English allows a degree of precision and granularity unrivalled in other languages I’ve studied, and actually has a fairly high rate of compression in comparison too.
There’s a reason it became the most popular language globally and it’s not just “muh colonialism”; it’s the most useful tool for the job that the most people can agree on.
I don't agree. Its ease and simplicity allows adoption - it certainly doesn't win in precision and granularity. Pineapple 🍍 for example.
Not following what you mean about pineapple?
Why is a pineapple called a pineapple? It's not an apple, most countries call it Ananas. It also doesn't go on pizza. 
Because it’s shaped like a pine cone and in old English, æppel (apple) was the common generic term for fruits.
Fruit was adopted like beef and mutton and other terms; amongst the aristocracy trying to be fancy and distinct from the peasant classes with their foods by using the French.
Yes, exactly my point, English uses many generic terms and words from many languages; Latin, french and German most common.
It lacks very often the precision of say German.
“Handy” is hardly precise.
“Rechner” neither.
And a “Beamer” is a BMW, never a projector.
Languages loaning words isn’t a problem. That’s what ananas is.. It’s not like the Germans had ever seen a pineapple growing by the Rhine.
The choice as languages are confronted by new things is between being descriptive ie pineapple or loaning ie ananas.
I personally prefer loaning words, but I’m not the king of the English language.
German precision comes from compounding words and more rigid grammar structure.
The English adoption comes imo because of it's flexibility with word meanings and grammar - plus lack of need for pronunciation that you need in other languages.
Yeah if I was going to write a technical manual then German might well be my number one choice.
But the original image was about conveying the emotion “good”, and my post was about the totality of the language English. I think it’s that conveyance of meaning, emotions, intangibles, that’s what sets English apart.
Greater depth and granularity of the human condition is available in English than German, notwithstanding words that English doesnt have, it wins by weight of having more words that fill in these gaps in between which is what the graphic is showing.
Most English speakers reading that will either agree with the weighting or be +/- 1 point across the whole list; Germans would have a list half as long and likely be +/- 2 points in more instances.
Have you had a look at Greek? Latin? Hebrew?
English has many obvious deficiencies. It's lost the ability to distinguish between singular and plural in the 2nd personal pronoun (i.e., you).
No 3rd person imperative form.
No regular declension of noun cases.
We could do better...😜🤣😂
Some Latin yes and it’s also good, not studied Greek or Hebrew.
Every language has deficiencies, none are 100% exact.
Your first 2 points are fair criticisms but noun cases are redundant and that’s why they were compressed out of use. Always found them extremely pedantic in German, rather than conveying important detail they’re more a signifier of depth of knowledge. Like the language version of this:
I'm not conversant in German; however, I find that noun declension in Koine Greek adds a freedom of emphasis unavailable in English due to the forced word ordering resulting from its lack.
“Due to its lack of declension, English forces word ordering that makes unavailable the emphasis freedom I find in Koine Greek's noun system (though I'm not conversant in German)…”
Again, I think this just comes down to depth of knowledge in the language.
You can get fancy with your structures and word ordering in English if you want to and know how, but you just sound like a dick most of the time once you veer to far from the norm.
I’m not saying there is no merit, but that it’s not a good criticism if you think of language as a communications tool to convey meaning rather than a signalling apparatus for status and a proxy for intelligence, which many seem to, by overly complicating their speech/text.
English is a funagalo made up of several languages mashed together. It is also a constantly evolving language... and "colonialism muh". It may be granular in some ways, but where it is deficient, it simply borrows from another language.... schadenfreude, entrepreneur, etc.
English will go down history as the US is going down as the once world superpower and Hollywood/MSM no longer attracting audiences.
Germans will speak very limited English vocabulary with other non-German speakers, only on necessary occasions. So do all other peoples.
there will be no national language to take the role of universal language, AI will be the only intermediate who's doing the necessary translation. globalisation is over, people are going back to their tribe and speak their own millions of languages.
People don’t “go back” to languages, most of them die over time and there are very few examples of languages making significant come backs. It’s 99.9 to 0.1 language death to come back.
English isn’t going anywhere in the lifetimes of people alive today. It will definitely look and sound different in 100-200-300 years, but every year more people are learning it as a second language, not fewer.
i agree somehow.
my point is that English as a language will be a mere necessary communication tool instead of a cultural embodiment, people doing biz with foreign countries need to speak in such occasions but they prefer not to in their private lives.
English being dominating the world is definitely the outcome of US/UK imposing western value system to the whole world and more importantly people buy in because they benefit from it. Now it is changing. UK is falling, US is falling. In a sense it goes to a decentralized mode when no single national language dominates instead of AI a neutral thing, which is good.
The reason is because English was the language of business and the rest of the world wanted to do business in a free market.
Not because we forced our culture. Not denying the second part completely of course, but the language part was because folks wanted to do business with us.
i can't disagree your disagree tbh
I hope the world goes decentralized, that is the dream. Because very powerful groups are vying for the opposite.
Let's face it. It's all about colonialism when it comes to why English language is all over the place :)
And I would not agree with precision.
The following video explains what I mean.
You couldn't be more wrong. 🧡
Okay, rating languages by simplicity is *incredibly* complex and subjective. There's no single, universally accepted metric. "Simplicity" itself is multifaceted – does it mean simple grammar? Simple pronunciation? Small vocabulary? Regularity? I'll do my best, explaining my reasoning, and with a *lot* of caveats. I'll break it down into tiers, with explanations for *why* I'm putting languages where I am. **Keep in mind, this is a generalization, and many individual languages *within* families will vary.**
**Important Caveats Before We Start:**
* **Native Speaker Bias:** What seems simple to a native speaker will be different for a learner.
* **Aspects of Simplicity:** I'm focusing on a combination of factors: morphology (word structure), syntax (sentence structure), phonology (sound system), and regularity. Vocabulary size is less of a direct indicator of *simplicity* as it's more about how *much* is expressed.
* **No Perfectly Simple Language:** All languages have complexities.
* **Creoles & Pidgins:** I'm generally excluding (or giving special mention to) creoles and pidgins because their simplification often comes from a mix of source languages and a reduced feature set, making them somewhat different than naturally evolved languages.
**Here's my tiered ranking, from simplest to most complex (with explanations):**
**Tier 1: Extremely Simple (Languages with very streamlined grammars)**
1. **Toki Pona:** (Constructed Language) This is *specifically designed* to be simple. It has only about 120 words and a very basic grammar. It's an outlier because it’s *not* a natural language, but it exemplifies the extreme end of simplification. (Used mostly by hobbyists and for philosophical thought experiments)
2. **Mandarin Chinese:** While its writing system is incredibly complex, Mandarin's *grammar* is remarkably simple. It has no verb conjugations, no noun declensions, no grammatical gender, and a limited number of inflectional morphemes. Word order is relatively fixed, but this is the main driver of grammatical relationships. Tone is a complication for learners, but doesn’t change the core grammar.
3. **Vietnamese:** Like Mandarin, Vietnamese relies heavily on word order and lacks inflectional morphology. It has a complex tonal system, but its grammar is relatively straightforward. It's also largely analytic, meaning grammatical relationships are indicated by separate words rather than inflections.
**Tier 2: Simple to Moderately Simple (Relatively straightforward grammar & pronunciation)**
4. **Spanish:** Spanish has relatively regular verb conjugations and noun genders, but compared to many languages, it's fairly predictable. The pronunciation is mostly phonetic (what you see is what you get). Sentence structure is generally Subject-Verb-Object, although more flexibility exists.
5. **Swahili:** A Bantu language, Swahili has a relatively simple sound system and a consistent grammar. It uses prefixes and suffixes extensively, but these are generally consistent and predictable. Noun classes exist, but are less complex than in some other Bantu languages.
6. **Indonesian/Malay:** These are very closely related languages with extremely simple grammar. They have no verb conjugations, no noun declensions, and rely heavily on word order and particles to indicate grammatical relationships. Pronunciation is generally phonetic.
7. **Turkish:** Agglutinative language (adds suffixes to words to express grammatical function). While it *has* a lot of suffixes, they're relatively regular and consistent, making it predictable. Word order is fairly fixed.
8. **Esperanto:** (Constructed Language) Designed for international auxiliary language, Esperanto's grammar is regular, agglutinative, and relatively easy to learn. It aims for simplicity and clarity.
**Tier 3: Moderately Complex (Start to see more irregularities & complexities)**
9. **English:** This is a tricky one. English has lost much of its inflectional morphology (verb endings, noun cases), making it simpler in some ways than its Germanic relatives. However, it has a large vocabulary, many irregular verbs, and a somewhat flexible word order. The pronunciation can be very inconsistent.
10. **Russian:** Russian has a complex case system (six cases), verb conjugations, and gendered nouns. However, the grammar is relatively logical, and the rules are generally consistent. Pronunciation can be challenging for English speakers.
11. **German:** Similar to Russian, German has complex noun cases (four cases), verb conjugations, and gendered nouns. Word order can be quite flexible and dependent on context. The compounding of words can also make it challenging.
12. **Portuguese:** More complex than Spanish, with more irregular verb conjugations and nasal vowels. The pronunciation can be tricky, and there are subtle grammatical differences between dialects.
13. **Japanese:** Japanese has a relatively simple sound system, but its grammar is quite different from Indo-European languages. It has particles to mark grammatical functions, a complex system of politeness levels, and a subject-object-verb word order.
**Tier 4: Complex to Very Complex (Significant grammatical challenges and/or irregularities)**
14. **Arabic:** Arabic has a complex morphology, with verb roots and patterns that can be difficult to master. It also has a complex system of noun gender and number, and a relatively flexible word order.
15. **Hindi/Urdu:** These closely related languages have a complex verb system, noun genders, and postpositions (similar to prepositions, but placed after the noun). The case system can also be challenging.
16. **Hungarian:** Agglutinative language with a very complex case system (around 18 cases) and a large number of suffixes. Word order is relatively flexible.
17. **Greek (Modern):** While simpler than Ancient Greek, Modern Greek still has complex verb conjugations, noun declensions, and gendered nouns. Word order is relatively flexible.
18. **Basque:** An isolated language with a unique grammar that is unrelated to any other known language. It has a complex case system, agglutinative morphology, and an unusual verb structure.
19. **Navajo:** A Native American language with a complex verb system that incorporates many prefixes and suffixes to indicate tense, aspect, mood, and other grammatical features. It also has a complex noun classification system.
**Tier 5: Extremely Complex (Requires significant dedication to master)**
20. **Polish:** One of the most complex Slavic languages, Polish has seven cases, complex verb conjugations, and a large number of consonant clusters.
21. **Georgian:** A Kartvelian language with a complex case system, verb morphology, and a unique agglutinative structure.
22. **Dyirbal (Australian Aboriginal):** Famous for its incredibly complex noun classification system, with four genders determined by subtle features. The grammar is very different from Indo-European languages.
**Again, please remember:**
* This is a generalization.
* Individual languages within families will vary.
* "Simplicity" is subjective and depends on the learner's background.
I hope this detailed breakdown is helpful! Let me know if you'd like me to elaborate on any specific language or aspect of simplicity.
This is the most egocentric statement of the year lmao
