On 15 December 2006 15:38, Alan McKinnon wrote: > According to German friends of mine, it not only does, but tries to > handle every possible case that could ever come up anywhere, anytime.
A quick case study. The adjective is "mager" (thin or skinny). Male base form comparative Nominative der magere Mann der magerere Mann Genitive des mageren Mannes des magereren Mannes Dative dem mageren Manne dem magereren Mann Accusative den mageren Mann den magereren Mann Female Nominative die magere Frau die magerere Frau Genitive der mageren Frau der magereren Frau Dative der mageren Frau der magereren Frau Accusative die magere Frau die magerere Frau Neuter Nominative das magere Kind das magerere Kind Genetive des mageren Kindes des magereren Kindes Dative dem mageren Kind dem magereren Kind Accusative das magere Kind das magerere Kind Well, it isn't all that bad, actually. But then again, imagine you have to do that in real time in speech. It can be very hard on your brain if you haven't grown up with it. All in all, there are things in German that are far worse than adjective. Like capitalising or verbs - regular verbs, that is. Maybe, I should change my signature soon. ;-) In his book "A Tramp Abroad", Mark Twain wrote a whole chapter about how difficult German was - and he went into much detail about verbs. Unfortunately, there isn't a single sentence with a good pun about it that qualifies for a signature. > > If you look at the rules of German grammar, you get a distinct feeling > that the designers of C++ tried their very best to emulate German in a > programming language. Alan, my South African brother, you are not talking about C++ but about Ada. C++ wasn't invented by a committee but by a single person. It's rather easy. If you stick to a couple of conventions (*not* rules) it's very readable even without comments. Ada, on the other hand,... Yes yes yes. Let's start a flamewar about programming languages. I love them. Better than SciFi. ;-) Uwe (who avoids perl and does almost everything either in C++ or bash scripting) -- Mark Twain: I rather decline two drinks than a German adjective. http://www.SysEx.com.na -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
