Re: Learning a language

From: Rex F. May (rex.may_at_comcast.net)
Date: 07/05/04 

Date: Mon, 05 Jul 2004 16:23:28 GMT

in article slrnceiv8m.bs3.a282244@lxhri01.lrz.lrz-muenchen.de, Helmut
Richter at a282244@mail.lrz-muenchen.de wrote on 7/5/04 10:08 AM:

> In article <m33c46ixza.fsf@mika.informatik.uni-freiburg.de>, LEE Sau
> Dan wrote:
>
>> Dmitri> Simplicity of verb tense for me.
>>
>> How is Esperanto's verb tense system simpler than that of Malay?
>
> Here, and in numerous other postings with the same argument, you are
> confusing two kinds of complexity:
>
> a) the morphological complexity
>
> b) the complexity by mandatory specifications
>
> A concrete verb exists in a multi-dimensional state: its root
> (i.e. the verb proper), its voice (or binyan, or whatever it is called
> in some language), its aspect, its tense, its mood, optional negation,
> the person or thing acting, the person or thing acted upon, inclusion
> in a relative clause, trustworthiness of information (eye-witness,
> hearsay, ...) and many possible others.
>
> Complexity (a) is the complexity of forming an expression out of those
> ingredients that you want to add or you need to add because of the
> grammar of the language. If you indeed *want* to say "He who does not
> see you", the Swahili word "asiyekuona" (a=he/she, si=negation,
> ye=who, ku=you, ona=see) is quite simple: all syllables are
> independent of the others and their sequence is fixed once and for all
> (albeit slightly dependent on tense and negation). It could be a bit
> simpler but not much. I guess that a Chinese phrase with the same
> meaning would also not be simpler to construct.

I'm not sure. Ceqli uses Mandarin methods for such and thing, and in ceqli
it would be:

bu xaw zi de pe. Not-see-you modifier person.
>
> Complexity (b) is the complexity that comes in because the language
> forces you to specify the tense (German) or the aspect (Russian) or
> something else although you did not intend to talk about it.

Indeed. And my goal is to dispense with as much of that as possible.
>
> Complexity (b) is usually not noticed by learners whose native tongue
> demands the same specification (e.g. English Esperanto learners), and
> it is very difficult for other learners (e.g. Balinese English
> learners, to pick up an example from another contributor). Rules about
> things one did not want to say but is forced to say are generally
> perceived as more difficult than rules that are different from one's
> own language but are about things one wanted to say anyway,
> e.g. postpositions or noun endings in Hungarian instead of
> prepositions in one's own language.
>
> In contrast to that, complexity (a) or lack thereof seems to be judged
> similar by learners of different languages: Swahili verb conjugation
> across persons and tenses is easier than French verb conjugation, no
> doubt. Only the fact that verbs have to be conjugated in these two
> languages may be perceived as extremely difficult for some learners,
> whereas those who are already accustomed to it are happy when it is
> simple.

You bet. For Anglophones, gender is a pain in the neck, so that makes
Chinese, Turkish, Esperanto, Japanese much easier for us -in that one
respect-. For the speakers of a gendered language, Russian or Portuguese
might have no qualms about the genders, but recoil from the case endings of
the first and the comparatively irregular spelling of the latter.

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