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Most Interesting Grammar | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| nescafe Senior Member Japan Joined 5410 days ago 137 posts - 227 votes  | Message 1 of 35 17 April 2010 at 2:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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Which language you ever learned has the most intersting grammar? and Why is it ineteresting?
As for me, Engish has one of the most interetsing grammars, and I think Japanese grammar would be very exotic to English native speakers. Mandarin is also interesting, because Mandarin is a SVO word order language, but words are modified by the preceeding clause. This is the pen I bought in Shanghai 这(This) 是(is) 我(I)在上海(in Shaghai)买(boughr)的(de)钢笔(pen) これは(This)私(I)が上海で(in Shanghai)買った(bought)ペン(pen)です(is)。· I am curious to know rare and intereting grammars. Please recommand your one. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| MäcØSŸ Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5810 days ago 259 posts - 392 votes Speaks: Italian*, EnglishC2 Studies: German | Message 2 of 35 17 April 2010 at 4:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hindi has a very strange verbal system.
Basically verbs have just indefinite forms (infinitive and participles) but the verb honā (to be), which is used as a copula. Hindi also uses conjunct and compound verbs. Examples: मैं नियुक्त कर दिया जा चुका हूँ। Maiṃ niyukt kar diyā jā cukā hūṃ. Niyukt means “appointed”, kar is the stem of karnā (to do), diyā is the past participle of denā (to give), jā is the stem of jānā (to go), cukā is the past participle of cuknā (to finish) and hūṃ is the present 1st person singular of honā (to be). The whole sentence means “I have been appointed”. It is of course possible to express the same thing with just “maiṃ niyukt kiyā gayā”, but it’s less expressive. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Delodephius Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Yugoslavia Joined 5404 days ago 342 posts - 501 votes Speaks: Slovak*, Serbo-Croatian*, EnglishC1, Czech Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 3 of 35 17 April 2010 at 6:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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I like Sanskrit's grammar. I think that would be the second reason I want to learn it (besides the great works of philosophy written in it).
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| BartoG Diglot Senior Member United States confession Joined 5448 days ago 292 posts - 818 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Spanish, Latin, Uzbek | Message 4 of 35 17 April 2010 at 7:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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I find Uzbek and Uighur fascinating for the seeming order and regularity of their grammar. Look at these four sentences:
Men amerika-lik-man. - I am American. Men yoz-a-man. - I write. Men tushun-yap-man. - I understand (what is going on right now). Men uy-lan-gan-man. - I am married. Almost every Uzbek verb form for the first person singular ends in either "man" - almost identical to "men," I - or ends in "-im," which after a noun means "my." With a language like Latin, all you can really do is learn the tables - even a background in proto-Indo-European grammar tells you mor about how the grammar works than why it should be that way. With the Western Turkic languages, though, the elements of the language reveal themselves more clearly with a minimum of deciphering. For example: Siz kasalxonaga bormayapsizmi? siz=you kasal=sick xona=room/place -ga=to bor=go -ma-=negative -yap-=present progressive siz=you -mi=? So, "Are you not going to the hospital?" If only it always worked so transparently! Still, in Uzbek and Uighur, there's a fascinating logic to the language that far excels what you find in most of the Indo-European languages. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| MäcØSŸ Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5810 days ago 259 posts - 392 votes Speaks: Italian*, EnglishC2 Studies: German | Message 5 of 35 17 April 2010 at 7:15pm | IP Logged | ||
That’s typical of agglutinative languages. Finnish and Korean also behave this way, I really like this paradigm. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TixhiiDon Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5465 days ago 772 posts - 1474 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian Studies: Georgian | Message 6 of 35 18 April 2010 at 12:11am | IP Logged | ||
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In Georgian verbs agree not only with the subject, but also with the direct object and
the indirect object. So for example, mok'lavs is the base form of the verb "kill" (not the nicest example I know but it's the one in my textbook!), and since there are no infinitives in Georgian, it means "he/she will kill it". Then mogk'lav means "I will kill you", momk'lavs means "They will kill me", and mogk'lavt means any of "We will kill you", "I will kill you (pl.)", "They will kill you (pl.)" and "We will kill you (pl.)", depending on context. Add indirect object markers too and you can say "He sent it to me" using the single verb form gamomigzavna, while "He sent it to you" would be gamogigzavna and "He sent it to him/them" would be gaugzavna. By the way, I still have very little idea how to use these forms in practice so all the examples are copied out of my textbook! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 7 of 35 18 April 2010 at 12:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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I love the directness of ergative-absolutive languages over nominative-accusative.
Right now I'm trying to puzzle my way through Basque in the absence of a decent course.... 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| nescafe Senior Member Japan Joined 5410 days ago 137 posts - 227 votes | Message 8 of 35 19 April 2010 at 8:04am | IP Logged | ||
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I think no grammar has a needless part, no matter how it seems complicated and strange to learners. An example, many Western language have articles, "a","the", etc, but Asians do not. This is because, I think, in Asian languages words are modified by the preceeding clause.
Let me introduce a new symbol "de" to English ("de" is from Mandarin "的"), which eachanges the location of words in modifier-modified relation, as "A that(which, when, etc) B = B de A", like the followings. my car, which I bought recently. = I bought recently de car. This is the reason why I said so. = This is I said so de reason. an apple on the table. = On (the) table de apple. A man from Canada = From Canada de man From the above examples we can see why Asian languages do not have articles: there is no room before modified words to put an article there in examples. On the other hand, a language in which words are modified by back needs articles to make things clear. I intended "de" to be a bridge from English to Mandarin. One more function word "ha" can be introduced, which is from Japanese "は". "ha" serves as to switch a SVO snetence to the SOV sentece, as "SVO = S ha O V(es, ed)", like the followings. I go to Tokyo = I ha to Tokyo goes I talked with her lastnight = I ha with her lastnight talked I think that language learning is very nice = I ha lanuage learning ha very nice is de thinks (Here both two symbols "de"and "he" are used.) By those "ha" and "de", only two symbols introduced, a least modification, one can simulate Japanese grammar within English. This shows why Japanese verbs have to be ended with "-ru", that if not so it will become very confusing to find which word is the verb in a sentence. I think, all the SOV language need their verbs to have a special form to indicate which word is the verb in a sentece. For example in German language verbs have to be ended with "en" in SOV sentce, like "Ich darf Tee trinken". Any exception to this? Edited by nescafe on 19 April 2010 at 8:09am 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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