AW: [WorldofGlorantha] Re: Broo language?

> I worked with Turks for a couple years and learned nothing of Turkish. You
> can listen to people talk all day, but you have to have some grasp of a
> language to learn from hearing it.
>
>Counter-example: In China, I picked up the basic greetings and polite
>phrases in a couple of days.

Of course. That's easy. But it's not speaking a language.

>Mandarin has nothing in common with European languages

Course not. Why would it?

>... the word for mother, and if you miss the tone, you are
>saying horse, hemp, or curse instead).

All the same thing.

>pronunciation is not good, but I can still tell a taxi driver a couple
>of destinations successfully, so rudimentary communication is possible.

Yes, of course. But that's nothing like learning a language. One normally uses at least a couple thousand words, plus the grammar of a language. When you get half that far you've learned something.

>I think there is room for both cases (broo learning nothing,
>broo picking up some phrases).

They can pick up a few phrases, but communicating more than simple things requires learning a language.
If you don't believe what I've written to this list then read anything on linguistics, or try learning another language. I don't have any more time as con is coming. I've tried to inform people on this list about simple linguistic matters/basic facts. If you don't like it then just do what you want to. If you wanna learn but won't listen to me then maybe someone else will repeat what I've said and you'll listen to them. If not then read something. Any books will say what I said.

Daniel             Received on Tue 22 May 2007 - 14:34:03 EEST