>>>>> "Dan" == Dan Sugalski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Dan> Dunno--the older a language is, the more regular it seems to
Dan> be. (The rough edges get worn off, I assume) While Latin had a
Dan> reasonably complex set of rules, it was more regular than
Dan> English. Japanese feels the same, though I'll grant I've little
Dan> enough experience with it that my impression might be wrong or
Dan> incomplete.
I'm fluent in Japanese (lived there for 6.5 years, married to a woman
who didn't speak English until we moved to New York), and I'd have to
say you are very wrong.
But, your impression is only natural, if your experience with the
language is limited. When you learn a new language, you start off by
learning its regularities. Only when you start to approach a more
advanced level of understanding do you begin to learn the really
twisted irregularities that are an inevitable side effect of centuries
of linguistic evolution.
Japanese doesn't have the perverse spelling rules of English, for
example, but it does have plenty of special cases and cultural
oddities. Enough so that I would not say it is "regular". More so
than English perhaps, given the relative cultural and geographic
isolation under which it evolved.
English, by comparison shows the effects of protracted foreign
occupation of English speaking peoples by conquerors who spoke a
foreign language. Japan, in contrast, has no "independence day"
because until 1945, they had never been invaded and conquered.
Even still, Japanese isn't immune to the effects of "foreign
influence". Most of the vocabulary for technology and science are
taken from English, and a number of Dutch and German terms have crept
into the vocabulary as well. But most of this was introduced in teh
last century, since the "Meiji Restoration" in the 19th century, when
Japan realized that thay had better start paying attention to the rest
of the world. The Dutch influence goes back a bit further, but it is
not that deep.
