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- [11:04:40 PM] Lily: No, but when they switch to English for basic stuff it's usually because English is just better.
- [11:04:46 PM] Lily: Hell, I've seen them do it for numbers.
- [11:04:52 PM] Lily: Literally reading off a long number
- [11:04:56 PM] Lily: 2 native arabs
- [11:05:01 PM] Lily: But they do it in English
- [11:05:11 PM] Lily: Because everything in English sounds different and it's good for transmitting info.
- [11:06:09 PM] Snap: Okay but I don't see how that's just because "English is better"
- [11:07:06 PM] Snap: It's better in the context of what
- [11:07:49 PM] Lily: It's better for transmitting information unambiguously.
- [11:08:26 PM] Snap: I just don't agree with that
- [11:08:49 PM] Snap: Better for certain kinds of information, maybe that argument could be made? Sure
- [11:09:21 PM] Snap: It's not as though everyone who speaks two languages fluently goes around wishing they were speaking English all the time
- [11:09:39 PM] Snap: Frankly that just sounds insulting
- [11:09:44 PM] Snap: "Your language sucks because it isn't English"
- [11:10:15 PM] Lily: Your language isn't as good at making an unambiguous point as English, because it's constructed fundamentally differently.
- [11:10:36 PM] Lily: Different languages have different strengths and weaknesses, but I've yet to see anything that can top English on that front.
- [11:10:43 PM] Snap: But that's not even fair, it's just that English is constructed in a way that doesn't allow for as much ambiguity
- [11:10:49 PM] Lily: Yes.
- [11:10:52 PM] Lily: And I fucking love it.
- [11:11:04 PM] Snap: And besides you're only speaking of what, Arabic and Japanese? What about Italian, German, French, etc, etc.
- [11:11:14 PM] Snap: You can't even comment on those languages, you don't even speak them
- [11:11:39 PM] Lily: I'm also going by what people on flag boards on 4chan say (boards where you can see which country they're in).
- [11:11:45 PM] Lily: They all say the same thing.
- [11:12:06 PM] Lily: I've never seen anyone say that any language can beat English for unambiguous transmission of information.
- [11:12:13 PM] Snap: Just sounds like a circlejerk, my friend who's fluent in Italian/French/English doesn't agree with you at all
- [11:12:29 PM] Snap: He's never been speaking Italian with his Italian family and gone "Boy I wish we were speaking English"
- [11:12:39 PM] Snap: 'So I could get my point across better"
- [11:12:59 PM] Lily: Well that could just be a national pride thing.
- [11:13:31 PM] Snap: So you'll write his opinion off as national pride but not the 4chin people for the same? Maybe they just really hate their own country and like the idea of English and English culture
- [11:14:07 PM] Lily: Haha, no. That would imply that everyone talks about how awesome English culture is and not shit on western culture mercilessly.
- [11:14:27 PM] Lily: It would also imply that my family or coworkers have American/English national pride.
- [11:14:34 PM] Snap: Yeah, but that can be boiled down to "Because it's very prevalent and easy to come in and shit on"
- [11:15:13 PM] Lily: And? How does that mean that people are secretly in love with English stuff?
- [11:15:38 PM] Snap: My point is your bias doesn't hold any weight because "Some people on 4chan said a thing I agree with"
- [11:16:03 PM] Lily: A bunch of people from other countries, my family and my coworkers are more opinions than your one friend.
- [11:16:26 PM] Snap: Well I wouldn't count the people from 4chan
- [11:16:31 PM] Snap: I'm not discounting your family and coworkers
- [11:16:37 PM] Lily: Ok, I still outnumber your friend by a lot.
- [11:17:14 PM] Snap: Your coworkers speaking which languages?
- [11:17:38 PM] Lily: Here in Japan
- [11:17:40 PM] Lily: And my old Chinese ones
- [11:17:50 PM] Snap: Right
- [11:17:58 PM] Snap: All I'm saying is that's a small handful of languages
- [11:18:36 PM] Snap: English is better than Chinese/Japanese at communicating unambiguously" would be something I could get behind, perhaps
- [11:18:53 PM] Snap: Because that would make sense. There's a distinct reason that you can linguistically prove
- [11:19:08 PM] Snap: "English is better than all languages in the world at communicating unambiguously" is nonsense, though.
- [11:20:09 PM] Snap: And in all cases, that language will only be the best for communicating things that are universal. As soon as you start discussing things that only exist in the culture of that language, that idea goes out the window
- [11:20:29 PM] Snap: Because you get things like "The word for this literally doesn't exist in the other language so now you have to write a whole big long paragraph explaining what you mean"
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