Re: CHAT: query: where to start?

On Fri, 9 Jun 2000, nicole perrin wrote:

> > I stole some aspects from who-knows-were, and the probable mood from
> > Japanese; conjugations do look vaguely Japanese/Korean from my
> > standpoint, anyway.  I'm borrowing elements from Latin where they fit.
> >
> > I'm trying for an Oriental-ish culture, so probably I'll lean more toward
> > Semitic/Japanese-Korean influences (wish I could tackle Chinese or
> > Indonesian or some *other* Asiatic languages, but those are the only two
> > I know anything about).
>
> Well, if you want to learn some about the structures of other languages
> without reading a whole grammar on them, maybe you'd want to check out
> (or buy) a book like Comrie's The World's Major Languages or Lyovin's An
> Introduction to the Languages of the World.  The former is the better
> book but they're both really neat.  They have short essays on a whole
> bunch of different natlangs so you can learn about the more interesting
> parts of their grammars and then steal them!
Thanks for the pointer!  I'll go look for them.  :-p  I have grammars in
several languages, but most of them are Indo-European (except Korean and
Japanese).

Stealing grammar is so fun, I can't figure out how some people *don't*
like learning languages.  OTOH I'm terrified to death of chemistry and
economics, so I guess it's all relative.  :-)

YHL