Replying to Undergotten

American English *added* so much to the language, it's daunting. To say that English is inflexible shows that you've done absolutely zero research in studying English. The English language is amazingly flexible, more so than any other language in history, and it's growing everyday.

Don't worry about the kids. They might sound stupid now, but the very best of their slang will be absorbed by English, just like it's done for every generation previous, and it will emerge an even larger language still.

"The story of English" is a great little academic book on the subject and here is a great documentary based on the book, if you'd like to learn more:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6D54D1C7DAE31B36&si=XYV6scIgLmBjwZg_

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Undergotten 2y ago

Orthogonal is an English word. It has a Greek root. This is because English can absorb words from any language it wants. This absorption quality is what makes English the most powerful language on earth.

It's more precise than any language, programming or otherwise, because of this absorption quality. It can also absorb language rules. Which you seem to think is a flaw, when in fact is it's greatest strength. And modifiers? It's richness is infinite! Literally any word can become a modifier in English, even made up ones.

You seem to be dead set against it, though, so I won't try to change your mind any further. Give that documentary of look and see if it doesn't sway you a bit, or read the book If you prefer.

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Loki 2y ago

You clearly are not a programmer because you would understand that expressivity is not a cost-free feature of a programming language. But then, most programmers think expressivity is essential to programming languages, and thus we have bloated, memory wasting, overly complex garbage software, thankyou expressivity, and the corporate monoculture of C++ and friends.

English is no different from most other languages, except for the mindset that has gone along with it. Its dominance was not thanks to the English at all, but rather, the english/irish/german/african folk who fled england to live in north america. Because they asserted and defended their right to operate a free market, their capabilities and wealth increased far beyond any single nation in history, and in this respect, it is the successor of Latin. The romans also were largely a positive influence on their world, except for the crowd that orbited around Capitoline Hill.

But I disagree that it has any more durability or utility. It will be antique in a thousand years time just as Latin is now.

It's my opinion that the human brain computes in a language that is based on mathematics and is intrinsic just as electrons, neutrons and protons are intrinsic to matter. It's also my opinion that there is a lot more quantum strangeness going on inside our brains that means that we don't even have to have these arbitrary, flawed and incomplete encodings to communicate and record information, and that means we can communicate with each other without engaging even the lingual nerve complex as we do when we think.

Only a person without any skill in any other language would say that english is better in all ways. I met a moroccan berber whose trade was translator, he knew english, arabic, french, greek and bulgarian. He said that greek was the best language for lyrical poetry. Me, personally, what I like is the sound, and that's why my favourite language is serbian, and as I am studying portuguese, it has a lot of commonality, and both of them that's because of their latin roots. Bulgarian is very precise, and fast to speak, but very verbose in text, more verbose than english and maybe even more verbose than german.