Simpsons, German

[Terrance]

> 
> 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. 

Every possible one? 

German has all those tense and gender factors but on the plus
> side it has really straightforward phonetic spelling. 

OK, on the surface of things it seems fairly obvious. But do these
factors really make German a more complex language than Cantonese? 

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). 

Again, does having very long words make German a more complex language
than any other language, say Cantonese? 


Chomsky argues that all human languages can be thought of as composites
of a small number of elementary factors. Saying that German is more
complex than Cantonese because of word length or that it's easier to
learn than English because its phonetics are  more rigidly developed,
seems to contradict Chomsky's argument.