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Forums - General - What do you think is the best language?

 

Your favourite language?

English 131 37.11%
 
Japanese 51 14.45%
 
Korean 4 1.13%
 
Italian 18 5.10%
 
Spanish 43 12.18%
 
French 21 5.95%
 
Russian 13 3.68%
 
Swedish 4 1.13%
 
Chinese 6 1.70%
 
Other (Post! :D) 61 17.28%
 
Total:352
samuship on 05 October 2012
pezus said:
samuship said:

I guess we have more extras than anyone: áêõüç.

áéíýúó (since you counted á ;o) öðþæ 

I forgot to mention: áéíóú-à-öü-êâô-ãõ-ç

And don't forget that "s", "z", "ç", "c", "ch" and "ss" have the SAME sound sometimes. xP



We need moar Zelda, now!

We need moar Unchartedzz!

We need less DLCs.

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SvennoJ on 05 October 2012
Mnementh said:
SvennoJ said:
Come to think of it, dutch has some devillish streetnames
Oudezijdsachterburgwal, Noordscharwouderpolderweg, Burgemeester Baron van Voerst van Lyndenstraat, Burgemeester Jonkheer Quarles van Uffordlaan.
(Fun making algorithms to match that to JQ Ufoodlane)

Doesn't hold a candle to the Welsh town of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch though.
Yeah that caused some nasty buffer overflow errors.

Hehe, we actually have a project, for that we try to find the right geographic point for a given address. As different people inputted these addresses we have to handle all sort of stuff in the address records. Luckily we aren't embedded, so we can use enough memory, so that buffer overflows don't happen with such short names as this welsh one.

Yeah good times, so many different ways to spell place and streetnames with prefixes, suffixes, abbreviations, aliases and what not.
And there are plenty of places with streetnames in multiple languages, plus as we found there are a lot of municipalities with duplicate streetnames. Sending people 30km the wrong way is not good advertising.



Chris Hu on 05 October 2012
Mnementh said:
Chris Hu said:
Mnementh said:
Chris Hu said:

You really can't say that English is not very poetic when some of the most famous poems and poets are in English and where written by people that had English as their native tounge.

Most famous poems and poets? Hmm, I think Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, Heine, Fontane, Tucholsky, Keller, Mörike, Brecht, Kästner, Brentano, Büchner, Bürger, Droste-Hülshoff, Eichendorff, Enzensberger, Herder, Fallersleben, Morgenstern, Ringelnatz are among the most famous poets, and the poems they have written among the most famous poems. But they didn't write in english - they made their works in german.

The language for the famous novels on the other hand seems to be russian.


German is a more poetic language but their are just as many famous poets and  poems that are written in the English language.  William Shakespeare who considered the greatest writer in the English language by many was just as much a poet as he was a playwright.  Also for what the English language lacks in poetry it makes up for by being very lyrical.  I highly doubt The Beatles or the majority of all muscial acts during the last 60 years would have been as big if they didn't write and sing their songs in English.  Even today your best bet to make it big in the music industry is by singing in English.

I doubt that German is an especially poetic languages. At the time poetry was popular, one of the cultural central points was in germany. It's the same with your example: pop-songs are usually in english (that is not longer true if you look for classical songs). The biggest market at the moment speaks english. And it is unusual to synchronize music (like it is done in some countries with movies). But sometimes - 'House of Rising Sun' sung by Manfred Krug with german text is as good as the original.

Its more poetic then English for sure but its not very lyrical and only goes well with a few genres of music.  English is more lyrical then poetic it also helps that English was the main language behind most musical genres that emerged in the last 100 years like rock and roll, pop music, rap, r&b etc. etc.  Not only do a lot of foreign groups who are not native English speakers sing in English to be more popular but also because the genre they sing in sounds better in English.



radiantshadow92 on 05 October 2012

i agree with u i love Japanese



Siko1989 on 06 October 2012

English is my only language but Spanish is my favourite because i like how they speak. lol




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Gnac on 06 October 2012

PHP, because just about every website worth a fuck is made with it, the syntax is familiar to anybody who knows C++ or Java, the documentation is excellent, and

Oh wait



WHERE IS MY KORORINPA 3

thewayofthepath on 06 October 2012
Chris Hu said:
Mnementh said:
Chris Hu said:
Mnementh said:
Chris Hu said:

You really can't say that English is not very poetic when some of the most famous poems and poets are in English and where written by people that had English as their native tounge.

Most famous poems and poets? Hmm, I think Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, Heine, Fontane, Tucholsky, Keller, Mörike, Brecht, Kästner, Brentano, Büchner, Bürger, Droste-Hülshoff, Eichendorff, Enzensberger, Herder, Fallersleben, Morgenstern, Ringelnatz are among the most famous poets, and the poems they have written among the most famous poems. But they didn't write in english - they made their works in german.

The language for the famous novels on the other hand seems to be russian.


German is a more poetic language but their are just as many famous poets and  poems that are written in the English language.  William Shakespeare who considered the greatest writer in the English language by many was just as much a poet as he was a playwright.  Also for what the English language lacks in poetry it makes up for by being very lyrical.  I highly doubt The Beatles or the majority of all muscial acts during the last 60 years would have been as big if they didn't write and sing their songs in English.  Even today your best bet to make it big in the music industry is by singing in English.

I doubt that German is an especially poetic languages. At the time poetry was popular, one of the cultural central points was in germany. It's the same with your example: pop-songs are usually in english (that is not longer true if you look for classical songs). The biggest market at the moment speaks english. And it is unusual to synchronize music (like it is done in some countries with movies). But sometimes - 'House of Rising Sun' sung by Manfred Krug with german text is as good as the original.

Its more poetic then English for sure but its not very lyrical and only goes well with a few genres of music.  English is more lyrical then poetic it also helps that English was the main language behind most musical genres that emerged in the last 100 years like rock and roll, pop music, rap, r&b etc. etc.  Not only do a lot of foreign groups who are not native English speakers sing in English to be more popular but also because the genre they sing in sounds better in English.


Sorry, but no.  English is not lyrical by any stretch of the imagination.  For example, it's very easy to break Japanese syllables into musical notes because of the syllabic nature of the language.  But doing the same (correctly) in English requires a dictionary, even for native speakers.



blkfish92 on 06 October 2012

Well as someone who only knows English and corrupted spanish/italian, I'd say the best languages for me personally to know would be English of course, Korean because I'm an avid sc2 fan, and Japanese as an avid gamer and anime watcher this would be invaluable.



           

Captain_Tom on 06 October 2012
Immortal said:
This is an absurd question to ask. I mean, no one here will know more than half a dozen languages at most. How are we to judge which is the best when we have near-zero experience or understanding of the vast majority of languages?
I can say that the answers English and Japanese are objectively wrong, though.
Japanese, as much as I may love it personally, is linguistically outright bad. The main writing system is borrowed from Chinese, with all the pronunciations being bastardized or existing Japanese pronunciations being shoehorned onto them, and the very existence of both katakana and hiragana is very silly since no self-respecting language should have such an absurd number of foreign words in it. Grammar and spelling is reasonably logical and consistent, but it ends up being far too simplistic in effect.
Also, it's crazy to say that English is the "best" language in any sense. It's not poetic, its grammar is the most disgustingly illogical, it has unnecessarily convoluted spelling... need I go on? It's basically what a drunk German man who hit his head in France came up with. "Everyone speaks it" is a lousy excuse to like it.
French, Spanish and Hindi, although I'd disagree with, are justifiable answers as far as I know.


I was gonna say french, but conjagation gets dumb as hell (I took 5 years of it).  We don't need a tense that tells someone what you aare planning to do in the future while talking about the past lol!!!   So I voted Italien as I think it has 1 to 2 less tenses...



Gnac on 06 October 2012
thewayofthepath said:

Sorry, but no.  English is not lyrical by any stretch of the imagination.  For example, it's very easy to break Japanese syllables into musical notes because of the syllabic nature of the language.  But doing the same (correctly) in English requires a dictionary, even for native speakers.

Japanese speech is indeed syllabic, but also rhythmic, yet music provides an excuse to break the rules in any language.

There is a lot of artistic licence used in the interpretation of geminate consonants (sokuon),  long vowels (chouon), and even "ん" can defy moraic conventions if the vocalist so chooses.



WHERE IS MY KORORINPA 3