Newsgroups: sci.lang
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From: lilandbr@scn.org (Leland Bryant Ross)
Subject: Re: "Quality literature" in different languages?
Message-ID: <DyKurJ.EAB@scn.org>
Sender: news@scn.org
Reply-To: lilandbr@scn.org (Leland Bryant Ross)
Organization: Seattle Community Network
References: <52jjg7$gg5@gold.tc.umn.edu>  
Date: Tue, 1 Oct 1996 03:23:43 GMT
Lines: 48


Shane R Hoversten wrote:
>I was amazed at its [Cherokee's] relative impoverishment in expressive 
>power, the lack of pronouns or verb tenses, etc.
>	Anyway, this got me wondering what some of the more "rich" 
>languages are; ... I would say that Latin seems a much "richer" 
>language than English, for instance, with more opportunities for artistry 
>in varying word order because of the case system, its vastly superior 
>pronoun system, etc, although I am by no means an expert on Latin.  The 
>abundance of latin literature would seem to lend credence to that sort of 
>argument as well.

Granted, Latin has a pretty good array of relative, interrogative and 
especially demonstrative pronouns, but in the personal-pronoun department 
it's not particularly "rich", and doesn't even make much use of what it 
*has* (saying, e.g., "Odi et amo" when it *could* say the pronominally 
much wealthier "Eam (aut Te) odi ego et ego amo eam (aut te)"--pronominal 
wealth (and freedom of word order) at the expense of the poetry!).  And 
it doesn't even provide (whether in pronouns, conjugation or declension) 
for useful concepts like dual number (Greek at least has bit o' the ol' 
dual), s/he, or the distinction between inclusive and exclusive "we".

In any event, whatever enrichment Latin grammar and syntax afford the 
Latin writer, it comes at a price; each refinement of the pronominal or 
conjugational system reduces the writer's freedom and flexibility, and 
each increment of syntactic liberty creates potential ambiguity.

Rather little top-notch literature has been created in "good" Latin since 
the time of Augustine,
	in fact, in this century I would say original Esperanto literature,
	at least in the categories of published prose fiction and poetry,
	has surpassed Latin in both quantity and quality, though some of 
	its quantity *is* of surpassingly *low* quality!
despite the constant nurturing of the language by both church and 
academia until quite recently.

Cherokee, on the other hand, merely awaits its Plautus or its 
Catullus--or perhaps better, its Dante--to show what it can do.

				Liberi quivus nil neglegendum non beati,
				Hanc ob rem parentes sunt creati.
					(--ab Ogden Nash)

--
Liland Brajant ROS'    		"Intla yajuanti quinitzquise cohuame o intla
P O Box 30091      		quiise se pajyo, ax quinchihuilis tleno."
Seattle, WA 98103 Usono		
Tel. (206) 633-2434  		(Aj aj aj!  Liland krokodiledas!)
