Comparisons across (as opposed to within) languages or language families.
Questions tagged [cross-linguistic]
243 questions
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Can Hangul be read as fast as Chinese?
I read that Chinese can be read 7% faster than English. Can Hangul also be read 7% faster than English?
Reason to think "no":
While Hangul and Chinese both have roughly one character per syllable, the Chinese characters might convey more…
Max Heiber
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8
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The hunger for single words
Over on English Language and Usage, there are many, many questions of the form "What is a single word for [phrase]".
The poster usually seems to be very keen to use a single word — which may be obscure, or have a subtly different meaning — than to…
slim
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7
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What language takes the longest to text?
It takes X seconds for the average English user to send an average-length text message via phone.
What language is the most effort-intensive to text? How about to write? Is there one language that is best adapted to "the keyboard" or the touchpad…
samthebrand
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5
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Robustness of a language to noise
not a linguist. I was just wondering if the degree of robustness of a language to environmental noise is somehow measured or studied. I presume not every language is equally robust, right?
user2042652
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4
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Cross-linguistic cases of German 'trennbare' Verbs
How many languages have verbs where you can detach a prefix and put it at the end? That's like the German 'trennbare' Verbs.
For example, in German, for depart/leave ('abfahren') you say:
Der Zug is abgefahren.
The train has left.
But:
Der Zug fährt…
Nuremin Ahmed
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3
votes
5 answers
Are there any languages where you say "My age is x years"?
This question is inspired by another one on ELL.SE.
To me, the most logical way to say "I am 20 years old" would be "My age is 20 years," because age is an attribute of a person. Maybe this is because I'm a programmer; in an object-oriented…
Someone
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3
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Answering Tag Questions
I am not sure if the post really is about tag questions. I apologize for the confusion.
Now consider the following situation in English. Your friend asks you,
Haven't you had lunch?
If you haven't, you would say "no", because in English people…
gonnastop
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Name for "all things able to be referenced" by a language
Is there a name for the collection of all things that can be referenced in a language; a language's universe perhaps?
For example, the "universe" of English would contain most all things/concepts we humans encounter. The "universe" of a numeral…
Novice F
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vote
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Are there comparative studies of lexical variety in different languages?
I'm not a linguist, but really curious about how different languages measure up in terms of how many different ways of expressing the same notion they offer. For example, Chinese is definitely a more difficult language for L2 learners than English,…
user9324
0
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Kokkova or kokkora carved on ivory
My question is to try to find the origin of the word kokkova. I have an antique/primitive pin made of ivory which if I had to guess would say that it is walrus but not 100% sure. It is scrimshawed with a basic line design and the word Kokkova. (it…
David
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Distance between languages
This question is similar to this one; the difference is that I'd like to find out about quantitative measurements that are not based solely on the vocabulary.
Are there any such objective quantitative measurements in existence? The Levenshtein…
Michael
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Where online compares phonemes across multiple languages, and exhibits the common and distinct ones?
This answer refers to http://web.phonetik.uni-frankfurt.de/upsid_compare.html.
Anyone know why it omits English?
2. Are there websites that can compare more than 3 languages concurrently?
user5306
0
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Is it right that repetition in English is not so pervasive?
In Chinese, word repetition is very pervasive, for example pao lai pao qu 'run come run go'.
However, this direct translation is not good English. Does the native English speaker intend to avoid this kind of repetition? Why would a language like…
Shudong
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-4
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What languages like Chinese are composed out of a limited set of syllables?
It appears Chinese has about 400 syllables (1600 if you include…
Lance
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