# The most compact language



## JLanguage

Which language can express ideas in the least amount of words? I hope to enjoy a good discussion.

-Jonathan.


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## Jana337

German - because you can always create megawords

Jana


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## Jana337

But seriously: I believe it won't be any of Slavic languages. Whenever I translate something in English, I end up with a shorter text.

Jana


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## melusines

Have you thought about Hebrew? Due to the grammatical particularity of Hebrew that allows the concatenation of prepositions, pronouns etc to the nouns, verbs etc, the ultimate of words used to build a sentence is drastically reduced. From experience, I know that translation from English to Hebrew gives 2/3 of the number of words.


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## Whodunit

Jana337 said:
			
		

> German - because you can always create megawords
> 
> Jana



No definitely not! When I translate any English text into German, it looks much longer and the English one looks totally compact.


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## JLanguage

What about Latin? From what I've studied so far, it seems like it's more compcact because it doesn't need as many linking words.


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## Whodunit

JLanguage said:
			
		

> What about Latin? From what I've studied so far, it seems like it's more compcact because it doesn't need as many linking words.



Yes, you're right. Only think of the ablative:

mercatore (= by/through the merchant)


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## ayed

JLanguage said:
			
		

> Which language can express ideas in the least amount of words? I hope to enjoy a good discussion.
> 
> -Jonathan.


 
Here are some Arabic joined words:

1-Bowl dog : Meelughuh"ميلغه"

dog laped up some water .So, laped up here means"walagha""ولغ"

2-Incense burner: Mibkhuruh "مبخرة"

3-Predawn repast "suhoor""سحور".It comes from sahar , the wee hours of dawn.
4-Morning skimmed milk"laban" called "subooh""صبوح"It is derived from "sabah"morning"
5-Sunset skimmed milk"laban"called "ghubooq"غبوق"

just keep this topic up.
thanks 
Ayed


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## germinal

JLanguage said:
			
		

> Which language can express ideas in the least amount of words? I hope to enjoy a good discussion.
> 
> -Jonathan.


 
Why not set a sample sentence or maybe a paragraph and invite translations so that we can compare the results directly?           Germinal.


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## Whodunit

germinal said:
			
		

> Why not set a sample sentence or maybe a paragraph and invite translations so that we can compare the results directly?           Germinal.



Yes, good idea.

Let me begin with Jonathan's first sentence:

Which language can express ideas in the least amount of words? I hope to enjoy a good discussion.

In German:

In welcher Sprache lassen sich die Gedanken in so wenig wie möglich Worte fassen? Ich hoffe auf eine schöne Diskussion.

Hm... German is longer.


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## JJchang

Chinese is very space efficient.

哪種話可用最少的字表達意見? 希望這討論會很有意思.
Which language can express ideas in the least amount of words? I hope to enjoy a good discussion.

et voila.

The classical Chinese can shorten the length even further, but I don't want to embarrass myself in case someone else writes the classical Chinese better.


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## germinal

JJchang said:
			
		

> Chinese is very space efficient.
> 
> 哪種話可用最少的字表達意見? 希望這討論會很有意思.
> Which language can express ideas in the least amount of words? I hope to enjoy a good discussion.
> 
> et voila.
> 
> The classical Chinese can shorten the length even further, but I don't want to embarrass myself in case someone else writes the classical Chinese better.


 

Interesting Chang- you appear to have 27 separate ideograms there, as opposed to 18 words in English.  Is one ideogram, which expresses an idea, the equivalent of one word or maybe several words?   

It is difficult to make a comparison between two entirely different systems. 

I have often wondered how easy it is to read as the ideograms are drawn very finely in newspapers etc.

Germinal


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## JLanguage

JJchang said:
			
		

> Chinese is very space efficient.
> 
> 哪種話可用最少的字表達意見? 希望這討論會很有意思.
> Which language can express ideas in the least amount of words? I hope to enjoy a good discussion.
> 
> et voila.
> 
> The classical Chinese can shorten the length even further, but I don't want to embarrass myself in case someone else writes the classical Chinese better.


 
Well, I think Chinese might win this competition, but we shall see.


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## elroy

Arabic:

.في أي لغة يعبر عن الأفكار في أقل عدد من الكلمات؟  أتشوق إلى نقاش جيد

(15 words)

In general, Arabic is a very "compact" language. For example, the sentence "I will help you" is expressed with one word in Arabic. For starters, there is one word for "I help" (a letter is added to the stem for "help" to indicate the first person singular). Another letter is added to the end of the word to indicate a second person singular object. Then another letter is added to the beginning to indicate the future tense.

Another example from colloquial Arabic. There is a one-word expression, transliterated "tistahbilnish," in spoken Palestinian Arabic that means "Do not treat me as if you thought I were stupid." It literally means "Do not consider me a fool." Either way, that's a lot of compact information in one word.

I obviously don't know all of the languages in the world, but if I had to vote for the most compact language I would choose Arabic.


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## JJchang

germinal, theoretically one character has one meaning, but I was writing in colloquial way and use two words to repeat the same meaning twice (表達, 意見 etc.) so people won't find it awkward to read.

They are all just symbols, so you can tell which word is which really quickly. It's like male and female sign, all of us can recognise instantly which one is which, right?


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## germinal

JJchang said:
			
		

> germinal, theoretically one character has one meaning, but I was writing in colloquial way and use two words to repeat the same meaning twice (表達, 意見 etc.) so people won't find it awkward to read.
> 
> They are all just symbols, so you can tell which word is which really quickly. It's like male and female sign, all of us can recognise instantly which one is which, right?


 

Er.....Right!! - thanks.         Germinal.


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## Jana337

Which language can express ideas in the least amount of words? I hope to enjoy a good discussion.

In Czech:

Který jazyk umí vyjádřit myšlenky nejmenším počtem slov? Doufám v hezkou diskusi. (12)

Better (=shorter) than I expected! We do not use articles and do not have to use personal pronouns in the nominative.


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## winnie

> Which language can express ideas in the least amount of words? I hope to enjoy a good discussion.


 
quale lingua può esprimere i concetti con il minor numero di parole? spero che la discussione sia proficua. (18)

same as the original one.


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## JJchang

I'm calling helps now...
http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=29804


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## gliamo

JLanguage said:
			
		

> Which language can express ideas in the least amount of words? I hope to enjoy a good discussion.
> 
> -Jonathan.


Quelle langue permet d'exprimer des idées avec le moins de mots? J'en attends une bonne discussion. (18 words)

G.


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## Tabac

It's what is called agglutinative (adding suffixes to change the part of speech, the use in the sentence, or to make what English would call a relative clause).
Here's an extreme example, not a very likely sentence, perhaps, but totally possible.  (*2 words*)

Gidemiyeceginizi bilmiyordum = I didn't know that you wouldn't be able to go.


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## AkErBeLtZ

JLanguage said:


> Which language can express ideas in the least amount of words? I hope to enjoy a good discussion.
> 
> -Jonathan.


Zein hizkuntzak adieraz ditzake ideiak hitz kopuru txikienean? Eztabaida on batez gozatzea espero dut. (14 words)


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## Frank06

Hi,


germinal said:


> Interesting Chang- you appear to have 27 separate ideograms there


First a small note: Chinese characters aren't ideograms. Or rather, only a few characters could be labeled as such. See also here.



> , as opposed to 18 words in English. Is one ideogram, which expresses an idea, the equivalent of one word or maybe several words?


In modern Chinese, there isn't always a one to one correspondence between a character and a word.
A simple example:
我 wo3 = I (me, ...): one word, one character
我们 wo3men = we (us, ...): one word, two characters.
One of the most striking features of Chinese _throughout history_ is the (ever) increasing use of polysyllabic words. Here you find some more information.

Groetjes,

Frank


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## linguist786

I haven't read the whole thread, but I would definitely say *Arabic*.


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## Whodunit

Okay, we have mentioned Latin, so here you go:



JLanguage said:


> Which language can express ideas in the least amount of words? I hope to enjoy a good discussion.


 
Quae lingua sententias exprimere potest in quam paucissimis verbis? Sermonem iucundum spero. (12 words)


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## DrWatson

JLanguage said:


> Which language can express ideas in the least amount of words? I hope to enjoy a good discussion.



Finnish:

Mikä kieli voi ilmaista asioita vähimmällä sanamäärällä? Toivon saavani nauttia hyvästä keskustelusta. (12 words)


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## karuna

Latvian:

Kurā valodā idejas var izteikt vismazāk vārdos? Ceru uz interesantu diskusiju. (11 words)

But this is a very small sample. Latvian translation normally has less words than English but the translated text is approximately of the same length. It would be interesting to compare which text would take less time to read it loadly.


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## Whodunit

karuna said:


> It would be interesting to compare which text would take less time to read it loadly.


 
And how would you do that? Do you want everyone to record the text and attach it to his/her post?


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## karuna

Whodunit said:


> And how would you do that? Do you want everyone to record the text and attach it to his/her post?



No, recording would probably be too difficult for most forers to do. 

I mean, we know that translating from language X into language Y in general the text becomes longer or shorter if counting by words or by characters. But this is rather meaningless between languages with very different writing systems, for example, English and Chinese. The time required reading each respective text could be more informative. 

The idea is that we would need a text about one paragraph or several sentences long that is already properly translated into many languages. And then each forer could record the time in seconds it took to read it loadly with normal speed. And then post the results here for comparison.


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## Ander

Whodunit said:


> Yes, good idea.
> 
> Let me begin with Jonathan's first sentence:
> 
> Which language can express ideas in the least amount of words? I hope to enjoy a good discussion.
> 
> In German:
> 
> In welcher Sprache lassen sich die Gedanken in so wenig wie möglich Worte fassen? Ich hoffe auf eine schöne Diskussion.
> 
> Hm... German is longer.



Isn't it possible to say in German: "Welche Sprache fasst Gedanken mit den wenigsten Worten?"

That's 8 words instead of 11 or 14.


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## Whodunit

karuna said:


> The idea is that we would need a text about one paragraph or several sentences long that is already properly translated into many languages. And then each forer could record the time in seconds it took to read it loadly with normal speed. And then post the results here for comparison.


 
I think that's not always very reliable because I may read much faster than my neighbor or my classmates. On the other hand, there are many people who read much faster than I do.



Ander said:


> Isn't it possible to say in German: "Welche Sprache fasst Gedanken mit den wenigsten Worten?"
> 
> That's 8 words instead of 11 or 14.


 
The first part is possible, but I don't like the second. My suggestion, based on your version, would be:

Welche Sprache fasst Gedanken in die wenigsten Worte?


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## Outsider

Portuguese:

Que língua consegue exprimir ideias com menos palavras? Espero gozar de uma boa discussão. (14 words)​There are other ways to say this, though.


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## Joannes

linguist786 said:


> I haven't read the whole thread, but I would definitely say *Arabic*.


Yes, I guess so too. After non-verbal communication and pragmatics, but I suppose they don't count? 

The test sentences in Dutch, by the way:
*Welke taal kan ideeën uitdrukken met het minste woorden? Ik hoop op een goede discussie.* (15 words)


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## Athaulf

JLanguage said:


> Which language can express ideas in the least amount of words? I hope to enjoy a good discussion.



That depends on how you define "word". Also, separating an utterance into words is very much a matter of convention (e.g. in Croatian, it can be a major pain to remember if a preposition should be written separately or as a prefix of the following word; the rules for this are often arbitrary). In some languages, single "words" can be as internally complex (and long!) as whole phrases and sentences in others. 



Jana337 said:


> German - because you can always create megawords



There are languages that make German look quite simplistic in this regard.


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## Qcumber

Arabic, Chinese and Hebrew point at the necessity to reformulate the question in linguistic terms. For instance: what language uses the smallest number of morphemes (lexemes and grammemes) to express the following idea: "Women spend more time than men in the kitchen."?


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## Athaulf

karuna said:


> I mean, we know that translating from language X into language Y in general the text becomes longer or shorter if counting by words or by characters. But this is rather meaningless between languages with very different writing systems, for example, English and Chinese. The time required reading each respective text could be more informative.
> 
> The idea is that we would need a text about one paragraph or several sentences long that is already properly translated into many languages. And then each forer could record the time in seconds it took to read it loadly with normal speed. And then post the results here for comparison.



This would unfortunately still be far from a controlled experiment. We would have to control for at least two important additional effects:

(1) Similarity to the original language of the text. When translating into a language with a very different grammar and vocabulary, there is a strong tendency to make translations too long, sometimes much longer than if someone were expressing the same thoughts via an original text in the target language. 

(2) Individual stylistic differences between translators -- some people (e.g. me ) have a tendency to always be long-winded in writing. 

Here's my idea for a controlled experiment: show a few simple pictures to a mixed-language audience and ask them to write down precise descriptions of what's being shown. Check each text that it indeed covers all the necessary details, and nothing else. That way, we avoid the effect (1). Also, make sure that there are at least ten people independently producing texts in each tested language, and take their average to avoid the effect (2). This is of course impractical without a substantial budget and effort, but alas, it usually takes a lot of both to do good science.

I strongly suspect that the results would be more or less even across languages, because the human brain always requires a specific level of redundancy in information to be able to communicate reliably, and more redundancy than this necessary level is wasteful.


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## Outsider

Athaulf said:


> (1) Similarity to the original language of the text. When translating into a language with a very different grammar and vocabulary, there is a strong tendency to make translations too long, sometimes much longer than if someone were expressing the same thoughts via an original text in the target language.


Very true, and this is a problem I've always had with attempts to compare the length of sentences in two languages. The translator just has to come across an idiom for which he can't recall an equivalent expression in the target language, and bang! -- you get a much longer periphrasis. Also, I feel that native speakers can usually express themselves in a more concise way that non-natives.


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## jonquiliser

Anyway, there seems to be some unclarity here about what constitutes brevity. I'm pretty sure Finnish can shrink the number of words a little, but often the text as a whole (the number of letters) might be longer than, say, an English equivalent text. 

Anyway, true as you say that in translating, sometimes the translation takes too much from the original and thus isn't as it would be "spontaneously" said.


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## Outsider

Yes, it would be interesting to investigate whether shorter sentences correlate with longer words. 
Across languages, I mean.


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## karuna

Athaulf said:


> (1) Similarity to the original language of the text. When translating into a language with a very different grammar and vocabulary, there is a strong tendency to make translations too long, sometimes much longer than if someone were expressing the same thoughts via an original text in the target language.



This is what an inexperienced translator would do. Professional translations should never show the influence of the source language. In fact, it is harder to hide this influence between more similar languages because you invariably tend to follow the source language structure. On the other hand while translating between dissimilar languages you can focus more on the actual ideas.

However, the problem is with the cultural differences; when one language has certain notions and idiomatic expressions etc. that does not exist in another language, then it requires more words to explain them. 

How much impact comes from the translation process could be analized by performing translations in both directions with different texts. 



> (2) Individual stylistic differences between translators -- some people (e.g. me ) have a tendency to always be long-winded in writing.


While individual styles and preferences certainly exist, I would suspect any translation that is considerably longer or shorter than average. While it is not scientific, it is a well accepted fact among Russian translators that the Russian translation by character count is about 10% longer than the English source but in the terms of the word count it is about 15% shorter. At least the tendency is very clear.

I just want to know the ballpark figure of the third parameter: how much time it takes to read the same text in different languages. This information could be very useful for interpreters.


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## Daimflo

I agree with Karuna. The length of a sentence can vary depending of the dialect, and an unexperienced translator will also make longer sentences. For example:

"Which language can express ideas in the least amount of words? I hope to enjoy a good discussion."

What I would say, neutral:

"¿Qué idioma puede expresar ideas en el menor número de palabras? Espero disfrutar una buena discusión." (15 words against 18, but the sentence is written with longer words)

And shortened:

"¿Qué idioma expresa las mismas ideas en menos palabras? Espero gozar de una buena discusión." (now I've got less characters than the English sentence)

The length of sentences greatly depends of the translator, and the context (or lack of it) of the sentence, translated and not translated.

Anyway, regardless of the "context compression" and the "translator compression", Spanish is a long language, and I've heard that is the most difficult language to learn.


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## Athaulf

karuna said:


> While individual styles and preferences certainly exist, I would suspect any translation that is considerably longer or shorter than average. While it is not scientific, it is a well accepted fact among Russian translators that the Russian translation by character count is about 10% longer than the English source but in the terms of the word count it is about 15% shorter. At least the tendency is very clear.



Does this really generalize to all sorts of texts? I'd be really surprised if these figures turn out to be the same regardless of whether one translates a novel, a scientific article, an everyday conversation, etc.



> I just want to know the ballpark figure of the third parameter: how much time it takes to read the same text in different languages. This information could be very useful for interpreters.


Assuming exactly the same information content, I would expect the time to be approximately the same for all languages. Human brains are the same everywhere, and demand the same level of information redundancy and the same rate of information flow to achieve the same level of reliability and clarity in communication. Different amounts of information per unit of time would mean that some languages are inherently clearer and more understandable than others, which would be surprising for natural languages. Although I don't know much about linguistics, this conclusion seems to directly follow from information theory and some common-sense assumptions.


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## ham_let

Are we talking about words, syllables, or space-wise?

Chinese saves A LOT of space as far as written text is concerned (although many languages can be written much smaller and still be legible, while chinese has to be at least a certain size for it to be legible)

English is efficient in that a lot can be said in just a few syllables.


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## tom_in_bahia

Which language can express ideas in the least amount of words? I hope to enjoy a good discussion.

Ki lang ka eksprime ide-yo ak mwenn mo? M' swete jiwi youn bon koze.
*(Haitian Creole)

*Points:
-one word infinitives
-no conjugation for persons
-static verbs (no copula necessary with adjectives)
-verb tenses are marked with pre-verb particles (te, ta, pwal, ap)
-isolating language and most words are mono- or bisyllabic
-definite articles and demonstratives are suffixed
-Subject and object pronouns are the same
-Allows for single consonant sound contractions of pronouns
-*In comparison with French (one of the derivative languages), the orthographical reform makes the following words much shorter:
*French-----------Kreyòl*
musique-----------mizik
acheter-----------achte
enveloppe---------anvlòp
petit(e/s/es)------ti
croire-------------kwè

* Example with a sentence:**
 Je ne serai pas capable de vous aider à écrire cettes petites histoires pour votre cours d'espagnol.  
 M' pa pwal ka ede'w ekri ti istwa-sa-yo pou kous panyol'w.*


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## linguist786

*English:* Which language can express ideas in the least amount of words? I hope to enjoy a good discussion.
*Gujarati:* કઈ ભાષા માં કશું વસ્તુ બધા કરતા ઓછાં શબ્દો માં બોલાય શકે છે? હું એક રસિક ચર્ચા ની આશા રાખું છું.
*Hindi:* कौन सी भाषा में किसी वस्तु को सब से थोडे शब्दो में कही जा सकती हैं? मैं एक विनोदी चर्चा की आशा रखता हूँ.
*Urdu:* *كون سى زبان ميں كسى چيز كو سب سے تهوڑے الفاظ ميں كہى جا سكتى ہے؟ مي ايک دلچسپ مناظره كى اميد ركهتا ہوں*

English: 18 words
Gujarati: 21 words
Hindi: 24 words
Urdu: 24 words

I think all Indo-Iranian languages (Punjabi/Bengali/Farsi, etc) will be really uneconomical in terms of number of words used. We have a lot of functional words I think, which may be one of the causes.


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## Kael

Jana337 said:


> Which language can express ideas in the least amount of words? I hope to enjoy a good discussion.



Quae lingua informationes minimis numeris verborum effari potest? Bonum consilium fuari spero. (12)


Edit: Didn't see someone already posted a reply in latin! Same number of words though.


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## Alijsh

linguist786 said:


> I think all Indo-Iranian languages (Punjabi/Bengali/Farsi, etc) will be really uneconomical in terms of number of words used. We have a lot of functional words I think, which may be one of the causes.


Persian:
kodâm zabân mitavânad andishe râ dar kamtarin vâže beguyad? omidvâram bahse khubi dâšte bâšim. (14 words)

کدام زبان میتواند اندیشه را در کمترین واژه بگوید؟ امیدوارم بحث خوبی داشته باشیم.​


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## Alijsh

As for the most compact languages, I say agglutinative languages like Turkish. Persian has agglutination but not as extensively as in an agglutinative language. For example, *khândeamash* is a single word and means "I have read it". As you see it's expressed with four words in English. Arabic has also some degree of agglutination.

An example from Turkish: *Evinizdeyim* (I am at your house). Colloquial Persian: *khunatam* (it's also a single word as in Turkish because *tu* which means *at* drops in colloquial. So in the end it will be two owrds: *tu khunatam*).

But Turkish *gelememiş* (I gather s/he couldn't come), *gelebilirsen* (if you can come) can no longer be expressed in a single word in Persian.

- Turkish examples were taken from here


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## Staarkali

It's hard to tell, some languages as German can have compound words but they are very long, some others express the same idea with a lot of little words, such as French or Italian (some words only got one letter)

In term of space efficiency, Chinese is far away from all others, for at least 2 reasons; the 1st is that there is not articles and there is no compound verb forms ("would have been coming" => no).
The 2nd reason is that there is thousands of "letters", thats exactly the same difference binary and hexadecimal: the bigger is the base, the smaller are the number to express the same value.


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## Honour

Alijsh said:


> As for the most compact languages, I say





Alijsh said:


> agglutinative languages like Turkish. Persian has agglutination but not as extensively as in an agglutinative language. For example, *khândeamash* is a single word and means "I have read it". As you see it's expressed with four words in English. Arabic has also some degree of agglutination.
> 
> An example from Turkish: *Evinizdeyim* (I am at your house). Colloquial Persian: *khunatam* (it's also a single word as in Turkish because *tu* which means *at* drops in colloquial. So in the end it will be two owrds: *tu khunatam*).
> 
> But Turkish *gelememiş* (I gather s/he couldn't come), *gelebilirsen* (if you can come) can no longer be expressed in a single word in Persian.
> 
> - Turkish examples were taken from here




I agree with you. In agglutinative languages many states, cases, conjugations get together to form s single word.
For instance, konuştuklarımızdan hiçbir şey anlamamıştım.

From what we had talked nothing i hadn't got.

Disassembly of the word konuştuklarımızdan takes place in the following order:
konuş-tu-k-lar-ımız-dan: talk-ed-(we)-s(plural suffix)-our-from
it is something like from, our, we have talkeds.


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## palomnik

Frankly, I'm surprised that this discussion has lasted this long.

The winner - hands down - is Chinese, especially of the Classical variety. Anybody who has studied it becomes keenly aware of how much can be said in such little space. Few people outside of students of the language realize that the majority of Chinese proverbs are only _four syllables long._ What's more, anybody who compares a Classical Chinese poem with a translation into English, even the relatively spare, blank translations of somebody like Arthur Waley, will realize that it easily takes up less than half as much space, both visually and temporally, as the English translation.  Good Chinese style in the Classical mode results in something akin to a telegraph message in most European languages.

As a postscript, I might add that even modern Chinese can be read faster than any western language.


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## Athaulf

palomnik said:


> The winner - hands down - is Chinese, especially of the Classical variety. Anybody who has studied it becomes keenly aware of how much can be said in such little space. Few people outside of students of the language realize that the majority of Chinese proverbs are only _four syllables long._ What's more, anybody who compares a Classical Chinese poem with a translation into English, even the relatively spare, blank translations of somebody like Arthur Waley, will realize that it easily takes up less than half as much space, both visually and temporally, as the English translation.  Good Chinese style in the Classical mode results in something akin to a telegraph message in most European languages.



However, was Classical Chinese ever spoken as a natural language? Or was it developed as an artificial shorthand language of sorts? Because if we  count artificial languages, why stop there? A text file compressed using Zip or some similar program is nothing but a translation of the text into an artificial language optimized so as to minimize the necessary storage space (admittedly one that can't be easily read by humans).  The redundancy of information in natural language is so great that there are many ways to artificially represent it using less space.

Also, can this extremely brief style really be used to convey the same range of thoughts as any other language? I find it very difficult to imagine how complex sentences involving conditions, nested clauses, etc. could be represented in this "telegraph" style while preserving their full meaning. However, I'm completely clueless about Chinese, so I guess I might be wrong.



> As a postscript, I might add that even modern Chinese can be read faster than any western language.


Does this hold for actual Chinese as spoken in practice, or to some style that is conventionally accepted as correct, but in fact artificially shortened?


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## univerio

JJchang said:


> Chinese is very space efficient.
> 
> 哪種話可用最少的字表達意見? 希望這討論會很有意思.
> Which language can express ideas in the least amount of words? I hope to enjoy a good discussion.
> 
> et voila.
> 
> The classical Chinese can shorten the length even further, but I don't want to embarrass myself in case someone else writes the classical Chinese better.



I'll embarrass myself, then.

问何语可述且乃最简也？望此颇具趣味。

That was not, by any means, perfect. I am just illustrating a point. It can even be further shortened with more complex words.


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## palomnik

Athaulf, to the best of my knowledge Classical Chinese was a spoken language at one time. Having said that, it is no doubt true that a certain style was cultivated, and that style had a marked preference for brevity.

But in general, a great deal of the concepts that European languages feel the need to externalize grmmatically are unexpressed in Chinese. for comparison's sake, one might compare the use of reflexive verbs in English vs. other European languages. English, in general, leaves the reflexive sense to be understood by the context. Chinese does something similar to this in many areas of grammar.

To render univerio's translation of our sample sentence:
哪種話可用最少的字表達意見? 希望這討論會很有意思.
Literally translated, this is: which (哪種) language (話) can (可) use (用) most (最) few (少的) words (字) express (表達)meaning (意見)? Hope (希望) this (這) discussion (討論) will (會) very (很) interesting (有意思).

His Classical translation is even briefer, but it is by no means obscure:
问何语可述且乃最简也？望此此具趣味。
Ask (问) which (何) language (语) can (可) express (述) and also (且乃) most (最) simple (简) [copulative] (也).  Hope (望) this (此) rather (此) have (具) interest (趣) [final particle].

Chinese _can _make grammatical relations more explicit when the need arises, usually by adding more phonemes to the sentence, and this is by necessity often done in Chinese textbooks for learning foreign languages.

As for Chinese being quicker to read, it is because most words consist of at most two symbols, unlike the alphabets of western languages or even the syllabaries of Southeast Asian languages, and not because of any stylistic shortening. If one argues that the symbols are more complicated than our alphabet, that is no doubt true, but I'm talking about a fully literate adult that has internalized several thousand characters.


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## Athaulf

palomnik said:


> Athaulf, to the best of my knowledge Classical Chinese was a spoken language at one time. Having said that, it is no doubt true that a certain style was cultivated, and that style had a marked preference for brevity.
> 
> But in general, a great deal of the concepts that European languages feel the need to externalize grmmatically are unexpressed in Chinese. for comparison's sake, one might compare the use of reflexive verbs in English vs. other European languages. English, in general, leaves the reflexive sense to be understood by the context. Chinese does something similar to this in many areas of grammar.
> 
> To render univerio's translation of our sample sentence:
> 哪種話可用最少的字表達意見? 希望這討論會很有意思.
> Literally translated, this is: which (哪種) language (話) can (可) use (用) most (最) few (少的) words (字) express (表達)meaning (意見)? Hope (希望) this (這) discussion (討論) will (會) very (很) interesting (有意思).
> 
> His Classical translation is even briefer, but it is by no means obscure:
> 问何语可述且乃最简也？望此此具趣味。
> Ask (问) which (何) language (语) can (可) express (述) and also (且乃) most (最) simple (简) [copulative] (也).  Hope (望) this (此) rather (此) have (具) interest (趣) [final particle].
> 
> Chinese _can _make grammatical relations more explicit when the need arises, usually by adding more phonemes to the sentence, and this is by necessity often done in Chinese textbooks for learning foreign languages.



Thanks for the detailed explanation. However, does the everyday spoken Chinese also operate with such implicit, context-dependent grammatical relations? Would a sentence similar to the one above look like that if spoken casually, or do people tend to add additional grammatical markers for clarity in colloquial language (which would be, I assume, considered as bad style in writing)?


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## Staarkali

Athaulf said:


> Thanks for the detailed explanation. However, does the everyday spoken Chinese also operate with such implicit, context-dependent grammatical relations? Would a sentence similar to the one above look like that if spoken casually, or do people tend to add additional grammatical markers for clarity in colloquial language (which would be, I assume, considered as bad style in writing)?


 
Everyday's Mandarin is very shortened, as every language, it goes for speed and efficiency. A manager briefing his team might not be as fast and speak much more clearly, sure you can find that in any language.

Now please note that Mandarin will express ideas faster than other languages, that is only true in everyday's life (which may represents most of the time for most of the people though). For scientific or legal texts, Mandarin can be much longer that usually, even longer than French or German that are naturally very accurate languages.


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## palomnik

I would say that univerio's translation into modern Chinese is the standard way that the subject would be said.

Classical Chinese was based on a language that had a more complicated phonetic system than modern Mandarin has.  Modern Mandarin has much less phonemes than earlier Chinese had (and less than most other modern dialects do, for that matter) so it can't have the same number of one-syllable words that classical Chinese had - too many homonyms - and as a result it has to be longer than the classical version.  Likewise, spoken classical Chinese is difficult to understand, since in reading classical Chinese aloud the characters are invariably given their modern pronunciation, although many educated Chinese can understand it.

It's worth noting that one of the commonest mistakes of foreigners learning Chinese is attempting to make their speech more complicated than it needs to be.


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## univerio

In my translation, I have altered the meaning slightly because otherwise, the translation would be very long. This is due to the fact that Indo-European languages are drastically different from Sino-Tibetan languages. If you want to translate accurately from one language to the other, it is almost guaranteed that one would be succinct and the other verbose. There are a lot of characters in Chinese, which can be words on their own, and when you combine them that makes even more words. Some words have such unique connotations that a long explanation in English is required. Therefore, it is very difficult to match words exactly in two different languages, which renders the translations very long. In conclusion, I believe that the best way is to translate it to a close native sentence (which, in turn, would shorten the length of the translation).


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## perfavore

linguist786 said:


> *English:* Which language can express ideas in the least amount of words? I hope to enjoy a good discussion.


 
Aling wika ang magpapahayag ng mga kaisipan sa pinakakaunting bilang ng mga salita? Umaasa akong masiyahan sa isang mabuting talakayan. (18 words)

Definitely not Pilipino/Tagalog. By the way for all of you that are not aware, we don't just have different dialects in the Philippines but totally different languages, spoken or written.


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## ams28

Definitely not Finnish!  The Finnish word for "eighty-seven" is "kahdeksankymmentäseitseman."


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## arielipi

Which language can express ideas in the least amount of words? I hope to enjoy a good discussion.

Hebrew(though sometimes hebrew is shorter and sometimes longer than english,most times its shorter): 
באיזו שפה אפשר להביע רעיונות בצורה מינימלית?אני מקווה ליהנות מדיון טוב.
(be)eyzo safa efshar lehabi'a ra'ayonot betzura minimalit? ani mekave lehenot mediyun tov.
Significantly shorter.

And personally, I think what matters is syllables


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## osemnais

toki pona if constructed languages count


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## Favara

_Quina llengua pot expressar idees amb menys paraules? Espere fruïm una bona discussió._
I can't say it in Catalan in less than 13 words... I doubt any Romance language will get under Latin's 12.


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## Jabir

Qual idioma pode expressar ideias com menos palavras? Espero ter uma boa discussão


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## tFighterPilot

arielipi said:


> Which language can express ideas in the least amount of words? I hope to enjoy a good discussion.
> 
> Hebrew(though sometimes hebrew is shorter and sometimes longer than english,most times its shorter):
> באיזו שפה אפשר להביע רעיונות בצורה מינימלית?אני מקווה ליהנות מדיון טוב.
> (be)eyzo safa efshar lehabi'a ra'ayonot betzura minimalit? ani mekave lehenot mediyun tov.
> Significantly shorter.
> 
> And personally, I think what matters is syllables


I take your sentence and decrease it by two. 10 words and, if I counted correctly, 31 syllables.
באיזו שפה ניתן להביע רעיונות במינימליות? מקווני להינות מדיון טוב.


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## apmoy70

Ancient Greek IMHO is one of the most compact languages historically. Modern Greek has lost this compactness, this briefness and conciseness, ancient Greek and Latin are notorious of (Greek has become more & more analytical over the years). 
PS: Spartans were notorious in the ancient world for their clear and precise expression in few words. During the naval battle of Cyzicus (410 BCE) a major event of the Peloponnesian War, the Lacedaemonian Vice Admiral, Hippocrates, after he and his men ran aground on a hostile area following the destruction of their ships by the Athenian fleet, and the death of the Spartan Admiral, Mindarus, sent this famous message back to Sparta:
«Ἔρρει τὰ κᾶλα. Μίνδαρος ἀπεσσύα. Πεινῶντι τὤνδρες. Ἀπορίομες τὶ χρὴ δρᾶν».
"Ships are gone. Mindarus is dead. Men are hungry. We puzzle over what tο do next".


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## LilianaB

Polysynthetic languages will the most compact languages, in my opinion, Native American languages will be among them. I don't have any words as examples at the moment, but I will look for some.


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## Rallino

Which language can express ideas in the least amount of words? I hope to enjoy a good discussion.


*Turkish:*

Düşünceler hangi dilde en az sözcükle anlatılabilir? İyi bir tartışma bekliyorum. _*11 words

*_
I could probably make it shorter, but this seems to be the most natural translation at the moment.


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## Jabir

apmoy70 said:


> Ancient Greek IMHO is one of the most compact languages historically. Modern Greek has lost this compactness, this briefness and conciseness, ancient Greek and Latin are notorious of (Greek has become more & more analytical over the years).
> PS: Spartans were notorious in the ancient world for their clear and precise expression in few words. During the naval battle of Cyzicus (410 BCE) a major event of the Peloponnesian War, the Lacedaemonian Vice Admiral, Hippocrates, after he and his men ran aground on a hostile area following the destruction of their ships by the Athenian fleet, and the death of the Spartan Admiral, Mindarus, sent this famous message back to Sparta:
> «Ἔρρει τὰ κᾶλα. Μίνδαρος ἀπεσσύα. Πεινῶντι τὤνδρες. Ἀπορίομες τὶ χρὴ δρᾶν».
> "Ships are gone. Mindarus is dead. Men are hungry. We puzzle over what tο do next".




We could translate this Hipócrates message as follows, in Brazilian Portuguese:
"Navios se foram. Mindarus morreu. Homens famintos. Fod...!"


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## tFighterPilot

Jabir said:


> We could translate this Hipócrates message as follows, in Brazilian Portuguese:
> "Navios se foram. Mindarus morreu. Homens famintos. Fod...!"


Fod?


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## Jabir

It is a swear word, I didn't want to write the rest.


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## hadronic

I personally think that Hebrew is a very wordy language, and have the impression to struggle to get to the end of a sentence. I'm talking here in terms of number of syllables of course.
Indeed, most of the words have at least 2 syllables, even the most frequent ones, (safe for a handful of morphemes like prepositions ב ל כ מ, and article ה, and the words based ill roots like ריק, חול...), compounded with the loss in the modern language of the synthetical structure of the old language for more analytical constructs (quasi-loss of possesive, loss of present tense replaced by beinoni)
Example :
- I (fem.) say that my dog likes this film : 8 syllables 
- Ani omeret she ha-kelev-sheli ohev et-ha-seret-ha-ze : 19 syllables 
A more Semitic language would have yielded something more like this (warning : hypothetical !!) :
- Omar she kalbi yohav seret ze : 10 syllables.

Other example : I love you (3)- Ani ohevet otkha (6) - French: je t'aime ( 2, pronounced as 1 ).

The difference between English and Hebrew is that in English, words tend to get longer the more technical the discussion becomes, whereas Hebrew, by nature, would stick to its 2-3 syllable words. In the end, technical discussions in Hebrew can end up shorter than English. But everyday sentences will not, and very far from it.


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## tFighterPilot

hadronic said:


> I personally think that Hebrew is a very wordy language, and have the impression to struggle to get to the end of a sentence. I'm talking here in terms of number of syllables of course.
> Indeed, most of the words have at least 2 syllables, even the most frequent ones, (safe for a handful of morphemes like prepositions ב ל כ מ, and article ה, and the words based ill roots like ריק, חול...), compounded with the loss in the modern language of the synthetical structure of the old language for more analytical constructs (quasi-loss of possesive, loss of present tense replaced by beinoni)
> Example :
> - I (fem.) say that my dog likes this film : 8 syllables
> - Ani omeret she ha-kelev-sheli ohev et-ha-seret-ha-ze : 19 syllables
> A more Semitic language would have yielded something more like this (warning : hypothetical !!) :
> - Omar she kalbi yohav seret ze : 10 syllables.
> 
> Other example : I love you (3)- Ani ohevet otkha (6) - French: je t'aime ( 2, pronounced as 1 ).
> 
> The difference between English and Hebrew is that in English, words tend to get longer the more technical the discussion becomes, whereas Hebrew, by nature, would stick to its 2-3 syllable words. In the end, technical discussions in Hebrew can end up shorter than English. But everyday sentences will not, and very far from it.


Hebrew has much less letters per syllable than English. That, of course, is also true to Arabic. Though at times Hebrew can actually have less syllables per word. For example: "I will love her" - "Ohava". Of course that is not something you'd normally say, but it contains all of the needed information.


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## hadronic

Hebrew *looks* compact because of its written convention, but it's not in terms of actual number of sounds uttered.
Your example "ohavah" is exactly what I am saying : this is the "old-fashioned" Hebrew, very synthetic. I'm not saying you cannot say that now, but nowadays preference goes to the more analytical "(Ani) ohav otah".


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## tFighterPilot

hadronic said:


> Hebrew *looks* compact because of its written convention, but it's not in terms of actual number of sounds uttered.
> Your example "ohavah" is exactly what I am saying : this is the "old-fashioned" Hebrew, very synthetic. I'm not saying you cannot say that now, but nowadays preference goes to the more analytical "(Ani) ohav otah".


Well, if we're talking about modern pronunciation, then syllables tend to be dropped in common speech. "Ani ohev otakh" can turn into something like "nievtakh".


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## hadronic

I would have guessed so... I'm sometimes fancying about the state of Hebrew 200 years from now, when all the unstressed vowels would have reduced or disappeared, new palatalizations come into effect, new consonantal clusters formed and maybe simplified again ... Kind of the same path taken by French off of Latin.


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## ancalimon

Rallino said:


> Which language can express ideas in the least amount of words? I hope to enjoy a good discussion.
> 
> 
> *Turkish:*
> 
> Düşünceler hangi dilde en az sözcükle anlatılabilir? İyi bir tartışma bekliyorum. _*11 words
> 
> *_
> I could probably make it shorter, but this seems to be the most natural translation at the moment.



Which language can express ideas in the least amount of words?

Hangi dilin anlatımı en sadedir? 

I could translate this as: Which language's "manner of telling" has the least unnecessary words.


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## terredepomme

It depends on what languages these ideas belong to. A brief sentence written in one language can be wordy in another, and vice versa. Ideas are not identical throughout languages. Sometimes it takes a much longer sentence in Korean to translate its English "equivalent," but sometimes I have to use many more English words to explain what can be said so simply in Korean. Just look at our sample sentence. "language" "idea" "word" "discussion These are very typical concepts to European languages. Korean/Japanese/Chinese use bisyllabic calques to translate these concepts, so it can be wordier then writing something that is typical to the Korean/Japanese/Chinese mind. For example, any attempt to write this sentence in classical Chinese would be vain. First of all, what is a "language?" Is it 語? 話? 文? There is no sinngle word in classical Chinese that can be used to explain this term. And what is a "word?" 字? Since classical Chinese do not have "words" but only "letters," an ancient Chinese would not understand this concept.


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## arielipi

I agree with tfighterpilot with all that he said, and think that we should give a song/paragraph to translate, thatll show uis where we have shorter and longer sentences.
Suggest - let me live by queen.


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## LilianaB

I agree with Terredepomme. I think it really depends what ideas are being expresses and to which language or language group these ideas belong. I mentioned before polysynthetic languages, such as Native American languages. I though that these language would express certain ideas in the most concise way. This is true about certain notions, whereas I think it would be quite the opposite in relation to other notions.n shoe _A white woman wearing green shoes_ would be one word most likely in many Native American languages, whereas to express some very complex ideas from the field of linguistics, literature or science may take many more words than it would in the language the ideas are embeded in. I don't even know how you would express such ideas in the languages where certain concepts are quite foreign or are not ordinarily dealt with.


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## P|O

Hello!


osemnais said:


> toki pona if constructed languages count


No, Toki Pona texts can't be short. Toki Pona is compact in terms of the vocabulary volume and the number of described grammatical features; but the compactness of texts is not the strength of Toki Pona. For example, the Toki Pona expression for eighty-seven will be much longer than the Finnish one; and many notions that are one word in many natural languages, in Toki Pona have to be two-words or more. The main idea of Toki Pona is, on the contrary, to think less quickly (with expressing oneself less quickly) and to feel more carefully.

Ithkuil is much more efficient, that is, _it transmits much more information per second of articulation through the sonic channel_ (  ), than Toki Pona and than natural languages; on the other hand, Ithkuil may require a speaker to express thoughts that speaker would like not to say.

P|O


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## Istriano

English is pretty compact. 50 % of words (and most common words) are monosyllabic.
That's why it's suitable for singing. You can tell a long story in a 3 minute song.
And contractions ('ll, 's) make it even more compact. 
Furthermore, British English is prone to the deletion of schwa, so many words lose a syllable in the spoken form (library -> libry).

German words are so difficult to memorize, because they're so long: for example, compare *cast *(one syllable) with *Besetzung *(three syllables).
When the rate of speech is measured not only the number of words in a minute is taken into consideration, but also the numbers of syllables (which is even more important).


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## tFighterPilot

Istriano said:


> English is pretty compact. 50 % of words (and most common words) are monosyllabic.
> That's why it's suitable for singing. You can tell a long story in a 3 minute song.
> And contractions ('ll, 's) make it even more compact.
> Furthermore, British English is prone to the deletion of schwa, so many words lose a syllable in the spoken form (library -> libry).
> 
> German words are so difficult to memorize, because they're so long: for example, compare *cast *(one syllable) with *Besetzung *(three syllables).
> When the rate of speech is measured not only the number of words in a minute is taken into consideration, but also the numbers of syllables (which is even more important).


But what about the the time it takes to pronounce each syllable? English has a lot of diphthongs and long monophthongs unlike languages like Japanese and Hebrew which might have a lot of syllables in each word, but most of them are simple and short.


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## terredepomme

> English is pretty compact. 50 % of words (and most common words) are monosyllabic. That's why it's suitable for singing. You can tell a long story in a 3 minute song. And contractions ('ll, 's) make it even more compact. Furthermore, British English is prone to the deletion of schwa, so many words lose a syllable in the spoken form (library -> libry).


 Every language is suitable for singing, as every culture has its musical tradition with its own language. Syllables are not a good measure of a "compactness" of language of course, since there are long and short vowels as tFighter has pointed out, and also the question of continuous consonants. For example : Strike= one syllable, sutorayiku(Japanese) = 5 syllables, and these two words are pronounced at roughly the same speed.  Contractions are of course much more present in other languages than English: The fact that it is non-pro-drop unlike Romance languages, or the relative lack of preposition+article contractions (such as German in+dem=im, in+das=ins). And of course, it is a subject-based language where all sentences have to be grammatically complete, unlike theme-based languages like Japanese or Korean when even subjects or objects can be omitted if the context is right.


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## mataripis

All languages can be expressed in short or fewer words by the native speakers. 1.) which language can express ideas in the least amount of words?= Aling wika ang may siksik na salita?


----------



## 涼宮

Let's compare some languages by seeing the translations  of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 1). Legal texts  are the best to test those things as there are no free variations  possible.

*Afro-Asiatic languages:*

*Berber*
*Kabyle (Ṯaqḇayliṯ)*

Imdanen, akken ma llan ttlalen d ilelliyen msawan di lhwerma d yizerfan-  ghur sen tamsakwit d lâquel u yessefk ad-tili tegmatt gar asen.

*Arabic - Modern Standard*

يولد جميع الناس أحراراً متساوين في الكرامة والحقوق. وقد وهبوا عقلاً وضميراً وعليهم ان يعامل بعضهم بعضاً بروح اﻹخاء.

*Hebrew* 

כל בני האדם נולדו בני חורין ושווים בערכם ובזכויותיהם. כולם חוננו בתבונה ובמצפון, לפיכך חובה עליהם לנהוג איש ברעהו ברוח של אחווה.

*Germanic languages:*

*English*

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are  endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another  in a spirit of brotherhood. 

*Dutch*

Alle mensen worden vrij en gelijk in waardigheid en rechten geboren. Zij  zijn begiftigd met verstand en geweten, en behoren zich jegens elkander  in een geest van broederschap te gedragen.

*Afrikaans:*

Alle menslike wesens word vry, met gelyke waardigheid en regte, gebore.  Hulle het rede en gewete en behoort in die gees van broederskap teenoor  mekaar op te tree.
*
Norwegian (Nynorsk)*

Alle menneske er fødde til fridom og med same menneskeverd og  menneskerettar. Dei har fått fornuft og samvit og skal leve med  kvarandre som brør.

*German*

Alle Menschen sind frei und gleich an Würde und Rechten geboren. Sie  sind mit Vernunft und Gewissen begabt und sollen einander im Geist der  Brüderlichkeit begegnen.

*Hoorning dialect (fräisch) (A dialect of Frisian)
*
Ale mänschne sän fri, glikweerti än  mä däseelwie rochte tolaid. Jä hääwe ferstand än gewääten mäfüngen än  schouln enår as bråre ounjintree'e.

*Languages of North America:*

*Mi'kmaq*

Msit mimajulnu'k weskwijinu'ltijik alsumsultijik aqq newte' tett wkpimte'tmut aqq koqwajo'taqnn wejkul'aqmititl.

*Oto-Manguean family:

Chinanteco*

Lej†̎ ni sou tsa lisia ijaa sia ikou' ne kojo jï ne juso ne jmo' re ju i s†̍' jmo' nö sala ne sasno.

*Chinanteco, Ajitlán
*
La juu dsa lu siä –Dsa kö ñi ba dsa, nía kö ni' ba na lu' dsa e dsa tï é li jnia' roö'.

*Zapotec, Miahuatlán*

Diti mien ndied xa yent kuan nkie xa nak rieti xa diba xa rola. 

*Uto-Aztecan*

*Nahuatl (nāhuatl/nawatlahtolli)*

Nochi  tlakamej uan siuamej kipiaj manoj kuali tlakatisej, nochi san se  totlatechpouiltilis uan titlatepanitalojkej, yeka moneki kuali ma  timouikakaj, ma timoiknelikaj, ma timotlasojtlakaj uan ma  timotlepanitakaj

*Languages of South America:* (Some of them are long)

*Language family: Arawakan*

*Amuesha-Yanesha*

Allohueney  ñeñtey arromñatey att̃o ye'ñalletyesa arr patsro e'ñe att̃ecma cohuen  yesherb̃a'yen. Ñam̃a yechyen allpon derechos att̃och e'ñech  cohueno'tsa'yeney arr patsro. Ñam̃a allohuen att̃ecma yechyen alloch  yoct̃ape' chyen cohuen ñam̃a yeñotyen yeyoc̃hro ñeñt̃e'ne pocte' enten  acheñenesha' ñam̃a ñeñt̃ama pocteye' enteneto. Yeñoteñ añ poctetsa e'ñe  yemo'nasheñ yep̃annena ama't ora allohuen allpon acheñenesha' ñeñt̃añe  patsro'tsa'yeney.

*Campa pajonalino*

Yudabu dasibi jabiaskadi akin, xinantidubuki. Javen taea jau jaibunamenunbunven.

*Wayuu*

Naa  wayuukana jemeishi süpüla taashi süma wanawa sülu'u nakua'ipa, aka müin  yaa epijainjana sünain anajiranawaa a'in nama napüshi.

*Language family: Panoan*

*Cashinahua*

 Yudabu dasibi jabiaskadi akin, xinantidubuki. Javen taea jau jaibunamenunbunven.

*Altaic languages:

Mongolic*

*Mongolian (Монгол) - Cyrillic alphabet*

 Хүн бүр төрж мэндлэхдээ эрх чөлөөтэй, адилхан нэр төртэй, ижил эрхтэй  байдаг. Оюун ухаан нандин чанар заяасан хүн гэгч өөр хоорондоо ахан  дүүгийн үзэл санаагаар харьцах учиртай.

*Mongolian - Traditional alphabet*

 ᠬᠦᠮᠦᠨ ᠪᠦᠷ ᠲᠥᠷᠥᠵᠦ ᠮᠡᠨᠳᠡᠯᠡᠬᠦ ᠡᠷᠬᠡ ᠴᠢᠯᠥᠭᠡ ᠲᠡᠢ᠂ ᠠᠳᠠᠯᠢᠬᠠᠨ ᠨᠡᠷ᠎ᠡ ᠲᠥᠷᠥ ᠲᠡᠢ᠂  ᠢᠵᠢᠯ ᠡᠷᠬᠡ ᠲᠡᠢ ᠪᠠᠢᠠᠭ᠃ ᠣᠶᠤᠨ ᠤᠬᠠᠭᠠᠨ᠂ ᠨᠠᠨᠳᠢᠨ ᠴᠢᠨᠠᠷ ᠵᠠᠶᠠᠭᠠᠰᠠᠨ ᠬᠦᠮᠦᠨ ᠬᠡᠭᠴᠢ  ᠥᠭᠡᠷ᠎ᠡ ᠬᠣᠭᠣᠷᠣᠨᠳᠣ᠎ᠨ ᠠᠬᠠᠨ ᠳᠡᠭᠦᠦ ᠢᠨ ᠦᠵᠢᠯ ᠰᠠᠨᠠᠭᠠ ᠥᠠᠷ ᠬᠠᠷᠢᠴᠠᠬᠥ ᠤᠴᠢᠷ ᠲᠠᠢ᠃

*Shor (Шор тили)*

 Парчын кижи, по чарыққа туғчадып, тең, пош туғча. Кижилер сағыштығ,  ақтығ туғчалар, кижилерге пашқа кижилербе арғыштаныштарға керек.
*
Turkish (Türkçe)*

 Bütün insanlar hür, haysiyet ve haklar bakımından eşit doğarlar. Akıl ve  vicdana sahiptirler ve birbirlerine karşı kardeşlik zihniyeti ile  hareket etmelidirler.

*Indo-European:*

*Lithuanian (Lietuvos)*

 Visi žmonės gimsta laisvi ir lygūs savo orumu ir teisėmis. Jiems  suteiktas protas ir sąžinė ir jie turi elgtis vienas kito atžvilgiu kaip  broliai.

*Greek (Ελληνικά)*

 'Ολοι οι άνθρωποι γεννιούνται ελεύθεροι και ίσοι στην αξιοπρέπεια και τα  δικαιώματα. Είναι προικισμένοι με λογική και συνείδηση, και οφείλουν να  συμπεριφέρονται μεταξύ τους με πνεύμα αδελφοσύνης.


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## 涼宮

*Albanian - Tosk (Shqip)*

  Të gjithë njerëzit lindin të lirë dhe të barabartë në dinjitet dhe në të  drejta. Ata kanë arsye dhe ndërgjegje dhe duhet të sillen ndaj njëri  tjetrit me frymë vëllazërimi.

*Welsh (Cymraeg)*

  Genir pawb yn rhydd ac yn gydradd â'i gilydd mewn urddas a hawliau. Fe'u  cynysgaeddir â rheswm a chydwybod, a dylai pawb ymddwyn y naill at y  llall mewn ysbryd cymodlon.

*Breton (Brezhoneg)*

  Dieub ha par en o dellezegezh hag o gwirioù eo ganet an holl dud. Poell  ha skiant zo dezho ha dleout a reont bevañ an eil gant egile en ur  spered a genvreudeuriezh.

*Gujarati (ગુજરાતી)*

  પ્રતિષ્ઠા અને અધિકારોની દૃષ્ટિએ સર્વ માનવો જન્મથી સવતંત્ર અને સમાન હોય છે.
   તેમનામાં વિચારશકતિ અને અંતઃકરણ હોય છે અને તેમણે પરસ્પર બંધુત્વની ભાવનાથી વર્તવું જોઇએ.

*Hindi (हिन्दी)*

  सभी मनुष्यों को गौरव और अधिकारों के मामले में जन्मजात स्वतन्त्रता और  समानता प्राप्त है। उन्हें बुद्धि और अन्तरात्मा की देन प्राप्त है और  परस्पर उन्हें भाईचारे के भाव से बर्ताव करना चाहिए।

*Oriya (ଓଡ଼ିଆ)*

  ସବୁ ମନୁଷ୍ୟ ଜନ୍ମୁକାଳରୁ ସ୍ଵଧୀନ, ଷେମାନଙ୍କର ମର୍ସ୍ୟାଡା ଓ ଅଧିକାର ସମାନ,  ସେମାନଙଠାରେ ପ୍ରବଁ ଓ ବିବେକ ନିହ ଟଛି, ସେମାନେ ପରସ୍ପର ପବ ବ୍ରାଦହବ ପୋଷଷ କରି  ଠାର୍ପ୍ୟ ଜକିରା ଡରକାର.

*Sanskrit (संस्कृतम्)*

  सर्वे मानवाः स्वतन्त्राः समुत्पन्नाः वर्तन्ते अपि च, गौरवदृशा अधिकारदृशा  च समानाः एव वर्तन्ते। एते सर्वे चेतना-तर्क-शक्तिभ्यां सुसम्पन्नाः  सन्ति। अपि च, सर्वेऽपि बन्धुत्व-भावनया परस्परं व्यवहरन्तु।

*Latin (latine)*

  Omnes homines dignitate et iure liberi et pares nascuntur, rationis et  conscientiae participes sunt, quibus inter se concordiae studio est  agendum.

*Spanish (español)*

  Todos los seres humanos nacen libres e iguales en dignidad y derechos y,  dotados como están de razón y conciencia, deben comportarse  fraternalmente los unos con los otros
*
Catalan (català)*

  Tots els éssers humans neixen lliures i iguals en dignitat i en drets.  Són dotats de raó i de consciència, i han de comportar-se fraternalment  els uns amb els altres

*Corsican (corsu)*

  Nascinu tutti l'omi libari è pari di dignità è di diritti. Pussedinu a  raghjoni è a cuscenza è li tocca ad agiscia trà elli di modu fraternu.
*
Russian (Русский)*

  Все люди рождаются свободными и равными в своем достоинстве и правах.  Они наделены разумом и совестью и должны поступать в отношении друг  друга в духе братства

*Ukrainian (Українська)*

  Всі люди народжуються вільними і рівними у своїй гідності та правах.  Вони наділені розумом і совістю і повинні діяти у відношенні один до  одного в дусі братерства.

*Czech (čeština)*

  Všichni lidé se rodí svobodní a sobě rovní co do důstojnosti a práv.  Jsou nadáni rozumem a svědomím a mají spolu jednat v duchu bratrství.


*Niger-Congo family:*

*Makonde*

  Vanu vohevohe vaidile n'chilambo valendene. Vanijaliwa ulimala vene. Pavele vanu pave na ulongo

*Lingala*

  Bato nyonso na mbotama bazali nzomi pe bakokani na limemya pe makoki.  Bazali na mayele pe base, geli kofanda na bondeko okati na bango.

*Swahili (kiSwahili)*

  Watu wote wamezaliwa huru, hadhi na haki zao ni sawa. Wote wamejaliwa akili na dhamiri, hivyo yapasa watendeane kindugu.

*Baatonum*

  Ba tɔmbu kpuro marawa ba tii mɔ, ba nɛ, girima ka saria sɔɔ. Ba ra  bwisiku, ba dasabu mɔ, ma n weene ba n waasinɛ mɛrobisiru sɔɔ.

*Sino-Tibetan family:*

*Mandarin Chinese (Simplified characters - 简体中文)*

  人人生而自由,在尊严和权利上一律平等。他们赋有理性和良心,并应以兄弟关系的精神互相对待。

*Cantonese (廣東話)*

  人人生出嚟就係自由嘅，喺尊嚴同權利上一律平等。佢哋具有理性同良心，而且應該用兄弟間嘅關係嚟互相對待。

*Tibetan (བོད་སྐད་)*

  སྐྱེ་བོ་རེ་རེར་གསལ་བསྒྲགས་འདི་ནང་བཀོད་པའི་ཐོབ་ཐང་དང་རང་དབང་སྟེ།  མི་རིགས་དང། ཥ་མདོག། ཕོ་མོ། སྐད་ཡིག། ཆོས་ལུགས། སྲིད་དོན་བཅས་སམ།  འདོད་ཚུལ་གཞན་དག་དང་། རྒྱལ་ཁབ་དང་སྤྱི་ཚོགས་ཀྱི་འབྱུང་ཁུངས་། མཁར་དབང་།  རིགས་རྒྱུད།  དེ་མིན་གནས་ཚུལ་འདི་རིགས་གང་ཡང་རུང་བར་དབྱེ་འབྱེད་མེད་པའི་ཐོབ་དབང་ཡོད།།

*Dzongkha / Bhutanese (རྫོང་ཁ)*

  འགྲོ་བ་མི་རིགས་ག་ར་དབང་ཆ་འདྲ་མཏམ་འབད་སྒྱེཝ་ལས་ག་ར་ གིས་གཅིག་གིས་གཅིག་ལུ་སྤུན་ཆའི་དམ་ཚིག་བསྟན་དགོ།

*Yi (ꆈꌠ - Nuosu)*

  ꊿꂷꃅꃧꐨꐥ, ꌅꅍꀂꏽꐯꒈꃅꐥꌐ. ꊿꊇꉪꍆꌋꆀꁨꉌꑌꐥ, ꄷꀋꁨꂛꊨꅫꃀꃅꐥꄡꑟ. 


*Isolated languages:*

*Japanese (日本語)*

  すべての人間は、生まれながらにして自由であり、かつ、尊厳と権利とについて平等である。人間は、理性と良心を授けられてあり、互いに同胞の精神をもって行動しなければならない。
*
Korean (한국어)*

  모든 인간은 태어날 때부터 자유로우며 그 존엄과 권리에 있어 동등하다. 인간은 천부적으로 이성과 양심을 부여받았으며 서로 형제애의 정신으로 행동하여야 한다.

*Urarina*

  Ita rijiicha itolere cacha. Aihana jaun, ita belaain, naojoain neuruhine laurilaurichuru nenacaauru aina itolere cachaauru.

*Constructed languages:*

*Esperanto*

  Ĉiuj homoj estas denaske liberaj kaj egalaj laŭ digno kaj rajtoj. Ili  posedas racion kaj konsciencon, kaj devus konduti unu la alian en  spirito de frateco.

*Volapük*

  Valik menas labons leig e lib in dinits e dets. Givons lisäls e konsiens e mutons dunön okes in flenüg tikäl.


 I chose the ones that seemed the shortest and some others sort of  long to compare. So far, I give my vote to the languages of North  America.


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## LilianaB

I am sorry, Suzumiya, but even these great examples cannot serve as a proof which language is the most compact: it all depends on the phrases you use and ideas you want to express. I have noticed that the Lithuanian version and the Russian one use not that many words to express this particular idea. Usually these languages use a lot of words to express some other notions. There are no participles there, as I have noticed. Also the sentence is in the present tense: this may make a difference. How many words you have to choose to express a certain concept in a particular language may depend on the concept itself. To be more clear, how many words it will take to express something in a particular language may depend to a certain degree on what one wants to express.


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## 涼宮

Of course, that is obvious. But it's impossible to know what the most compact language is precisely because of what you said - it depends on the sentence-; nevertheless, we can have a little guide of which *usually* the shortest are


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## OneStroke

Both the Standard Chinese and Cantonese can be a little more concise. I think the other languages could be as well.

人人生而自由,在尊严和权利上一律平等。他们赋有理性和良心,并应以兄弟关系的精神互相对待。
Renren sheng'er ziyou, zai zunyan he quanli shang yilü pingdeng. Tamen fuyou lixing he liangxin, bing ying yi xiongdi guanxi de jingshen huxiang duidai. (26)

I think the sentence would be fine without the 一律 (yilü) as the 人人 already indicates that it is the same for every person.

  人人生出嚟就係自由嘅，喺尊嚴同權利上一律平等。佢哋具有理性同良心，而且應該用兄弟間嘅關係嚟互相對待。 (31)

The 一律 and the second 嚟 are not necessary.

Legalese, in my opinion, can be wordier than 'artificial concision'.


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## AquisM

One can always argue that one can speak Standard Written Chinese in Cantonese to make it shorter.  Of course that defeats the purpose.


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## Ilmen

Yes indeed, we simply can't tell which language is usually more or less compact than another by comparing the space (or time in the case of oral speech) taken by only one sentence translated in each target languages; for this purpose, we should compare the different translations of a whole text in order to have a more precise comparison, since the relative compactness of a sample sentence can greatly vary depending on its topic or on other speech parameters such as politeness and style.

And yes, I totally agree with Suzumiya, for such comparisons the best type of text is legal text, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (whereof you can find translations in 384 different languages by clicking *->here<-*), because tranlsators have much less liberty in translating legal text than with novels, journalistic texts or any other type of text, since even a slight semantic change in a legal text can entail serious implications. 

Besides, the compactness of a language doesn't depend on its relative amount of words, because there is languages, such as Latin, which have a fairly low amount of words compared with the text lenght, but its words are pretty long, because they include grammatical cases. 

As for the most compact language, I don't know which one it could be, but Chinese and Lojban seems to be quite good candidates.
I already made some comparison based on the preable of the UDHR (Universal Declaration of Human Rights) in 16 different languages (which don't include Chinese), and I've found that the two Norwegian was seemingly very compact, with 1652 (Norwegian Nynorsk) and 1768 (Norwegian Bokmål) characters, when Esperanto was 1889, English was 1992 and Spanish and French was both around 2200 characters long. The less compact among my 16 samples was Greek, with 2299 characters. 

We should try to make a comparison with more different languages and applying to the whole UDHR, in order to get a better overview on this matter.


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## terredepomme

> but its words are pretty long, because they include grammatical cases.


 I don't think noun cases in Latin make the nouns significantly longer. It's normally three letters at the longest. Some words even get shorter(Christus->Christi)


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## terredepomme

> «Ἔρρει τὰ κᾶλα. Μίνδαρος ἀπεσσύα. Πεινῶντι τὤνδρες. Ἀπορίομες τὶ χρὴ δρᾶν». "Ships are gone. Mindarus is dead. Men are hungry. We puzzle over what tο do next".


 Isn't that more like being brief rather than being compact? Or more like "laconic" if you know what I mean.


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## terredepomme

I might add that East Asian languages(Korean-Chinese-Japanese and maybe Vietnamese) are highly contextual. This means that most sentences in everyday life do not have to contain every single grammatical information as long as the context is clear. For example a Korean or Japanese would seldom say "I'm going to school" literally. "school going" or "school go" would suffice in most cases. When I'm speaking European languages it's like doing math: almost every element of the sentences has to be present even in the most informal occasions. Obviously when it comes to legal statements like this, such latitudes are less permitted. These languages could be seen as "compact" in this regard.


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## 涼宮

Yes, that is very cool about Chinese, Korean and Japanese, but, it's a double-edged sword. When you learn a language like those 3, you have to get used to thinking in a ''freer'' way, you have to be simpler, learn to ''feel'' the context. On the other hand, when your mother tongue is one of those 3 and you have to learn a Germanic, Romance or Slavic language your way of thinking changes drastically. I guess that you, as a Korean speaker, had a tough time learning Spanish or many other languages, you can't be so brief and leave everything to context as Korean and Japanese do.  I sometimes find that is easier to express myself in a language like Japanese than Spanish or English, I love the way that the Korean/Japanese languages are, so 'free'.



terredepomme said:


> I might add that East Asian languages(Korean-Chinese-Japanese and maybe Vietnamese) are highly contextual. This means that most sentences in everyday life do not have to contain every single grammatical information as long as the context is clear. For example a Korean or Japanese would seldom say "I'm going to school" literally. "school going" or "school go" would suffice in most cases. When I'm speaking European languages it's like doing math: almost every element of the sentences has to be present even in the most informal occasions. Obviously when it comes to legal statements like this, such latitudes are less permitted. These languages could be seen as "compact" in this regard.


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## terredepomme

> On the other hand, when your mother tongue is one of those 3 and you have to learn a Germanic, Romance or Slavic language your way of thinking changes drastically. I guess that you, as a Korean speaker, had a tough time learning Spanish or many other languages, you can't be so brief and leave everything to context as Korean and Japanese do.


 That actually made things a bit easier. It's like everyone's being kind to me and talking out of a grammar book so that I can understand them better. In Korea no one talks like what a foreigner would learn in a textbook.


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## OneStroke

Another problem with Chinese (I don't know about Korean/Japanese) is that what constitutes a word may also be a problem. For example, I remember terredepomme once romanised 進退兩難 as 'jintui liangnan'. However, the dictionary uses 'jin tui liang nan' (since they're all separate words in classical and that's where the chengyus come from), and I've also seen 'juntui-liangnan' with the hyphen. Does that count as a word, two words or four?


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## terredepomme

> Does that count as a word, two words or four?


 成語 is generally considered as a single word since it is generally syntactically non-seperatable. But then again a "word" is a concept primarily for European languages and does not always comply well with East Asian languages.


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## OneStroke

I see. What about words like 的, 地, 得? Are they inflectional suffixes or are separate 虛詞s?


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## terredepomme

Like I said a "word" is not always a concrete concept especially when it comes to East Asian languages. Some linguists who see words as entities with their own grammatical functions might treat 的, の, 의 as words. Other linguists who view it as the smallest phonetical components that can stand alone would not agree.  My guess is that a concept of a "word" would have to be, technically speaking, unique to each language. The definition of "word" as used in English might not be so useful when analysing Chinese.


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## Ironicus

The question of which is the most compact language is related to the following:
1. What is the best length for a piece of string?
2. How much food is enough, and how much is too much?
3. How many pieces make a jigsaw puzzle?

It's obvious that it takes longer to say most things in German than in English, and English takes longer in general than Chinese.

We can only attempt an answer when we start from first principles. We should agree: 
1. a sentence is a sequence of ideas whose relationships are shown by tokens within the sentence, or by their positions relative to each other, or by some combination;
2. the tokens expressing these ideas are shown by phoneme sequences;
3. for practical purposes, the shortest comprehensible phoneme group is the syllable.
So then we can conclude that a sequence of ideas, each represented by a single syllable, all of whose relationships in a given sentence are determined by the relative positions of these idea-syllables, is the shortest possible utterance.

From this we can conclude:
1. a language consisting only of very short utterances is short of ideas
2. - and unable to show complex relationships among them.

Such a language will not be fun to hear or speak; it will be intellectually unsatisfying; and although it will be no harder to learn than a very simple sign language, it will hardly seem worth learning.

So let's ask ourselves instead: What language do you think is the most beautiful to listen to? Which one is the most satisfying to speak?
There will surely be at least as many answers as there are languages.


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## LilianaB

Ironicus said:


> The question of which is the most compact language is related to the following:
> 
> 
> So then we can conclude that a sequence of ideas, each represented by a single syllable, all of whose relationships in a given sentence are determined by the relative positions of these idea-syllables, is the shortest possible utterance.
> 
> From this we can conclude:
> 1. a language consisting only of very short utterances is short of ideas
> 2. - and unable to show complex relationships among them.
> 
> Such a language will not be fun to hear or speak; it will be intellectually unsatisfying; and although it will be no harder to learn than a very simple sign language, it will hardly seem worth learning.



Hi, I absolutely do not agree with you on this point. That a language is compact does not mean it is not complex, beautiful or complex ideas cannot be expressed through it.  Even English is more compact than some languages and yet very complex ideas can be expressed in English, and it is also beautiful to many people. One of my favorite languages is quite compact -- Swedish to be more precise, and it is very beautiful, to me at least and to many other people, I am sure. Lithuanian on the other hand is a beautiful language, not compact at all, and try expressing any more complex ideas in it and you will get lost in the ancient sounding beautiful, otherwise, words and all the declensions and conjunctions. 

I am not trying to say that complex ideas cannot be expressed in grammatically complicated languages, please don't take me wrong. I just think it takes much more out of you, and you may even get lost as to what you originally intended to say. Maybe if you learned those complex ideas in this language, it might be easier.


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## ({[|]})

I guess that the question, what language is the most compact, is a fallacy, at least now.

I'll try to elaborate. 

The  question is about quantities, that is, if we want to find the most  compact language among a number of known languages, then we need to have  a common scale, a vertical line, so to say, where we could place every  possible language, the higher the more compact the language is. It seems  to me, that the only meaningful way to get such a line is to find a  method to assign a number to any language, so as to if one language is  more compact than the other, then its number will be greater. But how to  proceed?

The task seems unimaginable at first, but I guess that if only such way exists, then the number should:

a) be calculated on the base of the features that are pertinent to the  given language, not some  deliberately chosen texts. As the language is a method to express ideas  in  sound [or, maybe, using other means, for example, signs or pictures],  that is, to build meaningful sentences, then, I think, the  features that really belong to the language are its grammar and  vocabulary, that is, the tools for building sentences;

b) reflect  the ratio of the number of simple and important ideas that get  expressed in a phrase, when a specific tool is used, to the length of  the phrase that gets built. The length of a phrase may be calculated in  different ways, of course (time to pronounce, or else the number of  physical elements in the phrase);

c) take a note that some tools  of the language are used frequently, and other tools are used rarely.  Probably here we would in fact need to explore language corpora in order  to know, when and how often a specific tool is used ;-) .

Almost everything of that seems to make rather severe problems.  It is especially hard to understand, what is "a simple and important  idea". Probably this notion should reflect some really existing feature  of our brain, but I'm not sure that scientists now know what feature is  of interest here. Otherwise, we may get a lot of approximative or even  subjective measures, and every other measure is different. Or not to get any measures at all.

So, it looks like asking the title question is a fallacy today. This doesn't really lead anywhere.

Still, my question is, to the learned folks here (  ):
is there really a scientific way to calculate the compactness of languages? I'd be grateful to anyone who answers. 

We of course know that Ithkuil is compact and Toki Pona is not. But how to calculate...



Ironicus said:


> and although it will be no harder to learn than a very simple sign language


 I'm sorry! I always thought, sign languages are just as complex as spoken ones. In fact, I think so now too...


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## Ironicus

Sign languages can of course be as complex as you like. I said 'a simple sign language' - of the kind used by traffic cops, for example!
Who defines a simple and important idea? One of the problems of translation is that an idea that appears blatantly obvious in one language might be entirely absent from another, because the concept is not needed by those speakers. This is true of every language. English had no words for many religious, legal and political concepts, so had to import them from Norman French. Today we use the word 'democracy' to mean - what? Nobody knows exactly, but we use the word as though everyone agrees on its content, and simply transcribe it into other languages rather than translate the underlying idea. 
But let's say we can find common ideas in two languages. Then in which are those ideas likely to be expressed more compactly?
First, it depends on the phoneme set. It's obvious that if you work to base 60 and have a separate symbol for each digit from 0-59, you can express any number up to 3599 in just 2 digits. So base-60 notation is objectively more compact than base-10 notation and a lot more compact than binary. This idea extends to the phonemes of a language. If your language has only 11 phonemes, you are only going to produce at most 121 combinations of any 2. If you have 70 phonemes, you can have 4900 combinations of any two. So in the first case, you are limited to 121 2-phoneme ideas, and in the second to 4900. 
Second, the way words are formed determines how ideas are wrapped up. For example in Swahili the root -ja means 'come', but you will never hear it in isolation. It has to be modified by markers for person and tense and other things. In Spanish the syllable roj- carries the idea of red, but this is never heard alone: it has to have gender and number endings added to it. In English we can make a past tense of most verbs simply by adding 'd'; in other languages the past tense must be formed by reduplication - repeating the whole word, or most of it. So if we take a language with 20 phonemes or less and using reduplication, we are bound to get something less compact than English.
But when all is said and done, compactness is no virtue in language. Only accountants could love it! Language is our most treasured and universal art form, making us human as distinguished from all the other apes, and many politicians and bureaucrats. We should first of all relish it, enjoy it, love it. And since different humans have different tastes, one may love - say - Swedish or Dutch and abhor Urdu, while another loves Urdu and Persian but despises Bengali and Dari. _De gustibus non disputandum!_


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