's *Kiti-gi tii-í*, (*í* means you saw it)
If he's *apparently *chopping trees (you're not 100% sure) it's* Kiti-gi tii hɔ̀i* (*hɔ̀i* means you're not 100% sure)
if it's *hearsay* that he's chopping trees then it's *Kiti-gi tii yigï* (*yigï* means they're all saying it)

So, for every sentence you say, you have to specify how you came to know about the information, sentences like "Mary's baking a cake" are incomplete without this information in Tuyuca, but us English speakers don't make this distinction, to us it's seen something a bit frivolous. 

Someone who has been raised to always make this distinction when learning English just realises that you don't need to mark how you came to know the meaning of the sentence, this is easier for them to discard if they come to approach learning English at 20, rather than a native English speaker approaching Tuyuca and will have to think and constantly add in this grammar where he's never had to before.



> But why should a speaker of language A be able to learn the language of speaker B easier than speaker B can learn speaker A's language? There is obviously some kind of inequality here


It's not inequality, it's just a different level of complexity regarding this thing, there will certainly be complications that English has that Tuyuca doesn't, for example the choice of the past simple or present perfect, many languages only have 1 past tense and are perfectly happy, they could see our two tenses as being a bit redundant (we appreciate the difference), just like the Tuyuca speakers appreciate their differences in evidential marking.

Just imagine for a second (I'm making this up now) you were learning a language where if you were talking about something that has 4 legs (a lion / chair / elephant / desk) you had to sneeze after you said it, and were you had to tap your head if it was a dark colour, then cough if the noun had 5 letters and began with the letter *S*.

If you've been brought up doing this, it's normal for you to view the word as groups of things that have 4 legs / 5 letter words beginning with S, and those things that are dark, if you go to another language where for all 3 categories you just tapped your head, it's easier for the learners of _that language_ (after childhood) rather than the one with more distinctions.

This is why in some regards, some languages are more complex (not necessarily 'more difficult') than others.

When I was having a little search on the net about Tuyuca I saw it was mentioned in an article by The Economist as the world's hardest language, and there's quite an interesting article on the topic (link here), the last 3 paragraphs detail the reasons for Tuyuca being considered (by them) as the most difficult.


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## Hulalessar

Alxmrphi said:


> Yeah, that is a fairly common theme etc



A cynic may observe that no social scientist ever came to a conclusion that conflicted with what he believed before he set out on his research and that the purpose of the social sciences is to confirm prejudice. Whilst it may be the case that the idea that all languages are equally complex was first proposed by those of a liberal disposition, it is also the case that some of those who suggest the opposite (notably John McWhorter and Geoffrey Sampson) are very much on the political right. The truth of the matter does not of course depend on politics. It is all too easy to dismiss something by declaring it to be "politically correct". One of the triumphs of the right has been to turn "politically correct" into a term of abuse that can be bandied about to slap down something one does not like so that prejudices can be maintained without having to engage in debate to justify them. Paradoxically, perceived complexity may be advanced as an indicator of linguistic backwardness. It is dismissed as nothing but the result of an isolated community producing rococo embellishments because they have nothing better to or is explained away by environmental factors. The implication is that "civilised" languages are a balance between two extremes; like the gammas in _Brave New World_ they are just right.

It has happened that a linguist looking to make a name for himself has gone off to study a language that has never been studied before and after describing it declared that it proves/disproves Chomskian theory or the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Peer review may show that the description was inadequate or the conclusions unsustainable. Even a description of the phonology of a language can be disputed; phonological analysis involves identifying phonemes and that is dependent on semantics.

Whilst it is clearly the case that one language may be phonologically or morphologically more complex than another, what must not be left out of account is that the more analytical a language the more it relies on context to convey meaning. Having to rely on context for meaning is as much a complication as having to make the meaning explicit. It is not necessary to go to exotic locations to show this. It can be done by comparing English and French.

I have a box of equipment that contains a "carbon fibre brush" and a "compact disc cleaner". On the surface the two constructions are similar, but in the first case "carbon fibre" tells us what the brush is like, whilst in the second "compact disc" tells us what the cleaner is for. "Cleaner" can mean "someone who cleans" as well as "something used to clean", but the context rules out the former because you do not find people in small boxes; in the sentence: "John is our compact disc cleaner" the context is different and "cleaner" must refer to a person. In French the constructions would be different and "helper" words are needed. To express what something is for you need to use "pour" and what it is made of "de". (However, French is still sufficiently analytic that "nettoyeur" means both the person and the product; another language may require the distinction to be made.) Further, "carbon brush fibre" and "compact cleaner disc" mean something quite different from "carbon fibre brush" and "compact disc cleaner" respectively.

The only way in which any difference in complexity between languages could be determined is to measure the brain activity which each generates. Until that is technologically possible, the question will have to remain undecided. Perhaps (since sophistication is not equivalent to complexity) we would in fact be better off saying: "All languages are equally sophisticated." Every language is a perfect vehicle of communication for the native speakers who use it and all human beings have the same range of emotions and need to describe the world.


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## mugibil

Hulalessar said:


> Whilst it is clearly the case that one language may be phonologically or morphologically more complex than another, what must not be left out of account is that the more analytical a language the more it relies on context to convey meaning. Having to rely on context for meaning is as much a complication as having to make the meaning explicit.


It's true that omission of information can also be a problem - the overall balance of difficulty varies depending on the objective importance of what is expressed, the complexity of the way it is expressed, etc.. But I object to your use of the words "analytic" and "synthetic". An analytic language is not necessarily a language that omits expressing things. "Analytic vs synthetic" is a morphological distinction. Each grammatical category, including evidentiality discussed above, can be expressed morphologically both in an "analytic" and in a "synthetic" way. Whether their expression is possible and/or obligatory is a completely separate issue. Not to mention that even the authentic "analytic" vs "synthetic" distinction is confused: it basically refers to using separate words and periphrastic constructions vs using affixes, but the difference between a separate word and an affix - "analytic" vs "synthetic agglutinative" - can be vague, and in addition the idea of "classical synthetic-ness" often includes the complex and _variable_ expression of _combinations_ of categories as in IE case/number(/gender). Of course, "agglutinative syntheticness" naturally morphs into "classical IE syntheticness", because once you have multiple morphemes within a single word, they tend to interact in less and less intuitive and transparent ways.



Hulalessar said:


> ... the more analytical a language the more it relies on context to convey meaning. ... It is not necessary to go to exotic locations to show this. It can be done by comparing English and French.
> 
> I have a box of equipment that contains a "carbon fibre brush" and a "compact disc cleaner". On the surface the two constructions are similar, but in the first case "carbon fibre" tells us what the brush is like, whilst in the second "compact disc" tells us what the cleaner is for. "Cleaner" can mean "someone who cleans" as well as "something used to clean", but the context rules out the former because you do not find people in small boxes; in the sentence: "John is our compact disc cleaner" the context is different and "cleaner" must refer to a person. In French the constructions would be different and "helper" words are needed. To express what something is for you need to use "pour" and what it is made of "de". (However, French is still sufficiently analytic that "nettoyeur" means both the person and the product; another language may require the distinction to be made.) Further, "carbon brush fibre" and "compact cleaner disc" mean something quite different from "carbon fibre brush" and "compact disc cleaner" respectively.



Again, your terminology is a problem. "*brush de carbon fibre" is no less analytic than "carbon fire brush". "*cleaner pour compact disc" is no less analytic than "compact disc cleaner". If anything, the opposite is true, because the English compounds basically integrate the separate words into a single complex word such as "carbonfirebrush" and "compactdisccleaner" - thus one that is difficult to analyse, because it is free from the laws of syntax - and that is, if anything, a synthetic feature, not an analytic one. Whether you have separate expressions for utensil and person in "cleaner/nettoyeur" has no relevance for "analyticness"; those may be separate affixes (synthetic), or separate function words (analytic).


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## Alxmrphi

> it is also the case that some of those who suggest the opposite (notably John McWhorter and Geoffrey Sampson) are very much on the political right.


 
John McWhorter isn’t on the political right, but like you said this distinction about politics has _absolutely nothing to do with this discussion_, the evidence he puts forward for his case is logical and understandable.



> . Paradoxically, perceived complexity may be advanced as an indicator of linguistic backwardness. It is dismissed as nothing but the result of an isolated community producing rococo embellishments because they have nothing better to or is explained away by environmental factors. The implication is that "civilised" languages are a balance between two extremes; like the gammas in _Brave New World_ they are just right.


 
This is considerably far away from the message he puts through in his lectures, the balance of culture sharing and meeting of certain peoples (like the way the Scandinavians in living with Old English speakers helped along the already evident reduction of grammatical features) tends to ‘bring in the reigns’ so-to-speak of developments, having a complex language is not, to my opinion, or never has been a signal of linguistic ‘backwardsness’, this is not a view I am familiar with and is certainly not Mr McWhorter’s.

What you said about someone going off to study one remote language to disprove a point, I believe is quite common, but I view this as quite similar to the “_All swans are white_” hypothesis, all it takes is to find one black swan to disprove the theory, not counting all the white swans in the world. If any comparison can be made to falsify the theory, then it needs to be amended, I am _perfectly happy_ with “most languages are equally complex, but not 100% of them are”.



> Whilst it is clearly the case that one language may be phonologically or morphologically more complex than another, what must not be left out of account is that the more analytical a language the more it relies on context to convey meaning.


 
Not Riau Indonesian, like in the example he illustrates quite clearly.
Many utterances are based on context a lot and the grammar doesn’t follow a strict system like other analytical languages.



> The only way in which any difference in complexity between languages could be determined is to measure the brain activity which each generates. Until that is technologically possible, the question will have to remain undecided.


 
I am happy for the question to remain undecided until we do have a clear, scientific way of measuring this, I am completely with you on this, but it’s not a bad thing to hold a belief on this issue now.



> Perhaps (since sophistication is not equivalent to complexity) we would in fact be better off saying: "All languages are equally sophisticated." Every language is a perfect vehicle of communication for the native speakers who use it and all human beings have the same range of emotions and need to describe the world.


 
If “_all languages are a perfect vehicle of communication_” then why would languages develop new ways of expressing things? Why has English developed new methods of using –ing in the last few hundred years, if “_The house is building_” was a perfect method to express “_The house is being built_”, then why would this new distinction come into existence? I don’t believe if a system is perfect then it has such a need to develop new grammatical features.

I’m not even saying for new grammatical features to come into existence it’s even based on a need for them, some seem to appear at random, I would not call anything perfect though.

I think the statement “all languages are equally complex” needs to provide a lot more evidence to support itself rather than “not all languages are equally complex” because based on differences in languages, to say they all balance out completely equally without any linguist studying even a majority of known languages, it’s a hard point to back up.

Without this technology that monitors brain activity to measure complicatedness / sophistication, I think the more logical approach is to assume there are differences, how else is it possible to say all human languages are _completely balanced out_ in this respect? How can such a definitive statement arise without people even looking at _all_ the evidence (a mammoth task I know) but if one can throw up sensible examples that seem to show fluctuating levels of complexity within a comparison of two languages, I think the “equally complex” school-of-thought (no matter how large its following) should come up with a good counter-argument.

Basically, I believe I’ve found my black swan, and I don’t think anyone else has gone all around the world looking for their white swans, they’ve found a lot, but nowhere near all of them, so an amendment to "_nearly all swans are white_" would be required (and I'd be perfectly happy with that).


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## kepulauan

I thought one would have to tackle largely the same things in Hebrew and Arabic, but oh well...

Looking inside Frank's link I'd say it's only for fun (and us at the WR forums to argue about) as the FSI rightly warn themselves. The list is merely a time count (making their headlines incorrect) and all the different kinds of obstacles that need to be confronted have not been taken into account ...as it seems. 

Funny to see Japanese at the bottom, that harmless fellow.



Meyer Wolfsheim said:


> Like there being a language which is level 3 for English but that same language as English as a level 1.



I don't know about that but you must consider the high level of irregularity in English. No matter the learner's background, just trying to cope with the basics is very time consuming, even for Europeans.


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## mugibil

Alxmrphi said:


> John McWhorter isn’t on the political right...


He very much is, judging from what his wiki article says. Nevertheless, the excerpt you've given seems reasonable (although, misanthrope as I am, I'm sure he eventually finds a way to connect his research to his politics).



Alxmrphi said:


> If “_all languages are a perfect vehicle of communication_” then why would languages develop new ways of expressing things? Why has English developed new methods of using –ing in the last few hundred years, if “_The house is building_” was a perfect method to express “_The house is being built_”, then why would this new distinction come into existence? I don’t believe if a system is perfect then it has such a need to develop new grammatical features.
> 
> I’m not even saying for new grammatical features to come into existence it’s even based on a need for them, some seem to appear at random, I would not call anything perfect though.



You said it yourself in the last sentence - language change is not proof of non-perfection, because it is not clear that it is progress. You have developments towards synthetic structure (perhaps easier to pronounce and more laconic) and towards analytic structure (perhaps easier to learn and more flexible); towards clearer but more strained articulation and towards more relaxed but less clear articulation; etc. This can't all be progress, it looks more like shifting of priorities, which is probably connected to changes in the environment (is an anteater more or less perfect/efficient than an oyster?). Dunno about complexity, but as for "perfection", we just can't prove anything about it, so the only decent thing to do is to assume that everything is equally perfect until the opposite is proven. 

But yeah, the main point is to distinguish the question of complexity/simplicity from the question of goodness/badness (perfection/imperfection or sophistication/primitiveness). I agree it's pretty obvious, intuitively, that there is such a thing as "complexity" in a technical, structural sense, and that it is not the same across languages. The point is to keep value judgements out of this, and to remember that neither "complex", nor "simple", nor "average" is a compliment for a language. A structurally simple language need not be unsophisticated, and neither need its speakers.


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## Alxmrphi

> But yeah, the main point is to distinguish the question of complexity/simplicity from the question of goodness/badness (perfection/imperfection or sophistication/primitiveness). I agree it's pretty obvious, intuitively, that there is such a thing as "complexity" in a technical, structural sense, and that it is not the same across languages. The point is to keep value judgements out of this, and to remember that neither "complex", nor "simple", nor "average" is a compliment for a language. A structurally simple language need not be unsophisticated, and neither need its speakers.


I 1000% agree with everything here.

Regarding the political stance of John McWhorter, I wouldn't go by one adjective written in an open-to-all website, his work on creoles and support to the credibility of Black English is quite obvious, but why are we even talking about this? He can be as right as he likes, you've said the examples seem to lend credibility to an argument, that's all that matters in this discussion. Given his area of expertise in language mixture (even from his teaching of Native American languages at Berkley) etc, it's obvious to see he's not out there to perpetrate the idea of cultural inequality, this is quite the opposite of his message, he would be the most staunch advocate of your last paragraph, so I just don't see the relevance of this point here.



> we just can't prove anything about it, so the only decent thing to do is to assume that everything is equally perfect until the opposite is proven.


This is a good statement, _equally perfect_ is good, I do agree, it's _complex _that I don't agree with, I maybe wouldn't have chosen the word _perfect_, I think all languages are equal in the sense that none are better / worse than any others. (The complexity issue is a completely different kettle of fish IMO).


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## Hulalessar

mungu said:


> It's true that omission of information can also be a problem - the overall balance of difficulty varies depending on the objective importance etc.



I started a reply but it was turning out far too long!

I agree there is a problem with terminology. Let me just say that the more isolating a language is the more likely it is that it will tend to rely on context to convey meaning.


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## Hulalessar

Alxmrphi said:


> John McWhorter isn’t on the political right etc



It was only yesterday that I discovered that John McWhorter is on the right. Like Mungu I looked him up on Wikipedia. I have since Googled his name and after looking at a dozen different sites now have no doubt that he is on the right. I only know of him through his book _The Power of Babel_ which gives no intimation of his politics. (I happen to think that that book is one of the best ever written on language for the layman.) I was not actually suggesting that he personally believes that perceived complexity (or for that matter simplicity) is as an indicator of linguistic backwardness, though I can see that I may have given that impression.

As to Riau Indonesian not everyone seems to agree with his assessment of the language; here is an example: http://sastra.um.ac.id/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/PU-David-Gil-Riau-Indonesian-.-.-..pdf I have only read the abstract.

You ask: why would languages develop new ways of expressing things? I really do not know. I think it just happens. I do not think it happens because people find their language inadequate in some way. (An exception is of course that languages may expand their lexicon to meet need.) I think there is a danger when looking at the history of a language like English to get the idea that it somehow improves with time and that the earlier forms were somehow incomplete. It is an impression that can arise because the earliest written forms of a language can sometimes appear to be rambling (see _The Power of Babel_) but we need to remember that writing is something different from speech. The fact is that at any moment in time a language is a complete system. Chaucer did not consider the language he wrote in to be _Middle_ English, but _Modern _English.


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## Alxmrphi

> You ask: why would languages develop new ways of expressing things?


Not quite, it was a hypothetical question challenging the need for languages to develop new things if they were already perfect (as mentioned in your post). I, like you, think a lot of the time, it just happens in ways we cannot understand, I also don't think it's because of any inadequacies, though, as I am unaware of anyone in history complaining they don't have a specific function in their language (not having it, without comparison of another language I don't know how anyone would realise they were missing it ).

[Edit] I realise I didn't write what I thought I wrote, I meant to write "_why would languages *need to* develop new ways.._." (correction)



> It was only yesterday that I discovered that John McWhorter is on the right. Like Mungu I looked him up on Wikipedia. I have since Googled his name and after looking at a dozen different sites now have no doubt that he is on the right.


Ok I will let this lie now, I will have to look into it more because I am not 100% sure what you're all referring to, but what I want to reaffirm is _my belief_ that whatever his stance is, has absolutely, concretely and categorically nothing to do with his view on complexities within human language. 

What could his agenda be in these statements he's made? Are you both referring to something or just pointing out the fact he's on the political right? Can you see a logic for why he might be prone to say something like this because I just get the feeling this is being pointed out but doesn't actually add _anything_ to the discussion. Let's say he was as right as can be, how would this change _anything_?

He perpetrates the underlying complexities and logic of languages like Black English Vernacular, is a world renowned expert on creole languages and language mixture, has a massive knowledge of Native American languages (knowing how to speak a few of them) speaks French, German and has an obvious affinity for the Asian languages, he is (I believe) more informed about the matter than all of us, so what relevance does a political stance have? The only connection I can make is of creating the idea some cultures are unequal to others (like conservatives do), and I know this is not what he believes, so relevance please?


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## mugibil

> Regarding the political stance of John McWhorter, I wouldn't go by one adjective written in an open-to-all website, his work on creoles and support to the credibility of Black English is quite obvious, but why are we even talking about this?


I didn't go by one adjective, there was more (and I feel that I know Wikipedia well enough to tell the trustworthy parts from the untrustworthy ones). I said he was right-wing mainly because you explicitly said he wasn't right-wing, so I thought it was good for the truth on this issue to be clear, relevant or not. Also, it's always good to know what might influence his theories whenever one reads something by him. Note - it's clear that we have no disagreement about the basic claims you argued, so this is just a minor side issue we're still dwelling on.

So how could his theories be influenced by his politics, and are creole studies compatible with some kind of inequality? Well, I now recall (from some reading I did concerning an unrelated argument about the definition of creole years ago) that his theories on creoles - and on Riau Indonesian, as shown by the link posted by Hulalessar - is far from being uncontroversial, and that precisely because of its potential ideological implications. Actually, those were some extremely heated and unusually nasty disputes. Basically, he and others set out to prove that creoles (and Riau Indonesian?) all reflect a creole prototype in being extraordinarily simple languages that reflect the basic bare bones of Universal Grammar; his opponents in linguistics argue that creoles are very different from each other, are not really that different from any other languages, and aren't that simple. I think it's pretty clear that they see themselves as "defending" these languages of accusations of inferiority (in one case I even remember the linguist was a native speaker of a creole). The underlying question that they were excited about seemed to be - are creoles and Riau Indonesian elementary monkey/baby talk or not? Back then, I wasn't interested in the issue to actually try to form an opinion, but I didn't see anything inherently racist or rightist in what I understood of McWhorter's theory, and I felt that some of his opponents were overreacting and reading too much into this. I still don't see anything racist or rightist in what I remember of his theory, but now that I learn that he actually _is_ right-wing - an _American_ conservative, i.e. right-wing even by American standards - I can't be _quite_ so sure any longer that his opponents were _completely_ wrong to read rightism into his work. If I read something he has written about linguistics that might have political implications, I'll be more cautious and have in mind his positions on other issues. But - far be it from me to say that rightist linguists are any less sophisticated, complex and perfect  than centrist and leftist linguists! I never intended to say such a thing, and I'm sure that neither did Hulalessar.


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## Alxmrphi

> Note - it's clear that we have no disagreement about the basic claims you argued, so this is just a minor side issue we're still dwelling on.


Ok I'm glad this is the main point.

But I'm still none the wiser about the other issue, there's a lot of talking around issues here, you haven't proven how his political stance is relevant at all. Everything is controversial in linguistics, linguistics are some of the most argumentative people on the planet, they bicker about anything, I don't see a special case here.

I don't think linguists on either side had the opinion creoles were baby talk though.



> but now that I learn that he actually _is_ right-wing - an _American_ conservative, i.e. right-wing even by American standards


Whereby did you make this judgement? Is it because someone else described him as this or did you make up your own mind? If you did can you enlighten me as to what gave you this impression, I'm being stubborn about this because through (many many hours of) listening to his lectures and explanations on multiple stances he doesn't hold any views that compromise his linguistic authenticity.

By the way, when you say "read rightism" in his work, what is rightism? What's the right-wing view of creoles? I've heard his definition of a creole panned out over 2 hours and there's nothing right wing about it.



> he and others set out to prove that creoles (and Riau Indonesian?) all reflect a creole prototype in being extraordinarily simple languages that reflect the basic bare bones of Universal Grammar


Riau Indonesian is not a creole, it wouldn't have credibly stood up in his argument about languages if he compared Tsez to a creole, his definition is that a creole is the bare-bones of a language that other speakers try to learn, but there is also an innate regularity in the mind to create a grammar (and he backs this up with examples from Hawaiian Creole & Nicaraguan sign-language, both of which I hope you know a bit about to understand the the fundamental point). What does this have to do with conservatism? 



> But - far be it from me to say that rightist linguists are any less sophisticated, complex and perfect  than centrist and leftist linguists! I never intended to say such a thing, and I'm sure that neither did Hulalessar.


 Well doubt was cast, and was unsubstantiated (and still is).
Getting more back on to the topic, even talking about creoles is going off topic, the stance of being on the political right still doesn't have anything to do with an informed opinion of languages being unequally complex (and I'm glad you've expressed the idea that the argument has credible evidence that should make people think twice to at least consider it).

I didn't bring up a political issue, this was brought up as a way of attacking his credibility and his opinions with which I allied myself (because it makes sense to me), All I've done is said what I believe and given reasons, and the opinions of a major-player in the field yet I'm trying to defend this phantom agenda that he is supposed to have.

Seriously, watch his DVDs and listen to his lectures, I am 100% sure you're opinion would not be the same again. We're on different wavelengths regarding his opinions, articles about political issues are separate from his teaching about language, in my view they hold no bearing what he presents (regardless of whatever philosopher has an opinion of a social scientist), so I don't see we'll ever agree given we're pooling information from uneven sources. So for that reason I'm finished on this topic.


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## mugibil

OK, OK. This is getting too emotional. Although you have asked some questions and made some objections concerning the connection between linguistics and politics, I agree with your last sentence: IMO, there is nothing left to say here, one would only repeat what one has already written in earlier posts. If either of us three (I, you, or Hulalessar) wants to learn more about the issues to make some point clear for themselves, they can just read more about them.



> and he backs this up with examples from Hawaiian Creole & Nicaraguan sign-language, both of which I hope you know a bit about to understand the the fundamental point



Of course I know them, they are basically my mother tongues! My mother is a deaf Nicaraguan who grew up in the 1970s and became pregnant with me as a teenager, and my father is a Creole-speaking Hawaiian. Thank God for that, otherwise I really wouldn't have understood anything of your post. (sorry, couldn't help it ).


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## Hulalessar

Alxmrphi said:


> I didn't bring up a political issue, this was brought up as a way of attacking his credibility and his opinions with which I allied myself (because it makes sense to me), All I've done is said what I believe and given reasons, and the opinions of a major-player in the field yet I'm trying to defend this phantom agenda that he is supposed to have.
> 
> Seriously, watch his DVDs and listen to his lectures, I am 100% sure you're opinion would not be the same again. We're on different wavelengths regarding his opinions, articles about political issues are separate from his teaching about language, in my view they hold no bearing what he presents (regardless of whatever philosopher has an opinion of a social scientist), so I don't see we'll ever agree given we're pooling information from uneven sources. So for that reason I'm finished on this topic.



With respect I think you did bring politics into it. In post number 6 you suggested that the idea that all languages were equally complex was motivated by the desire to break down prejudice and that suggests a political motive. The quote from John McWhorter is more overtly political as it refers to "political correctness."

What you and McWhorter come across as saying is that the idea that all languages are equally complex is motivated by non-linguistic considerations, whereas the opposite position is based on purely linguistic considerations. Whilst it is not always the case I tend to find that if someone attacks someone else's position on something and says they have an agenda they too have an agenda. It is as Professor Juan Carlos Moreno Cabrera says in _La dignidad e igualdad de las lenguas_ "We linguists are not free from linguistic prejudices." The impression I have is that you personally have no agenda and are possibly embarrassed to learn that that McWhorter may have one. If so I do not think you need to feel embarrassed. If there is one thing I have come to realise it is that sometimes those on the right say something sensible I agree with and sometimes those on the left say something silly I cannot agree with. The fact is though that language does not exist in a vacuum but only in a context and it cannot be fully understood without looking at the context.


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## Frank06

*Hi,*

*The original question can be found in post 1.*
*I'd like to suggest* to stick to that topic.*


*Frank*
*Moderator EHL*


** "I'd like to suggest" is Modspeak for "Guys, stop the off topic posts"*


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## Angelo di fuoco

Meyer Wolfsheim said:


> Hello everyone,
> 
> I remember reading about how the U.S. Defense Department gives a level of difficulty in how long it takes to become fluent in a foreign language if one's native language is English.  For example, Spanish is a level I language, Hebrew is a level II and Arabic is a level 3.  The higher the level, generally the more hours needed to gain a level fluency.
> 
> My question is, are there some languages which might be level 3's for English but the other way around English is a level 2 or even level 1 language.  The real question is given two natives of two different languages, is it possible that one native might find it much more easier to the learn the language of the other?
> 
> I know this is true for English-German.  German is practically a level II language according to the defense department but I am pretty sure English would be a level I language for a German speaker.  Does anyone know of a larger margin possible?  Like there being a language which is level 3 for English but that same language as English as a level 1.
> 
> (I know the whole "level" system is not really a standard, but I am using it to give some tangibility to my question).



I think Portuguese is more difficult for Spaniards than Spanish for Portuguese; quite similar grammar, but the Portuguese phonetic system is much more complex than the Spanish one and, e. g., the difference between open and closed vowels is not always indicated in writing even in the stressed position in Portuguese, whereas Spanish doesn't make much ado about it. The Portuguese spelling is not nearly as phonemic as the Spanish one.

Moreover, I think English should be pretty easy for Chinese to master: a simple alphabet, not many "redundant" features like gender, declension, and a pretty easy conjugation. However, I don't about the pronunciation. 
One frequent mistake of the Chinese is: even when they speak a European language well, when they pay no attention, they will use the present tense while speaking of the past. Confusion between genders, cases and articles is quite frequent even when a native speaker of a European language speaks another European language, but the non-markedness of grammatical tense is a feature that I have encountered, until now, only in Asiatic languages.


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