Re: [frogs] Discourse on the Consumption of Dog Food

[Graham Breed]

Graham Percival wrote:

> I mean, in Japanese there's no pluralization of nouns.  Given the
> writing that I see from the graduate students here, I gather that
> Chinese doesn't pluralize nouns either.  Now how can I explain to
> them how to do something as simple as saying "one foo" and "two
> foos" ?  There's nothing /approacing/ a firm rule for this.  I
> just have tons and tons of special cases (subconsciously)
> memorized, so I instantly recognize that "In the morning, I pulled
> my beet onto my foots" is wrong.

Chinese doesn't pluralize nouns.  But it does have measure 
words, and different measure words go with different nouns.

Of course you have to learn the irregular plurals.  Like you 
have to learn the words in the first place.

> I'm not as sympathetic when they forget to add a "the" or "an" in
> front of a noun.  English is consistent on that point.

It is not.  Countable and uncountable nouns are already a 
good hour's lesson.  (I know, I've taught it.)  Then you get 
to the irregularities, like why you write a piece for piano, 
instead of "the piano".

> Really, if any HCI (err, that's Human-Computer Interface, a
> sub-field of Computer Science) guy proposed "hey, let's invent a
> new language such that the average first-year university student
> native speaker doesn't know how to pronounce every single word at
> first glance", he'd be laughed out of the room.

All natural languages have complexity lurking somewhere. 
It's to do with us all having the same kind of brains.

> IMNSHO, one of the first rules of an (alphabetized) written
> language should be that every single word should be pronouncable
> by a complete novice after 10 hours of study.  Or maybe 5 or 20...
> but you get the idea.

Sure, and what about languages with a variety of accents, 
like English?  Which one do you base the spelling on?


                   t'other Graham