Quote:
Originally Posted by Nyororin
Wow... I just don`t even know what to say to this.
It`s not an even balance because you can`t speak them evenly.
Just because you don`t know the proper vocabulary doesn`t mean it is not there.
There is a tendency to feel that the language you are weaker in is a weaker language. It`s not. It`s your own ability. If you have a limited vocabulary, the entire language is going to seem limited. It has nothing to do with the actual qualities of the language.
|
I wasn't expecting to get chewed out when I came back to this thread lol.
Steven asked for ways in which one language felt better or worse than the other. I gave my opinion.
I thought I was being pretty clear saying it was the way I felt, in hindsight I should have been more explicit, as usual! haha I really gotta cover my tracks around here or I come off as a real asshole.
Yeah English is what I'm used to, so Japanese feels inaccurate.
Actually French is what I'm used to, and English feels inaccurate!
Going from French to Japanese feels even more so.
The fact of the matter is that less details are conveyed in regular conversation in Japanese. The language doesn't lack the tools necessary to do so, but the people who use it, and the way they use it, is such that it simply conveys far fewer details than native English speakers are used to.
This, by the way, is what I meant by crude, lacking detail. And like I said, it's just the way I feel.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nyororin
I`ll go a step further and say (speaking as a linguist here) that the perceived need for the details, such as the difference between dog/dogs when it doesn`t really matter in the conversation, is entirely cultural. I don`t really think that it has anything to do with the "truth". It has everything to do with what you are accustomed to hearing.
I know a woman who is a native French speaker. She has said that it seems so frustrating to her that there are no genders in English. Something large and important is missing. Literature is empty and dry - like a science paper. To her, they are necessary - without them, speech feels incomplete and less expressive.
To the native speaker of English, however, having a gender for each word seems completely unnecessary.
|
Honestly I agree with the French woman, English feels crude to me at times.