Is English a “writer-responsible language” and Japanese “reader-responsible”?

Re:Is English a “writer-responsible language” and Japanese “... by jinushaun on Tuesday August 04, 2015 @11:33PM (#10007911)

Interesting. I wonder if it stems from the difference between grammar. European languages tend to have a lot of different forms for words based on tense, case, mood, gender, number, etc. Asian grammar is comparatively simpler, so understanding comes from context.

As an Asian person, I still don't understand why European languages needs so much "metadata" to transmit the same message. Likewise, Esperanto is still much more complex than Asian languages, so it fails as a true IAL for me.

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Re:Is English a “writer-responsible language” and Japanese “... by yongjik on Wednesday August 05, 2015 @01:54AM (#10008212)

I have a feeling that, when you say "Asian languages", you're probably not thinking about Japanese. :)

OK, I don't really know Japanese, but (for example) Korean allows thousands of possible forms for every verb. I don't think "Asian/European" is a useful category for languages. There's so much variety inside each continent.

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