What are some examples of the unnecessary complexity of language (and is it actually unneeded complexity)?

My opinion is that the complexity is not unneeded. (How’d you like that? A double negative—unneeded complexity perhaps?). I think that what people might put forward as unneeded complexity actually allows for subtle shadings of meaning. Or, in the case of conjugating verbs, it provides redundancy that helps people understand meaning.

Sure, in writing, it might not be necessary, but most communication is in the form of speech, and we often miss words due to all kinds of reasons. Having multiple redundancy in our speech, such as saying “he is” or “you are” instead of “he is” or “you is” helps us hear the subject of the sentence even if we missed one or more words.

In the case of double negatives, that adds a certain color to phrases. In some cases it calls attention to the negation, and in other cases it action isn’t a negation at all. Confusing, and probably deliberately so.

Redundancy in communication is not necessarily a bad thing. (That’s one way natural languages differ from computer languages.) Hence seemingly “unnecessary complexity.”

Gender modifiers ascribed to nouns – like in German (totally removed from reality most of the time, and even the Germans make tons of mistakes when speaking, regarding what gender a spoon or a car is)

The repeated indication of plurality: “There are two cars in the street” (why the s at the end?) – in Chinese supposedly there is only one form for nouns, no plurals, so you’d just say two car (someone correct me if I’m talking outta my @$$).

The double address (in German, [and Chinese too?] for instance): Sietzen vs. Dutzen (addressing someone formally vs. informally). I prefer the English “You” – easier to talk to people when you don’t have to consider whether to address them using the formal person or the informal person indicator (or whatever you call this).

By the way, Polish uses double negatives all the time and we never even notice it, comes natural to us. What our language could do without are the damned cases (all seven of them). And, depending on your gender, you will talk about yourself using different verb endings.

@PhiNotPi There are languages in which conjugation does, in fact, indicate the subject. Ancient Greek, for example, does not have the same strictness that English has about word order. As such, subject-verb agreement is sometimes the only way to figure out what a sentence is saying. It might be an artifact in other languages, but it is not necessarily so.

My understanding is that linguists (which I am not) try to stay away from the word complex. More often the efficiency of a given language is compared.

An example: I would argue that the use of kanji is not efficient in Japanese. Having over 2,000 pictographs is a lot to remember. My Japanese friends argue that kanji clarify meanings when words sound the same. Then we drink biru.

I don’t like the rule about not ending a sentence with a preposition.
Example: Who did you give the book to?

The only thing I really take issue with is gendered speech in some languages. Ours included. But I’m acutally advocating more complexity, not less. I want a gender-neutral pronoun instead of a vaguely assumed gender neutral “his”, and I want a second person plural. “Y’all”, “Yinz”, and “Youse Guys” have gone on long enough.

@Seek_Kolinahr I thought we had effectively handled second-person plural? Didn’t all y’all get the message?

@YARNLADY It is not a hard and fast rule, though it does help us to avoid certain mistakes. For instance, your sentence should be ”Whom did you give the book to?” Ordering our words according to the proposition rule can be helpful not only in reminding us what is subject and what is object, but in conveying this information to our audience. Thus we get: “To whom did you give the book?” Note how immediately clear it is that unknown person about whom the speaker is inquiring is the receiver of the book and not the giver.

/me throws dictionary at @CWOTUS‘s head.

Apparently, there’s a line to do that, @Seek_Kolinahr.

I should start selling dictionaries.