on Mon, 20 Oct 2003 11:53:34AM -0700, Erik Steffl insinuated:
> Nori Heikkinen wrote:
> >the two are apples and oranges, my friend, especially when you're
> >dealing with something that no one can have an objective point of
> >view on, given different native languages.
>
> ??? you can measure how much information you need to
> understand/parse each of the languages... that doesn't have
> anything to do with language being native or not...
my point was that depending on your native language, different aspects
will seem natural to you, whereas others will appear radically
different and therefore harder. depending on how different one's
native language is from the target language, certain people can find a
language very difficult to learn, whereas others with closely related
languages could master it much faster than others. for instance, it
is easier for speakers of english to master a romance language than
something much more remotely related, like mandarin.
> >>>the usage of words is simple, the grammar is simple.
> >>>
> >>
> >>Depends what you mean by purity. By European language standards
> >>it's fairly pure in the sense of not being cluttered up with
> >>things like redundant inflections, but this is probably because it
> >>is impure in the sense of having been knocked around by
> >>neighbouring languages and dialects until there's not much left of
> >>it apart from what's really necessary to communicate.
> >
> >you're kidding, right? if i read you right, you're stating that
>
> note that the 'you' above and the 'you' far above refer to
> different people
sure. i was collapsing threads.
</nori>
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