Date: Sat, 23 Mar 1996 23:39:57 +0200 (EET) From: Narvi <narvi@haldjas.folklore.ee> To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: cvs commit: ports/editors/bpatch/pkg COMMENT Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.91.960323222810.20691A-100000@haldjas.folklore.ee> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.91.960323115242.1609E-100000@mramirez.sy.yale.edu>
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On Sat, 23 Mar 1996, Marc Ramirez wrote:
> On Fri, 22 Mar 1996, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote:
>
> > Nobody ever said that english was a language
> > that made much sense, hell, it's a walking card-catalog of special
> > cases. It's often a matter of great wonder to me that non-native
> > speakers learn it at all!
>
> What? English? It's easy!
>
> Off the top of my head:
>
> Nouns
>
> English German
> nom-sng the heart der Knopf
> nom-plu the hearts die Knopfen
> acc-sng the heart den Knopf
> acc-plu the hearts die Knopfen
> dat-sng the heart dem Knopf
> dat-plu the hearts den Knopfen
> gen-sng the heart's des Knopfes
> gen-plu the hearts' der Knopfen
>
> English has only 4 noun forms, compared to German's 7 (and German, by
> far, is not a worst case; consider Kivunjo which has sixteen genders,
> including human singluar, human plural, thin or extended objects, objects
> that come in clusters, the clusters themselves, instruments, animals,
> body parts, diminutives, abstract qualities, precise locations, and
> general locations). If I wanted to, I could get into the ten declination
> types in German, but I don't. :)
What a wonderful system! The best design of a gender system for the words
I've ever seen... Except of course those languages, which don't have any...
>
> Once I was in a bar in Germany and I got into an argument with some
> real-live Germans about the gender of Apfelmuss (it's neuter, btw. :).
> One would think that applesauce would be a fairly common word... In my
> opinion, the less of such arguments that can happen in a language, the
> better. In English, well, geeks can work their lather up about VAX-VAXen,
> but any other arguments tend to be short-lived.
>
> Verbs
>
> English has four forms for weak verbs (walk, walks, walked, walking) while
> German has ten (kaufe, kaufst, kauft, kaufen, kaufte, kauftest, kauftet,
> kauften, gekauft, kaufend). For strong verbs in English, the count goes
> up to five (think) or six (drink). Of course, there's always Italian with
> its 36 or so (oso, osi, osa, osiamo, osate, osano, osavo, osavi, osava,
> osavamo, osavate, osavano, osai, osasti, oso`, osammo, osaste, osarono,
> osero`, oserai, osera`, oseremo, oserete, oseranno, oserei, oseresti,
> oserebbe, oseremmo, osereste, oserebbero, osiate, osino, osassi, osasse,
> osassimo, osassero, osato, osando), but I'm being unfair there becuase the
> tense system in Italian is still active (i.e., retains its meaning) and
> regular, unlike the case system in German. In some areas the verb forms of
> spoken German are being reduced as they were in English ({ich|wir|ihr|sie}
> hab', du has', er hat), so German may come out of the quagmire yet... :)
>
> Adjectives
>
> English has no cases, and adjectives do not have to agree in number with
> the noun. So, this leaves three forms (big, bigger, biggest).
>
> Spelling
>
> Spelling is, of course, the bane of English. Of course, English borrows
> the most heavily of any language, which makes it difficult. And English
> does have rules of spelling, they just differ based on the time the word
> entered the language. :) If you want a really good (bad?) example of
> vestigal spelling, though, you could always look at French, e.g., quel and
> quelle, both pronounced [kwel]. French las lost a gender distinction in
> the spoken language, but retained it in the written one!
>
> So in short, in my opinion the English language is one of the cleanest in
> design in many facets (and, of course, sucks in others). But it's
All the indo-european languages are so funny and silly - first they
divide the words into several (and totally unneeded) genders (after all,
what information does it give to you that the word Ma"dchen is neutrum?),
then they think up a whole lot of all kinds of articles, prepositions and
other nonsense.
sng. plu.
----------------------------------------------------------
1.the head pea pead
2.the head's pea peade
3.the head pead peasid/pa"id
4.into the head peasse/pa"he peadesse
5.in the head peas peades
6.out of the head peast peadest
7.to the head peale peadele
8.(shows the ownership
(the head own's) or
the state) of the head peal peadel
9.from the head pealt peadelt
10.up to the head peani peadeni
11.as the head peana peadena
12.(to be, become,
remain, etc) the head peaks peadeks
13.with the head peaga peadega
14.without the head peata peadeta
NB! The head is the one you carry on your neck and where there are
two alternatives for the form, you may use the one you like best.
There is a place up there where the discription isn't clear (at least
as I watch it myself, for others there might also be others), namely the
8th, but I can't help it.
We use the 8th in sentences like:
1) The man has a gun
2) The mouse has buttons
3) The cat feels sick
(all three word sentences)
PS. It is as easy as that except that there are words where the root
changes in the above-outlined process... :)
As for the spelling... With the exception of couple of words, they all
are written just as you pronunce them (so leaf would be liif, cow
would be kau and so on) + words where there are only two consonants
written but pronunced are three + everything written is always pronounce
(you write kn in the beginning of the word, you pronounce it so, not as
in know).
> definitely not appreciably more difficult than most other languages for
> non-native speakers to learn. Most people I've talked to who have learned
> English as one of *two* foreign languages have said that English was the
> easier of the two to learn (most people who know only Mother Tongue and
> English bitch about English because, well, foreign languages are more
> difficult to master than native ones :).
>
> Well, anyways, I've proselytized English enough for one day. Back to
> hacking!
>
> Marc.
>
> --
> AMAZING BUT TRUE ...
>
> There is so much sand in Northern Africa that if it were spread out it
> would completely cover the Sahara Desert.
>
>
Sander
Eat good food, preserve nature, be nice to all nice people :)
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