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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 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 33 of 85 12 December 2010 at 12:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
Me too, but only because we then can reserve "you" for the plural. In Danish we say "du", and I hope I never meet our otherwise friendly queen because she might expect me to use the old polite form "De". If I met our prime minister I would certainly just say "du". But now we are at the pronouns: I'm sick and tired of having to say "he" and "she" - English (and a lot of other languages including my own) are in dire need of a gender neutral pronoun. Or flip a coin to decide which one of the two has to go. Edited by Iversen on 12 December 2010 at 12:41pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lightning Groupie United Kingdom livelanguagelove.bloRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5339 days ago 58 posts - 70 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 35 of 85 12 December 2010 at 1:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I agree with those saying to not use loanwords in Japanese. It's awful when you're writing something in Japanese, and lovely long line of Kanji and Hiragana, then you have to use a loan word... :(
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| Marikki Tetraglot Senior Member Finland Joined 5496 days ago 130 posts - 210 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Spanish, Swedish Studies: German | Message 36 of 85 12 December 2010 at 2:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
After my wish has been fullfilled and definite/indefinite noun articels have been removed altogether, tables, lamps and chairs may be boys or girls for all I care. So, please, no articles in any language. Especially English. Edited by Marikki on 12 December 2010 at 2:49pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| chucknorrisman Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5449 days ago 321 posts - 435 votes Speaks: Korean*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, Mandarin, Lithuanian, French | Message 37 of 85 12 December 2010 at 3:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
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No more loanwords in any language. It's especially sad to see some langauages like Japanese, Korean, Basque, etc, whose native words have no known cognates with other languages, throw out their native words in favor of loanwords. It may make the language learning harder, but I'm okay with it.
If not, I'll take the revival of the ancient Chinese pronunciations. Chinese was much cooler when each word was only one syllable and the characters weren't too darn homophonic. Edited by chucknorrisman on 12 December 2010 at 3:51pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Thatzright Diglot Senior Member Finland Joined 5673 days ago 202 posts - 311 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English Studies: French, Swedish, German, Russian | Message 38 of 85 12 December 2010 at 3:58pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Since I still know so relatively little of languages other than Finnish and English, I can only really comment on them. I wouldn't want to change anything about my native language, but in the case of English, I'd bring back some of the cases it has gotten rid of, a lot of the "old school" words mentioned earlier like whither, whence, thou and so forth back to active use and maybe adopt more "Germanic-sounding" and looking words. Wouldn't mess with the ortography though.
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| getreallanguage Diglot Senior Member Argentina youtube.com/getreall Joined 5472 days ago 240 posts - 371 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: Italian, Dutch | Message 39 of 85 12 December 2010 at 4:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
Standard English already has such a thing as a gender neutral pronoun for the third person singular. It's called the 'singular they'. Ever since I found out about it I've been happily using it. It's a lot shorter and nicer than having to say 'he or she', when you want to be all gender neutral about it. As for a 'plural you' distinct from 'singular you', nonstandard American English has many distinct forms for 'plural you'. Examples include y'all, you all, y'alls, all y'all, yous, yinz and you guys, the latter of which seems to be steadily becoming standard, at least in less formal speech. I've even heard 'you guys' on Fox News, from an editorialist with his own daily evening show. Those are examples of Subject/Object forms of these pronouns. Some of these also have their own distinct possessive forms. Isn't American English fun? 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Marc94 Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5247 days ago 32 posts - 50 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian | Message 40 of 85 12 December 2010 at 5:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
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If a genie came out, I'd just ask to be fluent in every single language in the world (without having to maintain them daily), but that's beside the point.
Hmmm..so many options. One thing I'm sick of when studying history is that historians usually don't seem to keep the original name of the person. So I'd change the world by having everyone use the foreign name for leaders and various other people of the past. One thing that shocked me in my AP European History Course was that they refered to Kaiser Wilhelm II as William II! 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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