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Why do different languages look like absolute gibberish?

Reconscope

Reconscope

Supreme Citizen of ZV
Russian for example has hieroglyph speech writing. There are other languages like the polish section i was buzzing there I'm like "my god how is that even communication even possible if it's that disorganized?"

(Idk if this is dumpster fire material)
 
Any language that doesn't use your native alphabet is going to be especially difficult to wrap your head around. Languages that share the same alphabet also generally share some phonetic similarity as well. For example, I learned German in high school. Almost all letters in German make similar sounds as they do in English, it's like having a head start in learning the language. Where as now I'm trying to learn Japanese before I go there on vacation and it's absolutely destroying me lol.
 
Octavian said:
Any language that doesn't use your native alphabet is going to be especially difficult to wrap your head around. Languages that share the same alphabet also generally share some phonetic similarity as well. For example, I learned German in high school. Almost all letters in German make similar sounds as they do in English, it's like having a head start in learning the language. Where as now I'm trying to learn Japanese before I go there on vacation and it's absolutely destroying me lol.
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I do see similarities in those plus Spanish.
 
Octavian said:
Any language that doesn't use your native alphabet is going to be especially difficult to wrap your head around. Languages that share the same alphabet also generally share some phonetic similarity as well. For example, I learned German in high school. Almost all letters in German make similar sounds as they do in English, it's like having a head start in learning the language. Where as now I'm trying to learn Japanese before I go there on vacation and it's absolutely destroying me lol.
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Fun fact, English is technically related to German in the language family tree. Not sure what the grouping is called (Germanic or something?) but I thought it was neat.
 
Reconscope said:
Russian for example has hieroglyph speech writing. There are other languages like the polish section i was buzzing there I'm like "my god how is that even communication even possible if it's that disorganized?"

(Idk if this is dumpster fire material)
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There's also a possibility that you don't have the right character set for particular language and your browser/reader is making a poor second choice for you. Even worse, not all languages read in the same direction and your unconscious bias can sneak up on you.
 
Reconscope said:
Russian for example has hieroglyph speech writing. There are other languages like the polish section i was buzzing there I'm like "my god how is that even communication even possible if it's that disorganized?"

(Idk if this is dumpster fire material)
Click to expand...
To folks of other languages, their language is not gibberish at all.
Have you considered English might look like gibberish to them?
 
Kristy said:
To folks of other languages, their language is not gibberish at all.
Have you considered English might look like gibberish to them?
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I have, and it's absolutely hilarious! ?

But in all seriousness, I love language, it's all a unique form of communication and expression that's evolved throughout the millennia.
 
Pillar said:
I have, and it's absolutely hilarious! ?

But in all seriousness, I love language, it's all a unique form of communication and expression that's evolved throughout the millennia.
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...and in many ways, not evolved nearly enough. In fact, slipping backward in some ways.
 
Kristy said:
Are you asking a question, indicated by your question mark? And sorry, I don't know what "imo" is.
(I'm not trying to give you a hard time. Serious questions.)
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"in my opinion" = imo (its quicker that way)

i said the ? mark as in a ummmm way not as a question.
 
Kristy said:
Then don't use a question mark. THAT is one of the ways in which language is not evolving, but slipping backward,
of which I spoke above.
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as far as i care i have my own way of communicating. as long as my message is out there i hardly care what the 3rd party says on my sentence structuring.
 
I'm not attacking you. You're one of the millions of people who do it.
I wasn't the third party. I was the second party, the one to whom you were speaking. Is someone communicating effectively when a question mark is present, but, there is no question being asked? What if it involved a situation of immediate importance, and it's crucial for proper meaning of a sentence to be understood?
 
Kristy said:
I'm not attacking you. You're one of the millions of people who do it.
I wasn't the third party. I was the second party, the one to whom you were speaking. Is someone communicating effectively when a question mark is present, but, there is no question being asked? What if it involved a situation of immediate importance, and it's crucial for proper meaning of a sentence to be understood?
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like what is of importance? as far as my life it im not gonna use anything thats of importance unless its done in person.

not even attacking either im clarifying.
 
sometimes i think russian must seem like gibberish even to russians themselves... i mean, some letters are read as different letters, flipped numbers are also letters, some letters are even syllables i think? some letters are very similar to other letters. chinese looks more comprehensible if you at least know some basics of what's what.
 
The trick is if you don't know the words you can't see the grammar unless you have a keen eye for detail, like German's ge__t verb construct, Romance languages's suffixes, or absolutely anything in a language w an alphabet or glyph system you're not familiar with, so it looks disorganized only bc you haven't been trained to see the order

If you want an utterly maddening glimpse of what English sounds like to ppl who don't speak English check this out!
 
Jewelry Fish said:
Fun fact, English is technically related to German in the language family tree. Not sure what the grouping is called (Germanic or something?) but I thought it was neat.
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It's grammatically Germanic but predominately Latin roots for vocabulary. That's why there's so much similarity to spanish and french words, same vocabulary root.
 
Reconscope said:
as far as i care i have my own way of communicating. as long as my message is out there i hardly care what the 3rd party says on my sentence structuring.
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Except your "message" isnt out there...which without hitting you with a hammer, Ive tried to tell you. Your "own methods" are starting to become a different language....with a speaker number of one.
 
There are 3 generally recognized categories which languages originate from...

1) Indo-European (Including English, Spanish, German, Italian, French, Russian, and etc.)
2) Sino-Tibetan (Including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Laotian, and etc. )
3) Afro-Asiatic (Including Arabic, Somali, Berber, Amharic, Oromo, Swahili, and etc. )

Usually when learning a language it is a lot easier to do so by choosing a branch that is within the same family. For example, learning German when you already know how to speak English. The learning curve is a lot higher when trying to learn a language from another category. For example trying to learn Japanese when your native tongue is English.

Russia is actually an interesting case. It's primarily a Indo-European language, but due to it's geographical location it has barrowed several elements from Sino-Tibetan languages. So to us English speakers it looks completely foreign. We'll look at it and proclaim "What even is this shit? How is this even a language?" While a native Chinese speaker might look at the English language and proclaim "这到底是什么鬼东西？这怎么会是一种语言?"

Here's a fun one... try deciphering Russian cursive!

1612065176059.png
 
FloofyNewfie said:
There are 3 generally recognized categories which languages originate from...

1) Indo-European (Including English, Spanish, German, Italian, French, Russian, and etc.)
2) Sino-Tibetan (Including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Laotian, and etc. )
3) Afro-Asiatic (Including Arabic, Somali, Berber, Amharic, Oromo, Swahili, and etc. )

Usually when learning a language it is a lot easier to do so by choosing a branch that is within the same family. For example, learning German when you already know how to speak English. The learning curve is a lot higher when trying to learn a language from another category. For example trying to learn Japanese when your native tongue is English.

Russia is actually an interesting case. It's primarily a Indo-European language, but due to it's geographical location it has barrowed several elements from Sino-Tibetan languages. So to us English speakers it looks completely foreign. We'll look at it and proclaim "What even is this shit? How is this even a language?" While a native Chinese speaker might look at the English language and proclaim "这到底是什么鬼东西？这怎么会是一种语言?"

Here's a fun one... try deciphering Russian cursive!

View attachment 142358
Click to expand...
That cursive...holy crap...
 
FloofyNewfie said:
There are 3 generally recognized categories which languages originate from...

1) Indo-European (Including English, Spanish, German, Italian, French, Russian, and etc.)
2) Sino-Tibetan (Including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Laotian, and etc. )
3) Afro-Asiatic (Including Arabic, Somali, Berber, Amharic, Oromo, Swahili, and etc. )

Usually when learning a language it is a lot easier to do so by choosing a branch that is within the same family. For example, learning German when you already know how to speak English. The learning curve is a lot higher when trying to learn a language from another category. For example trying to learn Japanese when your native tongue is English.

Russia is actually an interesting case. It's primarily a Indo-European language, but due to it's geographical location it has barrowed several elements from Sino-Tibetan languages. So to us English speakers it looks completely foreign. We'll look at it and proclaim "What even is this shit? How is this even a language?" While a native Chinese speaker might look at the English language and proclaim "这到底是什么鬼东西？这怎么会是一种语言?"

Here's a fun one... try deciphering Russian cursive!

View attachment 142358
Click to expand...
I think I just had a stroke trying to look at that
 
Kristy said:
That cursive...holy crap...
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Apparently so, I tried looking it up and making sure it was real before I posted it. Because yowzah! Lol

Edit: I actually tried to make sure the whole post was factual. I remember the three categories of language, but wanted to at least try and make sure my facts were straight. Hehe
 
why are you guys giving recon such a hard time omg :ROFLMAO: it’s not slipping backwards, it constantly evolves! plus, text speech doesn’t reflect spoken language anyways so it’s hard to say it’s devolving when it’s just casual.

languages are a big interest of mine but I’ve only had time to study Japanese thoroughly since I can actually exchange tweets with other artists and talk..

its not so much gibberish, as it has its own rule sets. like in Japanese! kanji actually do have ways of predicting how they sound, you just have to get used to the basic ones! like onyomi and kunyomi! Which is Native Sound and Chinese sound (basically, it’s literal Is a little different and the Sounds aren’t like Chinese at all, but a telephone game of Chinese,,,)

learning Rendaku, and learning the radicals help decipher meaning! like 痛 having the radical for sickness, 疒. It’s a person on a bed!
Also マ and 用... I’m not sure why the latter two are there but a lot of sicknesses have that radical!

I love that it’s so different, but if you had an apple both would know what it is, just in a different context ~ it’s neat!

cyrillic is a lot to take in tho HAHA especially cursive XD i wouldn’t know the process or grammar to tell you tips or verbs, conjugation, etc...
 
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