[Wikipedia-l] Edits by project and country of origin

[Berto]

Hi!

I'd say that english is the easiest language I've ever met. Its grammar can
be written in 20-30 pages, and basically you need only the first 3-4 to
become an average speaker. BTW, this is also one of the reasons why it's so
wide-spread. Having a lightweight grammar allows speakers to save memory for
more words: if you look at an english dictionary it's going to be huge, if
confronted (say) to italian. But if you confront grammar/dictionary pairs
the overall weight gets more equilibrated.

if you want something more "strong" for grammar, you should try piedmontese
and/or russian. One may object to the way english is written (that is,
syllabically instead of alfabetically), but that's not going to stop people
from learning to write in it, it only makes it more complicated as a spoken
language. Besides, closely related languages like dutch (and even more
closely related frisian) all have this derivation, because of the high
number of vowels they use. So this is not even typically english.

If I have to say the plain truth, I guess english speakers love to rate
their language difficult as an excuse for their being usually unable to
learn just even a second language :) They mastered such a terrible language
as english, so they now have the right to take a nap :) Anyway, in the next
ten years native english speakers will really become a minority on the net,
so I guess we (the not natives) will eventually enforce radical reforms in
the language, by pure brute force. It already happened in small with en_us,
it's going to big really big with en_int.

Bèrto


----- Исходное сообщение ----- 
От: "maru dubshinki" <marudubshinki at gmail.com>
Кому: <wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org>
Отправлено: 4 сентября 2006 г. 21:20
Тема: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Edits by project and country of origin


> On 9/4/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> > It depends on what you mean by a simple language.  English is second
> > only to Chinese in its simplicity.
> >
> > Ec
>
> Oh, c'mon. That old prejudice?  Is English really more complex than
> Japanese, or Sumerian and Akkadian and Sanskrit? I greatly doubt it.
>
> ~maru
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