Simpsons, German

[Kent Mueller]

Well, We have the babble stage of infancy when a child makes every possible noise known to human language, as if the
brain is programming for any eventuality in that area. German has all those tense and gender factors but on the plus
side it has really straightforward phonetic spelling. Then it also has incredibly long words that if translated, would
come out to be "the chief manufacturing engineer on the second shift at the tractor factory in Gdansk" all one word, no
kidding, something like that (read it in Ripley's Believe It Or Not, once). Finno-Hungarian (Uro-Hungarian ?) is a
language family of its own, just those two, though there's, I think, some suspicion it might tie into or grow out of one
of the "Ur" languages of Europe, otherwise extinct. It's one of those mysteries right up there with the anomalies of
blood-type common only to the Basques... 

Visit KM art's web site at http://www.execpc.com/~artkm/

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>From: Terrance <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
>Cc: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: Simpsons, German
>Date: Fri, Nov 7, 2003, 12:18 PM
>

>
>>And well, of course... German is without any doubt one of the most difficult languages. 
>
>What makes German any more or less difficult than any other language? 
>
>Depends on lots of things, right? 
>
>For example, German infants learn German at about the same pace as
>French infants learn French. Don't they? 
>
>And, while English  phonetics are more difficult than Italian
>phonetics,  native speakers manage to learn English phonetics. Some L2
>learners (and age is a factor here too) have great difficulty with
>English phonetics and some don't. 
>
>Complicated stuff, language. 
>
>un en der able 
>
>door. 
>
>door? 
>
>Yes, un en DOOR able
>
>U your un en door able
>
>V your va lore able
>
>W 
>
>and X me to love two
>
>Y
>
>Be cauzzz be cau zzzz  be cauzzzzzzzz of the adorable things you do 
>because
>