Language

How would you measure the efficiency of a language?

Do languages become more efficient over time?

What is the most efficient known language?

Do you think we will see any major changes to the way languages are formed in the future?

Thanks :)

I have only a little understanding of linguistics but I think they would laugh about efficiency. It does not seem there is such a thing. Prove me wrong.
>Do you think we will see any major changes to the way languages are formed in the future?
Why would it change differently? I can see the internet having more influence on language, but that doesn't mean a different kind of change.

Maybe in the future we will see more initiatives like Esperanto.

So people actively trying to create better languages.

There's no thing as better languages. I suggest you go to r/linguistics. It is Reddit, but it has actual linguistics (those who study language).
Unless some user here studies or studied linguistics I doubt you get good answers here.

>How would you measure the efficiency of a language?
Lack of redundance

>Unless some user here studies or studied linguistics
You called?
Nobody has set up criteria for the efficiency of a language. The general consesus among linguists is that there are no better or worse, or prettier and uglier languages. There is something called Sprachausbau which refers to how wide of an area of topics a language can cover. For example, there are languages that work perfectly well in everyday situation, but which have little to no scientific tradition, so a different language is used for scientific purposes. Or attempts at expanding its vocabulary for the purpose at hand are being made.

As to the change of language, there is something called grammaticalization. In this process, stand-alone words become free grammatical markers and then bound grammatical affixes, which then in turn disappear completely, all over the course of several hundreds or thousands of years.

To what point will we tolerate mongs like you?

Better language=easier to learn.

English is incredibly easy to learn, hence a better language

Is it easy for everyone? I am Dutch so English was quite easy (not that it won't stop me from making many, many mistakes). But from Russian, Arabian and Chinese to English seems much harder.

Cont.
>What is the most efficient known language?
There is none, as there are no criteria for a language's efficiency.
>Do you think we will see any major changes to the way languages are formed in the future?
Yes, unfortunately the standardization and written tradition of today's languages slows down language change in all aspects except vocabulary. We might be stuck with the same redundant forms and writing systems for a few more hundred years.
English has a writing system that is beyond retarded and is actually quite hard in terms of pronunciation. It is mostly easily learned because teaching is mandatory in large parts of the world and because of the large amount of resources in English.

It is easier for a Russian, an Arab and a Chink to learn it than to learn each others' languages

>quite hard in terms of pronunciation
Easier than the other global languages though

Which ones?

Mandarin, Arabic and Spanish

Actually, you can drop Spanish but you get the idea

So how did you come to this genius conclusion?

>Harder to pronounce than spanish

Duda

Have you tried speaking Mandarin or Arabic you fool? Let alone writing in it?

But it is not easier for a Russian than Ukrainian or Polish, nor for an Arab than Hebrew. Shitty and lazy argument, mate.

>durr
Are you intentionally being retarded or something?
I'm talking globally, not locally.
A Chinaman, a Russian and an Arab will all three learn English more easily than they would each others' tongues

>A Chinaman, a Russian and an Arab will all three learn English more easily than they would each others' tongues
Citation needed.

ok, so you weren't pretending at all.

How about you check how these languages are spoken, let alone written, then get back to me

I am learning French right now and would argue that its pronunciation is much harder to grasp than English. For example, the difference between "elle court" and "elles courent" is completely inaudible to me when spoken, because the "s" in "elles" and "ent" in "courent" are both silent.

Obviously English has some strange silent stuff as well but very rarely do you need to rely on context to determine plurality in English, and when you do, the "s" is absent (as in "deer", "fish", or "money") when written.

English is the only language I speak fluently and it has gotten much more bastardized over time. I think it's fair to say that the black dialect has a major impact in that we see whites speaking that way today

Someone in 18th century England would say the way you talk is bastardized. Languages change.

The problem is that you are just making assumptions and not backing up your arguments with any scientific evidence.

To you it might seem to make "semse". But I am not so easily persuaded with armchair linguistics.

There's literally nothing wrong with aave faglord.

How many foreigners learn it.

That has more to do with how much influence a country has.

The reason that english is spoken so much has more to do with the colonial past then with how easy (or hard) it is to learn.

Nigger detected

Yes, French and Irish are also fucked beyond recognition. Try Finnish or Bahasa Indonesia for a language with a good spelling-to-pronunciation conversion.

this user is right. nobody knows what "efficiency" in language could possibly be. as far an anybody can tell, all languages do an equally adequate job. no language is strictly harder than another to learn either. children all progress very quickly through language acquisition, regardless of the specific language they're exposed to.

I would postulate that efficiency is not necessarily a positive trait of language.

Emojis are very efficient but also extremely limiting in their scope of the set of ideas they are able to convey in a manageable, portable form.

>How would you measure the efficiency of a language?
By its means to convey an idea within its speakers/readers.
>Do languages become more efficient over time?
Depends. They could change to be more efficient, if that means saving on spit and air to pronounce things; or they could change to adapt new concepts.
>What is the most efficient known language?
Mathematics.
>Do you think we will see any major changes to the way languages are formed in the future?
Yes. For example: different cultures see time differently (such as absence of future, or subdivitions on the past, etc), so when time travelling becomes a thing (if it does), new conjugations would emerge.

However, as many anons have already posted here, there is no "better" language.

All languages are equal.

All languages are meant for shitposting and the development of new means to shitpost, like the printing press and the internet.