cultural differences in language

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ibex
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cultural differences in language

Beitrag von ibex »

Hello everybody,

just short a time ago (by the way - is short a time ago completely wrong, do I have to put a short time? I'm uncertain, for I sometimes try to put the a in the middle in similar constructions, so I suppose I must have read it this way someday) we discussed the difference in writing style, especially concerning formal writing.
The point was brought forward that German speakers as well as French like to sound professional or sophisticated by using complex and complicated structure, like e.g. a great number of nominalisations or long-winded sentences. British people, however, seem to use rather plain language even in formal writing such as proposals etc. The Briton present at the time of discussion thought for a while and then said he guessed that British people rather proud themselves / focus on hitting the very word and being really precise. And indeed, dealing with French (my French is still rather limited, though), I am under the impression that the French vocabulary isn't a particularly precise one.
I am really thrilled to hear your opinions on the subject, for I find it an absolutely fascinating one! :jo:
Thank you.




tiorthan
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Re: cultural differences in language

Beitrag von tiorthan »

ibex hat geschrieben:by the way - is short a time ago completely wrong, do I have to put a short time?
Yes it is completely wrong, that's why you can use it :mrgreen:
For real now, that kind of construction is not wrong at all it's just rather uncommon. It is a kind of fronting which means positioning a part of a clause further to the front than it would occur originally, although usually fronting is used with words that follow the predicate that are then placed at the beginning of the clause. Fronting shifts the emphasis to the fronted word (or in some cases to the thus changed construction).
The Briton present at the time of discussion thought for a while and then said he guessed that British people rather proud themselves / focus on hitting the very word and being really precise.
It's not just the British though, every native speaker uses that "plain" language, as you call it. Even so, the English used in Britain is far from being more precise than German or French, it's a rather colorful language that uses a lot of idioms and is often used metaphoric, ironic, etc.
The real reason is most likely a combination of two things: a lack of inflection and tradition.

The first is quite obvious, if you think about it. If you parse a sentence you need to identify the function each word has in it. Inflection marks the parts of a clause for their function. In a languages like English, that lack (almost all) inflection, the function follows from a words position in a sentence.
This is even more important as English has no real distinction between noun, adjective and verb anymore. Words can easily change their category if you like and there is already a significant number of words that dictionaries list in more than one category. One of the more prominent examples being the word "sound" which can be a noun, an adjective and a verb. That lack of distinction adds to the need for a strict word order.

As a consequence of the fixed word order, it is much harder to nest structures within a sentence. A nested structure, unless clearly marked as such, adds a lot of ambiguity when you try to parse a sentence. Clear structure markings are rare in spoken language though, thus English does not lend itself well to nesting, which is one of the main reasons English does seem simpler.

My second point was tradition, and that's one of the things that is much harder to outline here, so I'll just mention the fact that English is traditionally a more "action-centered" language than German which is more or less "fact-centered". Both have advantages though.
And indeed, dealing with French (my French is still rather limited, though), I am under the impression that the French vocabulary isn't a particularly precise one.
I am really thrilled to hear your opinions on the subject, for I find it an absolutely fascinating one! :jo:
It may seem as if French is less precise but that's most likely due to a "German" approach to the French language. You see, what we call "words" in french is not the same as what we call words in German. French has developed into a language that is spoken in phrases. You can see that best in the way French is pronounced (liaison) but also in the way meaning is assigned to a phrase rather than single words. Many of the Words of the French language have no more meaning of their own than German affixes, they merely add to or modify the meaning of the phrase.
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tiorthan
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Re: cultural differences in language

Beitrag von tiorthan »

Just to detail my last point about French in more detail I'd like to look at some examples.

You know the French negations ne ... pas, ne ... personne, ne ... rien etc. When on their own "pas", "personne" and "rien" have a totally different meaning. "Pas" is a step, "personne" is a person or it can mean somebody, "rien" can mean something like negligible. Now, this is something not so unusual. A lot of words form idioms in other languages as well, but the situation in French is a bit more complex than that because, as it turns out, the "ne"-Part of these phrases doesn't have any meaning at all, literally! Most people don't even pronounce it at all.

Another example are the French personal pronouns "je", "tu". I know you can find them in the dictionary, but are those really words? They aren't! One of the things that is defining for a word is that it can be used on its own. These "pronouns" never occur without a verb, instead a different form of pronoun is used "moi", "toi".

Examples like these can be found all over the French language, and it's not only words, it's grammar as well.
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Duckduck
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Re: cultural differences in language

Beitrag von Duckduck »

tiorthan hat geschrieben:
ibex hat geschrieben:by the way - is short a time ago completely wrong, do I have to put a short time?
Yes it is completely wrong, that's why you can use it
For real now, that kind of construction is not wrong at all it's just rather uncommon. It is a kind of fronting which means positioning a part of a clause further to the front than it would occur originally, although usually fronting is used with words that follow the predicate that are then placed at the beginning of the clause. Fronting shifts the emphasis to the fronted word (or in some cases to the thus changed construction).

Hey there!

@tiorthan
I beg to differ! Though I wouldn't want to make a fuss, I'm pretty sure that fronting does not work just like that and whenever the speaker wants it to; i.e you can't just haul any old word to the front of a sentence because you would like to emphasize it. There are of course many cases in which it works but I would say: this isn't one of them!

@ibex
I'm sure you've come across this kind of construction somewhere but I suppose it looked a little different. In a way it is all a matter of emphasis, but it's the sweet little word "so" (used as an emphasizer) that makes all the difference!

May I refer you to this explanation (though, alas, given in German...) viz the :watch: part:
In der Regel steht "such" wenn es als "emphasizer" (Betonung) benutzt wird vor einem Substantiv:

She is such a beauty! -> Sie ist eine solche Schönheit.

Dieses Substantiv kann seinerseits auch ein Adjektiv vor sich stehen haben:

She is such an interesting beauty. -> Sie ist solch eine interessante Schönheit.

Entscheidend ist, dass ein Substantiv vorhanden ist.

"so" steht als "emphasizer" hingegen vor einem Adjektiv (ohne ein folgendes Substantiv):

She is so beautiful and interesting. -> Sie ist so schön und interessant.

Das ist doch ganz gut zu verstehen, nöch?

:watch: :watch: :watch: Aber sofort kommt eine Ausnahme hinterher gewackelt, die dich aber nicht zu sehr kümmern muss, weil es eine ziemlich hochgestochene Formulierung ist, die im gewöhnlichen Sprechen kaum verwendet werden dürfte:

It was so beautiful a day that we decided to skip work and mow the lawn (hihihi). -> Es war ein so schöner Tag, dass wir beschlossen, die Arbeit zu schwänzen und Rasen zu mähen.

Hier haben wir "so" vor einem Adjektiv (nichts Besonderes), aber dann kommt doch noch ein Substantiv hinterher. Dieses ist aber bei dieser besonderen Formulierung durch einen Artikel "a/n" abgesetzt, deshalb geht es eben doch. Alles eine Frage der Reihenfolge der Worte, besonders der Stellung des Artikels. Vergleiche:

She is such an interesting beauty. ABER She is so interesting a beauty.

So ibex, your sentence should have been something along the lines of:

It was so short a time ago we talked about... (but surely, this is a bit over the top in this context...) :shock:
Grüße
Duckduck
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ibex
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Re: cultural differences in language

Beitrag von ibex »

Thank you very much for your remarks, both tiorthan and Duckduck. It's always a pleasure to ask a question in this forum.

@Duckduck: Thank you for the extensive explanation. Yes, you're right, it must have come from a construction similar to this:
Duckduck hat geschrieben: It was so beautiful a day that we decided to skip work and mow the lawn (hihihi). -> Es war ein so schöner Tag, dass wir beschlossen, die Arbeit zu schwänzen und Rasen zu mähen.
@tiorthan: Thank you for your reply!
I get your point with the lack of inflection and that sentence structions may - for reasons of understandability - not become as long-winded and complicated as in German. This is very reasonable.
I do have some further questions, though :mrgreen:. I hope you don't get tired of them!

What I was especially trying to refer to was the use of language in formal writing. Most often, people make fun of the unnecessarily complicated language used by authorities or by people who are trying to sound sophisticated. Furthermore, essays and scientific stuff sometimes get complicated, but in this case rather for condensing facts and expressing them shortly but still with enough details (or, at least, that's how it seems to me). So do you believe it's not true to say that English people rather use plainer language, even when writing something "important"? Personally, I was quite astonished to find a Penguin guidebook on "Plain English" at Waterstone's. I don't believe German people would think it necessary to learn how to express oneself clearly; but rather aim for a guidebook helping them to understand / teach complicated structures (sure, that's exaggerating it a bit, but I hope you get what I mean).

As for your second point, that "English is more action-centred and German more or less fact-centred", I believe I can kind of understand it. I mean, I do feel there's something about it, but I will definitely have to investigate it more attentively in everyday life.

Thank you as well for your explanations about French. They, too, gave me a new perspective of looking upon this language which I do like but which is still somehow unfamiliar to me.

tiorthan
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Re: cultural differences in language

Beitrag von tiorthan »

Duckduck hat geschrieben: I beg to differ! Though I wouldn't want to make a fuss, I'm pretty sure that fronting does not work just like that and whenever the speaker wants it to; i.e you can't just haul any old word to the front of a sentence because you would like to emphasize it. There are of course many cases in which it works but I would say: this isn't one of them!
You're right in that you cannot just put any old word to the front. Fronting follows rules that usually derive directly from SPO (because not even fronting may violate that). For example, if you want to front an object, you have to introduce a new subordinate clause and so on.

I'm also not so sure anymore that I was justified to just include that construction in the general concept of fronting. As a matter of fact, you cannot "front" (as in move to the front of a clause) qualifiers of objects on their own. But, moving adjective in front of the article (not out of the phrase, that would not work) is one of the concepts that do work; usually, as you have explained in combination with a further emphasizer for the adjective. Maybe, this should be called "in-phrase fronting" or something. The emphasizer is not required though.

Even so, I do not recommend using that form without a clear purpose. Deviation from the regular word order within a phrase is something that you should use on purpose, and not even if you just want to emphasize something. It really sets a phrase apart from all the regular ones, makes it scream for attention in a way.

@ibex
German has a long tradition of "Kanzleisprache" (the linguistic term and not the modern pejorative) which was not the best thing that has happened to the language. A lot of legal texts were written in that language and that was quite unfortunate because legislative texts are not updated very often. So, in consequence, those texts were what later generations of lawyers hat do deal with and they started to use the same style in their own writing which made later generations use the same style and so on. And of course, if politicians use a certain style, a lot of people start to think that this was proper "formal" language.
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