My article "The Astonishing Primitiveness
of the English Language" has drawn a large number of angry comments from
the native English speakers who are, as I have clearly pointed out, definitely
not the target audience of that article. "How dare you say our language is
primitive?" Their anger is perfectly understandable, them being so used to
being looked up to by all the world. But they just don't have an idea what it's
like to have at your disposal a language where you can substitute one affix for
another and get a different meaning which would take ten words in English to
explain.
Anyway, I would like to take this opportunity
to try and clarify a couple of things, lest someone begins to think that it's
somehow difficult for me to reply to the criticism I've been getting.
I read an article some time ago (too bad I
can't find it anymore) where a native English speaker discussed the differences
of languages. He brought examples from the Chinese, showing how the verbs and
nouns don't have various grammatical forms the way they do in English. Indeed
he demonstrated quite convincingly that the Chinese people's way of thinking
must be quite different from the English people's. But he was too afraid to
spell it out, so he took it all back by saying something like this: "Do
those examples mean that the Chinese people's way of thinking is different from
the English people's. No-no, of course not! Every people's way of thinking is
exactly the same. It's just that the Chinese express less meaning with the
actual language and leave much of the meaning to be deduced from the
context."
Well, that is exactly what I mean by saying
that a language is primitive. You have to leave much of the meaning to be
deduced from the context, because you can't express it through the language.
And just so you don't suspect me of native
language bias, let me tell you that I heard a Chinese woman who was teaching the Chinese language say to her students in the first lesson: "Our language is easy to
learn because we have no grammar."
The point of my previous article was that
English looks to us like Chinese looks to the native English speakers. While
English may technically qualify as a synthetic language, on a scale
isolating-synthetic it is closer to Chinese than to, for instance, Russian.
(Just as before, I am deliberately limiting the discussion as much as possible
to big languages, in order to not deprive the readers of the opportunity to
argue against me.)
I think the fastest and easiest way to get
a personal impression of what kind of a crippled language English is, is by
translating subtitles from and into English. (Or,
equivalently, create non-English subtitles for an English-language movie, and
English subtitles for a non-English-language movie.) When you translate
subtitles into English, you will be... well... sad, really, to see how much
meaning gets lost because you just can't say it in English, at least not at
acceptable subtitle length. Staying with the example of Russian, virtually all
those же, -то and -ка which are such a delight to listen to will be impossible
for you to share with your English viewers, just as a number of other nuances
which add colour to the text's factual content.
The same thing does not happen when you
translate subtitles from English. On the contrary. You will routinely find
yourself in situations where the English text goes like: "A is B. C is
D," and in the target language you have to write "A is B, and C is
D," because without "and" it would just look totally weird. Or
the English text goes like: "A is B. C is D," and in the target
language you have to write "A is B, because C is D," because without
"because" it would just look totally weird. Or the English text goes
like: "A is B. C is D," and in the target language you have to write
"A is B. After all, C is D," because without "after all" it
would just look totally weird.
For some reason, the native English speakers
tend to choose to omit those "ands" and "buts" and
"becauses" and "isn't it?s", putting only the bare facts
into their words and leaving the rest to intonation and (the listener's understanding
of the) context.
Look at this line from a US movie:
Wilmer, I'm sorry to lose you, but I want
you to know I couldn't be fonder of you if you were my own son. Well, if you
lose a son, it's possible to get another. There's only one Maltese Falcon.
If it were a written text, I would automatically
assume that there is a typographical error, the word "but" having
been mistakenly omitted before "There's only...". One can beget
another son, but one cannot find another Maltese Falcon. I mean, binding two
statements with the word "but" is not a complex linguistic concept
like imperfect progressive. It is one of the most elementary things in the
human language. There can hardly be a human being in the world for whom it is
too difficult to understand or too uncomfortable to use. But that character in
the movie actually talks like that, so it's not a mistake, the writer actually
meant it to be that way.
Or look at that passage from a famous British
writer's novel:
She was going to be tortured, she was going
to be raped, she was going to be shot. She had done nothing. She did not want
to die.
If someone wrote like that in my native
language, people would think he's retarded. I mean, really. What is it, a
computer program or a novel?
Or look at this conversation from a US TV
series:
"No, she's telling the truth.
Something happened. Something too horrible for her mind to handle. Her memory's
blocked."
"Well, even if that's true, maybe it's
blocked because she killed Kara."
"Well, it's possible. I don't think
so. I think she's a victim."
I just can't understand how any human being in
the world would say it without the word "but" before "I don't
think so." It is possible, but I don't think so. It's not like he
reflected for a while and then said: "No, I don't think so." He said "I
don't think so," immediately after "Well, it's possible."
And, just to make the picture complete, in my
native language I would almost certainly add a certain word before "think
she's a victim", but that nuance would take unreasonably long to explain
here.
That kind of thing keeps popping up in English all the time.
Maybe the most jaw-dropping example of this kind is this conversation in an Australian movie.
The character says (apparently referring to neighbourhoods of a city):
"I live in the Mountains because Blacktown or Penrith would kill me."
The subtitles that came with the movie read, would you believe:
"I live in the Mountains, Blacktown or Penrith would kill me."
Let me make this absolutely clear: the word "because" is spoken, but omitted in the subtitles!
Could be just a mistake. But it could also be that the author of the subtitles felt that "because" was an unnecessary word that could be omitted. I wouldn't be surprised, not the slightest, because I have seen so many occasions in English-language movies and books where the second part of the sentence is the cause of the first part of the sentence and yet there is no word "because" between them.
Added later:
No, it was not a mistake. Here is a dialogue from a TV series:
"Mugging gone wrong maybe?"
"Don't think so. His wallet's gone, but he did have this on him." (showing a certain object of value)
The subtitles say:
"Don't think so. His wallet's gone. He did have this on him."
It is obvious to every sane human being outside the English-speaking world that the world "but" is essential here. But the author of the subtitles who wouldn't skip one single "uh", "um", "ooh", "ah", "unh", "ahem", "ha ha" or "ha ha ha" thought the word "but" was irrelevant.
Another example. (Some moron accused me in a comment of not bringing examples. Ha!)
Speech:
Walter wouldn't let that happen. At least I believe he wouldn't let that happen.
Subtitles:
Walter wouldn't let that happen. I believe he wouldn't let that happen.
So, another retard (or possibly the same one) who would never skip a "uh", "uhn", "ahem" or "heh" and thinks the difference between "ha ha" and "ha ha ha" is vitally important, considers the words "at least" irrelevant in this context!!!!
Really, those people's brains ought to be scientifically researched.
Of course, if English is the only language you speak properly,
chances are you won't notice it and even if you did, you wouldn't find anything wrong with
it. And that is, as I've been saying, the reason why it will be pointless for a
monolingual person to participate in this discussion. How can you be able to
bring forward expert arguments in favour or disfavour of various sniper rifles
if you have never fired one? I have no use for armchair theoreticians. I am
only interested in discussions with people whom I can learn from. Unless you
have considerable tongue-on experience with languages, do not waste my time.
By the way, the other side of the coin is that
Russians, for instance, have the tendency to excessively start sentences with
"А..." ("But..."). Often it doesn't really add anything, it's just a bad habit. It's like
the native English speakers' tendency to start their sentences with an
unnecessary "Well..." But that doesn't disprove my point because for
every superfluous "well" they omit a couple of necessary "buts" and such.
I was suggesting in my previous article that somehow
the English speakers' linguistical thinking seems to be closer to that of the
Chinese than that of the Continental European peoples. That can be seen from
the fact that the English language has been and still is developing in the
direction of isolatingness. Meaning, the native English speakers seem to like
to leave unused even those rudiments of grammar which their language still has.
I brought examples of that in my previous article. Here I'd like to add just
one thing. Recently I have begun noticing how often the native English speakers
use the present tense when talking about the past. For instance, they are asked
to recall what exactly happened when they came home last night, and they're
like: "I open the door, I walk in, I see a broken cup on the floor."
That kind of a stylistic tool is occasionally used in other languages as well,
and it totally has its benefits in certain situations, but the English-speaking
peoples seem to be doing it on a regular basis. So, they seem to have a
linguistical mindset similar to that Chinese girl who told me in perfect
seriousness that it is pointless to put the verb into the past tense when it is
clear from the word "yesterday" that the events described take place
in the past.
And another thing I just remembered – I keep
seeing adjectives used as adverbs (like, people write "doubtless"
when they mean "doubtlessly"). Why bother adding the suffix when you
will be understood anyway, right? And why bother saying "they are"
when "they is" will be understood just as well, right?
And they almost always say "maximum"
when they mean "maximal". I don't know if the adverb would in that case be
"maximumly" or would it remain "maximally". (Oh, I forgot.
They omit the "-ly", of course. Silly me.)
And it's just unbelievable how they keep mixing up "who" and "whom". I mean, what kind of a retard wouldn't know when to say "who" and when to say "whom"?
I could go on but I think you're getting my point by now.
For the record, I am not saying that a
primitive language is necessarily a bad language. (For instance, a vague language
like English is a blessing for poets and comedians.) I'm just dying to
understand what it is that makes people create more or less complexity in their
languages. The way the prevailing mentality of an ethnic group is reflected in their language is one of the most fascinating subjects in the world, as far as I am concerned. Not only that, but there is that general tendency of languages to
slowly alter their type (a process which is well known to be taking place with
my native language as well). As I understand, the only legitimate explanation
under the yoke of political correctness is "it just happens". That
is not satisfactory. I want to understand what it is that makes
English move away from the languages it shares a common origin with. What on
Earth might be the similarities between the English people and the Chinese
people that make them enjoy the same kinds of things in a language?
I mean, the linguists seem to be largely
concentrating on figuring out which languages are related in terms of stemming
from the same proto-language. While that is very important, I have found
curious connections which don't seem to fit in any linguistical categories –
such as certain affinities between German, Estonian and Russian on one side,
and English, Swedish and Finnish on the other side. A Swedish text translates
into Finnish almost by itself, while translating it into Estonian is really
hard work. There are connections between languages which seem to have something
to do with not just common history and exchange of vocabulary, but also with
some sort of linguistic mentality. The linguists admit the existence of such
tendencies in certain isolated cases, such as the Balkan sprachbund (amazingly,
in almost a hundred years, the English haven't managed to create a word of
their own for it; I mean, it must be hell for them to pronounce it), but the
phenomenon is much wider. Chinese and Vietnamese are considered to be totally
unrelated, but they are in fact very similar. (I daresay more so that Chinese
and Thai which are supposed to be related.) Finnish and Hungarian may
technically be related, but for all practical purposes they're not much closer
than Finnish and Quechua. I mean, relatedness of the languages is undoubtedly
verifiable and has its useful purpose in language research, but it's being
grossly overvalued at the expense of other connections which are not so easy to
quantify scientifically (such as the
greater or smaller overlapping of semantic fields). I mean, Hungarian is
related to Finnish while Swedish has no relation to Finnish whatsoever, but in
the real life a native Finnish speaker would surely find Swedish much easier to
learn than Hungarian – not only in terms of common vocabulary (which can be
explained by geographical closeness and a long common history) but also in
terms of grammar. Meaning, when he has learned the vocabulary, he will find it
much easier to form grammatically correct Swedish phrases than Hungarian ones.
That is that other kind of relatedness which I
don't know the proper term for and which seems to be more than mere areal
diffusion. I mean, why do the black Americans tend to make their English more
primitive than the average speaker – a phenomenon routinely sneered at by the
white racists? Where does that tendency come from? Their African origin (as the
racists would suggest)? I don't think so. After all, the major African
languages seem to be grammatically more complex than English, so it doesn't
look like the black people have less capability for, or tolerance of, language
complexity. And the English don't seem to be all that different from the other
Europeans, so what is it that makes them shun morphology, or stick to an amazingly rigid syntax? Speaking of language contacts and mutual influences,
look at the strikingly complex grammar of Irish. Why hasn't it rubbed off on the
English speakers, the latter seeming rather like Chinese-minded people struggling to get rid of the curse of a Germanic grammar? With a large
percentage of Irish in the population of the USA, why seem the Americans more
inclined to primitivising their language than the British?
One might suggest that English and Chinese
share the drag to primitivity because they are both languages of big empires,
the assimilated peoples having learned the language improperly and thus
contributing to its primitivisation. No, that won't fly either, because if it
were so, why hasn't it happened to Russian? Sure enough, German, an
empire-language, is more primitive than Icelandic, a non-empire-language, but
so are Norwegian, Swedish and Danish which have hardly had anything worth
calling an empire. Neither does Spanish have a simpler grammar than Italian –
and speaking of Romanic languages, Latin has one of the most superior grammars
there's ever been, and the Romans most certainly assimilated a lot of foreign
peoples. Yet their language went primitive (that is, split into a number of related languages more primitive than Latin) only after the empire was gone, that
is when the various groups of former non-Romans went their own separate ways.
So the empire hypothesis just won't do. It must be something else.
I would very much like to know if such things
have been studied apart from isolated research papers stating "wow, it's
so interesting and we have no idea what makes it so".
