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Re: What's a good isolating language to look at

From:R A Brown <ray@...>
Date:Tuesday, December 6, 2005, 7:51
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 ================================== ray@carolandray.plus.com http://www.carolandray.plus.com ================================== MAKE POVERTY HISTORY

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Tristan McLeay <conlang@...>