Your next job is to find a more ambiguous language than English, which also have to be the official language of a state.

EDIT: please as you find one give an apropriately complete enough specification of all the ambiguities of the found language compared to all in english, then discuss it.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jul 8 2012, 5:28 pm by matefkr.

I think you misunderstand what serious discussion is.

How would you even begin to determine the "ambiguity index" of a language?

nooo, you dont know the whole picture yet. Suppose one is unable to find such, then this shall be the proof of stupidity of humanity, as this english, is the one for most iternational use (i think).

MANDARIN CHINESE

First comes ambiguity of words, either both written and spoken, this is the most serious dipshit.
Then those words counted which are ambiguous only one way, written xor spoken.
Then its somewhat less serious, if pauses have a meaning for interpretation, or emphasis/accent also have meaning in interpretation.
Then you count the inter-wordal ambigiouitis, whereas one could mistake multiple words for a different recombination (written or spoken).

{if these above would be maximised with one language then it is the worst language}

Then after this goes, the level of non-phoneticalsness in writing.
After this goes the used sillables being very similar to eachother but giving words different meanings
Then similarly to previous with written characters.


reasons please, compare it objectively to english, since so far this is the candidate for the first place.

As far as obscurity goes, there are a number of languages where getting a yes or no answer out of the people that speak it is incredibly difficult -

Arabic has "Insha'Allah" - "If God Wills It." This means that if you set a meeting for 2PM sharp, but you run into a frined you haven't talked to years, it is okay to be late because God wills you to talk to this person, and you should never go against God's Will. It is also used to describe the outcomes of said meetings - if God wills a construction project to be completed, it will, if He dosen't, it won't. Some strongly Catholic countries abide by "If God Wills It" it too, such as Mexico.

The Japanese feel very uncomfortable answering questions with a straigh yes or no answer. You have to be careful on how you phrase questions so that you don't force them into a solid answer - because it would be very embarrassing if something were to come up to make them late or unable to keep their commitment. As far as obscurity in the written, Japanese Kanji can be difficult to translate, especially as far as surnames are concerned, because the same kanji or radicals can mean a number of things.

Sorry, there wasn't enough in your post for me to respond any other way. :\

EDIT: In Korean, it is incredibly embarrassing for you and the person above you if you disagree with a superior. Airline pilots actually speak English when in flight because it loosens up this barrier - which means the co pilot can tell the pilot to dodge the building in front of them. Otherwise it would be too embarrassing for the co pilot to disagree with his pilot. It sounds funny, but it has actually helped to decrease accidents.

This is off-topic, i hadn't asked about culture, but language.

Wow. Okay, then better describe your 'topic.' Language is culture - it's a mechanism of how people interact with each other. If you remove culture from the language, then your language loses** context.

This is not relevant, as i am asking about Language, and not any other elements of culture. So you should just specify a more ambiguous language then english.

Arabic, Japanese, and Korean.

Moved this to a more appropriate subforum. You may want to revise your original post to make it meet Null's "standards," though. An assignment isn't a discussion, and so far this would be more suited for the shoutbox.

Anyway, does Japanese have more average ambiguity than English? I always see people confuse things with other things in anime shows as a point of humor.

Finally, ambiguity is rather subjective in evolving languages, as as TiKels implied, you can't really rate a language's ambiguity.

In that case, English isn't ambiguous at all, because any ambiguity comes from interpreting something differently, and how someone interprets something/learns how to use a language is part of their culture. That part removed, English is infallible, as is any other language.

Japanese has a lot more verbs, a lot more ways to spell kanji, and a lot more formality than English. That's what makes me it difficult to learn and to use properly. My friends who have lived in Japan also have told me that the newspaper will make up kanji on the fly if they need to to describe a specific item. Kanji is broken down into radicals - really simple pieces of kanji, sometimes just one stroke - and each radical combined gives the kanji a set of meanings. So in that reguard Japanese is much more specific than English, but the true meaning might be lost on someone who is not a native speaker or who is not fluent.