|
 |
Purpose of gender and conjugations | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| AML Senior Member United States Joined 6825 days ago 323 posts - 426 votes  2 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Modern Hebrew, German, Spanish | Message 9 of 24 12 October 2006 at 11:09am | IP Logged | ||
True! One sheep. Two sheep. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| japkorengchi Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6680 days ago 334 posts - 355 votes | Message 10 of 24 12 October 2006 at 11:45am | IP Logged | ||
|
Chinese grammar can be used as a way to talk about the “necessity” of conjugations here....we don't have verb conjugations, plural forms, inflections on adjectives or adverbs, grammatical genders ,etc in Chinese…yet people can still communicate effectively without those inflections. I think the contextual content is enough to substitute the place of inflections so actually grammatical genders and many inflections are not absolutely necessary to make others understand you..however, languages are not human-made and we can’t control the way it functions, so we can only follow the language norms in the moment Maybe in the future languages will become more simple, just in the same fashion the complicated Latin became relatively easy ones like French or Spanish in the past.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| dasleben Newbie United States Joined 6838 days ago 23 posts - 24 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 11 of 24 12 October 2006 at 4:13pm | IP Logged | ||
Maybe, but in the spoken English language, saying "two house" could be mistaken for "to house," which would completely change the meaning of the sentence. I suppose context could keep some confusion in check, but imagine the confusion if you told someone this: "I drove two house down the street." Hearing it said, the listener might think that the speaker is driving TO an arbitrary house down the street, not two houses down. Perhaps while we're at it we could change the word "to" to something else, but I'd rather we just kept the "-s" ending for plural. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 12 of 24 12 October 2006 at 8:30pm | IP Logged | ||
In fact "two" is not pronounced like "to", so you could still drop the plural marker, as long as you remember to use a numeral where number is relevant. But anyway, - why should counting one / more-than-one be the norm? Maybe it would be better to use a more precise indication of number where relevant and then skip the indication of number entirely where it is not. In fact the reconstructed ancestral Indoeuropean language had a dualis (like old Greek), and we live happily without that. Every language has its burden of unnecessary stuff, - even though English (thanks to William the Conqueror) has less overt incrustated heritage in the form of morphology than more flexive languages like Icelandic, German and Russian, it still has its share. Why is it necessary for instance to differentiate between "he" and "she" and "it"? We could just use "it" all the time, and normally it would be clear whether we referred to a human or to a thing. And by the way why do we separate gender in the form of "he" and "she" instead of obligatory "young one" versus "old one", or "worthy elder" versus "less important person than me"? At the end, that's just how English is, and cutting out all the silly nonsense would result in a sterile communicational system more suited for computers than for humans. Edited by Iversen on 13 October 2006 at 4:13am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6768 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 13 of 24 13 October 2006 at 3:15am | IP Logged | ||
I've never a dialect where they differed — unless you're referring to the fact that "to" (almost) never gets stress while "two" almost always would. This is a subtlety most non-native speakers wouldn't get anyway. Ultimately, prescriptive language "simplification" is futile and a bad idea. The more features you remove, the more complexity the language must take on elsewhere. At some level, all languages are equally complex. (Now, grammatical regularity is another issue altogether, but irregularity does add its charm to a language.) Edited by Captain Haddock on 13 October 2006 at 3:16am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| dasleben Newbie United States Joined 6838 days ago 23 posts - 24 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 14 of 24 13 October 2006 at 4:15am | IP Logged | ||
I disagree. I'm a native English speaker and I can't tell the difference between "two" and "to" in typical spoken American English. Sometimes the "to" in "to the house" comes out as "t'the house," but side by side they're no different in pronunciation. Edited by dasleben on 13 October 2006 at 4:26am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 15 of 24 13 October 2006 at 5:07am | IP Logged | ||
|
I'm somewhat surprised that so many native English speaking people deny that there is a difference between "two" and "to", except maybe a difference in stress as noted by Captain Haddock. When I hear the word "two", I hear a u-sound that is not only stressed, but also longer than the one in "to". Besides some persons - but not all - either open the wowel in "to" slightly or weakens it with a result in the direction of a a schwa-sound. This never happens to "two", probably due to the stress.
I will of course be try to listen with all the attention I can muster for these two words spoken by native Englophones the next couple of days to make sure that I don't hear something that isn't there, but I would be surprised if I can't hear a difference even after reading the posts in this thread. If you native people say "to two houses", does it then sound like "to to houses" would? Edited by Iversen on 13 October 2006 at 5:31am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| dasleben Newbie United States Joined 6838 days ago 23 posts - 24 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 16 of 24 13 October 2006 at 5:58am | IP Logged | ||
Sure does. I'd imagine that's why more than a handful of native speakers can't use "two," "to," and "too" correctly. :) I can't say for British English, though. That might be different in your neck of the woods with the Brits. In AE, they sound the same. Edited by dasleben on 13 October 2006 at 5:59am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
