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When I started learning Chinese I was like: Huh, this is basically English with a different vocabulary. May it be that languages with a lot on non-native speak
by rumcajz 9y ago
When I started learning Chinese I was like: Huh, this is basically English with a different vocabulary.
May it be that languages with a lot on non-native speakers (I assume Han was imposed on most of it speakers over the course of history, but I may be wrong) degrade to some kind of gramatically "neutral" pidgin?
- jdmichal 9y agoIn that case it's because they are both relatively analytic languages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_language
- rumcajz 9y agoThat's the obvious part of it. One would except laguage spoken by non-native speakers to lose most of the complexity in inflection. But what about, for instance, how the same word can be used as distinct lexical categories. The extreme case of the phenomenon is to use proper name as a verb: Houdini yourself out of a situation. In Chinese I've seen a text describing how killers of king Wu were going to "wu" his minister.