Linguae Francae

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

As a follow-up to these posts:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=173182&start=25#p2179919
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=173182&start=25#p2179926

Do we want a world language, permitting us all to communicate with one another effortlessly? Proponents argue it would enable us to share ideas and appreciate our shared humanity with others who are a mystery to us at the moment. It would ease trade and simplify the spread of information - and information is a currency of its own. In philosophy, where precise meanings are of the essence, and anglophone western philosopher could share thoughts with a professor of Confucian thought in Beijing.

Language doesn’t entirely define all of the concepts we can handle, as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis implies (http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/cultural/language/whorf.html) - otherwise translations and new coinages would be impossible, or at least very difficult. We have a capacity for metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche and other lateral shifts away from our mother tongue. We’re bright enough as English speakers to understand the difference (given explanation) between the German wissen and kennen for which we have only “to know”, or the French plaisir and jouissance for which we have “pleasure”. Schadenfreude is a recognisable feeling even without knowing the word for it.

On the other hand, fundamental grammar does shape the way we think of things and perceive the world. In some cases, very lightly - whether a fork has a gender or not - in other cases, more so. Many languages have inflections or verbs for knowing that communicate how certainly something is known; English has a complicated tense structure that baffles many non-native speakers, and to get English conditionals right every time you more or less have to be a well-educated native speaker (if you hadn’t have been born a native speaker, you might never have been able to have written this sentence correctly). See also the aboriginal language linked to in the first link.

One sees a lot of misunderstandings in philosophy due to linguistic assumptions. Particularly in epistemology and philosophy of mind, where the mere grammatical appearance of a noun or gerund (“an idea” or “his incomprehension”) tempts one to think of objects floating around in a mystical-physical space, or the use of verbs (like “to know” or “to understand”) become misinterpreted as mental processes rather than capacities, abilities or dispositions. Common idioms and metaphors reveal the inherent assumptions of a language.

A shared language would channel us all into its assumptions and weaknesses. While people remained bilingual it may not be such an issue, but a ‘brotherhood of man’ with no external linguistic perspective may just forget that other languages are a possibility. You already see this with some Anglophones who, isolated from other cultures, struggle to comprehend that some foreigners just don’t speak English.

A third option is a written/symbolic language that people can read in their own language. As an extension of Pali, in the following link:
tnr.com/book/review/tongues-twisted
The problem being then that the translation-step still remains - plaisir/jouissance as against pleasure; different contextual meanings and implications of the same word, relative to other languages; tense structures or grammatical cases that simply do not exist for many languages. It would have to be either the most complex language in the world, or a stripped-down simple childspeak.

This isn’t a case of scepticism, although there’s reason enough - Esperanto has already failed, the English language almost certainly won’t even permit a spelling rationalisation, languages are very conservative as they’re so intimately connected with culture and hence identity. Keeping languages will maintain different cultures, different aims, struggles and potentially violent conflict. But at the same time it maintains diversity, flexibility, robustness of thought as a whole across humanity; each linguistic gap acts as a bulkhead to dogma and unquestioned assumptions. Inefficient, but all the stronger for it.

2

Anything that makes it easier for people to communicate; anything that decreases the number of misunderstandings between peoples in general; anything that simply gives people something in common… All good in my book.

Some diversity of perspective would be lost, which is bad, but in compensation one pillar of nationalism would also be compromised, which is good.

3

Brrr… scary idea, Humean. The idea that a universal language would make the world better overlooks what I find most valuable in language - its richness in particularity.
If there were no German, French, English, Italian, Chinese, Russian and Spanish but only one logically adequate language I would have to kill myself I’m afraid. Or go live in the jungle and learn bird-languages. The world would be so much less than what I’m used to.
It would be like only having one color.

The bigger problem than me killing myself would be what you address - the difficulty of taking up all existing concepts into this one language. Since different languages have different sensualities, and therefore, as I understand it, different foundations to it’s use of logic and relation of concepts, unifying all concepts into one language would either result in loss of meaning, or stretch this language to such a vast volume that it would be difficult to learn, even if it was the only one you would ever have to learn.

But the main reason for my objection to a universal language is that I disagree that function is the bottom line. If it were, amoeba would have done just fine…

4

I’m not sure how much unifying language will undermine nationalism - the Soviet Union still fell apart to nationalism after several generations of Russian, Scottish nationalism is strong despite there being only a handful of native Gaelic speakers. But it’s the groupthink that makes nationalism dangerous that I see as the biggest danger of a monoglot world.

5

I’m a greenie in my thinking about this, but there seems to be a couple of things that stick out.

First, I don’t see the possibility of a universal language where meaning and understanding is easily traversed. If language colors how we think, then the best we can hope for is universal recognition that we will always be faced with not understanding HOW another person thinks. This is even true of peoples who share the same root language. The thought processes of a person living in a desert is going to be different than the person born and raised in swamp land. They may share the same root language, the same nationality, the same government, but will develop subtle differences in language and therefore, differences in thought patterns. We don’t have to wait for aliens from space, we are language “aliens” and something as simple as geographic location insures that no matter our good intentions, we will never effortlessly find understanding with people of different languages because we don’t think alike. Anything past vague generalizations would be difficult if not impossible and that is pretty much what we see now. Our problems aren’t what they think, but how the hell did they get there?

More later…

6

Shouldn’t that be, “if you wouldn’t have been born”? Also, I think “able to write” would be better.

7

I hope this isn’t off-topic, but I’m trying to understand this.

  1. “Right now, I am able to write this.”
    2a. “Right now, I am able to have written 1.”
    b. “At 1, I was able to write 1.”
    3a. “Right now, I have (at 2b) been able to have written 1.”
    b. “At 2a, I was able to have written 1.”
    c. ?

1’. “Right now, I may have been able to have written 1.”
2a’. ?
b’. “At 1’, I might have been able to have written 1.”
3a’. ?
b’. ?
c’. ?

8

Not exactly. The sentence should read:

If you hadn’t been born a native speaker, you might never have been able to write this sentence correctly.

I should add that I find the substance of this sentence rather amusing. Hardly any native English speakers know how to use this point of grammar correctly. Teachers over here don’t teach much grammar; and this particular aspect of grammar is rather advanced, involving the use of the past perfect form to predicate a modal conditonal. It’s about as abstruse and defunct as the subjunctive “were” and the spelling of the past tense of the verb “lead,” which was spelled “led” until it recently shifted to “lead” to conform with the verb “read.”

9

It’s not “wouldn’t”, but using “wouldn’t” is one of those (very minor and completely intelligible) error that gives otherwise flawless Dutch speakers away (along with “welcome at…” or “welcome in…”). My wife speaks accentless English and has a Masters in English and Linguistics, and the only three errors I’ve heard her make in 12 years have been with a misplaced “would”! “Able to write” is also good, in the context of the sentence maybe better. I have a friend’s doctoral thesis somewhere on my shelves explaining English hypothetical conditionals and it confuses the hell out of me.

I’m not quite sure what your other questions entail. In any case, 2a’s “am able to have done” something is not well-formed, only “was able to have done”. “Am able to X” needs a present tense. “Was able to” or “will be able to” takes present or past. 3a’s “Right now” also confuses things - “have been able to” is an ability that you may have lost, whereas “was able to” is the more normal statement about your state at the time. For the second set, shouldn’t 1 be “Right now, I may be able to write 1”?

10

Native American-English speakers, you mean? :slight_smile: “Hadn’t have been” is, as far as I’m aware, still good British. But then, so is the subjunctive “were”, although that’s losing ground.

Edit: Tab’s the person to ask, I guess.

11

I have noticed that grammar-wise, the Brits tend to use more words than necessary. For example, the use of the past perfect, as in the clause “If you hadn’t been born a native speaker,” is much more parsimonious and elegant than “If you hadn’t have been born a native speaker”. Another example is always putting a form of the verb “do” after a form of “have.” If you ask a Brit, “have you done your homework,” they’re required to say “I have done.” Or if you ask, “Have you gone to the store yet?”, they’d have to say, “I have done.” But an American would just say, “I have.” I always find that British rule a bit pretentious and unnecessay, but the distinctions are also rather fun and interesting in a way.

12

I say, after installing English as a world langue we should make sure to eliminate any unnecessary langue constructions. After that we should eliminate the remaining confusing bits. Words such as evaliate and choice. Capitol idea, what?

13

That’s a relief. But really, it’s “if I had known better, I wouldn’t have done that”, not “I hadn’t have done that”, right? I think the latter is a mistake stemming from the abbreviation “'d”, which can mean both “would” and “had”.

But “have” is a present tense, regardless of whether it’s followed by a participle or not.

Maybe. I’m planning a separate thread for this issue.

14

Your first take on the sentence is correct: if I had known better, I wouldn’t have done that".

However, changing the second clause to “I hadn’t have done that” is not an error made by English speakers, not even ones who are functionally illiterate. If someone were to use that construction, you would know immediately that they were not an English speaker. Also, that mistake has nothing to do with the contraction of a verb ending in apostrophe d because otherwise the original construction would be “I’d.” In the case of “I’d,” you would only know whether the speaker meant to say “I had” or “I would” from context.

15

It’s the third conditional, with a few bells and whistles thrown in.

ie. to have + verb three - future perfect. (with/without modal varient)

A simpler example:

If I hadn’t missed the bus, I wouldn’t have met you that day. (certainty)

If I hadn’t missed the bus, I might never have met you that day. (possibilty)

If I hadn’t missed the bus, I might never have been able to meet you that day. (possibilty of abilty rather than of the event itself)

It is however, a little exaggerated on the ‘have’ front perhaps. :stuck_out_tongue:

We should definitely lose the first one.

ie. “If you hadn’t been born a native speaker, you might never have been able to have written this sentence correctly.”

But it’s still wrong. The ‘why’ is a bit tricky. It’s this bit:

“you might never have been able to have written this sentence correctly.”

The ‘to have written this sentence’ bit fucks it up, because the reader, to whom the primary ‘you’ refers, did not write ‘this’ sentence - ie. the sentence in question - nor ever could have, being as it is, OH’s sentence. :laughing: Coupled with the present perfect form of ‘have written’ which implies that the act of writing - begun in the past - still carries effect into the present… But for whom…? Only for the writer and not the reader.

So it should either be,

“If [size=150]I[/size] hadn’t been born a native speaker, [size=150]I[/size] might never have been able to have written this sentence correctly.”

Which now makes consistant sense. Or maybe:

“If you hadn’t been born a native speaker, you might never have been able to have written a sentence like this correctly.”

Which is still wrong, because it implies the reader has written a complicated sentence prior, to which this sentence is referring after the fact.

Okay, try again…

“If you hadn’t been born a native speaker, you might never have been able to write a sentence like this correctly.”

Nope. Still seems to refer to a prior event which didn’t really happen. And ‘speaker’ conflicts with ‘to write’ also.

Last go. Let’s go crazy and change the shit out of it.

“If you aren’t a native, you might never be able to write a sentence in the third conditional format correctly.”

Which scans, but has lost the complexity that the original sentence was trying to emphasize.

I love English, it’s such an absolute fucker of a language.

Anyway. Final verdict:

“If I hadn’t been born a native speaker, I might never have been able to have written this sentence correctly.”

OH - 99% for ambition, 70% for accomplishment. Good effort.

[size=75]Ps. If I was being reeeeeaaaallly picky I’d say one cannot be born a native speaker, as babies when born, cannot speak, but as a conceptual, rather than object noun, it works.[/size]

16

True, when I looked back over it I thought changing “this sentence” to “that sentence” would have made more sense - changing “you” to “I” also works. My bad.

From what I could find online, my Brit English is verging on the archaic :stuck_out_tongue: But I disagree with the “I have done” - I’d always say “I have”, and no-one would say “I have done” to “Have you gone to the store yet?” - though you’d ask “have you been to the shop yet?” anyway, and if you wanted to answer in full you’d say “I have been”. But that sounds very stilted. What I’ve noticed in US English is that in answer to “have you got your wallet?” many people will answer “I do”, rather than “I have”. I don’t know if that’s a dialect difference or just plain wrong.

On parsimony, I agree - although US “I want out” sounds like childspeak compared to UK “I want to get out”, to me. And US is actually getting more flowery than British, colloquially - the last few years I’ve noticed a lot more “right at this moment in time” instead of “now”, “you’re very welcome” in place of “you’re welcome”.

What colloquial US English does have that the rest of English should have is a distinct 2nd-person plural form (y’all). And in some ways it’s more logical - if the past tense of forget is forgotten, the past tense of get should be gotten, no? But then, one doesn’t learn English for its logic. :stuck_out_tongue:

Absolutely. The clause following the ‘if’ almost never uses ‘would’, unless you’re using it in the archaic sense of ‘want’ - If you would be king, you must raise an army. In modern English that sounds very affected.

I meant “pure” present, rather than present perfect (have done) or present continuous (be doing).

17

Language is only one pillar of national identity, I wasn’t proposing it as the sole leg to stand upon. Anyway. I think the opposite concerning the groupthink thing. For a couple of reasons:

(a) Communication is the key to understanding. When I first came to Tr, it was very frustrating to not be able to fully follow conversations, and isolating to not be able to be understood. At some points I’d have happily spent a few hours talking with a serial killer if he’d spoken reasonable English. I remember talking to my dog in English when we went out on walks sometimes, just to practice my own tongue. :laughing: Much of a person’s individual humanity is conveyed linguistically. Without communication people are metaphorically masked and hooded, just that little less human than otherwise. Easier to kill. Afterall, animals are mute are they not…?

(b) At least the groupthink would be transparent. The german english speaker could listen in at the coffeehouse to the english english speakers plotting away and happily conclude “ja-ja, zey are groupthinkink.” And at least the whole world would be on the same page, group-think-wise.

We’d just have to pick a language that was fairly innocuous, cognition-wise. Almost ceratinly not English, which make people into whiney little blame-seeking assholes, as far as I can remember from that article.

(c)

18

They’re just pretending. :stuck_out_tongue:

Would you understand Turkish culture like you do now if everyone had switched to English? If they all spoke English and not Turkish, would there even be a distinctly Turkish culture?

I certainly don’t think my proposal is the easiest option, from the perspective of effort everyone should of course speak the same language. For business or diplomacy, say, this would aid immensely in the understanding and management of expectations. But that is within a limited framework of contractual language. That’s no more representative than analytical philosophy’s conceit that language consists of subject-predicate statements :stuck_out_tongue:

Everyone being on the same page is kind of the bad thing about groupthink.

Well, that’s the gist of my reservation - you’ll be stuck with whatever negative traits and limitations the language inspires.

Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen? :slight_smile:

19

I’m just going by what the British tv shows portray. I’m glad you don’t use that overly parsed claptrap.

The thing is that “I want out” is connotatively different from “I want to get out” and works better in certain contexts. I agree with you about the way American politicos have forced the language into some really awful constructions.

Actually, the past tense of forget is forgot. Forgotten is the perfect participle. What we Americans often do is flip the past form and the participle. Many people here do not respect grammar and usage. Ya’ll should know that for sure by now. “Ya’ll” is a construction born in the American south, and being Texan, I use it all the time. By the way, it’s both singular and plural.

Also, I speak one language, Texan southern, and write another. Sometimes it feels a bit schizoid, but it’s fun too.

Lol. I thought it sounded fine.