What is the most efficient language in the world?

[aronnax]

Esperanto will never catch on.

Chinese is a difficult language

You are expected to learn at least 50,000 characters that each have 4 sounds with different meanings that has different meanings when you pair them with another word of any of those 4 sounds. The Characters have nothing to do with the way its spoken, making it a tough language.

 

[Alpine Trooper]

Language can only be compared in efficiency against similiar forms of language. And language has developed they way it has because efficiency was never an objective.

So how do you justify comparing apples to oranges? I like oranges better.

 

[Arwon]

No such thing as efficient or inefficient language.

 

[Enkidu Warrior]

Hangul is the best written script (it's almost completely phonetic unlike say, English ('ough' has seven different pronunciations depending on the word). As for spoken, English is truly horrid in terms of efficiency (contrast English verbs with Japanese verbs: Eat, Ate, Eaten = Tabemasu, Tabemashita; Do, Did, Done = Shimasu, Shimashita; Go, Went, Gone/Been = Ikimasu, Ikimashita).

But then there's a lot more to langauge than efficiency. Esperanto, while not perfect, is much more efficient than any widespread langauge since it was designed from scratch with that in mind. But it's never going to take off because it's completely soulless. Language conveys so much more than brute meaning. Language is intertwined with history and culture. Unless we want to abandon all that we should preserve our languages as we preserve anything else that speaks of our heritage as human beings.

 

[warpus]

But then there's a lot more to langauge than efficiency. Esperanto, while not perfect, is much more efficient than any widespread langauge since it was designed from scratch with that in mind. But it's never going to take off because it's completely soulless. Language conveys so much more than brute meaning. Language is intertwined with history and culture. Unless we want to abandon all that we should preserve our languages as we preserve anything else that speaks of our heritage as human beings.

There is really no way of introducing something like Esperanto... It's not popular, so there's no incentive for people to learn it as a 2nd language and to pass it down to their kids as a 1st language.. You really need for something like that to happen on a large scale for a language to become established, and people do not easily give up the language "of their ancestors". There is a huge emotional attachment to the languages that we speak.

Having said that, the thread is about efficient languages, and the ones that are popular are not efficient.. as has been said many times.. because they weren't designed to be so.

Which is why I brought up Esperanto. It was designed with efficiency in mind, so it likely beats out all other languages mentioned in this thread, as far as efficiency is concerned.

I don't think that it should be adopted, or anything.. or that it will ever take off.. I'm just commenting on its efficiency here..

Polish is my 1st language, German my 2nd, and English my 3rd.. and it's pretty hard to say which one of the 3 is the most efficient. I would say Polish is the most flexible, German is the most to the point, and English.. well.. I can't think of anything good I can say about English, aside that I like it the most out of the 3... but that doesn't really mean anything, it's just a personal preference.

 

[scherbchen]

Does Esperanto even exist anymore (in the sense that there are people who actually learn it)? I know it had a bit of a hype in the 90ies but I actually never heard from it again until now.

 

[zxcvbnm]

The efficiency of languages is a very relative definition. Finnish has one of the easiest spellings in the world, with only two exceptions: nk and ng. But the grammar is hideous. Sure, you don't need so many prepositions but just think of this:

-Kokko kokoo kokoon koko kokko.

-Koko kokkoko?

-Koko kokko.

-Ok, Kokko kokoo kokoon koko kokon.

And it makes sense to us.

 

[Swedishguy]

Russian is by far the most efficient language. I've heard. I don't actually understand it!

 

[Imrahil91]

Newspeak maybe

 

[lutzj]

Does Esperanto even exist anymore (in the sense that there are people who actually learn it)? I know it had a bit of a hype in the 90ies but I actually never heard from it again until now.

According to wikipedia, it has around 1 million speakers worldwide.

 

[Arwon]

Including some unfortunate first-language speakers, kids of esperanto speaking couples.

 

[Oerdin]

If efficiency meanings speaking to the most people with the least effort then English.

 

[GoodGame]

Sign languages tend to evolve just like spoken languages, so there actually are different sign languages by nationality.

*you*
*complete*
*me*

but it's actually a good point. I keep forgetting, however, if there is an international sign language or whether each language has one. yep, didn't wiki it. I don't want to smart-arse.

 

[Kyriakos]

It would have been nice if the EU adopted ancient greek (and possibly latin) as its two languages..

 

[holy king]

so noone understands eu officials?

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Chinese - the tones and the characters are hard to remember, but the words are so much shorter, you don't have to spell, and the grammer RULES!

The logogramic languages have to be the least efficient languages to write in the world, simply because there is no phonetic alphabet. Korean survives this critique, but Mandarin, Cantonese, and Japanese do not.

The most efficient languages are probably Greek, Latin, and Arabic. Greek, because of its simpler alphabet of only 24 letters; Latin suffers a bit because of a more complex grammatical structure, but its ease of pronunciation makes up for this I think; and Arabic for its ease on the hand when writing, though being more difficult to pronounce at times.

 

[mangxema]

It can't be English because the spelling is so absurd.

as far as easy grammar goes: english. it has just so many things going against it. spelling, dissociated vocabulary, a truck-load of vocaublary to learn. on the plus side you have distribution, rather easy grammar.

Vocabulary is a terrible measure of efficiency. In the extreme, say your language only has five words. You can't say much, but you could sure say it efficiently...

Also, in defense of English spelling, keep in mind that the reason why it's so hard and seemingly arbitrary is because we've borrowed words from just about everyone we've ever met. We also have a tradition of not changing the spellings of words so that you know where it comes from. Now, you can argue whether that is desirable or not, but there is at least a reason.

I don't know much about Esperanto, but I bet it's way more efficient than English.

It depends... If by 'efficiency' you mean short words, then English wins. Just look at how many short words the two of us have used without really trying. Esperanto generally requires fewer words though. One cool feature about Esperanto is the frequent use of affixes to modify words.

IE: domo = 'house'; -et- = diminutive modifier; -ar- = collection modifier; -acx*- = pejorative modifer
--> dometaracxo = 'a collection of small, crappy houses'. 'Ghetto' or 'slum' doesn't quite cut it because you could have a bunch of tenement apartments or projects or something... and that would be too high density. 'Sparse slum'? 'Run-down neighborhood'?

* The cx is really a c with a caret over it, but that's hard to do on an English keyboard.

 

[general_kill]

Esperanto will never catch on.

Chinese is a difficult language

You are expected to learn at least 50,000 characters that each have 4 sounds with different meanings that has different meanings when you pair them with another word of any of those 4 sounds. The Characters have nothing to do with the way its spoken, making it a tough language.

You are confusing pinyin with character. But yea, saying Chinese is a lot more efficient than latin based languages, but reading and writing is a whole different story. Plus, every province in China has their own dialect, so it is a mess.

 

[Narz]

What is the most efficient language in the world?

Telepathy obviously.

 

[general_kill]

Telepathy obviously.

Are you fluent?