Oh good! That means they don't have both T and D, or both P and B, or both K and G.
By default, Arabic language is the best language , lets learn some Arabic.
"Entirely regular grammar" means that all words follow the same rules. It means there are no exceptions.
then be sure , including mines , all of artificial implementations (i.e. constructed languages) will be NOT the best prototype.
I think in B1 level or higher, yes.
"Entirely regular" means certain grammatical relations are expressed in a totally uniform manner. No different conjugation and inflection paradigms, no empty categories like grammatical gender, etc.
Not good for what?
and is not this an artificial implementation or idea? (which is NOT good)
simply for everything.
It all comes down to what feature is regarded as simple by a majority.
In general, English isn't a good language to copy phonemes from. English has too many uncommon sounds.
That makes English easier, not harder.
As far as its phonetic inventory is concerned, sure. Spanish phonotactics, on the other hand, allows many consonant clusters totally unpronounceable for, say, Japanese (including -str-, which may be considered a typical IE phonetic marker; at least it doesn't occur word-initially anymore, but that's of little help).
The Spanish Subjunctive is a pain in the neck and the sequence of verb tenses too. Besides, prosody is completely different in the two languages: English is a stress-timed language, while Spanish is a syllable-timed language.
But you can get all of those things wrong and still be understood...
That is backwards, but their syllable timing is different, which is a significant issue.
And I like the subjunctive in Russian much more.
English still produces tense differences which aren't really much relevant for situations that are by definition irreal. Russian doesn't, and uses the same mood for irreal conditions to the top of it (with the simplest morphology as a bonus - just бы + preterite). One of those few cases when Russian grammar is actually easier for a change.
That depends on what one understands by 'most representative'. Because if it's about the ten most spoken or widespread, we'll also benefit a reduced number of families, so that a particular set of features and vocabulary is going to prevail.
I will be the first to agree that "What does he of English know, who only English knows?" but only in the sense that learning foreign languages can give you insights into your own language, making you realise that there is more than one way of saying things. No one needs to "understand" their own language. Every language should be considered in its own terms, and not in the terms of any other. If you start to think of the subjunctive in English in terms of Latin or Spanish you run the risk of wondering if, or insisting that, the subjunctive, such as it is which is not much, is needed where it does not belong.
Well, I find that much more balanced, although IE still is predictably going to prevail.
There have been some studies about it, with no conclusive agreement reached. It is clearly not a typical syllable-timed language like Spanish or Italian, but it's not so stress-timed either as English. The position seems to be intermediate. Vowels suffer from reduction and one can notice this very clearly when the word is the same as in Spanish: patata is pronounced PA TA TA in Spanish, while the Catalan patata is more similar to the way an English speaker would say it if he didn't aspirate stops.
Many schwas are dropped in speech, specially when merging with a following vowel, so that segments like Quina hora és? ('What's the time?') becomes /kinɔ'ɾes/. (Pronouncing it without dropping/merging reveals you're not native). Words such as taronja, caramel, etc. are commonly pronounced tronja, c'rmel. In some cases, even the variant has eventually become accepted (caragol and cargol).
Your list omits Bengali, French, Portuguese and German, which are all over 100 million, and includes some languages with only 85 million speakers. But it is a good list for "most representative" languages.
Do we get badges? Is there a flag?
When I was a teenager at school in the US in the sixties, "subjunctive" was a normal part of grammar. When I saw "grammars of AE" in the 2010s that used the term "past tense" instead of "subjunctive", I freaked out. It weakened my belief in grammars (I even turned in my badge
), though not in the subjunctive.
Yes, I was shocked with those new grammar books from England calling it past tense and back shifting to express doubt, contrary to fact and non-existence. I had teachers teach the subjunctive and was enriched by that. It was alive and kicking, used pretty much daily. It's essential you be on time for class. Would that she learn her lesson once and for all. Were I you I'd think twice before doing that.Do we get badges? Is there a flag?
When I was a teenager at school in the US in the sixties, "subjunctive" was a normal part of grammar. When I saw "grammars of AE" in the 2010s that used the term "past tense" instead of "subjunctive", I freaked out. It weakened my belief in grammars (I even turned in my badge
But you have already commented on the UK/US difference:
Whether I would be annoyed by the use of "past tense" depends on whether it is used to describe form or function.
Just out of curiosity: would you say ''was I you'' instead of ''were I you'' in the last example?
The second example is admittedly strained, the third example purposely formal, but a structure like "to be" + adj + subjunctive" I couldn't imagine any other way. It's preferable we use subjunctive.
I was naturally referring to Standard Central Catalan, the most spoken and most taught of all the varieties of the language. But yes, the position of Western Catalan (including Valencian) would be closer to the syllable-timed ones. (I remember having read somewhere that some foreigners hearing Valencian though it was Italian)
I guess Dymn omitted them in order to add only one per family. Some may debate whether it should be Spanish instead of French, though.
It is commonplace to consider the Latin alphabet as the one more fitted for an auxlang, as it is de facto the simple alphabet known by most people who use a different one.
I still think phonemes should be restricted to the ones we mentioned above, with some possible 'expansion'. But a simple writing system which didn't privilege the Latin one would be an excellent idea, if feasible.
No, but then I am not going to say "Were I you" either unless being mock pretentious. I would say "If I were you" rather than "If I was you", but would be slow to condemn the latter.
The idea is these classical languages are already represented in modern ones. Each of them has loaned extensively to at least three of the languages in my list.
If it had to be unanimous, the phonological repertory would be ridiculously small. I would settle for 8 or even 7 out of 12.
Seems reasonable. I've noticed 3 natural languages that changed their written form (in the last 100 years) to one based on the Latin alphabet.
I feel that here ''I would buy'' is conditional, and ''had'' is subjunctive.
It's the matter of definitions, but what's obvious is that the condition and the thing being conditioned utilize quite different grammatical structures in English (which is always a problem for Russian learners; even I may occasionally hold for a moment to understand what form I should actually employ).
I disagree. English has very few subjunctive verbs that have different spellings than the past tense of the same verb: "were" is one of them. But English is full of same-spelling same-sounding words with different meanings, so that does not mean the subjunctive mood is rare. The subjunctive mood is quite common in English. It is a little more common in AE than in BE, but it is used in both.
Can you give an example of a subjunctive that is only distinct in spoken English?
Same-sounding words are not distinct in spoken English.
Hello Dojibear,
I don't really understand what this means. There are plenty of subjunctive forms in English. They just match (in both speech and writing) indicative preterite forms.
That can be tricky, though.
There might be loanwords (due to proximity or conquest) but not derivation, for many of these:
Well my idea would be to have vocabulary created mostly from scratch, and only include internationalisms when they're widespread enough.
Yes, it could be a contendant too. It's the most spoken Iranian language, a subfamily with more than 150 million native speakers, which is distinct enough from Indo-Aryan languages.
Swahili has lots of loanwords from Arabic too.
The main drawback to using A Posteriori vocabulary is that it provides an unfair advantage to people who speak the source languages; creating a vocabulary from scratch attempts to level the field, by making it harder for everyone. I think a better solution would be to broaden the number of languages used as sources.
