Timeline for Is spoken English more efficient than other languages?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
9 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 12, 2018 at 13:40 | comment | added | user74809 | By the way, I am not knocking Russian. I love Russian, it is my mother tongue and the only language, in which I sound like a native speaker. I mean, I still have a pretty thick Russian accent. I am not losing it anytime soon, if ever. But like I said, living in both worlds, the Moscow world and the Washington D.C. world, I do notice that English is objectively more efficient, even if I am myself not as efficient in it as most other people. | |
| Nov 12, 2018 at 13:29 | comment | added | user74809 | My experience just does not bear out an assertion that both Russian and English are equally efficient when speaking. Maybe, other people have different experiences (I highly doubt that), but that is my experience. | |
| Nov 12, 2018 at 13:24 | comment | added | user74809 | I do not think that "you can communicate the basic meaning of a sentence in English and Russian roughly with the same efficiency", especially when speaking. I was never able to do that, and I do not know any other interpreters who can accomplish such a feat. But maybe there are some who can, I don't know I never really looked into that. But what you can do is communicate the basic meaning of a sentence slightly more efficiently in English than in Russian, when speaking. You might lose some detail in the process, but that is the price you pay, I guess. | |
| Nov 12, 2018 at 13:13 | comment | added | Anixx | @user74809 My impression is the opposite, but it is irrelevant. My point was that you can communicate the basic meaning of a sentence in English and Russian roughly with the same efficiency, but in Russian you also will communicate overtones, which are lost in English. Thus English is like B&W TV while Russian is a color TV, even though you would spend the same time watching a movie on both. | |
| Nov 12, 2018 at 13:10 | comment | added | Anixx | @user74809 Why do you call the case system "rigid"? It is not rigid at all. What is rigid is the word order in English. | |
| Nov 12, 2018 at 13:01 | comment | added | user74809 | But in writing, though, I do think that Russian is somewhat superior. However, when it comes to common daily speech, I do not think that anyone can claim that English is less efficient than Russian. As a matter of fact, I also find Russian to be somewhat more mentally taxing than English when interpreting. I mean, anyone who has lived in the world of Russian and then moved to the world of English is certain to notice that English is somewhat more efficient in everyday life. It is not a night-and-day difference, but it is certainly noticeable. | |
| Nov 12, 2018 at 12:48 | comment | added | user74809 | Russian, when spoken, is somewhat less efficient than English, and that is for sure. No one who has ever worked as an interpreter can deny it. You can convey somewhat more information in English than in Russian within an hour. The English language is not constrained by the rigid case and gender systems of the Russian language, which somewhat reduce the information density of the Russian language. The rules of the Russian language force the speaker to incorporate sometimes unnecessary details in his speech, which can be problematic for interpreters | |
| Dec 14, 2012 at 0:52 | history | edited | Anixx | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 721 characters in body
|
| Dec 14, 2012 at 0:29 | history | answered | Anixx | CC BY-SA 3.0 |