João Ricardo de Mendonça wrote:
> On 12/6/05, *Gary Shannon* <fiziwig@yahoo.com
> <mailto:fiziwig@...>> wrote:
>
> I would really like to learn more about how a real
> live isolating language works.
[snip]
> The usual examples of isolating languages are Mandarim and Vietnamese. I
> guess Mandarim should be the easiest to find references for in the West.
Yes, but Mandarin does have grammatical affixes; it is not purely
isolating. In fact it has been argued on this on this list (more than
once IIRC) that English is more isolating than modern Mandarin.
But by all accounts, Vietnamese is (almost) 100% isolating. The trouble
is that few natlangs sit nice and neatly in these language types thought
up by 19th century linguists.
--
Ray
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