Proficiency alongside "poverty".

Hi Forbes

Thank you for your long reply. I do appreciate it. I would just like to say that I my opinion is based on the knowledge I have of the Germanic and Romance languages and it is of course very subjective. I fully understand that not everyone agrees with me and what I consider easy may be difficult for some others as I have already said. However, I have given my honest opinion and I don't think you or anybody else would want me to lie on this forum? I'll add some comments.

I thought that might be what you were getting at.

I think it is a mistake to equate complexity solely with the degree of inflectional morphology of a language. I agree. I was talking about morphology only. To my mind I made no mistake. I do know what is difficult about English.

I have never studied Finnish, but I would be willing to bet that at least one of the following is true:

1. that a language with at least 30 cases has a corresponding lack of prepositions

There are only about 15 cases in Finnish  -  I don't actually remember the exact number and didn't bother to check, but we always
have a different form for the plural and that explains the 30. It is true that Finnish has fewer prepositions than English. In my opinion the number of changes made to words and the number of inflections cause far more difficulties for nonnative learners than the number of English prepositions, though..

2. that word order is fairly free and is used to express different emphases Correct.

3. that the inflectional morphology, though complex, is regular Correct again. Someone has said that there are ten rules in English grammar and 10,000 exceptions and 10,000 rules in Finnish grammar and ten exceptions. That's not quite true, though.

4. that it is perhaps not quite so difficult to learn once you begin to get the hang of it That is a matter of opinion and dispute. Quite a few nonnatives have said it is very difficult. They say it is hopeless to  try and master the grammar from books. There may or may not be some truth in this. The number of "rules" must seem endless to some and people say it's a better idea not to worry too much about all the inflections and changes in the middle of the words but just go where people talk and learn the grammatical complexities by ear.

I have to say that I have met one or two Finns and they do seem to relish the idea that Finnish is a "difficult" language. I have also met some "Swedish Finnish" (I am not sure what the correct term is) and they all tell me that they are bilingual in Swedish and Finnish. They will of course have been helped in acquiring Finnish because either they live in a bilingual community or started to learn the language at an early age (I am not sure how it works) so they would not have been prejudiced by any concept of "difficulty". I expect that your idea that Finnish is difficult is confirmed by the fact that you do not know many foreigners living in Finland who have mastered it. This will be because:

1. It is more difficult to learn any language when you are an adult That is true about all languages.

2. Someone who is working full time will not be able to devote more than an hour or two a week to learning the language That is true about all languages.

3. Everyone will find it more convenient to speak to foreigners in English and there is therefore little incentive for them to learn Finnish There is a lot of truth in this. However, there are lots of people who have come to Finland for good and want to learn the language.

4. You keep harping on about how difficult the language is and put them off! I have spoken to Brits in Finland who say the opposite. They say they get encouraged in their efforts to speak Finnish. I don't think we are any better or worse than other people in this respect.

(I live in Spain and all the above applies to expats.)

You think that English is "simple". I venture to suggest that this is because you started to learn it at an early age and were introduced to it gradually so that you did not perceive its difficulties; you acquired your mastery over a long period. Also, I suspect that Finns are "subjected" to English in a way that the English are not subjected to foreign languages.  A lot can be learned without realising it.

No. I have perceived its difficulties all right. They are the spelling and the idioms and the exceptions, for me anyway. The grammar, as I understand it, and structure are the easiest of the languages I am familiar with. Mind you, I don't pretend to be perfect in English. Actually, I don't think I deserve the icon, or whatever is the right word, that says I have a good grasp of the language. I would say I have a good grasp of the grammar but my vocabulary isn't at all on a par with native speakers. My knowledge of idioms and colloquialisms could also be much better.

Consider the following:

There is no single way of negating verbs in English. I do not eat, but I must not. I do not have any eggs, but I have not got any eggs.

There is no single way of forming questions. Do you come here a lot? but Can I go out?

True. And a third way: Who came? What happened?

It is not always easy to know when to use the continuous form of the verb. Try and explain why you can say Are you having cakes for tea? but cannot go into a shop and say Are you having cakes?

The meaning of prepositional verbs is not always transparent.  John has got it in for me.

English is a highly analytic language and meaning is often derived from context:

A. You keep complaining. Have you got it in for me?

B. I asked you to bring in the shopping. Have you got it in for me?

These are just a tiny example of the complexities of English and they have nothing to do with inflectional morphology.

I am familiar with these things and I admit I make mistakes using expressions and tenses. However, I was referring to the fact that English words have only a handful of forms and the fewer inflections there are the easier it is to learn them. Using them correctly is indeed another thing, I agree with you there. Other languages have their "difficulties" too. I admit that English is difficult, at least for me, in this respect. No language is easy in every respect, or if there is one, then it is impossible to express nuances in that language.

As I said in my previous post, what is easy for some may be difficult for others. My views are based solely on my experience and I certainly don't expect everybody to agree with me.

Cheers

CB

1. <<3. that the inflectional morphology, though complex, is regular Correct again. Someone has said that there are ten rules in English grammar and 10,000 exceptions and 10,000 rules in Finnish grammar and ten exceptions. That's not quite true, though." src="/emoticons/emotion-1.gif">>>

<They are the spelling and the idioms and the exceptions, for me anyway.>

Most people who talk about an enormous amout of exceptions in English don't know how to evaluate the language. Can you post the exceptions that you have had difficulty with?

2. Can I tell you how difficult it was/is to learn Spanish for this Englisman? It was also very difficult to learn French - even as a child.

MrPedantic wrote:

It interests me that some modern languages have at least the appearance of greater simplicity (e.g. the loss of inflection) than their counterparts of 900 years ago. This seems counter-intuitive: you would expect a language to evolve towards (not from) complexity.

Hello MrP

As far as English is concerned, the loss of inflections is largely due to massive foreign influence that lasted for centuries. Even native speakers of English began to drop inflections that could be dispensed with when they heard nonnatives use these uninflected forms. Learning a foreign word is always easier than learning to use it grammatically. Many Italian men know little about Finnish grammar but when they say I love you in broken Finnish to a fair-haired Finnish woman, she understands immediately.

If a language can't fulfil its needs, it will grow more complicated with time. That has happened to English as well. There was only one relative pronoun in Old English  -  and it was uninflected  -  and that clearly wasn't enough for seamless communication. Therefore people began using which, who and what as relative pronouns in addition to the original that. This way a handy genitive (whose) appeared. Unfortunately it is considered stilted by many in some contexts despite its neatness.

Another development, this time inexplicable and totally useless, towards complexity was the appearance of the auxiliary do in questions and negations. In Shakespeare's day it was possible to say Know you him? or Do you know him? and the modern usage became the norm after his death. As there is nothing similar in other Germanic languages, learning to use do correctly is a minor hindrance to learners in the early stages of language acquisition.

Cheers
CB

Milky wrote:

Most people who talk about an enormous amout of exceptions in English don't know how to evaluate the language. Can you post the exceptions that you have had difficulty with? 2. Can I tell you how difficult it was/is to learn Spanish for this Englisman? It was also very difficult to learn French - even as a child.

1. I can't remember them all. Anything that is ungrammatical but idiomatic, I suppose.
2. I have no way of knowing that.

Cool Breeze, your English is faultless!

I think that Mr P has hit the nail on the head. In English the complexity resides in the syntax. Many say that English has no "grammar" because you do not need to grapple with conjugations and declensions, but of course if it had no grammar it would just be soup.

I have been to Thailand many times. I have made a not very sucessful attempt to learn Thai, which is even more analytical than English. When you hear that the Thai verb is completely invariable and does not express time, person, mood or anything else and that nouns have no gender or separate forms for singular or plural, you think "Great!" But you soon find that it is tricker than you thought. Even more than English, the meaning of a sentence is context driven. You feel as if you will never get a hold on the language.

When Thais who know some English speak it they tend to speak it like Thai. They do not worry about articles and tense, or even necessarily expressing who is doing what, as they consider these to be unnecessary frills! The future is expressed by using "soon" and the past by "already". When I stayed in a small hotel in Chiang Mai the cook/waiter learned that I did not like bacon for breakfast and so used to give me prawns. One morning he said: "Sorry, sir, not prawn. Not go market. Too much sleep."

It almost seems that a language either has high hurdles that you need to jump at the beginning and once you have jumped them you are more or less in the clear, or that it has an endless succession of low hurdles. Malay is often said to be "the easiest language in the world", but it is also said that whilst it takes ten weeks to learn to speak it well it takes ten years to learn to speak it properly.