Best Language(s) and Why?

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As many of you have probably figured out, I am a linguiphile. I know all sorts of linguistic jargon, I have heard of languages like Dyirbal and Halkomelem, yes, they both exist, and I am currently well into studying Sumerian (though once I become conversant I think I will move onto Swahili.)

So, I would like to know what people here think is the best language, or best languages, and why. By best, I mean in terms of the language itself, not the writing system nor what is contained in it.

With that said, I think the best language, which I studied a bit a while ago, is Quechua; actually a dialect cluster, but let us not worry about that, as many "languages", such as Mandarin and Persian, are actually dialect clusters.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quechua_languages

This is why: Quechua is perfectly regular from all I have read about it; even the pronouns decline like nouns: Qam for thou becomes Qamta for thee and Qamkunap for your, just like wasi for house, wasikuna for houses, or T'ikap for flower's, &c.. It is gender neutral save for a few words (like mama for mother and tata for father) and it lacks grammatical gender. Finally, Quechua can make new words at will from a relatively small number of roots by compounding and/or by adding suffixes, much like many Indigenous Languages of the Americas and unlike English, with its huge amount of Classical compounds and random neologisms to partially compensate for lacking this charicteristic, known as polysynthesis in linguistics.

So, those are my reasons for choosing Quechua; what are yours for choosing whatever language you choose is?

Latin: because it's the language of the ancient Romans and it was also the language of the academic world throughout the middle ages, reformation era, and up until the end of the 19th century it had remained as the common language of those who valued knowledge more than silver or gold and wisdom more than rubies or diamonds.

There is no "best language". Just about every human natural language is capable of framing just about any idea, impression, thought, inclination etc. that anyone could think of. The Human Race is wired ab iniitio for blabber.

Some languages may be more musical and smooth to listen to than others. Some may be easier to pronounce than others but all have the capability of carrying idea.

rjuveyn

It would have probably have been better put as "Favorite Language" rather than "Best", but the OP wrote what they did.

Latin has the virtue of age and veneration. It is not inherently better than natural languages currently in use. You might as well through classic Attic Greek into the pot. That is the language that Plato and Aristotle wrote and spoke with.

ruveyn

I disagree that there is no hierarchy among languages: If consistency and regularity alone are valued, Quechua is superior to Latin. If large vocabulary alone is valued, Classical Chinese is superior to Latin and Latin is superior to Quechua. If ease of coining new words easily alone is valued, Quechua is superior to Latin which is superior to English and to Classical Chinese. It is overly simplistic to say that all languages are equal, as can be seen from looking at the examples I gave. Quechua is inferior to Latin in vocabulary because of the destruction of Inka learning under the Spanish and its subsequent lack of use as a Classical language or lingua franca. Quechua can more easily coin lexical items, not just words, than Latin as Quechua is polysynthetic.

I'd say it depends on the use of the language and where you are at in your life.

English. I use it.

Perhaps at sometime I will try to learn classical Greek since it is still somewhat useful also. It would be neat to study Euclid's Elements in its original language.

Saying one language is better than another is like saying one species of animal is better than another. They're equally evolved.

Lets see a dolphin build an airplane.

The best langwidge is American!
I used it!

And use it goodly!

But seriously- that is interesting about Quechua.
Very precise and functional.

All languages have good and bad features


Italian is very pleasant and musical to the ear- with its Romance cousins Spanish and Portugese almost as pleasing.

The Madagascar language ( akin to Malay) is also said to be very musical.

Asian languages are very unpleasing as a rule.

Dead languages like Latin have advantages for academics because they are frozen in amber at a moment in time so the word meansings are precise.

English has one advantage over all other European languages (or atleast the other IE ones). That is the fact that it ditched sexual gender. You dont have to divide the universe into male and female (and or neutar) in English like you have to in virtually all other European languages. Definitely a good adaptation by our anglo saxon ancestors.

Thats interesting that the word for "mother" in Quechua is "mama".

Last edited by naturalplastic on 05 Dec 2011, 6:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mama_and_papa

not really. there are words in some languages that simply don't exist in others, and these are reflected in a very general sense in terms of the cultures of the respected speakers. jouissance and plaisir in french, both with substantially different meanings but generally translated as pleasure in english, and ungeziefer in german (see kafka's metamorphosis), which doesn't really have an english translation at all, being but two examples among may.

The Kwak'wala Language (the name preferred by the Kwakwaka'wakw for their language) is, like all Wakashan Languages, polysynthetic and thus can say quite complex sentences with a single word. Indeed, in this respect it is similar to Quechua, though unrelated. Just have a look at the Wikipedia article for more detail:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwak%27wala#Structure

Most PNW coast languages, including the unrelated Salishan languages and Haida, share Kwak'wala's type of polysynthesis known as affixial polysynthesis: Words are made incredibly detailed and complex by the use of a very large set of affixes, such as prefixes, suffixes and infixes, on the root instead of by compounding roots.

Indeed, Malagasy is Austronesian, like Tagalog, Hawaiian and, as you mentioned, Malay, and but is most related to the Barito Languages of Borneo.

Classical compounds from Greek and Latin are only as useful as they are to English because, unlike German, which is closely related yet still about as morphologically rich as Sanskrit in its nouns, or Quechua, which is even morphologically richer, English cannot coin new terms from existing morphemes very easily and thus largely resorts to random neologisms, lone words and classical compounds.

What's the difference between a new word from existing morphemes and a random neologism?