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Most inefficient languages? | ||
Tags: Difficulty | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages | ( Topic Closed) |  |
| Linguamor Decaglot Senior Member United States Joined 6620 days ago 469 posts - 599 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, French, Norwegian, Portuguese, Dutch | Message 9 of 69 19 September 2007 at 2:12am | IP Logged | |||||
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Maybe English should get rid of articles, plurals, past tense forms, and the he/she distinction? Many languages don't use these, and that would simplify it. Or how about the use of an auxiliary verb to express past tense in questions and negative sentences? How about tag questions in English?
Maybe English isn't as simple as you think it is. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| manny Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6360 days ago 248 posts - 240 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Tagalog Studies: French, German | Message 10 of 69 19 September 2007 at 2:24am | IP Logged | |||||
YES!!! I think English grammar rules should be changed to the same as Chinese. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Linguamor Decaglot Senior Member United States Joined 6620 days ago 469 posts - 599 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, French, Norwegian, Portuguese, Dutch | Message 11 of 69 19 September 2007 at 2:38am | IP Logged | |||||
I don't know much Chinese, but I suspect that the grammar of Chinese is not as simple as many people think it is. After all, grammar is more than conjugation and declension. Edited by Linguamor on 19 September 2007 at 3:07am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| manny Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6360 days ago 248 posts - 240 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Tagalog Studies: French, German | Message 12 of 69 19 September 2007 at 2:43am | IP Logged | |||||
If there is one easy thing about Chinese, it's the syntax. No flexion (words never change, verbs have one unique form) and a simple word order makes you almost feel as if you were speaking gibberish. http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/e/languages/mandarin-ch inese/index.html 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Linguamor Decaglot Senior Member United States Joined 6620 days ago 469 posts - 599 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, French, Norwegian, Portuguese, Dutch | Message 13 of 69 19 September 2007 at 2:47am | IP Logged | |||||
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"Because of the lack of inflections, Chinese grammar may appear quite simple compared to that of many highly-inflected European languages (e.g. Russian, Latin, etc.), or even the low-scale verb conjugations, for instance, of English (e.g. "swim, swam, swum"). However, Chinese displays a very high level of complexity in its syntax."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_grammar Edited by Linguamor on 19 September 2007 at 3:14am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| hagen Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6962 days ago 171 posts - 179 votes 6 sounds Speaks: German*, English, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 14 of 69 19 September 2007 at 4:20am | IP Logged | |||||
While I don't support exaggerating the simplicity of Chinese grammar, I don't see how this sentence can be justified. The rest of the article doesn't seem apt to do so. I would counsel Wikipedia-scepticism here. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| fredomirek Tetraglot Senior Member Poland Joined 6908 days ago 265 posts - 264 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishC1, Italian, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Japanese | Message 15 of 69 19 September 2007 at 4:47am | IP Logged | |||||
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Why simplify ANY language? If there are still people who use it in their daily lives efficiently and without any problems, I believe there's no need to reduce their grammar and so on. You sound like some anti-linguistic guys who don't like foreign languages and just would like to speak several without learning them. I, personally, like A LOT different scripts (Thai, Japanese), numerous tenses which don't exist in my native language (English) etc. And that's why I want to learn these languages! Because they're different, seem difficult to ME, are some kind of a challenge and because simplifying various languages would be like reducing many further aspects of my biggest hobby and passion. I really don't think that such dicussions make any sense (like this one, and the one about getting rid of all Chinese charactes in this language).
Have a nice day, and learn a few new words instead of discussing about simplyfing them :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7158 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 16 of 69 19 September 2007 at 8:01am | IP Logged | |||||
Not at all. You've just quoted me pointing out that counting in groups of twenty is logical. It's a matter of getting used to it. All that I said was that for someone (e.g. lloydkirk) who is used to a purely decimal convention, counting by twenties seems a little odd, since that person is already hard-wired to think in groups of ten. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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