Re: Jovian's Verbs From Hell

--- In conlang@y..., Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@F...> wrote:

> > Our grammatical vocabulary was rather limited, and mostly in German,
> > at the end of primary school.  When we had our first Latin lesson,
> > we hadn't ever heard of a conjunction or a preposition before, only
> > of "Verhältniswörter" and "Bindewörter" etc.  =P
> >
>
> I know the problem from learning Dutch ;)) . I still cannot have a scientific
> conversation in Dutch because very little of the vocabulary used is
> international (unlike in English or French).
Yeah, science is even worse.  I can read sci-fi technobabble rather
fluently (for sheer experience), but as soon as mathematical
terminology comes into play, it gets difficult.  Especially since
mathematical objects, being abstract, often get named with concrete
words ripped out of context for lack of better words.

How the frell am I supposed to parse the mathematical expression
"field" when the German equivalent is "Körper" (body)?

Even letter names are tricky... I remember how my brain used to
switch off every time Prof. Trubowitz (a New Yorker) said "e to the
i two pi j k over n" in under a second while talking about discrete
Fourier transforms.  =P



> > Anyway, in Jovian, I'm going to derive a subjunctive auxiliary from
> > the Latin subjunctive of |agere|.  I'm already using |ajer| from
> > |agere| as the all-purpose verb "to do" in Jovian.
> >
>
> Nice idea. Another idea would be to use a particle (like French subjunctive
> never appears without "que" in front of it, so much that in French conjugation
> tables the "que" is usually added in the subjunctive tenses) and make it part
> of the conjugation (like Romanian does for instance).
My Paternoster already included some subjunctives with optative (or
is that hortative?  I never quite know...) functions: |ga fire santun
tuun noeme| /ga fi:r "sant@n tUn"nAjm/ "may be_made holy thy name".

I've also thought of using |o| as a dedicated optative particle
derived from the interjection |o| commonly used before an optative
statement.  Obrenje already does that.



> [SNIP: Mnemonic rules etc.]
Once again, we'll have to agree to disagree.  =P

I don't remember ever having struggled with "wouldn't have", "it was
being done", "I'd rather he didn't" etc.  That might come from the
fact that I learnt English by reading books rather than with a
mnemonic system...  it just slowly builds your "language feeling".
Read something in the right context a few times and it'll sound
instinctively familiar next time you hear it.

Sure, it's more time-consuming and less thorough than taking lessons,
but ultimately more enjoyable and intuitive.  Which academic
English course will lead you through Asimov's Robots & Foundation
cycle?  (=D

As for conversational proficiency, you can only acquire that through
conversation.



-- Christian Thalmann