the ??? language is the most ???

FrostyBoy · January 1, 2003, 05:02

I'm studying Chinese at the moment, and I am curious what people think of other languages,

just wondering,

1. what is the most complicated language?
2. what is the easiest language?
3. what is the weirdest language?
4. what is the strongest language?
5. what is the most beautiful language?
8. stupidest language?
9. coolest language?
10. smartest language?
11. most divine language?

12. best language?
13. oldest language?

Sikander · January 1, 2003, 05:09

While not the oldest langauge AFAIK, Lithuanian is considered the living language closest to Indo-European. One of the easiest languages to learn as far as its structure has to be Chinese. IIRC Spanish has the fastest data transmission rate, and is the easiest languages for native English speakers to learn.

Nubclear · January 1, 2003, 05:16

1.

2. Babblespeak (Why its so easy that I've seen EVERYONE on these forums speak it

)
3. The weirdest language would probably be Korean, just because I think it is.
4. Chinese.
5. Chinese.
8..........Canadian.
9. Russian

10. Chinese.
11. I get that "divine" stuff enough from the Mormon church, I dont need it here

12. Russian

13. Babblespeak.

muxec · January 1, 2003, 06:15

1. Chinese
2. Esperanto
3. Greek
4. Russian
5. Italian
8. Babblespeak
9. Russian
10. English
11. Hebrew
12. English
13. Hebrew

Oerdin · January 1, 2003, 06:34

Isn't Esperanto a made up language which was designed to be easy to learn?

LDiCesare · January 1, 2003, 07:14

1. Depends on what you already know - tonal languages for pronounciation as far as I am concerned (Chinese, Vietnamese...)
2. Depends on what you already know - chinese for grammar
3. Allnoun (ok it's artificial)
4. What do you mean by strong.
5. Italian
8. Occidental - an esperanto for westerners, see below
9. mine
10. mine
11. meaningless
12. meaningless
13. basque

Esperanto had been designed to be easy to learn but utterly fails because:
Westerners find it too strange, as some find Occidental and other stuff easier to learn (that is, remove all the slav-inspired features in esperanto to make it easier to learn).
Chinese will still find the grammar silly, needlessly comlicated.
Esperanto is easy for indo-european speakers. For other language families, it is just as hard as any other. Probably better to learn spanish for ease or English for spread of the language.

Sonic · January 1, 2003, 09:41

1.Japanese
2.English
3.Czech
4.German
5.Lithuanian
8.Russian
9.German
10.English
11.Arabic
12.Lithuanian
13.Lithuanian

VetLegion · January 1, 2003, 10:00

German is the most scientific or 'smart' if you wish to me

French is the gayest

Italian is for comedy

Russian is for tragedy

Scandinavian languages and Finnish are for communicating with Klingons

Spanish for the soap operas on TV

Portugese like spanish with bit more 'sh', 'ch', 'tsh'

Dutch for scaring little children

Hungarian for making little children laugh

and ... a little bit like all of them ... Croatian is for everyday use

Solver · January 1, 2003, 10:19

Latvian and Lithuanian have similarities to Sanskrit and many words are the same.

Russian, even though it's one of my mother tongues, is a language that I admit is very compliciated - tough to learn for a foreigner, certainly.

Ivrit is a remarkably beautiful language.

Sonic · January 1, 2003, 10:38

Solver, Lithuanian has more similarities to Sanskrit because the old system of accenting words remains, while in Latvian allways the first syllable of the word is accented.

Russian is hard to learn (I wasn't able to learn it...), but I hope it will be les and less important over a time...

Wraith · January 1, 2003, 11:05

A lot of these are going to be "depends what you means", you know.

--"1. what is the most complicated language?"

Can't really say for over-all, although something like LISP might fit the bill.
But for writing, it's Japanese.

Really, though, I'd rather see a thread on comparative strengths and weaknesses than a "best of" thread. It'd probably be a lot more interesting and informative.

Wraith
I'm really quite pleasant until I'm awake

Edan · January 1, 2003, 12:17

1. what is the most complicated language?
yacc
2. what is the easiest language?
Basic
3. what is the weirdest language?
Klingon
4. what is the strongest language?
Assembly
5. what is the most beautiful language?
I'd say lisp if not for all those parenthasis, so I'll go with an OOPL- C++
8. stupidest language?
Prolog
9. coolest language?
Perl
10. smartest language?
C++
11. most divine language?

Lex
12. best language?
Logo
13. oldest language?
Fortran

Solver · January 1, 2003, 12:48

Quote:

Originally posted by Sonic
Solver, Lithuanian has more similarities to Sanskrit because the old system of accenting words remains, while in Latvian allways the first syllable of the word is accented.

Pronouncation wise, Lithuanian is closer a bit, but grammar and sentence construction is similar. So most of the time linguists will mention two of them, Lithuanian and Latvian.

Lord Merciless · January 1, 2003, 15:15

The best language is Java.

The strongest language is not Assembly, but pure machine language implemented in 0s and 1s.

C++ can't possibly be the smartest language if you have to declare all the data types and to clean up pointers explicitly.

Edan · January 1, 2003, 15:57

Quote:

Originally posted by Lord Merciless
The best language is Java.

If you don't mind the garbage collecting. :P

Quote:

The strongest language is not Assembly, but pure machine language implemented in 0s and 1s.

Enjoy your coding.

Assembler should be strong enough for a task you would require machine language for, and, IIRC, is more portable than machine language.

Quote:

C++ can't possibly be the smartest language if you have to declare all the data types and to clean up pointers explicitly.

The language doesn't have to be smart, the programmer does.

If you want a language that will do more work for you (at some expense), than I agree, java (or some other alternative) would be a better choice.