> 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.