Languages - writing of them etc.

[Skidzer]

Are there some languages which are more complex than others?

And if yes, does that stimulate a child's brain when learning them, or is the reverse and is it a reflection of the society that uses it?

If anyone replies I'll explain some of my rather jumbled brain processes which lead to me asking the question.

Yes some languages are more complex than others. I don't really understand the rest of your question though.

Well there's a school of thought which suggests that the more a child's brain is stimulated when it is young, the more the brain develops (not an academic or a medic, so no idea which part of the brain nor even if this has been proven).
I know that Japanese to me seems to be a very complex language to learn to write. A Japanese guy was trying to explain to me that they can have 10 different ways to write the same word.
I'm just wondering if learning such a complex language from birth could stimulate a childhood brain's development?

Arguably, they should stick to one way to write a word lol.

DH is from a country with a super complicated written language and is happy to report he is no more or less intelligent than me with my one alphabet

It’s an interesting question though! I know kids in japan spend a lot of time rote learning the 3 scripts/alphabets, but it does seem to be more rote learning than them being more intelligent than other nationalities.

However, school in japan sounds super hard, so I may be wrong there!

My nephew was brought up bilingual Japanese/English. Despite his father having a genius level of IQ, DN is of very average - being generous - at best: so in his case, it hasn't proven to be an advantage. Or- maybe it has, and without it, he'd be well below average

BUT he's a lovely young man, very kind, very hard-working - so there's nothing whatsoever wrong with average!

I speak (and write) Chinese, Japanese, and a few other European and non-European languages.

I think, in the context of languages, saying a language is 'simple' or 'less simple' is not so straightforward.
For example, the Japanese writing system is fairly horrendous to learn, with a mixture of two different writing systems using syllables, plus Chinese characters thrown into the mix. However, it is also a reflection of how Japanese developed as a written language, illustrates past vocabulary borrowings from Chinese and gives a person who has learn it an ability to understand (to a certain extent) shared vocabulary as far afield as China, Korea and even Vietnam. I actually find Japanese written without the Chinese characters (as in books for very young children, for example) harder to understand, because you are left without a lot of informational input that the characters provide.

However, when thinking of complexity in writing, have you stopped to think that the same could be said of spelling in English? There are huge numbers of words with silent letters, as well as different pronunciations for the same letter combinations (think of how the following words are written versus how they are pronounced: cough, through, enough, though, thought, bough).

In addition to spelling, the grammar is some languages is far more complicated than in others. I started giving some examples here, but deleted them again, as it's just going into far too much detail. Put very simply, what I wanted to say is that if a language is 'simple' in one aspect, it often tends to be 'complex' in some other aspect, whether that is writing system, grammar, the range of sounds used in the language, and so on.

One problem with your hypothesis is that you are actually mixing two issues together. One issue is learning the fundamentals of a language, which happens in the early childhood years, before school age. The other is learning to read and write, which happens later. So the two things are happening at different periods of brain development.

In addition, brain development in young children is not just about stimulating the brain and having it develop more. It's more complicated than that. I read a book about brain development in young children a few years back, so don't remember too many details, but it did point out that in very early childhood the brain is developing all sorts of neural pathways, then a few years later it actually removes many of them - essentially aiming for efficiency rather than just bulk.

@ohdrearydrearyme

Lol, you've kind of touched on what spurred me to think about it.
It was a programme I was watching on TV and I said to myself, I must remember that Salem is in Oregon.
Except I couldn't remember whether it was Oregan, Oregon or Oregen. Stupid I know, but I was then thinking, fuck this shit, we've to discern accents before we can discern how something is spelt. So I figured English is probably relatively complex.
The other side of it is that I wonder whether a people who create complex languages are more intelligent? Probably a stupid notion, but a notion that crossed my mind nonetheless.

Given the parity of students the world over, my wonderings would not seem to be borne out in reality. I just thought I'd ask.

Other things that cross my mind are for example Italian caveman looking at a dog and coming up with the sound 'perro'. Old English caveman looks at a dog and comes up with the sound 'dog'. Lol.
I know I have better things to be thinking about........

I speak several languages. Some are much more straightforward and some are much more complicated.

For example, Indonesian is very phonetic. The pronunciation stress is very regulated. The verb doesn't have to agree with anything and there are no word endings at all. Verbs don't have tenses either. Plurals are just the word repeated (appleapple is the plural of apple)

Russian on the other hand is really really complicated. There are 5 cases which means every word in every sentence has to change endings according to where it sits in the sentence. You don't have to sya the words in any order, you know which is the subject by the ending. And so on.

But children seem to pick up both just as easily! One other fatcor is that many many people are bi-lingual. So many Ondonesians actually speak Indonesian as a second language, and speak eg Javanese as their mother tongue. Whereas most Russians woudl not be bi-lingual as children.

Interestingly English has a bigger vocabulary than any other language, as well as very complex rules and non standard spellings.

In terms of how complex, languages develop to be more simple grammatically according to how widely spoken they are.

So, languages spoken widely, and by people who interact with people who speak other languages actually become more simple grammatically. (Oh it is late and my English is rubbish, don't judge me!) Languages spoken in remote areas tend to have convoluted and complex grammar, with oscure rules.

But the same things which have streamlined English grammar, have also contributed to the large vocabulary and complex spellings. This is because languages are essentially spoken, and the spelling came much later.

I speak Irish. It's an unusual language that bear's no resemblance to any other language - maybe Welsh or Scottish? - but nothing outside that.

I have obviously studied Irish, I speak English, fluent in Italian, studied French to A Level equiv, studied Spanish first year at uni; German, first year in Secondary school.

English isn't like any of the other languages. French enabled me to study Italian very easily.

I guess I'm wondering whether it's the chicken or the egg.

My brother who was very good at Maths, found German easy to learn.
It's easy to learn but I had no love for it. French? I fell in love immediately (I'm not so good at Maths).

I should probably have studied linguistics at uni.

I’m bilingual Cantonese and English. Supposedly Far East Asian languages and English shares almost no linguistic roots. And I have read for English speakers Chinese is one of the hardest to learn languages. I don’t find either hard to learn because I learned them when I was very young. On the other hand I did badly at learning Japanese and French at school. I struggled remembering all the katakana and hiragana symbols!

I believe that our human brains are very good at learning languages in the formative years. No children find their native tongue hard. No languages are inherently harder than another.

My kids are bilingual French/English. French kids learn to read a bit later than English ones because it's easier in English to start with phonetic words like "the cat sat on the mat", in French you're straight into explaining silent consonants as soon as you hit a verb.

I feel duty bound to point out that Japanese isn't alone in having three writing systems - English does too: capitals, lower case, and joined up.

Kind of Welsh although katakana and hiragana work like an upper case and lower case, kanji is a completely different beast. If you’ve mastered upper case and lower case in English, you can have a crack at deciphering joined up However, even if you master hiragana and katakana, you still have no hope with kanji.

In the attached pic, top line is hiragana, middle line is katakana (and you can see the similarities in the last 2 characters) and the bottom line is kanji.

They also have a 4th alphabet, romaji, with is the roman (English) alphabet.

French sounds difficult to learn - lots of silent sounds and complicated been endings. I think it’s a fantastic one to absorb as a child, as it’s a nightmare to do as an adult!

Skidzer the origin of word is really interesting! There are lots of great word maps which show how languages evolve in different directions over time.

English is technically Germanic but with a ton of French/Latin, Anglo Saxon and Celtic influences. “Dog” is an old English word, whereas the Germanic version is “hund” which became “hound”.

English really got kicked around and influenced by a lot of other languages due to many invasions and a very mixed population. Some, like Vikings, simplified our complicated grammatical verb endings by just bashing them off, while the Celtic influences of Welsh added a mystery do/did to English that isn’t seen in other Germanic languages.

Hahaha I've met my people fellow nerds

My favourite word in german was der hund lol. My mother used to call our dog a hound when it was misbehaving. Another one was kaput! We used it all the time thinking it was slang - never knew it was actually a word in another language growing up!

I could talk for hours and hours about language.

As for klappe die trappe! Heehee. Again, in Ireland we'd say 'shut yer trap'. Not a notion had we that it was German! Now that I think of it, I wonder how my family in particular had such a wealth of German words in our colloquial language. We wouldn't have travelled abroad much ever. Perhaps previous generations had fought in wars or something.

I'm a language teacher. I teach French, German and Spanish (though only primary level Spanish, because I'm still learning it myself!).

Obviously it's harder to learn a foreign language which has a different alphabet, but to a certain extent it's swings and roundabouts. I learnt a bit of Japanese. It's true that it's hard work learning the script, but there are other things about it that are less complex than other languages.

Imo Spanish is easier than French, largely because it looks like it sounds much more than French does. German is difficult in some ways, but it's pretty logical grammar-wise, which suits some people better. English spelling and pronunciation must be a nightmare for foreigners.

You know when you'd come home from school and your parents (my father) would ask 'Well, did you learn anything?'. I loved regaling them with things I'd learned about other languages. I don't think they were as fascinated as I was....

Another language nerd here. I‘m a native English speaker, but fluent in German, and can also speak French, Russian, and very basic Czech, Lithuanian and a little Cantonese. I also teach ESL. My feeling is that all languages are equally complex, but the complexities are different. It’s quite easy and quick for learners to get the basics of English: we only have a vestigial case system, verbs don’t inflect much - but we have so many verb tenses, word order is crucial, and it’s actually a tough language to fully master. And the vocabulary of English is enormous.

I think when you speak one or two, others become easier - in that genre. Like the Latin languages.
When learning Italian, I was in a class full of Japanese (and one Aussie). I sailed through from Level 1-4, in 2 months, but there were girls in the Level 4 class who had lived in Italy 2 years and their grasp of Italian was less than mine.

If I was to try to learn Japanese, I suspect I'd be in beginner's class for about 10 years. Whereas someone learning it with a similar alphabet at least could fly through it.

Russian is one that interests me. There are a lot of similar languages too.

If I was to learn a language outside of the Latin languages (would love to perfect Spanish), then I'd go for Russian.

Foxtrot that's quite a collection you have! I'm envious!