Re: French (was Re: Re: Optimum number of symbols)

Thomas Wier said:
> > > Even in my AP English class we only discussed gerunds and
> > > subject/direct object/indirect object for about a week before
> > > everyone complained that we were doing too much grammar.
>
> I'm surprised anyone would be discussing much grammar at all
> in an AP English class.  By the time you reach AP English,
> you should be discussing literary criticism and be writing
> essays on Henry James and Thomas Hardy.
>
Very true, but considering how little they taught us, EVER... and how little
of it people inmy class understand. I was expecting some grammar at SOME
point. It seems like that aspect of the language was skipped entirely.

Nik Taylor said:
> [...]even with him there was a lot of "that's just how it is".  I guess
most
> students would probably consider detailed explanation of why it's that
> way more confusing than helpful.  Different styles of learning, I
> guess.  :-)
I find that kind of explanation fun. IMHO, half of what lends 'detailed
explanations' their confusing factor is that people treat it like it's so
complicated, when in most cases it really isn't. Who and whom
(ever-example!) boggles so many people, but it's really easy to
understand--it's just that in order to make it an 'easy' concept, people
tend to over-explain, and so forth.

> Japanese is fun in that respect - there's virtually no grammatical
> gender, but there is a lot of *cultural* gender.  For example, for "I
> saw him" a woman might say "(Atashi wa) ano hito wo atta wa", using the
> first person pronoun "atashi", which is reserved for female speakers (or
> effiminate male speakers) and the sentence-final particle "wa" which is
> used only by female speakers (or effiminate male speakers), or speakers
> of certain dialects; a man saying that sentence might say "(Boku wa) ano
> hit wo atta yo", using the pronoun "boku", which is mostly male (female
> speakers occasionally use it, but I think that might've just been a fad
> a while back) and the sex-neutral particle "yo".  In more formal
> registers, those gender distinctions are lost, so either sex could say
> "(Watashi wa) ano hito wo atta yo."
>
I agree, that sounds very fun. Ah, japanese, another language I want to
learn. Damn 'real' classes getting in the way. ;)
I remember reading somewhere that in Japanese there are a lot of ways to
express first person depending on to whom one  is speaking, though I cna't
remember where I read that.
To me, it just seems odd, arbitrary and presumptuous to say that *all*
biologically female creatures are 'she,' all the time.
Though, now that I think about it, grammatical gender does seem extremely
arbitrary, in that I don't know what rules it follows, at least in languages
I'm familiar with. Your [Nik Taylor's] system sounds interesting, and
probably not very difficult to remember. :) But why the heck are ships
femenine in English?
Why une table and une chaise, but un bureau? Other than that the first two
end in -e :)

-Kendra
http://www.refrigeratedcake.com
http://www.refrigeratedcake.com/other/theatre -- Vade Mecum (comic)

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