
Why English sucks as the language for international and scientific communication - saint-loup
http://www.madore.org/~david/weblog/d.2015-03-20.2284.html#d.2015-03-20.2284
======
panglott
My, what a collection of old chestnuts. * All his bugs are features:
malleability and adaptability are English's strengths. * Most languages
proliferate their vocabulary to express all the needed shades of meaning,
English uses Norman/German vocab to distinguish formality just as Japanese
uses wago/kanji compounds. * Basic English's claim to a limited vocabulary
only makes sense if you ignore the many implicit phrasal verbs that are even
more inaccessible to learners that ten-dollar words are. * Relatively
isolating morphology vs. more inflection isn't really a feature or a bug: it
just correlates with a relative reliance on syntax rather than morphology to
communicate. Interlingua is even more isolating IIRC. * Every language has
ambiguities. * How is it possible to invent and impose an artificially created
vowel system under the conditions where it is impossible to do something as
simple as spelling reform?

Spelling reform is surely needed, but the ferst wun to spell rite shall lede
us.

English has succeeded not only because it is the voice of global hegemony, but
also the voice of global resistance.

International English can't happen as something people create in a lab and try
to impose in the world. It comes when you have a dictionary and grammar of
Standard Indian English and Standard Filippino English and Standard Nigerian
English, where people are comfortable speaking English to a non-American or
non-British standard. It will be pluricentric.

~~~
vacri
To make a dot-point list, preface each line with four spaces. HN interprets
that as 'code snippet' and keeps your formatting.

On-topic, one thing I see missing when I read articles detracting from English
is the benefits of English. Like not having genders for non-gendered things.
This article talks of ambiguity in English, but in turn an English student
doesn't have to figure out whether a pair of scissors is male or female.

~~~
nitrogen
_> To make a dot-point list, preface each line with four spaces. HN interprets
that as 'code snippet' and keeps your formatting._

    
    
        If you do this, remember to add line breaks
        every 50 characters or so for mobile screens.
    

* An alternative is adding two newlines between each bullet point,

* so each point is in its own paragraph.

------
beloch
"I am not trying to argue that we should now give up English for international
or scientific communication, or try to replace it with this or that other
language (except possibly in a limited way, e.g., see below on Basic English).
I am not proposing to use Interlingua, Esperanto, Latin, Italian, Chinese,
Russian, or anything else: I am maybe saying that we should have used
Interlingua, Esperanto, Latin, Italian, Chinese, Russian, or something of the
sort (probably any of the above would have been better than English) "

He really lost me when he suggested that Chinese would be a better scientific
language than English. First, he didn't say _which_ Chinese language or
dialect. It's truly remarkable how many Chinese people cannot understand each
other even though they speak the same language. Second, all Chinese languages
are far harder than English to master speaking. Finally, _writing_ is yet
another steep learning curve.

~~~
bdamm
Nor does he address the creation of dialects, an odd omission given how much
time he dedicates to analyzing the ways different speakers of english dialects
may misunderstand himself. Italian, for example, is primarily spoken in Italy
and almost nowhere else except by expat Italians. If Italian were to explode
as an international language, you can be sure there would be regional dialects
pop up that may misunderstand each other in systematic ways.

~~~
jasonlotito
My wife speaks Italian. My brother-in-law also speaks Italian. However, they
both speak different dialects (Sicilian and Bari), and have a hard enough time
understanding one another. So, there is no need to wait for it to explode. =)

------
MollyR
Seems like English for international and scientific communication is like
Javascript for the internet.

~~~
hashberry
I felt like I was reading a "Why PHP sucks..." article.

------
stupidcar
The large size of the English lexicon isn't just a result of the Norman
invasion and subsequent merging of Old English and Norman French. During the
renaissance, a huge number of words were consciously imported into English
from classical Greek and Latin by scholars and scientists seeking to make
English a better language for learned discourse. The so-called "inkhorn
controversy"[1] arose when some other writers objected to all these new,
foreign-sounding words, particularly those for which there was already a
suitable alternative in English. Despite the objections, many of the new words
did gain acceptance, and the English lexicon swelled accordingly.

So it's a little ironic that one of the author's chief complaints is partly a
result of scientists trying to turn English into a scientific language in the
first place.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inkhorn_term](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inkhorn_term)

------
reuven
No one got up one morning and said, "You know what? We really should be
conducting all of our business in English." It was the result of many years,
and many different accidents of history that led to English having its current
position in the world. World War II, the growth of American industry, the
dominant position that the US has played in research and business, and the
growth of the computer industry in the US all led to English being adopted
world-wide. And you're not going to change that now.

Every language has its own trade-offs. It's totally true that English has
crazy spelling, a huge vocabulary, and lots of ambiguous syntax. But it uses a
simple alphabet, and doesn't have a centralized body making decisions about
its direction, which also gives it flexibility.

So yes, maybe Spanish or German would have been a better choice. But that
implies that there was a "choice" to be made. There wasn't.

It's definitely true that this has resulted in native English speakers having
advantages over other people. But unless we decide to use an artificial
language that is native to no one, there will always be some native-speaking
group with an advantage. Fortunately, the diversity and flexibility of English
are such that even if someone has an accent or stilted syntax, they're still
(largely) accepted, and are able to get their points across.

~~~
rm445
I think your list of reasons begins a couple of hundred years too late.

~~~
reuven
English wasn't the main language of commerce or science until about 100 years
ago. Before then, French and German were pretty dominant, if I'm not mistaken.

------
f055
For me it seems a global language strength lies, in fact, in this ambiguity,
loose standards and acceptance of errors (in pronunciation, for example) - I'm
thinking like HTML - it really can be buggy and still render text fine.
French, German or Polish, on the other hand, are like XML - sure, it's strict
and there are all these rules - but boy, try to make a mistake and it will
blow in your face ;)

~~~
iamcurious
The spelling leaves lots to be desired though. Luckily it is among the easiest
things to change in a language.

~~~
johan_larson
Is it? What's the smallest set of organizations that need to agree to make
meaningful spelling reform (of a hundred troublesome words, say) actually
stick?

------
whizzkid
The thing is, there are no perfect language, just like programming languages.
You will always find advantages and disadvantages of them at some point.

Yes, I agree with the author on the points that he is making, but comparing to
other languages, I think that English is one of the easiest languages that can
be learned and understood easily.

"Ease" is an important aspect in the context of languages, since people all
around the world are not using latin alphabet and to get them using the
language as fast as possible requires to eliminate some parts of the language
like the meaning of the words for instance.

"Like" can be used for several different categories such as liking
somebody/food/something. It is not the same for other languages, there are
different words for liking somebody and liking something. Which puts more
learning curve to get going with the language. Sure, you can express yourself
better if you have time learn everything.

I guess this was one of the important reasons why English took off as well. (I
might be totally wrong on this)

Interestingly I find this topic kind of similar to programming languages. Most
of our interns in the company prefers Ruby over Java when they are learning
web development. Because they can get something working during the day. On the
other side, ones that choose java are spending time with configuring their
libraries to compile the project. They will both eventually find out the
advantages and disadvantages of both over the time.

~~~
woah
Are you sure that English didn't just take off because of the British empire?

~~~
huherto
Followed by the rise of the USA as a superpower.

------
dnautics
One and two are not a problem; three is. German, Italian, and Korean might
have been better choices in that regard. French has some frustrating silent
letters and horrifying irregular verbs (although not to the scale of English)

~~~
cesarb
It's even more annoying when you learn new words mostly through a text channel
(like, say, most of the Web).

For instance: I've read elsewhere that no common word rhymes with "orange".
But what about "range"? If it doesn't rhyme, then I'm pronouncing one of them
(or both) wrong, but how would I know if it weren't for that "nothing rhymes
with this" tidbit?

~~~
tempestn
For what it's worth, dictionary.com will play a little sound clip of spoken
words:

[http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/orange?s=t](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/orange?s=t)

[http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/range?s=t](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/range?s=t)

Of course, it's only one possible accent, but might be helpful with things
like this. (In this example, it says "orange" is pronounced, [AWR-inj], and
"range" is [reynj]. That's about how I would pronounce "range", but you don't
hear that strong distinction between syllables of "orange" here. It comes out
more like [awrj].)

------
SundayLinguist
Any human language would fail at one point or another when you need a strict
interpretation, a strict pronounciation, and a strict syntax. It's a inherent
human species trait to make the language evolve in inconsistent ways on all
fronts.

A good candidate would have to be specially created with _unambiguity_ in
mind, like with formal languages, but as importantly, it would have to be
aggressively controlled to avoid any misuse or divergence of usage. The later
is most probably impossible in practice: enforcement would not scale. A simple
question: how would a user of that language deal with a concept for which no
word exists? The only possibility is to formulate that concept in lengthy
sentences ( _Ents_ do speak like that), until a word is officially adopted by
the language conformance body. Of course, people wouldn't be able to wait for
that adoption each time they stumble on the issue, and it's bound to happen
all the time. From then, one or more unofficial words would pop up for ideas
yet inexistant in the language lexicon, and of course subtle semantic
differences would crop up among these variants. Or maybe the author is
implying that agglutinative languages don't suffer from that problem?

I am only talking about vocabulary, because this issue alone is enough to
demonstrate the problem. For grammar, Lojban and a few other artificial
languages have been created with _syntactical unambiguity_ as a goal.

------
dandare
I more than agree. The tragedy is the contender to the throne is Mandarin
Chinese (with it's tonality). You will beg to have your perplexing English
back.

------
afarrell
> "there is no such English word as costlily;"

There isn't? I've certainly used it as such.

~~~
viewer5
A few times in conversations I've found myself trying to force "friendlily"
(friendly as an adverb) out of my mouth. Aside from me tripping on my tongue
trying to pronounce it, the people around me understood what I was saying just
fine.

~~~
vorg
Adverbs for adjectives ending in -ly end in -like instead, e.g. "costly-like",
"friendly-like".

~~~
SundayLinguist
I would just go with "cost-wise", "friend-wise", although I feel there's a
nuance in there somewhere.

~~~
wtbob
Hmmm, how about costlywise & friendlywise?

~~~
vorg
"friendlylike" and "friendwise" have different meanings and usage contexts,
but I wouldn't use "friendlywise" except in an unusual context.

"friendlylike" is used because the adjective "friendly" already has an -ly
ending which makes the corresponding adverb "friendlily" sound clumsy, so e.g.
"I spoke slowly and friendlylike to him". We could use "friendwise" to
introduce a context, e.g. "Friendwise, I don't have many, but
acquaintancewise, I do". But "friendlywise" requires an unusual adjectival
context, e.g. "I show different behaviors for different situations:
suspiciouswise, on the train or in the mall; attackingwise, on the sports
field; friendlywise, at work or in karaoke." It sounds very contrived though.

------
baldfat
I understand the issues with English and well Latin is a great scientific
language BUT...

English is the most spoken language in the world. There are 4 times as many
second language speakers for each native English speakers. I totally get the
issues listed. I am a native English speakers with horrible Spanish skills and
4 years of ancient Hebrew and Greek studies.

English just works as a language for people and it is 100% about the content
that is available in English as opposed to every other language.

~~~
qznc
According to Wikipedia [0] Mandarin has slightly more speakers. 1200M vs
1350M.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_num...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers)

~~~
baldfat
Good post showing the content part of my argument.

[http://blog.esl-languages.com/blog/esl/most-spoken-
languages...](http://blog.esl-languages.com/blog/esl/most-spoken-languages-
world/)

------
leke
It's interesting how there is an International Academy of Sciences San Marino
that uses Esperanto as its language platform.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademio_Internacia_de_la_Scien...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademio_Internacia_de_la_Sciencoj_San_Marino)

------
edpichler
Once I read that German is the language of science.

I'm sorry HN people for not remembering exactly where, but it easy to find a
ton of results about this on Google:
[http://bit.ly/1CewLMB](http://bit.ly/1CewLMB)

~~~
cbd1984
German _was_ the language of science decades ago. Before that, it was Latin.
Before that, it was Greek. (Your mileage may vary in various regions.) Things
change.

------
vezzy-fnord
I've always found such linguistic criticisms of human languages to be quite
intriguing. Most are used to thinking of programming languages as "tools"
(though there are persuasive arguments for them being more like materials),
and consequently this axiom leads to the implication of using the right tool
for the right job.

Yet we seldom see such ideas for human languages - that some could be better
for expressing certain concepts than others. Is it because the huge keyword
count of human languages necessitate us to desire a single _lingua franca_ for
quick communication, or is it a fear of cultural insensitivity?

~~~
panglott
We seldom see this idea because it's mostly not true. To the extent that it
is, it's because some cultures have spent more time thinking about algebra and
spaceflight than others, and have more words for them. But words are cheap,
they're easy to make.

