OBSCURE AND OBTRUSIVE TITLE

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Is that even a real word?
Yes. But, like I said, it's a corner case. It's quite hard to improvise because it packs a lot of information and it's somewhat of a tongue-twister.

Would ["ensalsalemelo"] also be a word too then?
No, but "ensálsemelo" or "avigránemelo" would. Some nouns already have verbal forms and don't need a suffix.
It's worth noting that "ensálsale" is already a complete sentence ("cover him in sauce" or "cover [something of his that must appear later in the sentence] in sauce") with an object suffix ("-le", male third person singular) applied. Also adding "-me" would be illegal.
What about their system for looking a word up in the dictionary? Or their system for typing on a keyboard? Do they have keyboards with 10,000 keys?
With pinyin is quite easy: the keyboard is like firedraco said; the dictionary is sorted like the latin alphabet with a table at the beginning giving the pinyin transliteration of each hanzi

BTW Chinese has a quite simple grammar
I had heard that before, about chinese having simple grammer. Like it doesn't have past or future tenses etc. Is Japanese like that too? Any reason why an american might want to learn japanese or chinese, job-wise? International Communication is so important these days that I don't think its wise to leave all the language-learning to non-americans. But just out of curiosity, those of you that speak more than 1 language, how much has learning a relatively obscure language helped your wallet? (For the case of chinese and japanese, although not obscure per say, i'd say they are obscure in the context of westerners learning these langauges due to their perceived difficulty. )

Once again, how did we get on this subject again?
Idk, but I'm liking these programming jokes.

How did the programmer die in the shower?

He read the shampoo bottle instructions: Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
He read the shampoo bottle instructions
did that cause a bottleneck?
:^)
Are you even trying? I mean, I laughed... but... never mind.
I had heard that before, about chinese having simple grammer. Like it doesn't have past or future tenses etc. Is Japanese like that too?


Japanese has past and present tense, but it doesn't have a future tense. It also generally doesn't distinguish from one <-> multiple though (like person <-> people).
What? How can you not have a future tense? How would you say, "I will go shopping"?
Yeah, there are some things that are difficult to say, but generally you just use the present tense for that and the context tells you.
chrisname wrote:
How would you say, "I will go shopping"?

I guess you could say something like:

If today was tomorrow I would have said "I went shopping yesterday"
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@firedraco,
Right. That's not simple at all.

@m4ster r0shi,
If there's no future tense, you couldn't say that(!)
I suppose "later I go shopping" would be pretty clear..
But there wouldn't be a "later". That's future tense.
Wikipedia wrote:
Later may refer to:

* A period of time in the future
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later is an adverb. I'm pretty sure 'no future tense' means that verbs don't have a future tense. It would be somewhat silly to expect, that Japanese fail to understand the concept of future itself..
But it'd be really funny.

Teacher: "In English, there is a tense known as the "future tense", which is where people attempt to predict the future."
Student: "KILL THE ENGLISH! THEIR SORCERY MUST NOT GO UNPUNISHED!" (this particular student is a Catholic from the 16th Century).
firedraco wrote:
Japanese has past and present tense, but it doesn't have a future tense. It also generally doesn't distinguish from one <-> multiple though (like person <-> people).

It's just that the present/future tense use the same verb form, so you have to use context to figure it out.
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Right. That's not simple at all.


How so?
How could you say "I will go shopping" in present tense? "Tomorrow, I am going shopping"? That seems so... verbose. Though, I suppose English is the language that brought us such gems as "couldn't've" (which I have used before).
I don't believe double contraction is legal. It doesn't even sound aesthetically pleasing.

Another possibility would be to treat the past tense as a future tense if the verb is next to an adverb that references an event that hasn't occurred yet. E.g. "I went tomorrow." Such a construction would require ordinal auxiliaries to prevent ambiguity. E.g. "I went at midnight" has two equally valid meanings.
chrisname, I feel you're somehow overly aggressive towards English language. From the perspective of someone who doesn't live in an English-speaking country, I should say, it's really simple.

Though of course it's easier to judge the language you've been speaking your whole life. I'd like to see someone say that their language has simple and logical grammar.. (like that could ever happen)

Getting back to the original (since the 2'nd page), I only know Lithuanian and English.
I had been taught (but not 'had been learning') French at school for ~5 years (don't remember). Is suppose one cannot learn a language without intention to apply it..
I am considering learning Hebrew, but apparently it's even more painful than Lithuanian, so I might drop that idea. I might go for Japanese..
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