<div style="text-align: center; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">=========================================================================<br>L O W L A N D S - L - 13 July 2008 - Volume 06<br style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">
<span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">-------------------------------------------------------------------------</span><br style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);"><span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">Please set the encoding mode to Unicode (UTF-8).</span><br style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">
<span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">If viewing this in a web browser, please click on</span><br style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);"><span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">the html toggle at the bottom of the archived page </span><br style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">
<span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">and switch your browser's character encoding to Unicode.</span><br>=========================================================================<br></div><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From: </span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="HcCDpe"><span class="EP8xU" style="color: rgb(121, 6, 25);">jonny</span> <span class="lDACoc"><<a href="mailto:jonny.meibohm@arcor.de">jonny.meibohm@arcor.de</a>></span></span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Subject: </span><span class="HcCDpe"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">LL-L "Grammar" 2008.07.13 (04) [E]</span><br><br></span><div id="1enh" class="ArwC7c ckChnd">
<div>
<div><span><font face="Courier New">Beste Lowlanners,
Paul (F.-B.), Sandy and Ron,</font></span></div>
<div><span></span> </div>
<div><span><font face="Courier New">in your posting,
Paul, you again delt with some 'hair-splitting' of mine. Thanks for your
answer.</font></span></div>
<div><span></span> </div>
<div><span><font face="Courier New">But now, dear
<u>Scotsman</u>- I do not agree with you, as well as I don't with
<u>Ron</u>.</font></span></div>
<div><span></span> </div>
<div><span><font face="Courier New"><u>Sandy:</u></font></span></div><div class="Ih2E3d">
<div><span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">> Idiomatic resolution aside,
perhaps one problem here is the obsession</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">> with grammatical gender
that occurs in some language groups?</span></span></div>
</div><div><span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">> ...</span></span></div><div class="Ih2E3d">
<div><span> <font face="Courier New">> <span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">What should we discard in
inventing a world language?</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">> o
gender: pointless;</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> > o
plurals: useless;</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> > o
verb tense: worse than useless;</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> > o
word inflections: too complicated;</span></font></span><span></span></div>
<div><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"></div>
</div><div><span><font face="Courier New"><u>Ron:</u></font></span></div><div class="Ih2E3d">
<div><span></span> </div>
<div><span><font face="Courier New">
<li><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span>> </span>Gender:
<b>none</b></span></font>
</li><li><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span>> </span>Plural:
<b>only in three personal pronouns</b></span></font>
</li><li><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span>> </span>Verb tense:
<b>none, except one particle expressing change and another expressing
progress</b></span></font>
</li><li><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span>> </span>Word
inflection: <b>none</b></span></font> </li></font></span></div>
<div> </div>
</div><div><span><font face="Courier New">So, if I am on the
correct path, you tend to erase the greater part of grammar which our ancestors
created 'with huge strenghth'? Are you sure you want to 'bomb' our modern
languages back to any Neandertaler stammering? (You don't need to bomb; a kind
of suicidal process already has begun!)</font></span></div>
<div><span></span> </div>
<div><span><font face="Courier New">Perhaps you should
allow me to mention that there is one of the most straight languages, in name
Old Latin, since more than 2,000 years </font> <font face="Courier New">an
established part of our Western society. Pupils of </font></span><span><font face="Courier New">-zig generations had the
plague to be forced to become more or less familiar with a
communication facility that once enabled the preeminence of the Roman
Empire.</font></span></div>
<div><span></span> </div>
<div><span><font face="Courier New">Where can we find
any examples that societies with a simple, nature- or agricultural
orientated language without that 'weird' grammar which we have to
deal with in our western cultures influenced the modern world sustainably?
You might find any far eastern examples who 'co-moulded' our culture.
Well, let my say: this is fast changing in our time, but not as a result of
their own initiativity, or their language. No member of the e.g. Inuit
language family , no one of the German Low Saxons, no one of the
Basques ever seriously tried to do a habilitation script in her/his native
language. (This, I have to conceed on the other side, might have caused some
different, eminent problems in our modern world...
:-(!)</font></span></div>
<div><span><font face="Courier New">And, Sandy, sorry
for you: I fear in cases like these you wouldn't get along with Sign Language
exceptionally, but you would have to use the written word.</font></span></div>
<div><span></span> </div>
<div><span><font face="Courier New">Please don't tell
me, that this is just a result of the suppression of minority
languages and weak, adynamic societies!</font></span></div>
<div><span><font face="Courier New">No, gentlemen, if
you want to deal with modern, evolutionary scientology you are forced to be
enabled to rely on a dependable standard, may be called 'system', as
we find in physics and mathematics. But the same valids for languages- with
any diffuse banana-mixture you won't get forward at all. (Please, bear in
mind that I named and included Low Saxon as a part of the European/German
hemisphere *g*!)</font></span></div>
<div><span></span> </div>
<div><span><font face="Courier New">So, Sandy, going
back to my admittedly 'hair-splitting' questions about any illogicality whithin
the English language (that one, which, differently from Britannia itself, indeed
rules the world *s*- from <strong>A</strong>merica to
<strong>Z</strong>imbabwe): just bear in mind my different point of view as a
foreigner, ex- and eternal learner and no-native 'writer' of your language. I'm
always interested in matters suited to get a deeper view into a foreign
language- otherwise I shouldn't be a member of this list.</font></span></div>
<div><span></span> </div>
<div><span><font face="Courier New">(BTW: I like your
'brummel-grummel' very much; it is always a pleasure to deal with your
unwillingness to compromises ;-)!)</font></span></div>
<div> </div>
<div align="left"><font face="Courier New">Allerbest!</font></div>
<div align="left"> </div><font color="#888888">
<div align="left"><font face="Courier New">Jonny
Meibohm</font></div></font></div>
</div><br><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">----------</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">From: R. F. Hahn <<a href="mailto:sassisch@yahoo.com" target="_blank">sassisch@yahoo.com</a>>
<br>
Subject: Grammar<br><br>I'm not sure I'm following you, Jonny.<br><br>However, let me remind you that it is a common misconception that grammars of languages of "primitive" cultures are simple. This is not so on the whole. Some of the grammatically most complex languages are those of indigenous Americans and Australians, and you ought to add</span></font><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> to this</span></font><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> the Inuit and Aleut languages.<br>
<br>In many cases throughout the world, older stages of languages have more complex grammars. Their descendants discarded more or less of this complexity. This should not automatically be taken as deterioration. Europeans and other people with European-centered education have been indoctrinated into believing that grammatical complexity is superior, because the "classical" languages Old Hebrew, Old Greek and Latin have comparatively complex grammars. Does simplification make Modern Greek and the Modern Romance languages inferior? </span></font><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> Absolutely not.</span></font><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><br>Because of remnants of ancestor worship, we and people of some other cultures have been brainwashed to believe in the "ancient golden age" notion. "Simple" should not be automatically equated with "primitive." If you are eloquent, you can express the same within simple structural frameworks as within complex ones.<br>
<br>The types of grammatical devices Sandy listed are absent from many languages in the world. You surely don't want to insinuate that the Chinese languages and languages like them can be equated with "Neandertaler stammering", do you? <br>
<br>Chinese society has been one of the most sexist ones throughout history (at least on a par with European ones), back to the time after the ancient folksongs in the collection known as <i>Shijing</i> (詩經 (诗经), "Classic of Songs") were created, some probably around 1000 BCE. Despite that, grammatical gender distinction has never been considered necessary and was never introduced. Similarly, the Altaic languages are not exactly grammatically </span></font><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">simple, </span></font><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" size="2"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">and they distinguish things our grammars don't (e.g., reporting something with or without first-hand knowledge). Despite that, they never distinguished by gender. I am only pointing out gender as an example here.<br>
<br>Regards,<br>Reinhard/Ron</span></font><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br>