Re: basic vocab

> From: yl112@cornell.edu [mailto:yl112@cornell.edu]
>
> > > From: Yoon Ha Lee
> > >
> > > I someday have to figure out how to merge German and
> > > Japanese.  It'd be a
> > > fun exercise, but I don't know nearly enough about either language!
> > >
> > On Sat, 16 Sep 2000, The Gray Wizard wrote:
> >
> > These are two of my favorites as well.  I once experimented with mixing
> > German lexis with Japanese syntax and then the reverse.  Never
> > got really
> > far with either, but it might be fun to revive the effort.
>
> I will work on it as my knowledge of both increases, but it may take a
> while!  Do you think German lexis with Japanese syntax or v.v. would be
> more fun and/or feasible?  I'm thinking German lexis with Japanese
> syntax--have fun confusing the German readers.  ;-)
I think both are feasible, but it was my experience that both produce rather
strange results, at least to anyone familiar with either language and
perhaps even more so to one familiar with both.

David

David E. Bell
The Gray Wizard
www.graywizard.net

"'Yes, I think I shall express the accusative case by a prefix!'

A memorable remark! Just consider the splendour of the words!  'I shall
express the accusative case.'  Magnificent!  Not 'it is expressed' nor even
the more shambling 'it is sometimes expressed', nor the grim 'you must learn
how it is expressed'.  What a pondering of alternatives within one's choice
before the final decision in favour of the daring and unusual prefix, so
personal, so attractive; the final solution of some element in a design that
had hitherto proved refractory.  Here were no base considerations of the
'practical', the easiest for the 'modern mind', or for the million – only a
question of taste, a satisfaction of a personal pleasure, a private sense of
fitness."

(from The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays - A Secret Vice,
by J.R.R. Tolkien [Houghton Mifflin Company 1984])