Date: Mon, 25 Mar 96 11:19:35 MET From: Greg Lehey <lehey.pad@sni.de> To: mrami@minerva.cis.yale.edu Cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: cvs commit: ports/editors/bpatch/pkg COMMENT Message-ID: <199603251022.LAA01025@nixpbe.pdb.sni.de> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.91.960323115242.1609E-100000@mramirez.sy.yale.edu>; from "Marc Ramirez" at Mar 23, 96 2:11 pm
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> 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 I don't understand what you're trying to say here. German still has a dative, which has all but completely disappeared in modern English. Apart from that, they're the same. > If I wanted to, I could get into the ten declination types in > German, but I don't. :) I don't understand this, either. > 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). This argument is flawed. You're mixing endings and tenses. > 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! That depends on where in France you are. The 'e' at the end of 'quelle' is definitely pronounced in the South, and also for emphasis in the North. And this is just one aspect of gender. If somebody says "Tu es folle", you don't need to read it to know they're talking to a female. > 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 > 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 :). I think I'd go for Spanish as easier than English. Greg
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