Re: OT: English and schizophrenia

At 6:31 am -0400 6/8/01, John Cowan wrote:
>Jesse Bangs scripsit:
[snip]
>
>> But verbs--ho, boy, English verbs are about the easiest you'll ever see.
>
>Well, Turkish verbs are even more regular IIRC.
Yes they are.  IIRC only "to be" is irregular.

And the regularity of English is only so once the principle parts are known:
sing sang sung
go went gone
think thought thought
etc.

I know the common ending is -ed for preterite & perfect participle,
pronounced /t/, or /d/ or /Id/ according to what comes before it; but there
are an awful lot of exceptions.  I don't think difference is significantly
greater than Latin in this respect.

English also has a lot more compound tenses than most (all?) other western
languages.  We know that foreigners have to learn to distinguish between
"she goes" and "she is going" where most languages use the same form; but
they also have to wrestle with such differences as "she has gone" and "she
has been going" (How many languages have a perfect progessive form?).

It seems to me that Danish/Norwegian/Swedish verbs have as few fexions as
English, have the same problem about principle parts, and have a good deal
fewer tenses - they must on that score be significantly easier than English.

English verbs are about the easiest you'll ever see if you happen to be an
English speaker!  But my own experience of my continental neighbors is
somewhat different.

For many years we had foreign language students stay with us for their year
in Britain.  I'd always assumed the thing they'd complain most about
regarding English was our crazy orthography.  Not a bit of it.  Almost
without exception the biggest grumble was "English phrasal verbs".

Ray.

=========================================
A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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