languages

[Vito]

Some commentary heard recently on the one of the brilliant Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K) send-ups of one of those Japanese monster movies (one of the Gamera films, I think):

• Servo: Jeez...that bit of dialog sounded like a goat choking on its own vomit.
  
  Mike: Right...sort of like the German language, only prettier.

Great way to hear all kinds of foreign language accents is to watch Michael Palin's travelogues. Some of those Eastern European wimminfolk speaking English is downright erotic.

Biggest linquistic joke of the 20th century: Ebonics.

One of the most brilliant literary adaptations of any English language dialect is Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn...which is brilliant for other reasons as well.

I love the Cuban accent speaking English. There's a big Cuban-American community hereabouts, and I've had the pleasure of working with some of those folks.

I guess this thread is confined to spoken (natural) languages, so I'll refrain from waxing ebullient about the virtues of mathematics.

Proper English spoken by English wimmin: YOW!! Gotta go take a cold shower... :mrgreen:

:joker:

 

[alfredo_buscatti]

Vito, I'd love to hear about the language of mathematics. Remember this is "The Round Table."

 

[Vito]

Most Esteemed Signore Alfredo:

Well, compared to natural languages, mathematics is a very different kind of trip. It has great power because it is capable of great precision (great specificity), and because the operating rules don't change. One of its greatest advantages is noise reduction. Everything means something, and it only means one thing. There's no guessing. The operations — for example, +, –, x, ÷, ∑, ∂, ∫, ...etc. — always work the same way. IOW, it has a low bullshit factor. :mrgreen:

In that sense, mathematics is a superb tool for communicating, because there's no ambiguity. If you read what someone else wrote and you don't know what he means, you ask him. And, if he's doing it right, he can answer in a comprehensible way. It eliminates uncertainty. It's one of the reasons why we make progress in sciences that use mathematics as their language, while other domains of human endeavor are mired in bullshit. They can't define their terms, so no one has any idea WTF anyone else is talking about. Or worse, they don't even know that they don't know what they're talking about. Not that I'm thinking of politics, or anything.

Of course, mathematics has limitations. It's only good for what it's good for. In the end, it doesn't have any practical value without definitions that tie the symbols to something in the real world. There are plenty of things about pure mathematics that are interesting (...well, to some folks anyway), but ultimately, in order to be useful, mathematics must have some semantic content; it has to mean something.

The 20th century mathematicians (notably Russell, Whitehead, and Hilbert) who tried to recreate the whole of mathematics from a few simple axioms failed, but no one knew why until Kurt Gödel proved that what they were trying to do was impossible. In a nutshell, Gödel showed that there is no such thing as a completely self-contained abstract logical system that isn't trivial. Everything that means anything has to refer to something outside itself to have any significance. There are deep philosophical implications...which I leave to your imagination.

For all its advantages, mathematics wouldn't work very well for most of the kind of communicating we humanoids do (...or try to do ). It certainly doesn't cover all (or even most) aspects of human experience. IOW, it would suck as a natural language. It can't handle anything more than simple relationships. For example, while we manage to solve 2-body problems pretty well, and we can handle certain kinds of 3-body problems (sort of), there is still no general solution to the n-body problem.

What that means is that mathematics is impoverished in its ability to handle complex relationships...which includes most of the stuff that happens in the universe. So, for all its great power as a tool we've learned to use with great skill, it's actually quite limited in its scope where natural, complex systems are concerned.

But there's an irony therein. Despite all its limitations as regards the natural world, it's still not completely divorced therefrom. For example, the laws of gravitational, electrical, and magnetic forces all follow an inverse square law, like Newton’s law of gravitation…

Newton's Law of Gravitation

​

...wherein the forces of attraction or repulsion vary inversely as the square of the distance between them. It's a precise mathematical relationship, and it really is the way the universe (given name: "Bob") works. It's not something we just made up. We (...well, Isaac Newton) noticed that that's the way it works.

So, in that sense, mathematics is...well, if not a "natural language", then at least it's to some degree a language of nature.

 

[alfredo_buscatti]

The ideas in your post are breathtaking! Not that at this time I understand any of them very well (I linked to the Wiki article on Godel for a short read, but I shall return), but watch out! Your post awakened a long-slumbering desire to become more familiar with mathematics, logic and philosophy (honest), this from a very reluctant student in mathematics in grammar and secondary schools, who only discovered any utility in mathematics, for its abstract beauty, in college. In fact I smugly told my college algebra professor on walking out the door at the end of the term that mathematics had no eschatological usefulness. My how it was fun to use that term in public for the first time!

While it may be true that I was correct, mathematics certainly has great value in understanding natural phenomena and in and of itself, for its pure beauty, and your words resurrected my wish to know more about these powers and beauty. This reawakened desire touches me in a way that seems true, not casual.

Thank you for contributing to that, at this time, nascent desire, oh wizened west coast wanderer in the mathematical, physical realm. I'll let you know when I'm nominated for my work, eclipsing Godel's, in these new spheres!

 

[Vito]

...I'll let you know when I'm nominated for my work, eclipsing Godel's, in these new spheres!

Go for it, bro'!! :cheers:

:joker:

 

[NeroWolfe]

Man...You guys are up in the clouds on this topic, and I am stuck on the ground still thinking about Harlock999's photo of Sophia Loren in her "prime" !!!!

 

[Harlock999]

Man...You guys are up in the clouds on this topic, and I am stuck on the ground still thinking about Harlock999's photo of Sophia Loren in her "prime" !!!!

:cheers: :cheers: :cheers:

 

[Kyle Weiss]

...y...yeah? Yeah you think you're smart with your fancy math-i-matics? Try selling self-fixed camera bodies from a tent in Golden Gate park (now that's economics and language studies...). :lol: For chemistry lessons, figuring out which pieces of sushi from the refuse were okay to eat... most of the time... :lol: :lol: Stay in school kids. 8)

 

[Vito]

...y...yeah? Yeah you think you're smart with your fancy math-i-matics?...

Well...er, actually, no. I mean, really..."N-fucking-O", as we used to say in rock 'n' roll.

It's prolly kinda hard to imagine for somebody who doesn't get into all this mathematical shit...but it only LOOKS like it's difficult. Actually, it's a lot easier to understand than the thousands of pages of incomprehensible bullshit that comes out of Congress day after day, in their ceaseless attempts to regulate and micromanage every goddam aspect of everything we do...and which usually manages to accomplish the opposite of what it's supposed to accomplish. Now, THAT stuff is difficult...no, wait—impossible—to understand.

The math stuff is much simpler. It's not really much different from any other subject that has enough depth for you to sink your teeth into...including the massively complex (and endlessly fascinating) trip of selling ANYTHING from a tent in Golden Gate Park...especially if you do it in conjunction with a personal chemistry experiment of the...uh, pharmaceutical variety. Not that I'm admitting anything, mind you, but I WAS there in the '60s. As I recall. Some of it. Huh? (Earth to Vito...come in...)

Where was I...oh yeah, math shit. Lookee here:

Maxwell's equations for electromagnetic wave propagation​

Looks like "hard shit"...right? But that's only onna counta you don't know what all the symbols mean. Notwithstanding the possibility that you might not give a shit what they mean, if you had the burn to understand it, you could learn it in relatively short order. (BTW, most everything we do today is affected by the knowledge contained in those equations. Everything that has anything to do with light, radio, television, microwaves, wireless, infrared, ultraviolet—all e-m waves in general—derives from Maxwell's theory of e-m waves.)

Smart? Hell no. From my perspective, the more I know about that stuff, the more I realize how relatively little I know. It's actually kinda humbling. I mean, it's way cool that some of my fellow humanoids (like Newton and Maxwell) were smart enough to figure out the stuff they did, and we're all the beneficiaries of that knowledge, whether we realize it or not (and most people don't). But when you dig deeper and find out who they were...what kinda dudes they were, you find out that they didn't think they were so very smart. Maxwell was a pretty humble guy. Newton, who arguably was one of the greatest intellects in human history, said this:

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy, playing on the sea shore and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst a great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

That's from the guy who invented the calculus that Maxwell used in his equations, the guy who integrated all of what was previously called "natural philosophy" into the science we now call "physics", the guy whose work is the foundation of all technological progress in the past 300+ years.

I figure you prolly were just doing that wise-ass thang that you do so well (really! :cheers: ), but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to say that the guys who actually create the knowledge we all take for granted—guys whom everyone thinks are "smart"—usually don't have that same opinion of themselves. And for the record, neither do I.

:joker:

 

[Vito]

As a reasonably "normal" red-blooded 'Talian-'Merican three-legger with no shortage of testosterone, lemmee just say this on the subject of Sophia Loren:

​

YOW!!! Now THAT is a language I understand! :mrgreen:

:joker:

 

[Kyle Weiss]

I had no intentions, really, just had nothing to contribute besides non sequitur , which is much more my style, than anything. 8) As was once said, "Math is Greek to me." All kidding aside, I'm glad there's people that have a knack for it. Otherwise, how would language discussions get so convoluted? Funny stuff.

By the way, if you must know, dumpsters around the chain hotels were best, because the international tourists would usually ignorantly purchase them from the crackheads, and when discovered they didn't work, didn't pack them up to go home with them. Fixing them was usually a matter of putting the right parts back together in the right order. Also, stick to the rolls rather than the nigiri, they tend to preserve the fishy contents for a little longer.

I couldn't just suggest and not follow through! You never know when knowledge can come in handy.

(...by the way, I don't need the blatant use of "shit" and other puerile language to get through to me...I'm not 12, at least intellectually...perhaps I'm wrong, it just reminded me of how instructors and teachers "got through to the youth." A tasteless practice I find ultimately makes for weird rap/education math videos and creative teaching, but fails to do much for the rap or math it was intended... :lol: ...if just your stylish attempt at posting, well, carry on, then--my mistake...) 8)

Always a fun participation.

 

[Vito]

...if just your stylish attempt at posting, well, carry on, then--my mistake...) 8)

I write the way I talk...mostly.
:joker:

 

[Kyle Weiss]

...if just your stylish attempt at posting, well, carry on, then--my mistake...) 8)

I write the way I talk...mostly.
:joker:

Do you have two sets of lungs? *laughs* (pot, kettle, black, me, etc...)

 

[Vito]

...Do you have two sets of lungs? *laughs* (pot, kettle, black, me, etc...)

Dear Pot (...or Kettle):

No. I mean yes. I mean I don't think so. I don't know. I'm out of my element. (Vitonium - atomic number 335...depicted below)

Vitonium 335​

Devotedly,

Kettle (...or Pot. Or something.)

:joker:

 

[Airborne]

My wife is Quebecoise and is fluent in both French and English. My French is awful. I forgot most of the Spanish I knew in my youth.

We're both learning Italian!

 

[sand18f]

That conversation reminded me of the first few minutes of the movie "Lonsome Dove".

 

[SteveHorsfall]

I've always thought that Italian is the most beautiful, musical language I know - or rather don't know: I wish I spoke it. I can count to 14 in it, and even that sounds like singing - all those lovely trilled r's. Uno, due, tre, quattro, cinque, sei, sette, otto, nove, deici, undeci... beautiful! (There are probably a few spelling mistakes there.) It's also more logical and simpler than English: where there's an obvious male and female version of essentially the same thing, where English has completely different words (brother/sister, aunt/uncle), Italian just has the same word with a male or female ending (ragazzo/ragazza, zio/zia). (I dd try to learn a bit of Italian a year or so ago: maybe 'll try again when I retire in a few years' time.)
On the other hand, I don't like French, of which I have a smattering, much: it's always struck me as a rather slovenly language, with its unpronounced endings to many words.
The ugliest language I know, as far as mere sound is concerned - again, I don't speak it - is German: all those hard consonants and gutterals. It's a great language for ranting in, like Hitler, but it'd be hard to seduce a woman in it!

[Edit] Come to think of it, I think 'ragazzo/a' means 'boy/girl' rather than 'brother/sister'. 'Ragazzo' seems singularly appropriate for 'boy', with its echo of 'ragamuffin'!

 

[Dutch]

My girlfriend is Mexican, and Spanish is her first language. I really enjoy the Spanish lessons I've been getting. I also like the French language a lot.

 

[Harlock999]

I've always thought that Italian is the most beautiful, musical language I know -

German: all those hard consonants and gutterals. It's a great language for ranting in, like Hitler, but it'd be hard to seduce a woman in it!

:cheers: :cheers: :cheers:

 

[sand18f]

I'm of Harlock's school of language. Sophia is "always" in her prime.