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From: deb5@ellis.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: Re: Is Turkish a new language?
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References: <D3q22K.42H@news.dlr.de> <1995Feb16.012953.15511@Princeton.EDU> <D4Hr7t.MC9@midway.uchicago.edu> <3il14u$ll7@sarasvati.umiacs.umd.edu>
Date: Sun, 26 Feb 1995 18:19:33 GMT
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In article <3il14u$ll7@sarasvati.umiacs.umd.edu>,
Suleyman Cenk Sahinalp <jenk@umiacs.umd.edu> wrote:
>I definitely am no linguist, but the real problem for a foreigner
>in learning Turkish seems to be the locations of suffixes, especially
>in verbs. A very popular example demostrating this fact is:
>   "Evcillestiremediklerimizden misiniz?" 
>which is a one word sentence meaning:
>   "Are you one of many, whom we couldn't domesticate?"

[detailed explanation deleted]

Of course, this is an extreme example, like Shaw's "ghoti" or German 
Schuetzengrabenvernichtungsmaschine.  The real advantage to Turkish
is its regularity:  all the suffixes go on in a fixed order and have,
at most, four completely predictable forms each.  Of course, learning
this order is no picnic, but it beats the alternatives.
>
>Turkish seem to be a no nonsense language. Once you get familiar with a 
>handful of rules you're done. In this respect, it shouldn't be too hard to 
>learn compared to many others from the Semitic group or South-east
>Asian languages, but it just has a different way of thinking. 

I don't understand how a language can have "a different way of thinking"
but I agree with the first part of this.  Comparing one language to 
others, though, is difficult, because the single most important factor
for determining how difficult a language is to learn is how it compares
to your own.  It was easier for me to learn German than Korean because
I'm a native speaker of English; for a Japanese, the opposite would be
true.  Sinitic speakers, for instance, have much less trouble with
most SEAsian languages than anything on the continent of Europe.

As far as Semitic goes, its paradigms appear rather regular, from
what I'm told.  I've even heard Arabs brag that theirs is the best
language for logicians because it's so regularly structured.  The
hubris of native speakers aside, I've never considered the Semitic
languages that hard for I-E speakers, esp. Modern Hebrew, which is
heavily influenced by European languages.

-- 
	 Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
	(deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
				   /____\      gegen die Kunst!
