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AJC's point was that people are resistant to change. That's exactly why such a transition would be unthinkable, because *any* forced change to fundamental grammar would be unthinkable.
<< However, German still preserves this feature fully as in 'Mein Bruder, **der** ist alt, kann nicht schell laufen' (My brother who is old cannot run fast), versus 'Meine Brueder **die** sind alt koennen nicht schnell laufen' (My brothers who are old cannot run fast).
I saw a couple of posts on another thread stating that German was more "elegant than English" and "sharper and clearer". Perhaps this is one of the reasons why. >>
I still fail to see what's more elegant, sharper, or clearer about requiring agreement of relative pronouns. It seems to me all it would do is introduce an unnecessary complication. My own idea of an elegant language is one that reduces agreement, not adds to it.
- Kef
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<< It seems to me all it would do is introduce an unnecessary complication. My own idea of an elegant language is one that reduces agreement, not adds to it.
>>
Perhaps then English Reformation should be in the other direction,,,remove the remaining unnecessary inflections like 3rd person singluar -s ("he make" instead of "he makes")...
Conform all strong/irregular verbs to regular: I rided (rode), I seed (saw), I have beed (been),,,
Spelling still needs work though...
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You should see Japanese. It has no agreement of any kind that I can think of except that negative nouns like "nothing" must take negative verbs. There are no articles, nouns do not inflect for number or gender, and verbs, although they can inflect in myriad ways, do not inflect for person or number. You would think this makes things vague enough, but Japanese takes things even further: words are omitted whenever possible, which is often, and it's often the case in Japanese that the best way to say something is indirectly, especially if it's at all unpleasant. I've heard that Japanese uses fixed phrases a lot... if so, I wouldn't be surprised if it's to make up for the apparent lack of redundancy in their language.
- Kef
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