Nuances in the English language

[Segilla]

I marvel at how a simple sentence such as,
'I went to the bus stop', can have five differrent meanings depending on which word is emphasised, And one more, if none of the words are stressed at all.
Do other languages have such flexibility?

[Clanad]

In general, adjectives follow the noun in Spanish. However, the placement of the noun can change the intensity, direction and even the entire meaning of a sentence. A feature of sentence construction found in Spanish is the "reinforcing adjective". The placement and emphasis of such an adjective does more than just describe the noun that's modified by conveying an emotion to it.
The verb structure in Hebrew, called binyan (there are seven binyanim , the plural of binyan) is also quite different than expected in English. A root verb can mean differing things, depending on placement in the sentence and enunciation. Another confusing aspect of the Hebrew language is the vocal treatment of verbs. A sentence can and often is used without a verb or the verb can change meaning depending on the use of passive voice or active voice.

Point is, many languages have just as many confusing rules of grammar as English... ours are just, well... ours...

[jake-the-peg]

This of course may not always be a good thing.

In most cases the purpose of language is to communicate and most often ambiguity is bad - sometimes very bad indeed.

If you went to a lawyer regarding a relative's will you really don't want to hear him say "You know I love the way written language can be so ambiguous".

Anyway English is far from unique. I practice karate which was developed in the Okinawan islands which had often been in the forefront of the struggle of power between Japan and China.

The term Karate had been pretty universally taken to mean "China hand" as it had developed from a Chinese style. But when a man called Gichin Funakoshi took it to Japan in the '20s he wrote it down with the character meaning "empty". It had always been passed on verbally and so it had been abiguous the words being pronounced the same. But he chose that character to make it more acceptable to the Japanese - even though it outraged many of his countrymen.

Consider though too that we do not have genders to our nouns in English. We can say "I had tea and cake, it was horrible". It is ambiguous whether it was the tea or the cake or both that was horrible. In some languages if the word for tea has a different gender to the word for cake, there must be an agreement in the word horrible. This means in some cases it is ambiguous and in others clear which the offending item is.

Whether this is "good" or "bad" probably depends on circumstance and your role in the situation!

[marwel7]

I've often been struck by the imprecision of language.It's not just how you say it,it is the words themselves.So much of interpretation depends on personal history and knowledge.You can say the same sentence in exactly the same way to,say,five people and each could interpret it differently.
Also,I read Changing Places by David Lodge a long time ag,and I remember the character Zapp delivered a lecture comparing language to striptease.I can't remember how the argument went.