Does languages get better and more effective as time goes and they evolve?
language evolves according to situations. For exampe in U.S. it's shaped so that people don't commit thought-crimes
Not necessarily, remember that evolution /= improvement, evolution = change.
>>456738
This, you can see for example the changes in American English and Brazilian Portuguese, in some way using simpler grammatical structures so that immigrants could have a easy time.
>>456709
is that a sausage with cheese and onions on it
looks comfy
>>456805
Its falukorv
>>456775
I'm a linguist and you're stupid.
OP: sort of? It's hard to apply terms like "better" and "effective" to language. Language will always change in the direction of being more functional for its speakers, yes, but there's no universal set of characteristics that define a "good" or "easy" language.
>>457518
Same anon:
Questions like this mostly come from the mistaken belief that some language varieties are "better" than others. This, in turn, comes from power imbalances in society.
The speech of whomever is in power is considered "better", "more efficient", "more intelligent". When someone "just doesn't like" some element of anothee person's speech, it's actually just subtle prejudice sneaking in.
That's why there's literally nothing wrong with saying "He be runnin'." It's just that wealthy white men don't use the "habitual be", so our society has learned to stigmatize it.
I know this because I'm fucking great at my job. You can't be prejudiced and be a good linguist at the same time.
>>457518
Answer this one linguist (i am a different anon btw): are brazil and s. America to Portuguese and Spanish what the us/canada are to English in terms of clarity? General American is much easier to understand that most english accents except for middle class southern english
>>457606
Not him but I'm Portuguese and it really depends, Portugal is a tiny country with a huge variety of accents, idioms and even dialects, we have a second official language called Mirandese spoken by a minority of the population. Brazil is huge and has tons of different local dialects, I guess it depends on geographical location, people from the Azores can be really hard to understand like people from some remote part of Brazil. The Portuguese spoken in Lisbon or Porto is much easier to understand just like the one from Rio or São Paulo.
>>457606
What do you mean by clarity? How easy North American dialects are for people learning "standard" English?
I would guess that General American is easier to understand for an English English speaker than Brazilian Portugese is for a speaker of European Portugese, but I don't actually speak Portugese so I'm not certain. But the sheer volume of media available in North American English contributes a lot to people finding it easy to understand.
>>457606
No shit, because you're more exposed to American accents in the global media.
well th>>456709
ankfully everyone in this bread knows body language and nonverbal language was first before the convenient evolution of verbal speech known today.
They ultimately cycle between analytic and synthetic.
>>456709
we will never know because one of the functions of language is crypsis
>>456709
I suppose dropping the long S adding the J and making U and V different letters helped a lot with reading.
>>456716
>>456709
I don't think so. As people get to grips with reality and the world we live in, I feel there are words missing in language and concepts that require a page to describe, should have their own proper names. It's like language isn't evolving, really.
