09/06/2011
The languages \u200b\u200bspoken by people have been studied by scientists for a long time, but there are still no exact answers to many questions. There are theories according to which many languages \u200b\u200boriginated from Russian, but experts consider this to be nonsense. What serious linguists study, Online812 was told by the participant of the annual Festival of Languages \u200b\u200bin St. Petersburg, specializing in the problems of general linguistics from the University "Ukraine" (Kiev) Artem FEDORINCHIK.
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ovozelada scientist Quentin Atkinson managed to find the ancestral home of all languages \u200b\u200bexisting in the world in Southeast Africa, relying on the phonemic composition of languages. Is this a real discovery?- Using false efforts, you can prove anything: for example, that all languages \u200b\u200bare descended from Russian. Only it will be unscientific.
At this stage of development, languages \u200b\u200bare phonetically very different. For example, in many Polynesian languages \u200b\u200bthere are only 5 vowels and a dozen and a half consonants. And in Abkhaz there are 3 vowels and - depending on the dialect - about 60 consonants. In addition, we can only hear modern languages, and the ancients can only be seen. So we say that the god Ra was in Egypt, but in fact his name could sound like Ri or something else. Moreover, any writing appeared much later than people began to speak, and as they said initially, we can only guess.
Everything in the history of a language is based on hypotheses, it is very difficult to prove something. But there are many different factors to consider when building hypotheses. For example, there was a hypothesis that where the language originated initially, it changed less than on the periphery. But take, for example, Great Britain and Iceland: Iceland has always had less contact with the outside world, so the Icelandic language is more archaic, while the English are geographically closer to the Proto-Germanic language, but their language has undergone quite significant changes.
- When did the language appear - is that known?
- There are two main hypotheses on this topic. According to the hypothesis of monogenesis, which Sergey Starostin adhered to, the language originated about 100 thousand years ago in Africa. The polygenesis hypothesis states that languages \u200b\u200barose in several territories independently of each other. However, over the years, it is almost impossible to prove one or the other of them.
- Is it connected with theories of human origin? There, too, there are theories of mono- and polygenesis.
- In general, yes. Although there is less controversy: almost all scientists agree that the first people came from East Africa, from where the territory of Somalia is now. Another question is when they got a language: before or after the start of resettlement. There is a version that the Neanderthals still had the rudiments of the language, while the Cro-Magnons evolved it.
- How many languages \u200b\u200bare there now?
- This is a rather difficult question, because it is not always possible to draw a line between language and dialect. In addition, theoretically, it may turn out that somewhere in the jungle of the Amazon or in the Himalayas a hitherto unknown tribe is sitting. In addition, the number of languages \u200b\u200bis constantly decreasing, because their speakers are dying out. But in general, at the moment there are from 5 to 7 thousand languages \u200b\u200bon Earth.
- It is always clear: this is a language, and this is a dialect?
- It is believed that the Russian language is one, but there are many dialects in it. Meanwhile, the Dutch language can be considered a dialect of German, but we call it a language: there is such a country, the Netherlands, so there must be a language. In India, it is difficult to understand where one language ends and another begins: in each village they speak a little differently than their neighbors, but at the edges of such a continuum, people simply do not understand each other.
- Do you know at what point a dialect turns into a language?
- When the tribes were divided, then in each new tribe new words and constructions gradually appeared: someone said something wrong, the innovation took root. At some point, quantity turned into quality and another language emerged. Although the emergence of a language from a dialect is, again, a rather political issue.
- And the pronunciation in Russian: okanie, akane - where did it come from?
- When the first writing system was created, it is logical to assume that everything was written "as is." And then the pronunciation began to change. For example, "o" is a mouth sound. In some regions, the forward extension of the lips began to weaken, and people began to "ache". The same is with the Russian and Ukrainian "g": it is easier to pronounce Ukrainian, because a smoother transition is obtained, less effort is needed. Russian "g" is a plosive consonant, and such consonants are the least similar to vowels.
- Is pidgin a language?
- Somewhat. Pidgin occurs when two peoples do not understand each other, but they need to agree on something. A well-known example is Russenorsk, the language of communication between Russian and Norwegian fishermen, which included approximately the same number of Russian and Norwegian words (there were about 200 of them in total). Pidgin is a rather primitive language, but in some cases it can grow to a full-fledged Creole. This is how Tok Pisin, the official language of Papua New Guinea, was born. Haitian Creole appeared when France ruled Haiti: French was too complicated for slaves brought from Africa. Therefore, today in Haiti there are two official languages: French and Haitian Creole, while Creole is spoken by everyone, and French is only the top of society.
- Are new languages \u200b\u200bappearing in our time?
- In principle, such a possibility is not excluded, but for this it is necessary to fulfill a number of conditions. For example, it is desirable that their carriers live in isolation. Now it is almost impossible: the information environment around us interferes very much, which makes it much more likely that already existing languages \u200b\u200bwill disappear. The most famous case of the emergence of a new (and even then with a reservation) language in the relatively recent past is the case of Hebrew, which was deliberately created on the basis of Hebrew. New words appeared in it, plus people who came to Israel from all over the world slightly changed their grammar in the process of using the language. However, even in this case we are not dealing with creating a language from scratch.
- How do linguists divide languages \u200b\u200binto groups?
- The traditional, most frequently used classification is genealogical, it traces languages \u200b\u200bto a common ancestor, combining them into groups. The Slavic group, for example, includes Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian: their similarities are quite obvious. At the next level, these groups are combined into language families. The similarity of languages \u200b\u200bis determined at the level of morphemes: for example, despite the external dissimilarity of the Russian and English languages, the similarity of the words "three" and "three" is noticeable to the naked eye. When scientists began to notice such coincidences, languages \u200b\u200bbegan to be combined into groups and families, and at the moment there are about 300 language families. The most numerous is our family, Indo-European.
The second classification is typological: on the basis of how the individual elements of the language behave. So, according to this classification, English is close to Chinese: no cases, strict word order, and so on.
- Since there is an Indo-European family, then there was also an Indo-European language.
- I was. However, where the homeland of the Indo-Europeans was, we cannot say for sure. One of the versions says that it was Asia Minor, the territory of modern Kurdistan. This language supposedly existed about 10 thousand years ago, we have no written records of that time.
- Can it be restored?
- It is possible, and it has been restored to some extent. The first to try to solve this problem was the German scientist Franz Bopp.
- And what about other proto-languages?
- With the Indo-European proto-language, the situation is more or less good, but with other families it is worse: mainly because many of them had written language much later, and some languages \u200b\u200bgenerally remain unwritten to this day. For example, the Australian proto-language is also being reconstructed, but rather conditionally, since we can draw data only from those languages \u200b\u200bthat exist at the moment. A special situation with the Chinese language: its writing is quite ancient, but hieroglyphic, and the hieroglyphs do not give direct indications of how this or that word could be pronounced in antiquity. Sound-alphanumeric writing in this sense is much more informative.
- How to determine if two languages \u200b\u200bare related?
- There is a certain set of basic vocabulary. Basic vocabulary includes words that, as a rule, are not borrowed, but arise on their own: words like "hand", "leg", "mother", "father", "carry", "take". If we look at the word "daughter" in English and German, the words are very similar: "daughter" and "Tochter". Numerals are also rarely borrowed. Almost never pronouns. Basic vocabulary is very slowly replaced with other words.
There are different lists of basic vocabulary, the most famous of which is Morris Swadesh's 100-word list. To determine whether two languages \u200b\u200bare related, it is necessary to compare different layers of basic vocabulary in them. True, you need to look not only at the vocabulary, but also at the grammar: it is unlikely that the two related languages \u200b\u200bhave changed so much that the grammar is very different. There is such a language in the Palmyra mountains in Pakistan, Burushaski. On it, "I" will be ja, and "you" will be ti. But everything else: both vocabulary and grammar - does not look like Russian in any way.
- Are there languages \u200b\u200bthat are not included in any groups?
- These are isolate languages. An example is the same Burushaski. He has some common features with neighboring languages, but very episodic. Surely he also had relatives, we just don't know about them. In Japan, there is the Ainu language: it is considered an isolate, because its related languages \u200b\u200bhave become extinct long ago. This language is also on the verge of extinction: it is spoken by about 150 people.
- Has the threat of extinction always faced languages \u200b\u200band dialects?
- No not always. Among others, Popov, the inventor of radio, is to blame for the mass extinction of languages. Before, while riding a horse from Moscow to St. Petersburg - so much time will pass! And today everyone watches the same television, listens to the same radio. The greater the role of the media in people's lives, the stronger the tendency towards unification. Look at South America: Mexico and Argentina are very far apart, but their versions of Spanish are very, very similar.
- Can small languages \u200b\u200bbe protected from extinction?
- In this matter, we differ sharply from Europe: there speakers of not only minor languages, but also dialects, as a rule, love their languages \u200b\u200bvery much and fight to preserve them. In Norway, for example, there is no such rigid regulation of the language as in Russia. I mean, here on television and radio there is one standard, everyone is rowed with the same brush: the announcers are taught to speak correctly. In Norway, there is no such thing: everyone speaks as they say, there is no such thing that someone treats provincials from above. The situation is similar in Austria, Germany, Switzerland.
- Can some languages \u200b\u200bbe considered more developed than others?
- You can, although everything is relative. For example, in the language of the aborigines of Australia, many words we are familiar with are not, because their speakers do not need them: they did not have spaceships, submarines, computers. Therefore, a "submarine" in their language can sound something like this: "an iron creature that lives under water." Theoretically, there are no obstacles to translate, say, the Bible into these languages \u200b\u200b- the question is how much it will be if one concept needs to be described in ten words! On the other hand, there are often words in other languages \u200b\u200bthat we do not have: for example, the Yakuts have many names for different types of snow, while in some African languages \u200b\u200bthey call snow and ice in one word, meaning something cold: they do not need such a fractional classification if they almost never encounter this phenomenon.
In a sense, one can even say that English is richer than Russian: its terminological base is simply colossal. On the other hand, we say in Russian: "I will sing", "I sang", but in English it will be: "I will sing" and "I sang a little bit". The first indicator of the richness of a language is the ability to concisely express a particular thought .
It is not only philologists who like to argue about which language is the richest and most beautiful. Of course, for each person his native language will be the best, most beautiful and, of course, the most unique.
There are no rules by which we can determine which language is the most euphonious and perfect. However, almost each has its own characteristics that distinguish it from all the others and give many reasons for pride for the people who speak it out. In this article I will try to show just a little how diverse the language map of the planet is. In the future, I will return to this topic more than once, because each language has some amazing feature, thanks to which it can be considered a record holder in one area or another.
And you can start the story just from the simplest thing - from the number of words in the language.
As for the richness of vocabulary, Greek is the leading language here: it has 5 million words. English, for example, contains only about half a million words. However, we are unlikely to call the English "poor". This can only be said by those who are not familiar with the classical literature created in English, and have no idea how “capacious” this language is. Many are likely to agree that the best way to define the "richness" of a language is through its expressiveness. And there are not many languages \u200b\u200bhere that can compare with Russian and German. Is not it?
Now let's turn to the "poor" languages. Did you know that the Taki language spoken in parts of French Guinea contains only 340 words? But even with such a modest vocabulary, people manage to communicate well with each other.
The Guinness Book of Records, for obvious reasons, lacks the category "most beautiful language", but instead there are many other language records that are ways to surprise anyone. For example, Abaza is considered the longest of the existing alphabets (by the way, 65 alphabets are used in the world). It has only 82 letters. The Cambodian alphabet is only slightly inferior to it: it consists of 74 letters. It is followed by the Khmer alphabet containing 72 letters. The shortest alphabet is found in the Rotokas language from Bougainville Island (Papua New Guinea). It has only 11 letters. And in the Hawaiian alphabet, there is only one more - 12.
The earliest example of alphabetic writing was found in Ugarit (now Ras Sharma, Syria). It dates from around 1450 BC. and is a clay tablet with 32 wedge-shaped letters inscribed on it.
The most ancient letter is considered "o". It remained unchanged in the same form in which it was adopted in the Phoenician alphabet (about 1300 BC).
In English and Hungarian, the letter "E" is considered the most common.
The letter "Q" is used least often in modern European languages \u200b\u200b(with the exception of French).
In the Eskimo language there are more than 20 synonyms for the word “snow”, and many more words for shades of white. Also, there are 63 forms of the present tense in it, and simple nouns have 252 inflections.
The inhabitants of Papua New Guinea speak about 700 languages \u200b\u200b(this is about 10 percent of all languages \u200b\u200bin the world). In addition, among these languages, there are many local dialects that are used to communicate with each other in neighboring villages.
The Chippewa language of North American Indians contains the largest number of verb forms (there are about 6,000 of them). In another language of the North American aborigines - Haida - 70 prefixes are used, which is also a record.
In the Tabasaran language, which is widespread on the territory of Dagestan, there are 48 cases of nouns (in Hungarian, for example, there are only 24 of them, and in Russian - 6).
There is only one irregular verb in Turkish - olmak ("to be"), and in English there are 283 such verbs.
In Russian, German and Romanian there are three genders, in French, Danish and Swedish - two, in Finnish and Hungarian - one, but in the language of the Australian aborigines, Diirbalu - four: masculine, feminine, neuter and edible.
The largest number of consonants (80-85) is contained in the Ubykh language (the Abkhaz-Adyghe group of the Caucasian family), the smallest - 6 - in the Rotokas language (yes, yes, in the very one whose alphabet is considered the shortest).
The most vowel sounds are in the sedang language (Central Vietnam) - 55, and the least in Abkhaz (there are only 2).
The most common sound is the vowel "a" - there is no language in which it does not exist. There are languages \u200b\u200bwhere "a" has different degrees of longitude (Slovak, Hungarian, etc.).
The most rare is the Czech sound, which is a fused pronounced "r" and "zh" - [hw]. Even the closest relative of the Czech language, Slovak, cannot boast of this sound. It is also interesting to note that in the Czech language "rzh" is one of the main sounds: without it, it is impossible to pronounce such traditional folk names as "Jiří", "Přemysl", etc.
In the southern Bushman languages, there is another rare sound - a kind of tongue click. Even a special sign was invented to depict it in writing.
In Japanese, the sound "l", which is familiar to Europeans, is absent. And yet Japanese is rightfully called one of the most melodic languages \u200b\u200bon the planet.
The English word set has the largest number of meanings (58 meanings as a noun; 126 as a verb; 10 as an adjective derived from a participle). And how can you deny practicality to native English speakers after that?
If we turn to Asian languages, they seem to be completely woven from records. For example, in Chinese, where there are no verb conjugations or tenses, there is a huge vocabulary. And, of course, as befits a language whose history goes back more than one millennium, Chinese can be proud of its amazing writing. The 40-volume dictionary of the Chinese language "Zhongwen Dajidian" contains only 49.905 hieroglyphs. The phoneme [i] in the IV tone has 84 meanings, and among them there are such as "clothes", "hiccups" and "lousy". In the written language, there are 92 hieroglyphs for the syllable [i] in the IV tone. The most difficult is the hieroglyph [se] - "chatty", consisting of 64 lines. However, in our time, it is actually not used. Of the currently widespread characters, the most difficult is the hieroglyph "nan". It contains 36 dashes and means "stuffy nose." And if suddenly you decide to go to a Chinese pharmacy complaining of a runny nose, you have every chance to depict this very hieroglyph on a piece of paper. And then they will certainly understand you!
By the way, the Mandarin dialect of the Chinese language is the most used language in the world, more than 885 million people speak it. Spanish ranks second (332 million), English is third (322 million), and Bengali is fourth (189 million) .By the way, Russian is in 7th place on this list (170 million) and is the most spoken language in Europe.
There are over 1,000 different languages \u200b\u200bon the African continent. The Berber language in North Africa has no written form. And Afrikaans, known as the Boer language, was considered a dialect of Dutch until the early 20th century. And yet this language has no kinship with its African neighbors and belongs to the West Germanic group of languages. A unique case, isn't it?
Some linguists also believe that Latin has not ceased to be spoken at all, it has only undergone minor changes. The closest relative of Latin is the Castilian language. According to some reports, Occitan and Sardinian can compete with him. All these languages \u200b\u200bare so similar to Latin (even Italian differs from its distant ancestor much more than they) that one can believe that the language of the ancient Romans lives on to this day. Latin, by the way, is recognized as "the most alive of the dead languages." Its study is mandatory in many countries of the world, not only for philologists, but also for historians. Doctors are also compelled to understand Latin terminology. And not only them. The secrets of Latin grammar are also penetrated by simply interested persons.
There are about 5-6 thousand languages \u200b\u200bin the world, and about two die every month .... Languages \u200b\u200bdisappear and appear. And each of them is interesting. It would be useful to tell about the curious features of some of them, if only in order to better understand how valuable the language that you speak and which you love is.
Kurkina AnaTheodora
At one of the symposia four linguists met: an Englishman, a German, an Italian and a Russian. We were talking about languages. They began to argue, and whose language is more beautiful, better, richer, and which language does the future belong to?
The Englishman said: “England is a country of great conquerors, sailors and travelers who spread the glory of her language to all corners of the world. English - the language of Shakespeare, Dickens, Byron - is undoubtedly the best language in the world. "
“Nothing of the kind,” said the German, “Our language is the language of science and physics, medicine and technology. The language of Kant and Hegel, the language in which the best work of world poetry is written - "Faust" by Goethe. "
“You are both wrong,” the Italian entered into the argument. “Think, the whole world, all mankind loves music, songs, romances, operas! What language are the best love songs and brilliant operas in? In the language of sunny Italy ”!
The Russian was silent for a long time, listened modestly and finally said: “Of course, I could just like each of you say that the Russian language - the language of Pushkin, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Chekhov - surpasses all the languages \u200b\u200bof the world. But I will not follow your path. Tell me, could you compose a short story in your languages \u200b\u200bwith a tie, with a consistent development of the plot, so that all the words of the story begin with the same letter? "
This puzzled the interlocutors very much and all three said: "No, in our languages \u200b\u200bit is impossible." Then the Russian replies: “But in our language it is quite possible, and I will now prove it to you. Name any letter. " The German replied: “It doesn't matter. The letter "P", for example ".
“Fine, here's a story for you with that letter,” the Russian replied.
Pyotr Petrovich Petukhov, lieutenant of the fifty-fifth Podolsk infantry regiment, received a letter in the mail full of pleasant wishes. “Come,” wrote the lovely Polina Pavlovna Perepyolkina, “we'll talk, dream, dance, take a walk, visit a half-forgotten, half-overgrown pond, go fishing. Come, Pyotr Petrovich, to visit as soon as possible.
Petukhov liked the offer. I figured I would come. He grabbed a half-worn field cloak and thought it would come in handy.
The train arrived in the afternoon. Peter Petrovich was received by the most respectable dad of Polina Pavlovna, Pavel Panteleimonovich. “Please, Pyotr Petrovich, sit down more comfortably,” said dad. A bald nephew came up, introduced himself: “Porfiry Platonovich Polikarpov. We ask, we ask. "
The lovely Polina appeared. A transparent Persian shawl covered full shoulders. We talked, joked, invited to dinner. Dumplings, pilaf, pickles, liver, pate, pies, cake, half a liter of orange were served. We had a hearty lunch. Pyotr Petrovich felt a pleasant satiety.
After eating, after a hearty snack, Polina Pavlovna invited Pyotr Petrovich to take a walk in the park. A half-forgotten half-overgrown pond stretched in front of the park. We took a ride under the sails. After swimming on the pond, we went for a walk in the park.
“Let's sit down,” Polina Pavlovna suggested. We sat down. Polina Pavlovna moved closer. We sat and were silent. The first kiss sounded. Pyotr Petrovich got tired, offered to lie down, spread a half-worn field cloak, thought: it came in handy. We lay down, rolled around, fell in love. “Pyotr Petrovich is a prankster, a scoundrel,” Polina Pavlovna used to say.
"We'll get married, we'll get married!", The bald nephew whispered. “We'll get married, we'll get married,” said the daddy who came up. Pyotr Petrovich turned pale, staggered, then ran away. Running, I thought: "Polina Petrovna is a wonderful game, so much steam."
Before Pyotr Petrovich the prospect of getting a wonderful estate flashed through. Hastened to send an offer. Polina Pavlovna accepted the offer, and later got married. Friends came to congratulate, brought gifts. Passing the package, they said: "Lovely couple."
Interlocutors-linguists, having heard the story, were forced to admit that Russian is the best and richest language in the world.
The debate of lovers of Russian literature about which language is richer, Russian or English, continues. However, here is what is strange: it is problematic to find a correct definition of the term “richness of language” in the literature available to the ordinary reader.
In the Big Academic Dictionary of the Russian Language, for example, intelligibly
explains what wealth is, in different guises, but in detail about wealth
language at all, no, no. I will define this term as follows: “The wealth of language
is determined (mainly because it is not all) by the following components:
vocabulary (how many words in the language), word formation, phraseology, synonymy,
spelling, syntax, capacity, terminology. Compare the components of wealth
Vocabulary. The number of words in the English language is over a million. English available
dictionaries containing 475 thousand and 600 thousand words; Russian dictionaries record less
than 200 thousand words each.
However, not everything is so simple (grammar, quotations from the original): “In Russian -
boldly multiply by three. This is uncountable, because:
a) Russian dictionaries (neither spelling nor explanatory) do not give all
formations from the root of the word - all prefix-suffix markups, and their
there may be several; b) English is less flexible in terms of word formation.
How much to multiply is difficult to say, as well as to doubt that the Russian
general vocabulary is richer than English. To further clarify the question of
richness of languages, I will give the following data: Number of native speakers: English -
400-410 million, Russian - about 164 million.Number of English speakers - 600-1200
million, in Russian - about 280 million. "Body movements, antics, landscapes, languor
trees, smells, rains, melting and iridescent shades of nature, all
gentle human (oddly enough!), as well as everything muzhik, rude,
juicy and obscene comes out in Russian no worse, if not better than in English ... This
the discrepancy reflects the main difference in historical terms between the "green" Russian
literary language and mature, like a fig bursting at the seams, tongue
English ... "(V. Nabokov) Let us now evaluate the vocabulary of languages \u200b\u200b(thought experiment),
limiting ourselves only to such areas as science, technology, technology, politics,
jurisprudence, market, art, sports.
I don’t know about you, but I came to the following conclusion: in these areas, the vocabulary
English, most likely, is 30-40 percent richer than Russian. Word formation.
The rich word-formation capabilities of the Russian language allow you to create
a huge number of derived words. In the seventeen-volume Big Academic
dictionary (1960s) only feminine words with the suffix "ear" about 300.
Synonymy. The Russian language has no equal in terms of quantity and variety.
lexical and phraseological synonyms. Spelling. Famous linguist Max
Muller called English spelling a national disaster. In spelling
Russian language is not a national disaster, but its reform has long been
ripe. In particular, one should: - eliminate unjustified writing difficulties:
continuous and separate spelling of adverbs, continuous and hyphenated spelling of complex
adjectives, spelling of some proper names; English syntax
language is simple. Assessing the quality of Russian and English syntaxes, I would
rated them at 4.5 and 3 points, respectively. The capacity of languages. Determine the capacity
languages \u200b\u200bare easy. When translating Taliban history ... English and Russian by
the containers are indistinguishable. The brevity fallacy ...
About terminological systems. English average term, in my opinion,
shorter and easier to understand than the Russian counterpart. The future of languages \u200b\u200b"...
English and in a hundred years will retain its ... The international role of Russian,
German and French is falling. Perspectives of the Russian language
do not seem to be the most favorable. Its competitiveness weakens
the following: the demographic trouble of the Russian ethnos ...
We can only hope that the situation can radically change from
the coming to power of a new political elite. About 10 disappears in the world every year.
languages \u200b\u200b... Representatives of small indigenous peoples, dying, carry them away
itself ... A single language will absorb the best that was created by humanity in
English and other world languages. One language, one world government and
general prosperity will be the triumph of the development of intelligence on Earth.
Petr Georgievich Baskov
From the editor... We are looking forward to hearing from our readers on this topic.
Prepared by Tatiana Megelbey.
No, he is not richer, he is just different - and, really, one should not belittle his greatness in comparison with the Russian or any other! I, like many others, studied it in high school and listened to modern English-language rock ... and only recently fully realized how beautiful it is. I'm not talking about the modern, colloquial American version used by rappers, for example. I'm talking about normal English, which can be found in, say, English-language prayers, old songs, hymns ... The firmness and archaism of the Danish language, combined with the softness and pretentiousness of the French, gave a unique result! A very interesting language, perfect for both communication and art.
16/07/11, cromwell
I do not know how it is richer, but the fact that English is easy to learn and very convenient in terms of conveying information is an indisputable fact. No wonder half of the world speaks it, while "Russian gibberish" is rapidly falling out of use even in the subjects of the Russian Federation. And all the wealth of the East Slavic language is that you can only sing colorful obscene praises in it, or, more simply, "Russian" was created in order to send in three letters.
16/07/11, LoveUSA
Actually, English has the objectively richest vocabulary in the world. This is partly due to the fact that he, kk sponge, absorbs words from all languages \u200b\u200bof the world - German (Zeitgeist), Spanish (machismo), New Zealand (maori) and others. In English philology, there is practically no concept of "borrowing" - if a word is used in English, then it is already an English word, regardless of its origin. Of course, the pronunciation of these words is sometimes problematic, but the same happens with native English words. As for the expression of many concepts in one word, in English there is also a variety of synonyms, but it does not always correspond to Russian. The same word power (power) in English is translated as might, authority, clout etc, depending on the context.
16/07/11, tatevik
guys, as an English specialist, I can definitely say that English is much richer than Russian. it's one hundred percent :-)
16/07/11, Westerner
SHOK: * I do not like his phraseology for example when you need to say "I am taking a bath" you need to say "I have a bath" sounds rather dull to me. as a guest? It's just that in sufficiently developed languages \u200b\u200bthere are certain established phrases, for example, "it is raining" - where does it go? Legs have grown, or what? So they say, and that's it. * Why does a language need 12 tenses, too. * Yeah, why does another language need an imperfect and perfect form for each verb? "I will read", "read", "read" - I can imagine what kind of puzzle it is for non-Russians. * The alignment of tenses is still a big deal. * Perhaps, but still it is a fairly logical system, unlike a whole bunch of declensions and conjugations in inflected languages. And on the subject, so English is probably really richer than Russian because of its many borrowings, which are not even perceived by native speakers as something alien. Although Russian is also far from meager.
20/07/11, Servail
Languages \u200b\u200bare silly to compare. Your "native" language will still seem richer to you than any other. I'm not even talking about the potsreots that the butthirt experience even with any hint that something non-Russian is cooler than something Russian. What I love English for is its sound, ease of learning and flexibility. It has every right to be an international language.
20/07/11, Fsh
i agree that the languages \u200b\u200bare completely different and incomparable, it's just that the English language is international and everyone speaks it! It would be great if Russian also reached this level, though I would like people to speak it beautifully. So many words that people forgot about the beautiful or the terrible using foul language is disgusting. main so that Chinese does not go to the world level!
21/07/11, Aleider
I love English *))) * Easy to learn, sounds beautiful, suitable for communication in many areas of life. Please note: half of the world speaks English. 90% of computer games are also in English. Russian is only rich in mats.
21/07/11,
In general, the topic is actually meaningless, one can only say that, for example, I personally like English, but that it is richer and poorer, I cannot say anything, because Russian is native to frost. This makes it funnier for me to read the red column, which consists a little less than entirely of Slavophiles, which reduces the poverty of English to its simplicity and analytical grammar (grammatical meanings are expressed outside words and morphemes, words are short and consist mainly of a root) .. Well, on this basis, it can be argued that the languages \u200b\u200bof Southeast Asia are poor, because they are generally isolating (if in the same English some morphemes and conjugations of words are possible (employ - employER), then in Vietnamese, for example, words are not conjugated at all and are modified) ... English has its own phraseological units and grammatical phrases, the vocabulary is many times larger than Russian, for THEM our phrases and grammar may also seem meaningless and too "dead" ... But these are mostly ignorant!
22/07/11, Aleider
Selinger, there are people who are fluent in languages. You will not deny? English is not the limit. German, French, and especially advanced students take up Chinese. For example, the monotonous word "hate" in English will be short "hate", and "like" - "like"
24/07/11, Rat-eater
We are not, what nonsense, the Russian language is not at all wretched!
29/07/11, talmid
The English language is cleaner from the emotional pagan jargon!
10/12/11, Alibaba
I learned English at school and at an institute (non-linguistic), so I know it at an intermediate level, which does not give me the right to judge it and even more so compare it with Russian. But I just know that the vocabulary in English is much richer than in Russian, and in other developed languages. All of today's science, the Internet, books - mostly in English. In other languages, including Russian, English words are transferred without translation. Russian with English, of course, does not compete. Of course, today, English is richer than Russian.
10/12/11, Fusekey
Russian is definitely not richer than English, but English is not richer than Russian either. He's just really different. There was an argument in the opposite column, they say, "... the language is terribly straightforward, and in order to translate a text normally, you need to look for the meaning ...". It is at least silly to think so, because it is immediately obvious that you do not know the language. If you think that ENGLISH is straightforward, then I hasten to upset. To understand the opposite, you just need to learn it. And the phrase that "the richest language is Russian" comes from a person who is only capable of using it. For that matter, traditional Chinese is richer in vocabulary. And I do not feel any negativity towards Russian, I like it, it is beautiful, and I also like English. But what I love more than all the languages \u200b\u200bput together is that they are really very different. It's great when you can convey your emotions in Russian and English, using the epithets necessary for a particular language
17/12/11, Sebastian
When culture does not generate ideas, discoveries, how can a language be rich? In Russian, wherever you stick (in any area of \u200b\u200blife), foreignness is everywhere - vocabulary, grammatical units. Is it that we Russians, with our liveliness of mind and inner rich world, gave out such words and phenomena as a tent, democracy, mathematics, a veil, a stocking, a hero, a sundress, a doll, a post office, a market, a shoe, a ballet, a battalion, a notebook, beans, verse , image, gun, video, internet, computer, monitor, after all !? I define the richness of a language by its complexity, the ability to quickly and radically transform ideas and concepts, by the level of influence on world culture, by its persistence in the process of Romanization, Christianization, Islamization, etc. Chinese can be called Great and Mighty! And that slogan that we saw over the chalkboard for 11 years stuck in your head - an ordinary brainwashing of future citizens of the USSR. We need to get some air, guys! And yet - an active Russian dictionary - 500 thousand, and in English there are a million active words.