🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <9977@fs3.cam.nist.gov> koontz@cam.nist.gov (John E. Koontz X5180) writes:
>In article <10182@amsaa-cleo.brl.mil> matt@amsaa-cleo.brl.mil (Matt Rosenblatt) writes:
>|> >English wound up with an easy-to-speak, easy-to-understand 
>|> >isolated SVO structure.  That's one of its special virtues.

>For a speaker of another Western European language it's not too bad, but the
>belief that it's wonderfully simple for everyone is one of the pieces of 
>jingoistic folklore that we English-speakers pick up.  Anyone who has heard
>the sort of telegraphic English that first-language speakers of Chinese
>sometimes use has direct evidence that English has plenty of arbitrary fluff
>that it could easily get by without.  Our copious supply of irregular and
>regular strong verbs (sing, sang, sung, etc.) are present difficulties, too.

That speakers of Chinese have difficulty with English grammar is not
all that surprising; Chinese is, to my knowledge, the only major language
with fewer grammatical forms than English.

But the English formal structure is on the very simple side in the Indo-
European language family.  Unfortunately, its orthography is on the 
other side.
-- 
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399
Phone: (317)494-6054
hrubin@snap.stat.purdue.edu (Internet, bitnet)  
{purdue,pur-ee}!snap.stat!hrubin(UUCP)