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3-Logic and language
المنطق واللغة
Logic and Language ● Traditional grammarians treat Latin as a kind of authority. ● They considered the ‘logic’ as another kind of authority, e.g., one may say ‘English is a more logical language than French’ or it is more logical to say ‘spoonfuls’ than the word ‘spoonsful’, without basing their description of language structure on scientific facts and evidences. ● Not everything is due to logic, we must care about irregularities or exceptions concerning language structure(e.g. small-smaller is eight but why good-gooder is not?
The complexity of language
تعقيد اللغة
4. The Complexity of Language● There is no ‘most complex’ language, since standards of difficulty is relative.(= a thing is more difficult to do depending on how much practice we have had at doing it).● We should not say that one language is more complex or difficult to learn. One may consider Chinese, for example, is an awfully difficult language to learn, it may be true for a certain person but for one who speaks a language which is at all similar to Chinese in its sounds, grammar and vocabulary, it will be a lot easier for him to learn than one who does not. ●We must not say that some languages are ‘simple’, ‘crude’, or ‘primitive’ (low level of cultural development) languages. ● Languages are not better, worse but only different.
5 Aesthetics and language
الجماليات واللغة
5. Aesthetics and language● In older times, a language, word, structure are said to be more beautiful, ugly or affected than another, when beauty was associated with eloquence and the Classics.● In the Middle Ages, ‘grammar was the art of speaking and writing well’, while in these days, aesthetic judgments about language concerns people accent or ways of pronunciation. ● If we insist on criticizing someone’s else accent as ‘affected(= artificial)’ or ‘ugly’, we try to impose our own standards of beauty on others(= judging other people in terms of our own particular linguistic preferences) forgetting that we seem just as different from the people we are criticizing.
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