Inspired by Phil's post on the forum and Katanga's answer thereupon...
OXFORD - Because English no longer world's number one language, England's government decide use Chinese grammar write English. This method more than old one good, because foreign country people now can learn English extremely fast. Two thousand zero ten year, one month one day also introduce Chinese character.
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almost Shavian
Written by fellpony (1717 comments posted) 6th September 2008 |
- I'm sure you know the spelling reform suggestions attributed to Shaw, now often adapted and used to lampoon the Germans... I like this. You present the Chinese-style word order very cleverly.
If I wrote a Latin version of this I think it would come out as German. |
Written by Fledermaus (3490 comments posted) 6th September 2008 |
Thanks Sue,
I didn't know English went through official spelling reforms. Somehow I always thought it had just grown and some standards became more acceptable than others. Do you actually have something like the Academie Francaise or the Taalunie in the UK (a bunch of pompous 'linguists' that guard over the language)?
Dutch spelling reforms are so horrible that I nowadays probably write better in English than in Dutch. Even the most basic rules have changed and they keep on changing them to make us all write double-dutch. |
steady on Maus
Written by fellpony (1717 comments posted) 7th September 2008 |
"I didn't know English went through official spelling reforms." It didn't, that's the point. There are spelling reform movements which have existed for decades, one based I believe on the proposals of George Bernard Shaw, and another on those of Noah Webster, but they have never caught on. Like the use of the qwerty keyboard, the majority of people use a set of symbols learned in a set order, and to impose another set on their communication would take years of training, and forcible exclusion of the earlier set. We'd need a Revolution to impose that kind of law. (Did you know that when metrication was imposed on France, it didn't apply to the printing trade, because they'd have had to wait 2 years for all the printing presses to be upgraded to the new measurement system in order to produce the proclamations that announced metrication?)
We only have the Oxford English Dictionary as our mentor, and it is an observer and commentator, not a dictator. I know spelling / orthography are awkward at times in English (eg: cough, bough, through, enough!) but the language seems at once resistant to enforced change, and flexible about organic growth. |
Written by wltshr (352 comments posted) 7th September 2008 |
Short. But none the worse for that.
Nice word patterns. Simple and gently amusing.
Wltshr |
Written by Fledermaus (3490 comments posted) 7th September 2008 |
Thanks Wltshr,
And the fun is that if people would write English like this and replace the words with characters (provided that I did do it correctly) it would be Chinese. By not inventing an alphabet, the Chinese spared themselves a lot of translation problems. |
Written by mia_ms_kim (1057 comments posted) 8th September 2008 |
How interesting, FM! This shows me why Chinese people pick up English so quickly. Chinese grammar is very similar to English. Did you also notice that the Chinese historically use beds and tables with chairs etc like westerners? Koreans take a decade to learn half-decent English, and we historically slept on the floor (on mats) and ate on the floor around a low table.
Anyway, this could be a Korean rendition:
"OXFORD - English any longer world's number one language not because, England's government Chinese grammar use English write decide. This method old one than more good, why-because foreign country people now extremely fast English learn can. Two thousand ten year, one month one day Chinese character also introduce."
It is no wonder I had to go through painful mental gymnastics when I was learning English.
Very interesting, FM.
Mia  |
Written by Fledermaus (3490 comments posted) 8th September 2008 |
Thanks Mia.
When trying to learn Mandarin, it struck me that indeed both its word order and its sounds (except for things like q,j,zh,ch and the tones) are a lot like Germanic languages.
I heard that Dutch is quite difficult to learn for foreigners: We have quite a strange grammar and so far I haven't found any book that describes it to its full extend. I have studied a lot of linguistics, but I still can't explain some things that make Dutch sentences grammatical.
Considering your comment, I'm suddenly not so surprised anymore that the Korean department at the faculty of East-Asian languages was extremely small compared to that of Chinese... |
Written by Veronica_Milvus (751 comments posted) 9th September 2008 |
My room mate at University studied Chinese, and told me that this is a proper sentence:
"ma ma ma ma"
meaning, I think "my mother chastises the horse". Each word being identified purely by its different tone in spoken Chinese.
Interesting that "mother" appears to be "ma", just like every other language I personally know. |
Written by Fledermaus (3490 comments posted) 9th September 2008 |
Hi Veronica,
And funnily the characters in that sentence are very much alike too. An even more extreme example is the "Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den"-poem by Yuen Renchao, which consists of 92 characters, each pronounced 'shi' (although with different tones). |
Interested, Vron!
Written by Katanga (1515 comments posted) 9th September 2008 |
I tried it myself.
If you close your lips, and then produce a basic sound, it comes out as:
'ma'
Try it!
My partner, Joanna who is a speech and language therapist, could help us here, but she's gone to bed . . . .
Cheers!!
John X |
Hi Ron
Written by jean.day (2366 comments posted) 13th September 2008 |
| This was fun to read, and educational to boot. I always think descriptions of how to use a product, written by a foreigner in their take on English are more fun to read than ones done in precise English. |
Written by Fledermaus (3490 comments posted) 21st September 2008 |
| Thanks Jean. Obviously translations don't always go well. |
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