Re: Hello to you all!

En réponse à Jan van Steenbergen <ijzeren_jan@...>:

>
> I sympathize! But this kind of words are not so
> typical for the Dutch language as the word and concept
> of "hagelslag". For instance, I could never understand
> when and why the French make such frequent use of
> words like "y", "en"...
Easy. They are "adverbial pronouns". "y" replaces any complement introduced by
the preposition "à" (though it cannot refer to persons), while "en" replaces
any complement beginning with "de" (again, it cannot refer to people). The only
exception is the expression "il y a" which has to be taken as a whole (indeed,
in Spanish it's a single word: "hay"). In spoken French, we tend to use them
even when the complement they replace is present (it's part of Spoken French
being quite polysynthetic). But they always refer to something, whether stated
in a previous sentence or in the current one (for that, they behave like any
normal pronoun). And without them, sentences wouldn't be grammatically
complete. It's not the case with the Dutch little words. Without them, the
sentence doesn't sound complete to Dutch ears, but it's still grammatically
correct.

 Russian is also full of such
> words, and they don't make it any easier for us :(
>
I don't know enough Russian to say anything, but until now the only other
language I know which has such kinds of difficult seemingly meaningless words
yet mandatory for communication I know is Japanese :)) .

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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