[HN Gopher] Korean as a Concatenative, Stack-Oriented Language (...
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       Korean as a Concatenative, Stack-Oriented Language (2017)
        
       Author : zdw
       Score  : 125 points
       Date   : 2023-04-16 16:27 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (m.post.naver.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (m.post.naver.com)
        
       | boringuser2 wrote:
       | Is there is a general obsession in every culture with fetishizing
       | things perceived to be foreign or inscrutable, or is it just
       | Western culture?
        
         | ssnistfajen wrote:
         | Yes, this occurs in every industrialized culture that is
         | decently connected to the rest of the world. Anglophone
         | cultures just do it in the most prominent and cringey way
         | possible.
        
         | rippercushions wrote:
         | This seems less like fetishizing and more like someone applying
         | the only hammer they have (programming languages) to the wrong
         | nail (human languages).
        
         | zztop44 wrote:
         | Kind of? Certainly many countries "fetishize" American culture,
         | to a degree. Same with French and Italian culture (especially
         | as it relates to fashion and food). Some stuff is just popular?
         | Certainly things related to Korean and Japanese cultures are
         | popular throughout Asia, as they are in the West, right now.
        
         | eska wrote:
         | Do you mean to say this article is fetishizing Korean culture?
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | turtleyacht wrote:
       | Korean characters "stack" on top of each other. I wonder if an
       | array-oriented language like APL could be coaxed out of such a
       | "dense representation."
       | 
       | Examples:                 * , a, an       * , o, wae
        
       | solidsnack9000 wrote:
       | There might be something to this, but the way the author diagrams
       | it all is almost incomprehensible.
        
         | carabiner wrote:
         | I know RPN and found it pretty clear what he's getting at. The
         | stack and parentheses are pretty common way of expressing it
         | order of ops. Don't know Korean though.
        
       | wobby_sobby wrote:
       | This is going to make a great r/badlinguistics post
        
         | posterboy wrote:
         | Perhaps that's because it is not inherently Linguistics?
        
           | DiscourseFan wrote:
           | >Perhaps that's because it is not inherently Linguistics?
           | 
           | I can admit that linguistics is a specific field of knowledge
           | and has certain methodologies associated with it that are not
           | always fitting or practical for all forms of analysis, but I
           | think it's still inappropriate to say that any investigation
           | into the operation of (spoken) language is not in some way a
           | form of "linguistics."
        
         | ssnistfajen wrote:
         | Exactly. This should be re-titled "agglutinative languages
         | explained in programming terms".
        
       | neom wrote:
       | Having spent the last 5 years learning Korean, I've grown to find
       | it an incredibly efficient language.
       | 
       | maegju han jan juseyo Beer one please
       | 
       | hwajangsileun eodieyo? Toilet where?
       | 
       | waipai isseoyo? wifi is here?
       | 
       | You can process and even start answering someone before they've
       | finished their sentence. By contrast in English, I'd say "Could I
       | have another beer please?" - tell me what you need up front!
        
         | retinaros wrote:
         | hum... there is a saying in korean hangugmaleun ggeutggaji
         | deuleobwaya handa that literally translate to the opposite you
         | are saying << You should listen to Korean until the end<<
        
           | malodyets wrote:
           | Maybe such a saying is needed in Korean more than in other
           | languages?
        
             | retinaros wrote:
             | well its also true for turkish as well or any sov language
        
         | okdood64 wrote:
         | English can be pretty much as efficient... It's up to the
         | social context on how much you want to dress it up.
        
           | og_kalu wrote:
           | No it really can't. It's somewhat hard to explain without
           | going hard into grammar but if someone tried complex
           | communication in English, how you would in Korean,
           | communication would break down very quickly.
           | 
           | In Korean, Plural markers basically don't exist, Articles
           | don't exist and possessive determiners are very few and only
           | typically inserted when determining the meaning would be
           | difficult otherwise.
           | 
           | Strictly speaking cingu isseoyo ? means Friend Have ?
           | 
           | And you would say exactly that for any of these English
           | equivalents
           | 
           | "Do they have friends ?"
           | 
           | "Do you have a friend ?"
           | 
           | "Do you have friends ?"
           | 
           | "Does he have a friend ?"
           | 
           | And so on.
           | 
           | If you wanted to say,
           | 
           | "I have a friend"
           | 
           | "He has friends"
           | 
           | "They have a friend" etc, you'd simply remove the question
           | mark and change the tone of the last syllable (when
           | speaking).
           | 
           | cingu isseoyo.
           | 
           | The exact meaning would have to be divided from surrounding
           | context.
           | 
           | Lots of composability that simply doesn't exist in English.
        
             | creamyhorror wrote:
             | Similar story in Japanese, which is also high-context and
             | encodes less information explicitly. Listeners have to do
             | more interpretation using context than in English, since
             | sentences out of context can mean more things.
        
         | localplume wrote:
         | especially when you have great words like
         | 
         | nunmul = nun + mul = eye + water = tears mulgogi = mul + gogi =
         | water + meat = fish (although this only means the animal, not
         | the food, which is weird. saengseon is the fish meat like cow v
         | beef) dwaejigogi = dwaeji + gogi = pig + meat = pork etc.
         | 
         | there is a lot of other examples I'm forgetting but its cool.
         | 
         | The modification of the verb root to denote tense and formality
         | as well is pretty intuitive. Korean is a great language. The
         | problematic things IMO are the counting of items and the uses
         | of the Korean v Chinese number systems, plus the random Hanja
         | here and there.
        
           | LudwigNagasena wrote:
           | Isn't English (and other Germanic languages) very similar in
           | its propensity for noun+noun compounds? There is crab meat,
           | horse meat, shark meat, etc. And if it weren't for the Norman
           | Conquest, pork would probably be called pig meat. After all,
           | it is simply called Schweinefleisch in German.
        
         | schwartzworld wrote:
         | All these can be said as succinctly in English though. "one
         | beer please" is enough to place an order, and the rest is just
         | decorative.
         | 
         | Does Korean not have more complex / ceremonial speech patterns?
        
           | og_kalu wrote:
           | Yeah....It gets a lot more sparse
           | 
           | Strictly speaking cingu isseoyo ? means Friend Have ?
           | 
           | And you would say exactly that for any of these English
           | equivalents
           | 
           | "Do they have friends ?"
           | 
           | "Do you have a friend ?"
           | 
           | "Do you have friends ?"
           | 
           | "Does he have a friend ?"
           | 
           | And so on.
           | 
           | Plurality as a special marker doesn't really exist.
           | Possessive and Article Determiners don't really exist either.
           | Articles don't exist at all. Possessive markers are few and
           | only used when surrounding context might not be enough to
           | convey the needed information.
           | 
           | You might ask, well how would you know which of those
           | equivalents cingu isseoyo means ?
           | 
           | It's context. Korean is highly context dependent. There is no
           | way to tell before reading or hearing the surrounding
           | context.
           | 
           | >Does Korean not have more complex / ceremonial speech
           | patterns?
           | 
           | Oh boy. Let's just say formality and politeness is baked into
           | the language.
           | 
           | Words and sentence/phrase suffixes change depending on your
           | age and relationship with who you're taking to.
           | 
           | cingu isseoyo (meaning I have a friend/They have friends etc
           | without the question mark) becomes cingu isseo speaking to a
           | close friend and cingu ibnida speaking to someone much older
           | than you (or in a formal setting with say your boss)
           | 
           | There are also on how to address people you refer to in a
           | sentence separate from rules on how you address people you
           | speaking to.
        
             | airstrike wrote:
             | _> And you would say exactly that for any of these English
             | equivalents_
             | 
             |  _> "Do they have friends ?"_
             | 
             |  _> "Do you have a friend ?"_
             | 
             |  _> "Do you have friends ?"_
             | 
             |  _> "Does he have a friend ?"_
             | 
             | Seems like there's a lot of room for ambiguity, then
        
               | og_kalu wrote:
               | Yes there is a lot of ambiguity that is only resolved by
               | surrounding context.
        
           | yongjik wrote:
           | Oh, and there's one really succinct way of expression that's
           | not found in English:
           | 
           | One can say something like nan ramyeon - literally "I am
           | ramen" (or something like that - it's a bit fuzzy because the
           | "be" verb is omitted). It would be a ridiculous sentence by
           | itself, but if your friend just asked "I'll have noodles, how
           | about you?" then it's a perfectly fine response.
           | 
           | Similarly you could even say nan peurangseu ("I am France")
           | if the question was "I visited New York this summer, it was
           | really nice, did you go somewhere?"
        
             | LudwigNagasena wrote:
             | Isn't nan just na (I) + n ( _topic marker_ )? So it seems
             | like nan ramyeon should be translated more or less as "As
             | for me, ramen" and nan peurangseu as "As for me, France".
        
               | yongjik wrote:
               | You are absolutely correct - I oversimplified. On the
               | other hand, nobody says "As for me, ramen" in English
               | (it's not even shorter than "I'll have ramen"), so
               | there's that.
        
             | creamyhorror wrote:
             | You could just say "Ramen", "Ramen for me", "I want ramen",
             | or maybe even "Me, ramen". But I get your point - it's more
             | common in English to use a longer sentence. The same thing
             | is pointed out about Japanese too - "watashi wa ramen" for
             | "As for me, ramen" - it has the same topic-comment
             | structure as Korean.
        
             | l3000 wrote:
             | I may want to add that as a person who had a lot of
             | exposure to Korean (but is not native). Directly
             | translating for instance "naneun ramyeon" with the example
             | context you mentioned, feels like ,,in my case, Ramen". The
             | neun/eun is describing the na in a way that is contrasting
             | whatever was said in the current context. It is certainly
             | used for saying something that is different from the other.
             | ,,Well in MY case, it is ...", but it may work for other
             | cases too, I am not totally sure.
        
             | hydrok9 wrote:
             | In English you could say I am FOR salmon though!
        
           | aeternum wrote:
           | It does, many words have different age-based / status-based
           | suffixes which adds a lot of unnecessary complexity. Numbers
           | are also annoying as the counting numbers vs. quantity.
           | 
           | From an information theory POV, we should really look at not
           | just the complexity but the information density of a
           | language. English has a lot of foolish rules, but the large
           | vocabulary provides a much higher bandwidth than other
           | languages.
           | 
           | https://medium.com/oscar-tech/information-density-of-
           | differe...
        
             | gibolt wrote:
             | Compared to many European languages, sure, but English
             | still has plenty of filler. Chinese, for example, can be
             | extremely information dense.
        
             | pessimizer wrote:
             | > English has a lot of foolish rules, but the large
             | vocabulary provides a much higher bandwidth than other
             | languages.
             | 
             | I think that it's the grammar rules that make English
             | fairly efficient, and also effectively add to its
             | vocabulary, because word order in English is so strong that
             | it twists whatever word you put in a particular position
             | into whatever part of speech it needs to be. In less order-
             | based languages you have to learn a bunch of elaborate
             | formulas to change the word; in English, it's basically
             | just Subject, Verb, Object and a few mathematical rules
             | about commas, prepositions and conjunctions to make that
             | basic structure recursive or flowery. All of English's core
             | vocabulary is horrifyingly irregular, and you can ignore
             | almost all of that irregularity, prefixes and suffixes, and
             | still make yourself pretty easily understood.
             | 
             | I think the massive vocabulary of English makes it _less_
             | dense. We have a _lot_ of words that mean exactly the same
             | thing, but that we pretend mean different things. We find
             | ourselves arguing about the innuendo around words or the
             | "actual definitions" of words almost more than material
             | issues, constantly invoking contradictory authorities.
             | We're also constantly repeating ourselves and pretending
             | like we've understood because using obscure words is a sign
             | of intelligence, and not understanding them a sign of
             | stupidity.
             | 
             | Romance languages seem to have a lot fewer words with
             | specific meanings, and do most of their playing with
             | grammar (making a lot of sentences into horrifying mazes.)
             | And irt the center and north in Germanic Europe, the most
             | interesting thing about "Uncleftish Beholding" is that to
             | English speakers it reads like stupid cavemen talking about
             | magic, but it's basically a unit-by-unit direct translation
             | of how Danes, Norwegians and Swedes really talk. English
             | speakers never use the common word for anything if they
             | want to sound like they know what they're talking about.
             | 
             | an aside: I've always heard that Vietnamese is the most
             | efficient by syllable. IIRC some paper came up with a
             | metric where it was about 1.4x more efficient than English.
             | There was also someone who figured out that universally,
             | human languages expressed ideas at the same _rate_ , but
             | the people who spoke less efficient languages _just talked
             | faster._
        
           | neom wrote:
           | How would would you say "where is the toilet?" more
           | succinctly with the context up front in English? If someone
           | came up to me in English and said "toilet where?" I'd presume
           | they're either rude or English isn't their first language.
           | 
           | There are formal and informal ways to say thing in Korean,
           | for every day stuff it's often just a matter of changing the
           | suffix, for some stuff it's a different word, for example
           | gamsahabnida Kamsahamnida is thank you to anyone, but gomaweo
           | gomawo (thanks) only to a friend.
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | lalopalota wrote:
             | > How would would you say "where is the toilet?" more
             | succinctly with the context up front in English?
             | 
             | "Restroom?"
        
               | neom wrote:
               | We're talking(the article) about forming sentences, not
               | just saying words at people.
        
               | vineyardmike wrote:
               | While I agree "restroom?" Is perfectly valid, you could
               | also say "the restroom is where?" Which puts the
               | important noun first and makes it a question later. It's
               | not particularly formal, which in America at least is
               | completely unnecessary for day to day life.
        
               | MichaelZuo wrote:
               | "Restroom?" is a valid english sentence.
        
               | Google234 wrote:
               | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_rising_terminal you
               | can raise the pitch to indicate that you are asking a
               | question
        
             | wizofaus wrote:
             | "The toilet - where would I find it?"
             | 
             | But arguably putting the key information at the start of a
             | sentence is not ideal as it gives the listener no time to
             | context switch. If I ask a busy waiter in a restaurant
             | "where would I find the toilet", they may well not fully
             | hear the "where would... " but they'll know for sure what
             | I've asked by the end of the request. Which is presumably
             | why we often prefix statements with "excuse me, but..." and
             | the like...I assume that must happen in Korean too.
        
               | GauntletWizard wrote:
               | "The toilet, where is it?" is also grammatical in
               | English, and with the right tone "The toilet is where?"
               | gets the point across.
        
           | KMnO4 wrote:
           | juseyo doesn't actually mean "please". It's just the
           | conjugated version of "to give".
           | 
           | So it's more like saying "beer, one, give me" in a polite
           | way. And it's cool, not because of the English translation
           | (which yes, is just as simple), but as a showcasing of the
           | composability of Korean.
           | 
           | Replace juseyo (joo-se-yo) with any other verb and the
           | sentence works.
           | 
           | For example, masida (ma-si-da) is the verb[0] for "to drink",
           | so when you drop the "da" and conjugate it with the polite
           | present tense "yo", the sentence now becomes maegju hanjan
           | masiyo, or "I'm drinking a beer".
           | 
           | And then as another show of Korean's flexibility, don't
           | change anything about that sentence, but add a question mark
           | and "maegju hanjan masi?" For it to mean "would you like a
           | beer?".
           | 
           | Very cool and succinct.
           | 
           | [0]- you can identify Korean verbs because they all end in da
           | (da). You can easily conjugate them to present tense by
           | dropping the "da" and replacing it with "yo". You'll also
           | notice that each block of characters in Korean maps to
           | exactly one syllable, with no exceptions -- pretty cool!
        
           | yongjik wrote:
           | Korean has a crapload of complex speech patterns (degree of
           | politeness - that's sheer madness) but the nice(?) thing
           | about it is that it all comes at the end. So you can start
           | your sentence without even deciding if it's a statement or a
           | question.
           | 
           | E.g.,
           | 
           | oneul geu sigdang yeoleoyo Today that restaurant is open.
           | 
           | oneul geu sigdang yeoleoyo? Is that restaurant open today?
           | 
           | oneul geu sigdang yeol geos gatayo. I guess that restaurant
           | is open today.
           | 
           | oneul geu sigdang yeol geos gatdago deuleosseoyo. I heard
           | [someone] saying that restaurant is probably open today.
           | 
           | oneul geu sigdang yeol geos gatdago deuleusyeossdamyeonseoyo?
           | I heard that you heard that the restaurant is probably open
           | today, is that true?
           | 
           | oneul geu sigdang yeol geos gatdago malhan buni nugunji
           | cajaseo jom ddajyeoyagesseo! I'm going to find whoever told
           | me that the restaurant would open today, and set the record
           | straight!
           | 
           | oneul geu sigdang yeol geos gateul riga eobsjanhayo! There's
           | no way the restaurant is even open today!
           | 
           | In fact, learning English as a native Korean speaker, one of
           | the greatest difficulty was asking questions - you can't just
           | start your sentence and make it a question later, you have to
           | mentally pause, construct your question in your head, and
           | then invert the first word! It took me years.
        
             | MichaelZuo wrote:
             | Is there the Korean equivalent of very formal language,
             | such as:
             | 
             | "Dear honoured sir, may I humbly beg for your indulgence in
             | a meagre glass of beer?"
        
               | og_kalu wrote:
               | Formality and politeness is baked into Korean and you are
               | basically always speaking at the right formality unless
               | you ignore the rules.
               | 
               | Your relationship to who you're speaking to (and who you
               | are referring to if you speak about anyone else) changes
               | the grammar of the sentence.
               | 
               | The grammar changes mostly manifest in different suffix
               | endings.
        
               | MichaelZuo wrote:
               | How do noble or formal titles work then?
               | 
               | It seems very unlikely to just be a suffix ending.
        
               | og_kalu wrote:
               | The rules for how you speak to people and how you address
               | people you are speaking about are different.
               | 
               | The whole thing is a bit more complex than suffix changes
               | alone especially with more out there titles but generally
               | speaking,
               | 
               | I think you've seen a bit on how the endings would change
               | depending on your relationship to the hearer.
               | 
               | For the latter(addressing people you're speaking about)
               | 
               | For instance, You would basically never call an
               | acquaintance just by name
               | 
               | Take the name gimyeongceol
               | 
               | If you were on relatively equal social standing, you
               | would generally address gimyeongceol as gimyeongceol ssi
               | or yeongceol ssi
               | 
               | If you wanted to take it a step further in respect, you
               | would replace ssi with nim
               | 
               | For a senior in age or experience in say the workplace,
               | it would become seonbae but this can be used to address
               | the person on its own without the name attached.
               | 
               | There are also different words for how you would address
               | different members of the family. Unlike in English, you
               | would basically never call an older brother or sister by
               | their actual name. It's more a generic brother or sister
               | word that changes depending on if the speaker is male or
               | female.
               | 
               | obba - female referring to older brother
               | 
               | hyeong - male referring to older brother
               | 
               | nuna - male referring to older sister
               | 
               | eonni - female referring to older sister
               | 
               | For royalty, there'll be different titles for different
               | members of the royalty.
        
               | og_kalu wrote:
               | Forgot to mention. The brother/sister words don't
               | necessarily need to be referring to an actual brother or
               | sister.
               | 
               | They can be used endearingly to refer to older
               | males/females you are close to.
               | 
               | obba can be used somewhat flirtingly/romantically as well
        
               | devonkim wrote:
               | Using the wrong register is a form of humor as well just
               | like in English and other languages but with different
               | impact due to the politeness level being so important to
               | the syntactic structure just like in Japanese. Being
               | overly polite or using too low of a register works much
               | better than sarcasm for comedic purposes for reasons I
               | can't quite explain. In English sarcasm is commonly how I
               | joke around and involves an intonation cue but it doesn't
               | really work in Korean even with intonation (possibly
               | because intonation and vowel lengthening is used for a
               | lot of word distinction perhaps although homonyms exist
               | in basically all languages) and if you try it native
               | speakers will oftentimes have trouble telling if you're
               | serious or not. Although these days due to Western
               | influences IMO most Koreans understand sarcasm as a style
               | of humor and can apply it for all languages although for
               | older generations it's going to be less natural. The
               | country's had massive, massive social and economic
               | changes in the past 100 years, it's kind of wild
        
               | KMnO4 wrote:
               | There are many levels of honorifics, from very low form
               | to very polite form. Most aren't used on a daily basis
               | though, just like how most people don't speak like
               | they're a lawyer addressing a courtroom.
               | 
               | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_honorifics#Address
               | ee_...
        
               | MichaelZuo wrote:
               | I tried translating it with a tool:
               | 
               | "jongyeonghaneun gagha, maegju han janman deusige
               | haedalrago gyeomsonhi butagdeuryeodo doelggayo?"
               | 
               | Does that sound about right?
        
               | jinwoo68 wrote:
               | Close. But deusige is not correct in that place because
               | its an honorific form given to yourself when you're
               | trying to honor the other person. And I'd rather use
               | gamhi instead of gyeomsonhi, which can be roughly
               | translated into "dare to"
               | 
               | "jongyeonghaneun gagha, maegju han janman masige
               | haedalrago gamhi butagdeuryeodo doelggayo?"
        
             | ryukafalz wrote:
             | > In fact, learning English as a native Korean speaker, one
             | of the greatest difficulty was asking questions - you can't
             | just start your sentence and make it a question later, you
             | have to mentally pause, construct your question in your
             | head, and then invert the first word! It took me years.
             | 
             | Thank you, you've answered a question I've had about
             | different languages for years as a monolingual English
             | speaker! I've always suspected that it might feel
             | significantly different to construct sentences in languages
             | with different word ordering, and I think that confirms
             | that.
        
             | hashmush wrote:
             | > In fact, learning English as a native Korean speaker, one
             | of the greatest difficulty was asking questions - you can't
             | just start your sentence and make it a question later, you
             | have to mentally pause, construct your question in your
             | head, and then invert the first word! It took me years.
             | 
             | This is quite interesting to hear, but I assume you mean
             | that you always knew if you were going ask a question
             | before you asked it. So the issue was the actual
             | construction of the sentence itself?
             | 
             | If not, there are plenty of ways to bail out of a statement
             | midway through a sentence.
             | 
             | - Korean is more efficient than English... right?
             | 
             | - Korean is more efficient than English, isn't it?
             | 
             | - Korean is more efficient than English? (raising
             | intonation at the end)
        
               | yongjik wrote:
               | In a sense, sure I guess my brain almost always knows
               | whether I wanted a question or not - after all, native
               | English speakers have no problem asking questions.
               | However, it's hard to get used to it, when I've never
               | done it before.
               | 
               | It's like a habit. Imagine you make coffee every morning
               | - after a while it becomes second nature and you don't
               | even think about what you're doing, you just get up and
               | mindlessly start the coffee grinder. Once in a while your
               | girlfriend visits, and she wants milk in the coffee, no
               | problem, I'll pour some milk on her cup at the end.
               | 
               | And one day you have a different girlfriend, and she
               | doesn't like coffee at all, so when she's visiting you
               | have to make tea! So you just get up, start grinding the
               | coffee, and half a minute later, "Oh damn, not again!"
               | Even though making coffee and making tea take about the
               | same effort, it just throws a wrench in your morning
               | routine until you get used to it, which make take a long
               | time.
               | 
               | > If not, there are plenty of ways to bail out of a
               | statement midway through a sentence.
               | 
               | Sure you can also do it in English, but you can't do it
               | as _gloriously_ as in Korean, where you can start the
               | same sentence and end up with:
               | 
               | hangugeoneun yeongeoboda deo hyoyuljeogibnida. Korean is
               | more efficient than English.
               | 
               | hangugeoneun yeongeoboda deo hyoyuljeog...(read the room,
               | oh no, bail out)...iraneun heossorireul haneun sarami da
               | issdeoragoyo hahaha! => I found an idiot saying Korean is
               | more efficient than English, ha ha!
        
               | burnished wrote:
               | I suspect they meant what they said - you're probably
               | used to deciding that your statement is going to be a
               | question because you must in English. You are probably
               | forgetting all of the times you have started saying
               | something only to realize that you werent sure of what
               | you were talking about.
        
         | steele wrote:
         | Item specific counting suffixes are a pain though
        
         | posterboy wrote:
         | All I learned from reading this is that your translation skills
         | are abysimal.
         | 
         | I only know the script and can tell that the encoded
         | information is a little more complex.
         | 
         | > You can process and even start answering someone before
         | they've finished their sentence
         | 
         | That would likely break the Curry-Howard-Correspondance. So I
         | can only concure, it is "incredible".
         | 
         | Good on you if you reached a point where you don't notice the
         | difference.
        
         | freshbakedbread wrote:
         | On the other hand, the question template build up can be useful
         | when initiating contact with someone. They have the space of
         | "Could I have..." or equivalent in other languages to get tuned
         | in to the fact you're asking a question. Much of speech
         | comprehension is being able to anticipate what's coming.
        
           | y7 wrote:
           | Yes, or just getting attuned to the specific voice patterns
           | of the speaker.
        
         | rcme wrote:
         | In English you can say "One beer please."
        
           | photonbeam wrote:
           | Or "Beer me".
        
             | bee_rider wrote:
             | This definitely is the one that comes to mind. It is a
             | special case though, it would be unusual to say "soup me."
        
               | actionfromafar wrote:
               | Verbing. It's a thing.
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | mirthflat83 wrote:
             | Or "Beer".
        
               | hinkley wrote:
               | NORM!
        
           | ummonk wrote:
           | "You have wifi?"
        
         | DiscourseFan wrote:
         | Anyone can argue that any language is efficient based on some
         | ability to express a (relatively) complex idea in (relatively)
         | few words.
         | 
         | In Sanskrit, for instance, one can express entire
         | metaphyiscal/philosophical systems in a single word, using
         | compounds, and in philosophical commentaries this is actually
         | quite frequent (which is what makes reading philosophy in
         | Sanskrit so difficult, because everything is so condensed). The
         | compounds can be of an arbitrary length, and feature
         | extraordinarily complex syntactic system that allows for such
         | complexity of expression. See the Wikipedia article below, for
         | more.
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanskrit_compound
        
       | badrabbit wrote:
       | The phoenetic aspects of Hangul makes it just about my favorite
       | language. It just feels so natural to say the words and phrases.
       | French, german russian feel so unnatural on the other hand and
       | english accents in england feel like I am pretending to be rich
       | or of a higher class lol. Hangul is peculiar for me because
       | japanese and mandarin both have close cultural influence and ties
       | on Korea but it sounds very different.
        
       | melony wrote:
       | Turkish is another dreadfully regular language, would make for a
       | great programming language
        
         | jfk13 wrote:
         | ...except that the `uppercase` function would be wrong for
         | everyone else.
        
       | keithjl wrote:
       | The Korean graphic designer Ahn Sang Soo played around with
       | linearizing the alphabet: https://www.we-find-
       | wildness.com/2011/05/ahn-sang-soo/img_00...
       | 
       | What's nice is that it's immediately legible if you already know
       | how to read, but you also realize how inherently slower it is.
       | One of the nicest parts of Korean (and other east asian
       | languages) is that each block is always a single syllable.
        
         | posterboy wrote:
         | I'm not sure if that's inherent.
         | 
         | One problem is that Korean syllable structure is not as easy as
         | one os lead to believe, from what I heard. And whether syllable
         | is a meaningful unit is debatable.
        
           | terrorOf wrote:
           | [dead]
        
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