What is the most efficient language in the world?

[ConanKND]

For the answer...
ฏ An ancient d
ฎ - An ancient dt
ฆ - Another type of K

Yes, the other problem about Thai is that is seems to be an endless wave of alphabets. Punctuation marks, like you said, are rarely used.

COme to think of it, cultural backgrounds play a key role in education. In Thailand most schools are quite relaxed, different from in America, where there are things like bullies, and different from Korea, where those COnfucian ideals still exists. I fully agree with you about the grammar education aspect, too. I daresay that East Asia is the region that most emphasizes English grammar in the world.

Well, back to the thread title, I think that my answer would be like SS-18's answer. It'll be easier to use an already widely learned language, so the few candidates are
English -- French -- Spanish -- Chinese and.. Arabic perhaps?

 

[Xyan]

With continued globalisation, the most widely "universal" language in a couple of centuries would be the one where the native speakers refuse to learn other languages.

 

[MilesGregarius]

For the answer...
ฏ An ancient d
ฎ - An ancient dt
ฆ - Another type of K

Yup, another headache with written Thai: all those obsolete letters that are still in the alphabet, but never used.

 

[LAnkou]

I wonder why french wouldn't be the most efficient...
Maybe because every kid in France have to buy and learn an entire book of verbs (first two page are for verbs of 1st and 2nd group, the rest are exception...)

The most efficient language would be:
-no/few grammatical exceptions
-no changing of prononciations of a word according to its situation (like in celtic languages)
-no changing of prononciations of a "writing representation" depending of the context/meaning. One representation (being alphabet/symbol) = one sound
-easy vocabulary construction: add the same letters/symbol/sound to involve the same idea/grammar change (ie do/undo - clean/unclean...)

Besides these points, some other have to be debated:
-variations/subtleties: which level is the most efficient? well, the most efficient would be the greatest level of variations but with the fewer words. Having variations carried directly by the word used (synonyms: rain/moist, pluie/averse/bruine, pronouns in Japanese, snow type in Inuit...) is not efficient, but if you use a supplementary word/prefix/suffix to add variations, it's much more effective and you're not limited. That's why adjective are used in every language. The downside of it is that precisely describing something would be very long compared to a word. a "colour between the one of blood and the one of the sun high in the sky" is a good description for orange...(and i could have made longer. blood is just a variation of liquid and the sun is just a variation of Star, etc....)
That's where the necessity and the use of a "concept" is needed. I wonder if there is the word "snow" in some african language, but there's no wonder why inuit have so many word for it...
As long as you don't need the variation, there won't be a specific word to describe it.
-Symbol versus alphabet, versus syllabaire. Each have their advantages and their inconvenients. I favor alphabet and syllabaire for only one reason: once you learn the 24 symbols (in french), you can write the entire language (well, almost, at least in French). it may be easier to write some word, (less stick to write the word), but there are many words you don't know how to write...I like syllabaries because the prononciation is the good one.

 

[Arwon]

Just so you know, that idea that "Inuits have lots of words for snow" is actually complete garbage. I have NO idea why it gets repeated so much.

 

[gangleri2001]

I thought that it was "Inuits have lots of words for white", what would make sense.

 

[Shirastro]

I wonder why french wouldn't be the most efficient...
Maybe because every kid in France have to buy and learn an entire book of verbs (first two page are for verbs of 1st and 2nd group, the rest are exception...)

The most efficient language would be:
-no/few grammatical exceptions
-no changing of prononciations of a word according to its situation (like in celtic languages)
-no changing of prononciations of a "writing representation" depending of the context/meaning. One representation (being alphabet/symbol) = one sound
-easy vocabulary construction: add the same letters/symbol/sound to involve the same idea/grammar change (ie do/undo - clean/unclean...)

Besides these points, some other have to be debated:
-variations/subtleties: which level is the most efficient? well, the most efficient would be the greatest level of variations but with the fewer words. Having variations carried directly by the word used (synonyms: rain/moist, pluie/averse/bruine, pronouns in Japanese, snow type in Inuit...) is not efficient, but if you use a supplementary word/prefix/suffix to add variations, it's much more effective and you're not limited. That's why adjective are used in every language. The downside of it is that precisely describing something would be very long compared to a word. a "colour between the one of blood and the one of the sun high in the sky" is a good description for orange...(and i could have made longer. blood is just a variation of liquid and the sun is just a variation of Star, etc....)
That's where the necessity and the use of a "concept" is needed. I wonder if there is the word "snow" in some african language, but there's no wonder why inuit have so many word for it...
As long as you don't need the variation, there won't be a specific word to describe it.
-Symbol versus alphabet, versus syllabaire. Each have their advantages and their inconvenients. I favor alphabet and syllabaire for only one reason: once you learn the 24 symbols (in french), you can write the entire language (well, almost, at least in French). it may be easier to write some word, (less stick to write the word), but there are many words you don't know how to write...I like syllabaries because the prononciation is the good one.

The most efficient language would be:
-no/few grammatical exceptions -good luck finding one

-no changing of prononciations of a word according to its situation (like in celtic languages)-most of languages have a single way for pronouncing each word, with the obvious exception of Chinese and such

-no changing of prononciations of a "writing representation" depending of the context/meaning. One representation (being alphabet/symbol) = one sound - Serbian is perfect for this since, as i said before, there is no exception in the "one sign-one sound" rule.

-easy vocabulary construction: add the same letters/symbol/sound to involve the same idea/grammar change (ie do/undo - clean/unclean...)Most of European languages fit this category with the blatant exception for English

 

[Brighteye]

To make a decision we need to know what's a reasonable vocabulary to expect people to know, and how much vocab people need for functioning, which I would expect to be less.
Then we find a language with enough synonyms to bring the amount of words useful for the latter up to the level of the former.
If more than one language fits these criteria, then we need to start to judge by other means. If we wanted as much precision as possible for people who could remember enough vocab then we'd go for English, because of it's enormous lexicon.
If we wanted to judge by amount of learning necessary across the world for the language to become universal, we'd choose English or Chinese.
If we were interested in ease of writing we'd have to analyse the energy required for writing the symbols, and the speed possible. For typing, we'd have to examine whether it's easy to programme a quick, easy and intuitive input system, and for the script as a whole we'd want to look at the level of complexity and amount of space required to convey the same amount of information.
I don't know enough about the various scripts to judge this one.

 

[MilesGregarius]

-no changing of prononciations of a word according to its situation (like in celtic languages)-most of languages have a single way for pronouncing each word, with the obvious exception of Chinese and such

Try pronouncing:

I will graduate this fall.

He is a college graduate.

I need money for graduate school.

 

[Mirc]

Try pronouncing:

I will graduate this fall.

He is a college graduate.

I need money for graduate school.

I read them all the same... I'm probably not a good English speaker.

 

[MilesGregarius]

Graduate as a verb is pronounced with a long final "a" sound; rhymes with "late".

Graduate as an adjective or a noun is generally pronounced with a short "e" or "i" sound; rhymes with "get" or "it" depending on the speaker's accent.

There are a number of words that end in "-ate" that work similarly: conjugate, degenerate, delegate, ejaculate, precipitate, et cetera.

Also try:

"Did you record (ri-kawrd) your score?" versus "That's a new world record (rek-erd) ".

Not only does the pronunciation change, so does the stress.

 

[Shirastro]

I read them all the same as well.......they have different meanings in different situations, but they are pronounced the same way..........right?

 

[MilesGregarius]

I read them all the same as well.......they have different meanings in different situations, but they are pronounced the same way..........right?

From the American Heritage Dictionary:

graduate as a verb - grāj'ōō-āt'

graduate as a noun/adjective - grāj'ōō-ĭt'

Or from dictionary.com:

graduate as a verb - graj-oo-eyt

graduate as a noun/adjective - graj-oo-it

 

[Mirc]

Graduate as a verb is pronounced with a long final "a" sound; rhymes with "late".

Graduate as an adjective or a noun is generally pronounced with a short "e" or "i" sound; rhymes with "get" or "it" depending on the speaker's accent.

There are a number of words that end in "-ate" that work similarly: conjugate, degenerate, delegate, ejaculate, precipitate, et cetera.

Also try:

"Did you record (ri-kawrd) your score?" versus "That's a new world record (rek-erd) ".

Not only does the pronunciation change, so does the stress.

I knew about "record", but "graduate" is news to me. Thanks!!

 

[Ansar]

From the American Heritage Dictionary:

graduate as a verb - grāj'ōō-āt'

graduate as a noun/adjective - grāj'ōō-ĭt'

Or from dictionary.com:

graduate as a verb - graj-oo-eyt

graduate as a noun/adjective - graj-oo-it

Oh, of course!

 

[aronnax]

Okay Mirc, Try this

Japan

Japanese

 

[Mirc]

Okay Mirc, Try this

Japan

Japanese

Yep I pronounce them with a different stress, and the second "a" different too. Edit: Actually now that I think better I say the first "a" a bit different too.

 

[Shirastro]

From the American Heritage Dictionary:

graduate as a verb - grāj'ōō-āt'

graduate as a noun/adjective - grāj'ōō-ĭt'

Or from dictionary.com:

graduate as a verb - graj-oo-eyt

graduate as a noun/adjective - graj-oo-it

Yup very nice...to bad we are talking about the pronunciations of the words not their meaning or function.

 

[raketooy]

If everyone spoke Lojban we wouldn't probably need to argue about definitions of "is" and the like when our presidents get too many women.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban

Toki Pona sounds interesting, but I doubt that it would do as anyone's only language, even if everyone spoke it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toki_Pona

Of course, both of the above are constructed languages. Of natural languages Finnish is very logical and efficient (I might be a bit biased here but it is ture) with its logical grammar rules and pronouncing (one letter corresponds to one sound with the exception of 'ng'). The conjugations and deflections of words are logical and bound to rules with very few exceptions. The rules are just very complex; no Finnish speaker can ad hoc tell what the rules are, but they just come naturally in speech. The words could also be a bit shorter.

 

[Rossiya]

From the American Heritage Dictionary:

graduate as a verb - grāj'ōō-āt'

graduate as a noun/adjective - grāj'ōō-ĭt'

Or from dictionary.com:

graduate as a verb - graj-oo-eyt

graduate as a noun/adjective - graj-oo-it

Not everybody speaks American.