What are the strengths and weaknesses of certain languages?
As others have said, it's a vast subject. There's a lot of garbage written about the superiority/inferiority of various languages (usually on the basis of nationalism or cultural bias) - but the bottom line is that all well-established languages, though they do it in different ways, are capable of expressing the same degree of nuance. Apart from nationalistic concerns, you have to be very cautious about claims that some languages have more precise words, since the definition of "word" is variable. With agglutinative languages, for instance, people often marvel about them having a word for (say) "a fat spotted green ox eating grass sown by a Belgian", but in fact the word is, in English terms, a phrase constructed on-the-fly by joining morphemes "ox-fat-spotted-eat-grass-sownby-Belgian... It's not like they have some simple ready-made word meaning all that. However, as a general rule, it's typical to find that newly-established languages with small vocabulary and simplified grammatical structure (the pidgins and creoles) are less capable of expressing more complex constructions. Another general rule is that even highly complex languages will be at a disadvantage in areas where they don't traditionally have a vocabulary (e.g. Inuit is no good for discussing nuclear physics). However, this can be rapidly overcome: Cicero, for instance, coined many Latin words and phrases to handle concepts from Greek philosophy for which Latin hitherto had had no vocabulary. The same happened in English in the 1600s and 1700s, where the growth in scholarship (such as in science) needed the coining of a lot of new words from Latin and Greek routes.
Does the English language come from French or German?
English is a Germanic language, and so is German. French is Italic - it descends from Latin. They are all Indo European - they are all related. However - English, German, Dutch, the Scandinavan languages all descend from something we call Proto-Germanic - a very very early form of Germanic language about 2,000 years ago. As the different tribes moved about the continent of Europe, their ways of speaking began to change - which is why we have West Germanic [ English, German, Dutch, etc] and North germanic [ the Scandinavian languages] The Germanic dialects brought from Northern Europe to the island of Britain before 500AD are the ancestors of what we now call English, from the German district of Angeln in Schleswig-Holstein. If you get a chance to look at Anglo-Saxon - what people spoke and wrote in the country now known as England, up until 1066 - you will see a lot of words and constructions obviously related to modern German - verbs like /stigan/ meaning to climb, same as /steigen/ for example. A huge amount of vocabulary was 'driven out' when Norman French began to be spoken by the people in power [ i.e. the educated classes, the ones who could read and write - and what is written is what lasts ] after 1066. And of course, not only French words but Latin words were borrowed into English, because Latin was the language of scholarship throughout Europe in the middle ages.
What do you call the wife of your brother-in-law in English?
Being strictly conventially accurate only your wifes siblings can be brother/sister-in-law. The spouses should be either ‘wifes brothers/sisters wife/husband’ or ‘B-in-Law/S-in-Laws wife /husband’. However convention has mainly gone out of the window nowadays and they are generally all called B-in-Law or S-in-Law whether are blood relations or just spouses. Just another example of now standards in both written and spoken English has deteriorated in modern times, some examples of which I find really annoying. The one that REALLY winds me up in the UK is when people refer to a ‘Train Station’, it’s a ‘Railway Station’ always has been and always will be
Why are there so many old Western men dating young Filipina women in the Philippines?
They're a form of sexual predator, although not the worst type by far.Here's the typical story: a man in his late 40s onward (I've seen as old as 80s) comes to the Philippines (or Thailand, or Cambodia, or...). He is divorced, or plans to be. He thinks that women in his home country are terrible harpies, unfit for dating or marriage. He has been hurt by these women of his own culture many times, and has decided to break free and make his own way, with women who truly respect men. These women just happen to be 1/4 (or 1/6, or 1/8...) his own age and in desperate straits.The reality is that these men are usually the bottom of the barrel: untalented, unintelligent and undesirable. But not in their own opinion - they are deep, deep into Dunning-Kruger territory. It all boils down to self-interest, and performing whatever mental gymnastics are necessary to convince themselves that it's OK for an old man to have sex with girls in their late teens.Why are there so many? The fundamentals are simple. There is a massive income disparity between Western countries and the Philippines: a poor man in the US or UK is quite rich in the Philippines. There is free flow of information: it's easy to find out you can go take advantage of poor girls across the globe. They're allowed to do it by locals. And, there is no shortage of assholes in the world.As to why they're not the worst type of sexual predator out there, the simple answer is that many at least abide by legal age requirements (18+) and, happily, the women they choose are often smart enough to drain away enough money to improve their own lives. The smartest get their education and material needs (car, house) then move on to dating younger men.Here are a couple of fun phrases all Filipinos know:Matandang mayamang madaling mamatay (MMMM) - rich old man, ready to dieDOM - Dirty Old ManIn short, Filipinos are aware that these old men aren't particularly great, but they make no efforts to chase them away either, knowing that the DOMs are adding money to a rather poor economy.
What do you call a "sasural" in English?
The words “sasural” and “mayka” do not have exact equivalents in western languages, including English. The reason is that the societies and customs are quite different. In the Indian joint-family system, girls would grow up in their mother’s house or “mayka” and join their husband in his family home after marriage. “Sasur” and “saas” are the father and mother-in-law, and thus “sasural” can be translated as “in-law’s place,” or, as someone wrote, “marital home.”However, the same historical, social, and emotional connotations are not present! “Marital home” in English does not imply any in-laws being present. Joint families in the Indian sense of the word were never a custom in the West. Even if several generations were living under the same roof, there was no hard and fast rule about whose parents young couples would live with. E.g., for economical reasons, my parents (in Belgium) lived with my maternal grandparents until they had saved up enough money for my dad to start his own business and my parents to acquire their own house. They had three children by that time.After that, they kept very close ties with both their birth families. But basically the norm was, and is, for newly-wed couples to set up their own household after marriage (a.k.a. the nuclear family).My paternal grandmother, after becoming widowed, lived in the house she had shared with her husband and their children until her death. Most of the offspring had moved out, some nearby and some to different cities. Only her eldest daughter continued to live with her, even after marriage. And my aunt’s own daughters helped care for our grandmother until the end.There is no concept of “mayka” as the place you leave behind forever, or of “sasural” as the place where you live with your husband and assorted in-laws. Couples usually live independently and visit their parents and in-laws, but there are no different names for these places.
Why do Westerners address their elder siblings with first name instead of calling them big sister or big brother like we Indians do?
Ha, this is a recurring argument between my parents and my younger brother, who’s adamant that he should be able to refer to by my name.The simple answer is that ‘Western’ siblings, even those with large age gaps, typically view each other as equals within the family structure. That is, the hierarchy is parents > children rather than father > mother > older siblings > younger siblings (this reflects both the ageist and patriarchal nature of Indian social structures, since husbands are almost always older than their wives).Broadly speaking, Western cultures are more egalitarian while Indian culture is more hierarchical. This isn’t to say that there isn’t social stratification in the West, but it’s not as rigid, and age isn’t generally viewed as a meaningful marker. Indeed, most ‘Westerners’ would bristle at the idea that someone is owed deference simply be virtue of age, while reverence for elders is embedded within many Eastern cultures.Additionally, as some other answers have noted, English has comparatively fewer words to denote specific familial relationships, a potential reflection of the values dissonance between the East and West, i.e, individualism versus collectivism.
Why do Chinese use a Western name when abroad? Are they the only ethnicity to do so?
I’m guessing it’s more about pronunciation than anything else. Familiarity might be second; although I personally find it easier to remember an exotic name (new or unfamiliar) than I do a run of the mill name.I rented a room to two marvelous Chinese woman many years ago: Liu and Xia. Liu I pronounced with out difficulty. The first thing I asked Xia was how to pronounce her name; as I didn’t want to risk offending her by mangling it. She just laughed and said, “Just call me Linda. Everybody says it wrong.” With a little coaxing she provided the correct pronunciation; which I then, too, proceeded to get wrong. After a few more failed attempts, I acquiesced and just called her Linda from there on out.These two women are the foundation for my favorite college-student-rental-years story: As part of their education package at SCSU, both Liu and Xia (who were English majors) were tutors at The Write Place helping other undergraduates cope with the English language. So here we had two native Chinese speakers teaching remedial English to American high school graduates in a university setting. Hilarious; but sad.