Re: Why Python When There Is Perl?

On 4/2/24 22:51, Physfitfreak wrote:

On 4/2/24 22:25, rbowman wrote:

On Tue, 2 Apr 2024 16:02:07 -0500, Physfitfreak wrote:
>

Arabic is fundamentally different from Persian. Arabic cannot create new
single words. It does it by using two or more existing words instead of
a single new word. This is its shortcoming. But in a pinch, its power as
well.

>
I may have mentioned the film 'A Separation'
>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Separation
>
At one point the daughter uses an Arabic word and the father corrects her.
'We are Persians. The word is ....'
>
Despite all the awards I don't think the film was widely shown in the US.
Foreign language films seldom are but this one might not fit the narrative
of evil Iran.

>
In Persian (and all Indo-European languages), you can _correctly_ create
new single words by combining different roots. But it takes time for the
new word to get popular. So it is, just like Arabic, its power as well
as its shortcoming.

>
German makes that into an art form. 'Fernsehzeitschrift' is only the
beginning.
>

  Hehe :-)))
 Only the beginning indeed.
 Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaften! ...
 Hahhahahh :-))))
 

But still, that's not exactly the feature I was pointing at, in Indo-European languages. German does it a bit better than Arabic because at least instead of just make a long phrase describing the new concept that needs a word for its use, it creates one word for it. But since it just concatenates several other words, the new word becomes cumbersome for cases of more than two.
But the feature I pointed at in Persian, combines the roots, not the words, so the result is often much shorter words. Let me give an example:
"electromagnetism" is a word consisting of two parts. Magnetism uses the name of a city in Iran (well, in today's Turkey now) where magnets were first discovered. It is a crude way of naming such concept. Didn't carry a particular meaning when first used. You'd have to learn what it meant beyond the name of something that had something to do with a city, to know what magnetism meant. The "electro" part of it carried some degree of description, so was created better than the former word. At least it described the concept by a feature that amber exhibited. If you'd rub amber against fur, it would attract little pieces of straw. But again, you'd have to know that feature about amber to know what the word meant.
But in Persian language, full description can be carried along when a new word is created because it is  done at the root level, therefore there's room for description without making a cumbersome result. So Iranians did this:
- rob          means to steal (same as in English) - it's the root
- robaa        means "robber"
- robaayi      means "the concept of robbing" ("theft" in English)
- kaah         means "straw"
- kaahrobaa    means "straw robber"
- kaahrobaayi  means "what robs the straw" ("electricity" in English)
So this far, it was done just like the "electro" part was done in the Latin form, but slightly better because electro only points to amber, while kaahrobaayi points directly at the concept.
Now for the "magnetism" part:
- aahan        means "iron"
- aahanrobaa   means "iron robber"  ("magnet" in English)
- aahanrobaayi means "what robs the iron"  ("magnetism" in English)
Now how "electromagnetism" is constructed in Persian. Persian doesn't just place the two words kaahanrobaayi and aahanrobaayi together to make a long cumbersome new word. It, again, uses the roots to combine them:
- kaah + aahan = kaahan  means "straw and iron" but at the root level - a new root has been created
- kaahanrobaayi   means "what robs the straw and the iron" ("electromagnetism" in English)
So as you see, the overall description of the concepts involved are well carried to the final new world without making the word cumbersome. Electromagnetism points to amber and a city without saying anything more. kaahanrobaayi is on the other hand a rather full description of what concept it is that you are pointing at. All in one relatively short word!
Arabic and Semitic languages cannot do that. You cannot create new single words with them. You'd have to use phrases each time you point to those concepts, or, just borrow an Indo-European word for the concept. Arabic has quite a lot of Persian words in it for exactly this reason.
In Russian, from the way they use contraction of several words to create new single words, I suspect that their language is like Persian in this regard. But then I'm not sure if the original description of concepts from those individual words are fully carried over to the final word, cause I don't know Russian.