A language learners’ forum

Tristano wrote:- Japanese, it's true that I contemplated learning it because of a travel in Japan, but please, nope. It has all the characteristics of a language that I hate: language isolate, 3 alphabets, one of which is not even an alphabet but a set of ideograms, so weird and alien and strictly culture dependent that if you don't live in the country you basically have no chance whatsoever.

Heh, these are all the things that actually made me interested in learning Japanese in the first place. I remember thinking at one point "If I'm going to master a language other than English, why not take the biggest challenge possible?" I ended up sticking with it mostly for the anime though

Tristano wrote:- Turkic languages written with the Arabic alphabet, although I can always learn all the others first and those only by listening.

The major ones (Azerbaijani, Uzbek, Turkmen, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, even Uyghur) all have an alternative standard written either in the Latin or the Cyrillic alphabet, while the smaller ones tend not to be fully standardized anyway. Besides, the Arabic alphabet as used in China for writing Uyghur, Kazakh and Kyrgyz (not sure about Uzbek) is much easier to read than most other Arabic-based alphabets due to it being used as a full alphabet rather than an abjad - the vowels are written in all cases, and even Arabic and Persian words are respelled to how they are pronounced by the natives instead of retaining their original spellings.

So basically I have to study also Japanese and the languages that use the arabic alphabet as a full alphabet.
Dammit.

Personally I'm enamored by human language as a phenomenon, and as a consequence I find all languages amazing and wonderful and thus want to learn all of them. However I am not interested in putting in the time to learn most of them simply because realistically I just don't have the time or opportunities to learn and use a language spoken far away from me. Even if Burmese has 100 speakers for every speaker of Icelandic, the latter is still easier to get to, easier to learn because of language transfer and I'm probably more likely to meet Icelanders in Helsinki than Burmese people. I still like how Burmese sounds and would like to learn it, but I have to forgo that in favor of other languages I have more opportunities to use.

On another note it perplexes me to no end that we can have a forum for people who are interested in languages who can still hold the opinion that certain languages are ugly, or even that a human language can possibly be ugly or unpleasant. I just don't get it.

Henkkles wrote:On another note it perplexes me to no end that we can have a forum for people who are interested in languages who can still hold the opinion that certain languages are ugly, or even that a human language can possibly be ugly or unpleasant. I just don't get it.

Why? I'm interested in books - in fact, I love them and always have. I am probably even obsessed with them. However I can still think some of them are hideous in terms of design, or awful in terms of content. I can think a book is beautifully written and hate every second of it. I can think a book is trash and devour it (and its sequels) in three days. Why should I think all languages are beautiful and amazing just because I like a few of them? I like the phenomenon that natural languages are - but I don't have to like the individual languages.

Elenia wrote:

Henkkles wrote:On another note it perplexes me to no end that we can have a forum for people who are interested in languages who can still hold the opinion that certain languages are ugly, or even that a human language can possibly be ugly or unpleasant. I just don't get it.

Why? I'm interested in books - in fact, I love them and always have. I am probably even obsessed with them. However I can still think some of them are hideous in terms of design, or awful in terms of content. I can think a book is beautifully written and hate every second of it. I can think a book is trash and devour it (and its sequels) in three days. Why should I think all languages are beautiful and amazing just because I like a few of them? I like the phenomenon that natural languages are - but I don't have to like the individual languages.

Please understand that I don't do this out of spite, but I refuse to respond to your argument for it conflates things that arise naturally with things that are artificial; the difference is too fundamental for me to think of an answer. I do understand that for some or most this distinction isn't meaningful, but I don't really have much to say to such people.

I don't see any reason why one should find every language aesthetically pleasing, or shouldn't feel the opposite way. I was under the impression we're speaking of subjective perceptions, rather than objective opinions. Basically, I think we're just talking about two different things, one features expressions like "enamoured by human language as a phenomenon" (emphasis added) and "amazing", and the other "sounds" and "beautiful".

I find the phenomenon of life amazing, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't find arachnids rather off-putting...

EDIT: Typo.

galaxyrocker wrote:Japanese isn't an isolate, but part of the Japonic family along with the Ryukyuan languages of which Okinawan is the most famous. Still, a relatively small family. Korean is an isolate, however, though there are some attested languages on the Korean Peninsula that could have been related to it.

For practical purposes Japanese is an isolate. All of the Ryukyuan varieties are endangered and being subsumed into standard Japanese due to their considerable similarities with standard Japanese, among other reasons. If you're going to be a splitter, then Korean isn't an isolate either. The Jeju variety is apparently not mutually intelligible with standard Korean.

lichtrausch wrote:For practical purposes Japanese is an isolate. All of the Ryukyuan varieties are endangered and being subsumed into standard Japanese due to their considerable similarities with standard Japanese, among other reasons. If you're going to be a splitter, then Korean isn't an isolate either. The Jeju variety is apparently not mutually intelligible with standard Korean.

I was actually unaware of Jeju, so thank you for bringing that to my attention. As to considering Japanese an isolate, I think it does a huge disservice to the Ryukyuan languages. It completely forces them out of the picture, which doesn't help given their already endangered status. It'd be a rough equivalent to saying Welsh is a language isolate because all the other Celtic languages are endangered and their situation gets worse each year; it's a disservice to those languages. And, currently, there aren't 'considerable similarities' among the Ryukyuan languages and standard Japanese, at least as far as I understand them; the similarities are between the Japanese dialects spoken on the area (e.g. Okinawan Japanese) and standard Japanese. Besides, it really makes no difference when learning if Japanese is an isolate or not, so why shouldn't we be accurate when discussing it?

- Ancient Egyptian and all the extinct languages that don't have any related modern language.

Um, Coptic.

galaxyrocker wrote:I was actually unaware of Jeju, so thank you for bringing that to my attention. As to considering Japanese an isolate, I think it does a huge disservice to the Ryukyuan languages. It completely forces them out of the picture, which doesn't help given their already endangered status. It'd be a rough equivalent to saying Welsh is a language isolate because all the other Celtic languages are endangered and their situation gets worse each year; it's a disservice to those languages. And, currently, there aren't 'considerable similarities' among the Ryukyuan languages and standard Japanese, at least as far as I understand them; the similarities are between the Japanese dialects spoken on the area (e.g. Okinawan Japanese) and standard Japanese. Besides, it really makes no difference when learning if Japanese is an isolate or not, so why shouldn't we be accurate when discussing it?

There are a few issues here. First, assuming you are making the language/dialect distinction based on mutual intelligibility, there is no universally accepted test of mutual intelligibility. Depending on how the test is designed, your results will vary (cf. standard English vs Scots). Second, there is a sort of continuum in Okinawa with the most divergent varieties of Ryukyuan (mostly confined to the elderly) on one end and the Okinawan dialect of standard Japanese on the other end. I don't see any reason why we should discount those varieties of speech that are less divergent from standard Japanese. Third, I think the lived experience of speakers themselves should be taken into consideration. Many (most?) perceive the varieties they speak as a dialect (a topolect (方言) to be exact) of Japanese, which should count for something. Finally, considering that language can be such a politically divisive issue that can play right into the hands of imperialistic powers (I won't name any names) which like their adversaries divided and weak (see modern history of Central Asia and its languages), I think we should be very careful with how much splitting we do.

I do see your point though, I'm just arguing that it's not a cut and dry issue.