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Etaoin Shrdlu
Guest
Surely that wouldn't be that exceptional in German. In fact, it's more or less standard, at least when people are trying to sound impressive.
Is it really dead?
- Thread starter unlibrobrujo
- Start date
My mom told me about how her German teacher in university had challenged them all to render the English sentence "It could have been done by me" into German. I can't remember what her solution was and since it's been over 15 years since my last German course, I'm not going to try; but it was something along those lines.
What, seriously? Perhaps I just never went far enough in German. In any case I can't remember any sentences so mixed-up as the one I just posted.
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Etaoin Shrdlu
Guest
It would be a tad artificial, but I'm sure they're out there. I'll see if I can dig up some examples after settling the soup question.
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Etaoin Shrdlu
Guest
I suppose that is, technically, a soup question. But not one that I'd attempt to answer, as it's unlikely you're asking for a definition.
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Etaoin Shrdlu
Guest
Well, maybe there aren't the extreme examples that have been used in the discussion of (non-existent) embedded sentences: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_embedding
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Etaoin Shrdlu
Guest
As it's impossible to tell without further elaboration whether that means 'I was able to do it' or 'it's possible that I did it', I can cry off this one.
As I recall, the former.
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Etaoin Shrdlu
Guest
In that case, I'm going for es hätte von mir gemacht werden können. Only two infinitives, child's play.
A dead language is one that doesn't have any native speakers anymore, which is true to Latin. But is isn't an extinct language, one that's spoken by nobody anymore, like Akkadian.
It's sad that the use of Latin is declining today in favour of English as Latin has many advantages over it, like a more sophisticated grammar and diplomatic neutrality while it doesn't bring language imperialism and at least to me, it sounds much better.
It's sad that the use of Latin is declining today in favour of English as Latin has many advantages over it, like a more sophisticated grammar and diplomatic neutrality while it doesn't bring language imperialism and at least to me, it sounds much better.
Thou meanst that Latin lacks words for modern concepts, like works of technology that weren't invented in Antiquity? Well, as far as I know that was one reason which triggered the decline of Latin because during the Renaissance period, the humanists made people use the Classical Latin of Cicero and Caesar instead the established Middle Latin from the Medieval Ages. A language evolves to fit the circumstances in which the people who use it live, this was taken away from Latin and so it started to loose popularity. Though, we can just created neologisms like in "New Latin". For example, a spaceship is called "astronavis" (composite word of astrum and navis, star and ship), while the word for plane is "aeroplanum" and "bomba atomica" for atomic bomb (they just latinized the established English words).
Neologisms can be created, yes, but doing so for all modern (not only technological but also political, financial, etc.) concepts, and having everyone agree on them so that this half-new language could function as a lingua franca everywhere a lingua franca is needed, would be quite a hassle. I'm not saying it's impossible, but just a hassle, and is it worth the trouble since English is already available and functional?
There's Esperanto as well.
However, it did not attract mainstream attention. Two million "native" speakers is far from mainstream.
However, it did not attract mainstream attention. Two million "native" speakers is far from mainstream.
The international lingua franca should be Georgian, naturally.
Vi pravas, sinjoro!