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85 messages over 11 pages: 1 2 35 6 7 ... 4 ... 10 11 Next >>
mserious
Trilingual Tetraglot
Newbie
Israel
Joined 5193 days ago

2 posts - 4 votes
Speaks: French*, English*, Modern Hebrew*, Russian
Studies: Spanish, Ukrainian

 
 Message 25 of 85
11 December 2010 at 10:06pm | IP Logged 
Do away with gender-specific second-person personal pronouns in Hebrew, i.e the word
'you' having to be m/f.

It makes it quite annoying to have an affair when anytime you receive a call the caller's
gender is immediately disclosed.

I think I will start referring to everyone as "atem" (you, plural) regardless of sexual
affiliation.
2 persons have voted this message useful



Segata
Triglot
Groupie
Germany
Joined 5172 days ago

64 posts - 125 votes 
Speaks: German*, Japanese, English
Studies: Korean, Esperanto

 
 Message 26 of 85
11 December 2010 at 10:40pm | IP Logged 
Liface wrote:
No noun gender in ANY language. Especially German.


More noun genders in every language!
7 persons have voted this message useful



clumsy
Octoglot
Senior Member
Poland
lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5179 days ago

1116 posts - 1367 votes 
Speaks: Polish*, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Mandarin, Italian, Vietnamese
Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swedish
Studies: Danish, Dari, Kirundi

 
 Message 27 of 85
11 December 2010 at 10:41pm | IP Logged 
Vietnmese people to go back to chu nom!!!


4 persons have voted this message useful



getreallanguage
Diglot
Senior Member
Argentina
youtube.com/getreall
Joined 5472 days ago

240 posts - 371 votes 
Speaks: Spanish*, English
Studies: Italian, Dutch

 
 Message 28 of 85
11 December 2010 at 11:16pm | IP Logged 
furrykef wrote:
Make Latin more regular.


Heh. Do you seriously think Latin is all that irregular? You should try a romance language.
2 persons have voted this message useful





LauraM
Pro Member
United States
Joined 5353 days ago

77 posts - 97 votes 
Studies: German
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 29 of 85
11 December 2010 at 11:57pm | IP Logged 
MORE genders in other languages???
Wirklich??? Aber warum?! LOL
Seriously, I'm just curious...and reflecting, I must admit, there is something about the "puzzle" of genders in German
that I actually like...so many "Aha!" moments...

Edited by LauraM on 11 December 2010 at 11:57pm

2 persons have voted this message useful



Quabazaa
Tetraglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5610 days ago

414 posts - 543 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, German, French
Studies: Japanese, Korean, Maori, Scottish Gaelic, Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Egyptian), Arabic (Written)

 
 Message 30 of 85
12 December 2010 at 12:21am | IP Logged 
Get rid of all the R's in all the languages. Even though I love the sound I was not made for them and they were not made for me :P Even my native English accent doesn't have medial or final R's! When I say car it's more like "caa"

Have each Japanese kanji only have one pronunciation. Is that really too much to ask?

No more silent letters
2 persons have voted this message useful



Raari
Diglot
Newbie
United States
Joined 5098 days ago

4 posts - 8 votes
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Japanese, Mandarin

 
 Message 31 of 85
12 December 2010 at 12:50am | IP Logged 
I second the idea that English should regain common use of thou. Not only because it sounds nice, but more because, after getting used to the tu/usted distinction in Spanish and then to the Japanese honorific system, it just seems wrong to call my girlfriend, grandfather, professor and strangers all by the same "you". I remember well my meeting with the mayor of Nihonmatsu, which became immediately smoother once I grammatically indicated my respect for him. English could use something like that. I'm probably very mistaken in thinking that dropping a full honorific system on English would magically bring some omoiyari with it, but you never know...
2 persons have voted this message useful



batswinger
Newbie
United Kingdom
Joined 5097 days ago

2 posts - 6 votes
Speaks: FrenchA2

 
 Message 32 of 85
12 December 2010 at 3:02am | IP Logged 
English is too hard for many learners and needs simplifying by making it more standard. I would make a survey of the 500 or so most misspelled words and respell them to conform with the most high frequency spelling pattern. So a word like dumb might become dum to go with rum and sum. Comb (roam), tomb (loom) and bomb (Tom) doant rime on the page and could join their propper word-families.

We could rationalize the used of the apostrophe (for instance: woant, doant but Tom's and Jill's) & follow the double consonant rule more rigorously (very - berry, comic - common, ruddy - study, rabbit - habit).

Silent letter would need a prune too.

The English English habbit of writing "a service - to service, a promise - to promise but a practice - to practise", could usefully go.

English is complex in its verb constructions (catch - caught, hatched - hatched) but I would leave changing lexical rules to someone who is braver. Changes would look odd until people become habituated to them and then folks would not want to go back to the archaisms of English. The spoken language would remain essentially the same.

But, who is going to push these, or reforms like these, thru?

Also I would use Esperanto as a standard starter second language in schools.
I know, Im asking too much.


4 persons have voted this message useful



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