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If tenses are cases are what keeps languages from being global, you should all speak Chinese now, whose words don't change forms at all.
by echaozh 3y ago
If tenses are cases are what keeps languages from being global, you should all speak Chinese now, whose words don't change forms at all.
- moffkalast 3y agoYeah but doesn't the way you intone a word change the meaning entirely? With how heavy accents are the norm for English second speakers I would think this makes Chinese practically impossible to learn to pronounce. Also 90% of the world can read the latin alphabet already which is a good start when learning a new language. Years ago I made a small attempt to learn some Russian and Cyrillic was like smashing against a brick wall, I imagine it's 200x worse for Chinese since you have to learn 5000 new characters.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago> you should all speak Chinese now, whose words don't change forms at all There are some inflectional elements in Chinese. Speaking for Mandarin: - Verbs may be inflected into one of three aspects, with the suffixes 着 (progressive), 了 (perfective), or 过 (experiential). - Certain verbs may be inflected for possibility or impossibility, with the infix 得 (for possibility) or 不 (for impossibility). If the verb is not naturally part of the category that participates in this construction, the dummy particle 了 (which shares spelling, but not pronunciation, with the perfect suffix mentioned above) must be supplied, to convert it into that category. - Nouns may be inflected for plurality with the suffix 们. As I understand it, this is only really appropriate where the noun refers to a collection of people (broadly defined), but any such noun may receive the suffix.