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From: rdd@usa1.com (Aaron J. Dinkin)
Subject: Re: Mongolian, native languages (was Languages: Hard, Harder, Hardest)
Message-ID: <rdd-0908960951310001@dmn1-21.usa1.com>
Date: Fri, 09 Aug 1996 09:51:31 -0500
References: <4s9otl$1pt@dfw-ixnews6.ix.netcom.com> <705.6771T494T2133@gulf.net> <31EFCDC5.1629@trl.telstra.com.au> <31EF1E8A.3440@frontiernet.net> <31f09c4b.25641454@news.airmail.net> <4sr6ll$r0a@homer.alpha.net> <4tcbj8$tb8@sonnet1.sonnet.com> <31FD55EC.199A@oas.omron.com> <4tn6hn$7mj@raffles.technet.sg> <4u1kaa$keo@news.NetVision.net.il> <32089930.6AD7@trl.telstra.com.au> <4ual9k$4ro@pith.uoregon.edu> <320A2694.7955@trl.telstra.com.au> <chenrich-0808962329290001@ppp133.monmouth.com>
Lines: 32

In article <chenrich-0808962329290001@ppp133.monmouth.com>,
chenrich@monmouth.com (Christopher J. Henrich) wrote:

> In article <320A2694.7955@trl.telstra.com.au>, Jacques Guy
> <j.guy@trl.telstra.com.au> wrote:
> 
> > susannah@gladstone.uoregon.edu wrote:
> >  
> > >  Interesting, because my first language is English and I am always
> > > grateful I don't have to learn it as an adult -- because it seems
> > > extraordinarily difficult!  All those verb tenses.  
> > 
> > Dead easy. French has something like 13 tenses (we used to be given
> > homework in primary school: conjugate such and such a verb in all
> > its tenses, and modes).

I think she was referring to not tenses, of which English has two, but all
those non-inflected moods and aspects that are expressed with auxiliaries
(can, may, should, shall, will, could, must, might, used to, would,
supposed to, going to, have, ought to, &c.).

> > And the pronunciation: standard French has 17 vowels (my own variety
> > has 22)
> > 
> English has at least 15 vowel phonemes, if my memory serves.

I count thirteen single vowel phonemes and three diphthongs:

/i I e E & @ V a u U o O A/ /aU aI OI/.

-Aaron J. Dinkin
Dr. Whom

