<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; ">Hello, all -<DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>I've always been fascinated by languages, and recently came across Nahuatl - I'm hooked! Diving into it already thanks to the surprising amount of information out there...</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Got a couple of quick linguistic questions for anyone who can answer them (these are about the Classical language as that's the only one I have materials for).</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>1. Do long vowels have a different quality from short vowels, or are they simply pronounced twice as long? And, are there very many minimal pairs for vowel length? I've seen "metztli" "foot" and "me:tztli" "moon," but that's the only minimal pair for vowel length that I've seen, so far.</DIV><DIV>2. Verbs with third-person subject and object that are of the same number, i.e. both singular or both plural - if there's only one noun argument, is there a default reading for subject or object? E.g. does "O:quitta in cihua:tl" mean "The woman saw him/her," "He/she saw the woman," or both/either?</DIV><DIV>3. I know that the modern languages are different enough from each other to make inter-comprehension difficult, I'm curious to know how inter-intelligible any of the modern languages are with the classical language. Are the differences as great as, say, between Latin and the modern Romance languages?</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Thanks, and I hope to learn lots!</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Doug Barr</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV><DIV> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Papyrus" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Papyrus">'S fhearr an saoghal ionnsachadh na sheachnadh. Better to teach (or learn) the world than shun it. (Gaelic proverb)</FONT></P> </DIV><BR></DIV></BODY></HTML>