Is that Quite Clear or only Quite Clear?

In physical or mental translation, we often stumble upon English-language quirks which we have just accepted for decades without really noticing.

 

The latest is the very common word "Quite".

Has it ever occurred to you that it has 2 mutually-exclusive meanings?
That everybody uses it without specifying which meaning they have in mind?
And that nobody ever seems to be confused as a result?
Some kind of miracle!

Here are pairs of meanings from various dictionaries:
Cambridge
1. Completely
2. A little or a lot but not completely
WordReference
1. Absolutely; completely
2. Fairly; moderately
Wordnet
1. Rather; to a degree
2. To the greatest possible extent; completely
Macmillan
1. Fairly but not very
2. Completely
WordSmyth
1. To the greatest extent; completely; entirely
2. To a large degree

I have a lot of sympathy for foreigners struggling with English.

Parting thot: "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake." - Napoleon Bonaparte

Missing Sorry Sign

Of course, like everybody else, I am an excellent driver.
And never make mistakes.
Well - hardly ever...

But, just occasionally, I might make a tiny slip.
Typically finding myself in the wrong lane in a strange town, for instance, at the sort of place where all the locals know that the right lane becomes a right-turn-only lane, but there is no advanced warning.

At times like that, it would be handy to be able to indicate, by body language, something like "Oops! Sorry! Excuse me!"
The nearest I can imagine is 2 palms up, but that can also be interpreted as "So what?" or "Who cares?" so is not a good choice.

Surprisingly, there does not seem to be any recognised gesture for "I'm sorry" anywhere.
Sad reflection on humanity!

Most reference articles concentrate on offensive & obscene gestures and after a bit of reading, I realize almost any gesture can get you into serious trouble somewhere or other in the world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gestures

So I won't improvise my own hand signals, but I really think it would be a small step forward for civilization if we could invent & publicise a sign for "Excuse me!"

Parting thot: "By such innovations are languages enriched, when the words are adopted by the multitude, and naturalized by custom." - Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Lingo 3 – Alphabet & Pronunciation

As this subject could get out of proportion for the Disconnected Jottings Blog, I will shift it to a blog of its own. Here
But that blog is empty as I write this.

In the meantime, this post suggests an Alphabet & Pronunciation for a proposed "learn it all in half a day" universal language.

Firstly, an alphabet.
Pictograms, as used in Chinese & Japanese, have some advantages, can be recognised & read more quickly by trained users, take up less space, etc.
They have 3 overwhelming disadvantages though:
They offer no clue to pronunciation.
You need to learn several thousand.
They can't be used on popular western keyboards.
I think that rules them out for an easy-to-learn language.

Syllabic representation, such as Japanese Hiragana & Katakana deal with the pronunciation problem, but require learning over 50 symbols, unfamiliar to 95% of the world's population.
And need a special keyboard.

So a conventional western alphabet seems the simplest solution.
But selected so that each symbol represents one & only one sound. (unlike: calorie/celery, gin/gun, icicle, bet/beet…)
And each sound is represented by one & only one symbol. (unlike: cake, space, beet/beat, physics/fizz …)
And no sound is represented by a combination of letters which does not logically produce that sound. (qu, th, ch, sh, ph…)
For simplicity & keyboard-friendliness, I would avoid accents and also symbols which are only found in a limited number of languages.
Actually, that is one of the problems with Esperanto, invented before keyboards…

So, I end up with the following 24 letters (& corresponding sounds from English in brackets):
a(bat) – b(bat) – d(dot) – e(bet) – f(fit) – g(got) – h(hit) – i(hit) – j(job) – k(kit) – l(lit) – m(mat) – n(not) – o(dot) – p(pat) – r(rat) – s(sat) – t(tap) – u(pull not gull) – v(vat) – w(wit) – x(axe) – y(yob not many) – z(zap).

Eliminating (from a qwerty keyboard): c & q

I have lost these extremely common sounds:
u(cup) – e(err) – th(thin) – th(this) – ch(chat)
Which is a pity, but trying to get them back would introduce complications I don't want.

Pursuing radical simplicity, I propose to do without capital letters.
Current users of western alphabets will find that excessive.
My doubts started when I came across Japanese Hiragana & Katakana.
2 completely different sets of symbols, to represent the same set of sounds.
And you need to learn both to cope with any text including traditional & imported words.
I thought that was obviously an extravagance.
Then I looked at western capital & lower-case letters & realized that there too were 2 sets of almost-entirely different symbols representing the same sounds.
If capital letters had been just bigger copies of small-case, that would have been OK.
So, to speed up learning by non-westerners (though I admit that almost everybody recognises these letters now) I want to do without capitals.
I am encouraged by the fact that more & more kids, these days, have stopped using capitals, because they are too lazy to do the keyboard shifting which it requires.
I admit it makes blocks of text less easy to split into sentences.
I could still change my mind on this one.

The end result is that you can pronounce any word you see printed & you can write any word you hear.

Parting thot: "Teaching should be such that what is offered is perceived as a valuable gift and not as a hard duty." – Albert Einstein

Lingo 2 – Verbs

As I said here, I think there is room for a radically simple universal second language, whose main characteristic would be that you could learn all of it (except vocabulary) in half a day.

This post aims to cover verbs in such a language.

The heading picture, from http://conjd.cactus2000.de/index.en.php, shows a conjugation table for one German verb, not even a difficult one.
How long before you could use that at normal talking speed?
For a bit more detail, you could try this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_verbs
I think we can do better than that – or at least do something simpler & quicker to learn & be able to use.

Say our new language has a verb 'hit'.
You can guess what it means.
This one invariable word - & I want to stress that absolutely ALL words should be invariable – will be the infinitive.

It will also be the present tense, for any & every subject.
I/he/she/we/you/they/anybody hit.

I didn't mention the invariable word order: subject-verb-object.

To make a past tense, just add the invariable word 'did' after the infinitive.
I hit did.
She hit did.
Etc.

Note that, in general, all qualifying words should come after what they qualify, unlike in English.

To make a future tense, add the invariable word 'wil' after the infinitive.
I hit wil.
You hit wil.

Conditional?
Add 'wud'.
I hit wud.

Passive?
Add 'get'.
You hit get.

Combinations of passive & others are possible & obvious.
He hit get did.
You hit get wil.

Most languages have lots of additional tenses & moods.
Subjunctives, imperfects, continuous…
See the Wikipedia German link above.
They certainly add possibilities for subtlety & refinement.
I think a basic language can & should manage without.
In the interest of simplicity, above all.

So, in summary:
To learn any verb, you just learn one word, which stays invariable.

For every verb:
Future – add 'wil'.
Past – add 'did'.
Conditional – add 'wud'.
Passive – add 'get'.

That's it.
You know everything about every verb.

Parting thot: "It is better to talk with each other than about each other." – Angela Merkel

Lingo 1

In spite of the way I deliberately misuse language in this blog (incomplete phrases a so on - see here:) I do have a reasonable proficiency in English.

After 30 years' immersion in French, I can manage OK, but it is still instantly obvious to everybody that I am a foreigner.

At various times, I have attempted to learn a bit of Latin, German, Italian, Japanese, Esperanto and, most recently, Alsatian.
In none of those have I achieved more than about 5% competence.

Every time I study a language, I am struck by two things:
1. The way every language is weighed down by its own pointless complications & irregularities.
2. The surprising absence, from each language, of some elements which other languages seem to consider essential.

A quick example of both is plural forms.
English, like most other languages, has a plural form of most nouns.
Sometimes simple (cat/cats), sometimes less simple (potato/potatoes, lady/ladies, half/halves, oasis/oases) but often irregular (child/children, man/men, foot/feet, mouse/mice…).
It would be a lot easier if at least they were all regular.
Yet Japanese manages perfectly well without plural forms at all.
And so does English, when it wants to (sheep/sheep, fish/fish etc).
Did you ever have the slightest problem in transmitting or receiving any information about any quantity of fish or sheep, from none to millions?
Nor me!
Plural forms are a waste of everybody's time & effort.
Easily enough absorbed in early childhood, they are persistent stumbling blocks for adult learners.

Then there is Gender & Agreement.
The only way I managed to start actually talking in French at all was to deliberately ignore gender & put up with the mockery.
Otherwise I would have needed to stop & check every other word in a dictionary before using it.
And French only has 2 genders, where German & Alsatian have three...
Only by a lifetime's immersion could I possibly master the table of German genders & agreements well enough to use it faultlessly at talking speed.
You need to consider 16 possibilities every time:
Masculine/Feminine/Neutral/Plural x Nominative/Accusative/Dative/Genitive.
http://www.germanlinx.vic.edu.au/pdf/derdiedas-table.pdf
And to think it is pretty much pointless…
English manages OK without genders & agreement at all.

Another little example is pronouns which, even in English, mostly adopt accusative forms:
I/he/she/we/you/they hit me/him/her/you/them.
Having "you" as both nominative & accusative never caused anybody a problem, so why complicate all the others?

Fundamentally, languages are being used for two, often conflicting, missions.
1. Transmitting historical, cultural & regional values & information.
2. Communicating as widely as possible.

The cultural part requires that all the peculiarities, of as many local languages & dialects as possible, should be maintained & learned by local youngsters.
The communicating part would be better handled by a single, universal, language.

Seen from here & now, that seems most likely to be English.
Seen from elsewhere, it could well be Spanish or Chinese.
If any existing language becomes "universal", it will cause significant & justified jealousy & resentment among native-speakers of all the other languages, who will be at a disadvantage.
Indeed, the jealousy & resentment are more than likely to prevent any existing language ever becoming universal.

Which is where Esperanto comes in.
Designed.
Where all other languages evolved & accumulated.
Without irregularities.
It has to be hundreds of times faster to learn than any other language.
A wonderful effort.
But it has not developed any significant usage yet & seems unlikely to do so now.
Why not?
1. Came too early, before there was globalization to make it necessary & internet to make it popular?
2. Still unnecessarily complicated?
3. Just not promoted well enough?

I think there is room for a radically simpler language.
Which would aim to become a universal second language due to its utter simplicity.
One where anybody could learn absolutely all the grammar, with absolutely no irregularities, in half a day.
Leaving half a day to learn some basic vocabulary.
So in one day, we could all communicate…

Further details in part 2.

Parting thot: "Language is the means of getting an idea from my brain into yours without surgery." - Mark Amidon