From an information theory POV, we should really look at not just the complexity but the information density of a language. English has a lot of foolish rules, but the large vocabulary provides a much higher bandwidth than other languages.

https://medium.com/oscar-tech/information-density-of-differe...

I think that it's the grammar rules that make English fairly efficient, and also effectively add to its vocabulary, because word order in English is so strong that it twists whatever word you put in a particular position into whatever part of speech it needs to be. In less order-based languages you have to learn a bunch of elaborate formulas to change the word; in English, it's basically just Subject, Verb, Object and a few mathematical rules about commas, prepositions and conjunctions to make that basic structure recursive or flowery. All of English's core vocabulary is horrifyingly irregular, and you can ignore almost all of that irregularity, prefixes and suffixes, and still make yourself pretty easily understood.

I think the massive vocabulary of English makes it less dense. We have a lot of words that mean exactly the same thing, but that we pretend mean different things. We find ourselves arguing about the innuendo around words or the "actual definitions" of words almost more than material issues, constantly invoking contradictory authorities. We're also constantly repeating ourselves and pretending like we've understood because using obscure words is a sign of intelligence, and not understanding them a sign of stupidity.

Romance languages seem to have a lot fewer words with specific meanings, and do most of their playing with grammar (making a lot of sentences into horrifying mazes.) And irt the center and north in Germanic Europe, the most interesting thing about "Uncleftish Beholding" is that to English speakers it reads like stupid cavemen talking about magic, but it's basically a unit-by-unit direct translation of how Danes, Norwegians and Swedes really talk. English speakers never use the common word for anything if they want to sound like they know what they're talking about.

an aside: I've always heard that Vietnamese is the most efficient by syllable. IIRC some paper came up with a metric where it was about 1.4x more efficient than English. There was also someone who figured out that universally, human languages expressed ideas at the same rate, but the people who spoke less efficient languages just talked faster.

They could have meant different things at some point in time. A Language can change drastically with time and if the people using the words stop differentiating between them it may appear as if it was only a game of pretend. This only becomes a problem when someone that doesn't see a difference in meaning communicates with someone that does.

There are formal and informal ways to say thing in Korean, for every day stuff it's often just a matter of changing the suffix, for some stuff it's a different word, for example 감사합니다 Kamsahamnida is thank you to anyone, but 고마워 gomawo (thanks) only to a friend.

"Restroom?"

But arguably putting the key information at the start of a sentence is not ideal as it gives the listener no time to context switch. If I ask a busy waiter in a restaurant "where would I find the toilet", they may well not fully hear the "where would... " but they'll know for sure what I've asked by the end of the request. Which is presumably why we often prefix statements with "excuse me, but..." and the like...I assume that must happen in Korean too.

E.g.,

오늘 그 식당 열어요 Today that restaurant is open.

오늘 그 식당 열어요? Is that restaurant open today?

오늘 그 식당 열 것 같아요. I guess that restaurant is open today.

오늘 그 식당 열 것 같다고 들었어요. I heard [someone] saying that restaurant is probably open today.

오늘 그 식당 열 것 같다고 들으셨다면서요? I heard that you heard that the restaurant is probably open today, is that true?

오늘 그 식당 열 것 같다고 말한 분이 누군지 찾아서 좀 따져야겠어! I'm going to find whoever told me that the restaurant would open today, and set the record straight!

오늘 그 식당 열 것 같을 리가 없잖아요! There's no way the restaurant is even open today!

In fact, learning English as a native Korean speaker, one of the greatest difficulty was asking questions - you can't just start your sentence and make it a question later, you have to mentally pause, construct your question in your head, and then invert the first word! It took me years.

"Dear honoured sir, may I humbly beg for your indulgence in a meagre glass of beer?"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_honorifics#Addressee_...

"존경하는 각하, 맥주 한 잔만 드시게 해달라고 겸손히 부탁드려도 될까요?"

Does that sound about right?

"존경하는 각하, 맥주 한 잔만 마시게 해달라고 감히 부탁드려도 될까요?"

Your relationship to who you're speaking to (and who you are referring to if you speak about anyone else) changes the grammar of the sentence.

The grammar changes mostly manifest in different suffix endings.

It seems very unlikely to just be a suffix ending.

The whole thing is a bit more complex than suffix changes alone especially with more out there titles but generally speaking,

I think you've seen a bit on how the endings would change depending on your relationship to the hearer.

For the latter(addressing people you're speaking about) You would basically never call an acquaintance just by name

For instance, take the name 김영철

If you were on relatively equal social standing, you would generally address 김영철 as 김영철 씨 or 영철 씨

If you wanted to take it a step further in respect, you would replace 씨 with 님

For a senior in age or experience in say the workplace, it would become 선배 but this can be used on its without the name attached.

There are also different words for how you would address different members of the family. Unlike in English, you would basically never call an older brother or sister by their actual name. It's more a generic brother or sister word that changes depending on if the speaker is male or female.

For royalty, there'll be surgery trends for different members of the royalty.

They can be used endearingly to refer to older males/females you are close to.

오빠 can be used somewhat flirtingly/romantically as well

This is quite interesting to hear, but I assume you mean that you always knew if you were going ask a question before you asked it. So the issue was the actual construction of the sentence itself?

If not, there are plenty of ways to bail out of a statement midway through a sentence.

- Korean is more efficient than English... right?

- Korean is more efficient than English, isn't it?

- Korean is more efficient than English? (raising intonation at the end)

It's like a habit. Imagine you make coffee every morning - after a while it becomes second nature and you don't even think about what you're doing, you just get up and mindlessly start the coffee grinder. Once in a while your girlfriend visits, and she wants milk in the coffee, no problem, I'll pour some milk on her cup at the end.

And one day you have a different girlfriend, and she doesn't like coffee at all, so when she's visiting you have to make tea! So you just get up, start grinding the coffee, and half a minute later, "Oh damn, not again!" Even though making coffee and making tea take about the same effort, it just throws a wrench in your morning routine until you get used to it, which make take a long time.

> If not, there are plenty of ways to bail out of a statement midway through a sentence.

Sure you can also do it in English, but you can't do it as gloriously as in Korean, where you can start the same sentence and end up with:

한국어는 영어보다 더 효율적입니다. Korean is more efficient than English.

한국어는 영어보다 더 효율적...(read the room, oh no, bail out)...이라는 헛소리를 하는 사람이 다 있더라고요 하하하! => I found an idiot saying Korean is more efficient than English, ha ha!

"We are deploying the code, right?" versus "Are we deploying the code?"

"This is Boolean, correct?" versus "Is this Boolean?"

Is this cultural, or are they afraid to ask questions? It's almost as if by stating the question in the declarative form they are hedging their doubt. As an American English speaker, I find this annoying. If you don't know, be bold to ask straight, don't doublespeak it.

Thank you, you've answered a question I've had about different languages for years as a monolingual English speaker! I've always suspected that it might feel significantly different to construct sentences in languages with different word ordering, and I think that confirms that.

Pronouns in English still function this way a little (for example he = subject, him = object).

The kids had lunch in the park at 12pm today.

vs

The kids, Today at 12pm in the park had lunch.

The grander more ephemeral concepts go first in Japanese, with some common exceptions (persons tend to go at the start as it does in the example). In English we tend to start with the closest concept and work our way out.

That really helped my understanding and sentence creation.

    I like cats, because cats like me.

    Ich mag Katzen, weil Katzen mich mögen.

    I like cats, because cats me like.

It gets further complicated because verbs also change the tense of the sentence, which ultimately dictates which articles to use (der/die/das/den/des/etc. - all meaning "the" - or ein/einen/eine/eines/etc. - all meaning "a").

And yes, native speaking Germans screw it up all the time, too. Just like English speakers mess up "a" and "an", "me and my friends", "your/you're", etc.

Strictly speaking 친구 있어요 ? means Friend Have ?

And you would say exactly that for any of these English equivalents

"Do they have friends ?"

"Do you have a friend ?"

"Do you have friends ?"

"Does he have a friend ?"

And so on.

Plurality as a special marker doesn't really exist. Possessive and Article Determiners don't really exist either. Articles don't exist at all. Possessive markers are few and only used when surrounding context might not be enough to convey the needed information.

You might ask, well how would you know which of those equivalents 친구 있어요 means ?

It's context. Korean is highly context dependent. There is no way to tell before reading or hearing the surrounding context.

>Does Korean not have more complex / ceremonial speech patterns?

Oh boy. Let's just say formality and politeness is baked into the language.

Words and sentence/phrase suffixes change depending on your age and relationship with who you're taking to.

친구 있어요 (meaning I have a friend/They have friends etc without the question mark) becomes 친구 있어 speaking to a close friend and 친구 입니다 speaking to someone much older than you (or in a formal setting with say your boss)

There are also on how to address people you refer to in a sentence separate from rules on how you address people you speaking to.

> "Do they have friends ?"

> "Do you have a friend ?"

> "Do you have friends ?"

> "Does he have a friend ?"

Seems like there's a lot of room for ambiguity, then

When I speak English it sounds more like "d'yv'n'e friends"? 5 syllables, most very short

One can say something like 난 라면 - literally "I am ramen" (or something like that - it's a bit fuzzy because the "be" verb is omitted). It would be a ridiculous sentence by itself, but if your friend just asked "I'll have noodles, how about you?" then it's a perfectly fine response.

Similarly you could even say 난 프랑스 ("I am France") if the question was "I visited New York this summer, it was really nice, did you go somewhere?"

It’s just conversationally dry and people will assume you’re not interested.

So it’s more like saying “beer, one, give me” in a polite way. And it’s cool, not because of the English translation (which yes, is just as simple), but as a showcasing of the composability of Korean.

Replace 주세요 (joo-se-yo) with any other verb and the sentence works.

For example, 마시다 (ma-si-da) is the verb[0] for “to drink”, so when you drop the “da” and conjugate it with the polite present tense “yo”, the sentence now becomes 맥주 한잔 마시요, or “I’m drinking a beer”.

And then as another show of Korean’s flexibility, don’t change anything about that sentence, but add a question mark and “맥주 한잔 마시?” For it to mean “would you like a beer?”.

Very cool and succinct.

[0]- you can identify Korean verbs because they all end in 다 (da). You can easily conjugate them to present tense by dropping the “da” and replacing it with “yo”. You’ll also notice that each block of characters in Korean maps to exactly one syllable, with no exceptions — pretty cool!