Re: Netherlandish schools (was Re: Untranslated notes)

Christopher Wright wrote:
>ObLanguage: I was forced to drop Spanish after only one and a half years
>due to homeschooling. I was in school before, but I had trouble teaching
>myself a language, especially with that course. After all that time, my
>main question was "How do I form questions in Spanish?" It seems to be
>pure word order, now that I put a bit of thought to it.

Yes, but also by intonation.  Since declarative sentences can be inverted
too
(Juan huyó ~ Huyó Juan 'Juan fled') without turning them into questions.  So
it's also possible to have a question with normal word order, but with
question intonation (and of course the written ¿ helps too)--

ese conejo me atacó 'that rabbit attacked me' (~me atacó ese conejo)
¿me atacó ese conejo? 'did that rabbit attack me?'
¿ese conejo me atacó?   "     "      "       "     "   (probably more likely
in literary usage, and the longer/more complex the sentence, the more likely
it will retain normal word order.)

(Writers on the Ideolengua list, who often eliminate diacritics etc due to
e-mail difficulties, sometimes produce lengthy sentences in normal word
order, and you don't realize it's a question until you get to the end where,
lo and behold, there's a "?".)