On Tue, 8 Jan 2008, Peter F Brown wrote:
> No-one captures it better than Mark Twain:
> "Surely there is not another language that is so slipshod and
> systemless, and so slippery and elusive to the grasp. One is washed
> about in it, hither and thither, in the most helpless way; and when at
> last he thinks he has captured a rule which offers firm ground to take
> a rest on amid the general rage and turmoil of the ten parts of
> speech, he turns over the page and reads, 'Let the pupil make careful
> note of the following exceptions.'" (01)
IANAL*, but it seems to me Twain confuses complexity with lack of
systematicity. There is *complexity* in German due to the combinatorial
explosion of rules generated by genders and cases. But the rules
themselves, jointly, strike me as exceedingly systematic. (02)
Chris Menzel (03)
*I Am Not A Linguist :-) (04)
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