Webster's dictionary

Well good sir, nobody should ever accuse you of being anything but the most polite and helpful of the gentlemen of the House of Lords!

*PS correct word choice is the noun advice, not advise. Sorry.

 

No need to be sorry, it's always a pleasure to be pushed towards improvement, linguistic or otherwise.

 

Why do I get the feeling this discussion wouldn't have been half as confusing 2000 years ago?

Probably because language has to become more complex AND simple at the same time.
My reasoning for this being that complex language is needed for clearly defining concepts and theories in branches of science (and philosophy and religion) which are expanding by the day, while simple language is needed to get people up to speed on what they absolutely need to know for surviving in our modern society in a reasonable amount of time.

People also need to transmit information faster the more time passes, and this leads to simplification of language, which can be understood to be both intelligent (by allowing for the faster transmission of information) and stupid (by making it more difficult for children to learn prim and proper spelling, grammar et al) at the same time. Also, who still uses the word "fewer" when you can simply say "less"?

 

With any discussion of complexity you have to be very careful to define the level that you are considering. I think it is true that modern language is more concise - for example people used to say "four score and ten", whereas now they say "ninety". But is the old fashioned language more complex? It is using more linguistic units to convey the same amount of information units. I would argue that the old language is less complex, because it takes more words to say the same thing.

I believe that the main driver of any difference in language complexity or aptitude between now and in the past is that people are exposed to far more variety of language now than they would have been a few hundred years ago. The average office worker today spends all day at a desk dealing with words on a screen, or talking to different people, many of them with different accents or on the telephone where there are no visual cues. Then they go home and interact with their families, or watch TV - where the language bombardment is even more intense. Whereas a few hundred years ago they would have spent all day in a field with the same handful of people every day, and then gone home and found them there as well. There just wasn't the same impetus to develop linguistic sophistication as there is today.

 

We're taught at Uni that being clear and concise in as little words as possible is far more intelligent than rambling on. Then again I like my posts like I do skirts.

 

While I attended university, there was a guy in an obnoxious Rastafarian beanie who claimed that it was the purpose of language to express concepts as efficiently as possible. Another girl claimed that the purpose of language was to be expressive. She deliberately burned and cut herself occasionally.

 

Ancient tribes had incredibly rich languages. I call it the Babylon syndrome, where people love to enrich their language amongst their peers, but it just becomes nonsense to outsiders.

Not unlike first-year university students, really.

According to my sanskrit teacher, an erudite Yugoslavian woman, languages around the world have been simplified ever since the printing press, BUT now we've reached critical literacy, languages are now complexifying again.

 

This thread has stayed on topic FAR too long, on a topic I care nothing about.

I submit this for your further attention:

 

err, what was I saying?

Oh yeah! That girl's boobs...

 

Again - complexity is tricky. I would say that languages have become more standardized since the printing press, and then even more so with radio and TV. Before those things there was no need for material produced in one place to be understood in many other places. But this standardization wouldn't reduce the amount of complexity in any given dialect - it would just result in the variety of dialects diminishing. So in the past, people from one end of the country would have a hard time understanding people from the other end, even though nominally they spoke the same language. These days, all of them will be able to understand newsreaders on TV, and their own dialects would have adjusted to match it. Does this mean the base language becomes simpler? I would expect it would become richer as some of the dialect-specific words become absorbed into it.

This variety of dialects might have been one small factor in why Latin was used for all kinds of academic communication. Because Latin is fixed, you only had to learn it once - then it didn't matter which dialect of which language you actually spoke - you could always understand academic papers. These days, English has taken over that role, and since everyone is so exposed to it all the time, it doesn't even need to remain fixed to succeed.

Must... not... succumb... to boobs....

 

They look so soft, I just want to plant my face in them.

 

I maintain that I started off simple, but may have gotten intricate and confusing for the sake of accuracy in explanation; but point taken!

 

Wow, wayne, you've got steel b... bo...

Well done, DF, you've derailed the topic.

What WERE we talking about anyway?

 

I would point to any natural language that isn't immediately understandable, due to complexity, to argue the contrary (and I would like to stop Smuel in his tracks after he's looked up the term and then contrasted it with constructed language, due to his previous concession there regarding!).

 

Arbitrary, as in "not following reason?"

I'd say that most natural languages would indeed point to being this, as I can't think of any reasons why the word "computer", which we use quite often, shouldn't have it's meaning switched by the word "grub", which is shorter, yet we don't use nearly as much.

Also, why are there synonyms? And homonyms? Aside from making it easier to convey certain emotional value when saying things (for example, I'd sooner ask my girlfriend to make me some food then some grub.)

 

In medicine and psychology, a syndrome is the association of several clinically recognizable features, signs (observed by a physician), symptoms (reported by the patient), phenomena or characteristics that often occur together, so that the presence of one or more features alerts the physician to the possible presence of the others. Where as a hormone (from Greek ὁρμή "impetus") is a chemical released by a cell or a gland in one part of the body that sends out messages that affect cells in other parts of the organism.

 

I would point to any of wayne's language that isn't immediately understandable, due to complexity, to argue the contrary of whatever he's arguing (and I would like to stop wayne in his tracks after he's decided to respond to this, and say, for the love of God man, use some examples - easy to understand ones that is, not ones drawn from a Greek play or something. Then we might have a chance of grasping your point. Regarding.)

 

I haven't heard the word used much but I heard it used yesterday correctly. Homogeneous. So, in conclusion... boobs.

 

How was it pronounced? "Hommodgenus"? "Ho-mo-genius"?

(If you reply "Bewwwwbs", I will destroy you.)

[Edit]
Heh - I just thought "ho-mo-genius" sounds like a description of a brilliant hair stylist:
"Hey check out what Marc did with Chanelle's hair."
"Oh. Em. Gee. The man is a homo-genius."