Re: unnatural languages

On 15 Mar 2007 15:28:05 -0400, Herman Rubin
<hrubin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
<news:etc6o5$392g@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> in sci.lang:

In article <1173929324.317738.63840@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Peter T. Daniels <grammatim@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

[...]

Every human being (barring severe brain damage) speaks
their native language(s) "reasonably grammatical"ly.

Not in my experience.

Your statement is obviously false as Peter is using the
expression, and by now you should certainly be aware of
this. What you mean, I expect, is that you encounter many
people who don't speak according to rules of formal standard
English; if that *is* what you mean, say so! Then you'll
have to explain why you think this matters, but at least
you'll be talking about something instead of playing stupid
word games.

[...]

One is unlikely to get the technical vocabulary in the
normal course of learning a language. For example, in
a paper on efficient methods for multiple precision
arithmetic, I got hung up on "Einheit". I could reject
many uses of "oneness"; I did not know that it was used
in German works on rings for "unit", which has nothing
to do with "one", despite the English word being based
on the Latin for "one".

In fact it *does* have something to do with 'one', though
the connection is somewhat attenuated. And this has nothing
to do with whether technical language is a language in the
usual sense of the word. (It isn't.)

[...]

It seems you are suggesting learning languages in a very
similar manner to the whole word method for reading.

No.

[...]

Brian
.

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