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On Monday 12 October 2009 21:58:14 Volker Armin Hemmann wrote: |
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> On Montag 12 Oktober 2009, Grant Edwards wrote: |
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> > On 2009-10-11, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@×××××.com> wrote: |
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> > > English is a mess. As a language it's worse than a pig's |
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> > > breakfast and makes almost no sense whatsoever to non-native |
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> > > speakers. Mind you, it makes about as much sense to native |
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> > > speakers as well :-) I had to take 5 years of Latin study in |
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> > > high school to understand how my own mother tongue works. Sad |
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> > > indictment for a language wouldn't you say? |
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> > |
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> > At least we mostly got rid of the whole gender mess and only |
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> > have to worry about objective/subjective case for a few cases. |
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> |
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> which makes english a horrible, horrible language. |
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Spot on fella, spot on. |
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If anyone disagrees with you, have them write C without parentheses. Yup, |
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that's what English tries to do. Then we have our fancy professors who try and |
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tell you that "will" as in "will speak" is a word. It isn't. |
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The proof: define "will" in that sense, and do it in such a way that someone |
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unfamilar with verb tenses can get it. It can't be done :-) |
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What you *can* do is show how "will speak" and "have spoken" are different. |
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But then you have defined not two words, but one compound verb. Which is how |
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Latin and German work after all... |
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Another idiocy: "I will speak", what does that mean? Future tense? Someone |
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being emphatic? Something else? |
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> > During a mostly futile attempt to learn German, I had occasion |
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> > to read Mark Twin's essay on Germain articles. IIRC, plotting |
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> > out all of the combinations for "the" takes something like a |
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> > 3x9 grid |
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> |
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> it is always hard to go from chaos to order. |
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I truly pity foreigners trying to learn English. But at least English is |
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willing to absorb any idea or word from any other language and just use it |
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(unlike say, French). In theory you could pollute English with decent German |
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grammar and slowly deprecate the idiocies over time. Might take a few hundred |
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years though... |
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-- |
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alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com |
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