Is Python the Esperanto of programming languages?

Isaac To kkto at csis.hku.hk
Fri Mar 21 13:14:55 EST 2003


>>>>> "Steven" == Steven Taschuk <staschuk at telusplanet.net> writes:

    Steven> It is generally true that (Mandarin) Chinese lacks such things,
    Steven> with some qualifications.

    Steven> 1: There is a word (men) which can be used after a pronoun to
    Steven> make it plural.

I won't call it a "plural form" at all---I'd say it's a separate word that
expresses the meaning of "more than one".  But not just that: most of the
time it really means "people in general", i.e., most people.

    Steven> (I have heard that some younger speakers have started using this
    Steven> pluralizer on other words as well.)  If memory serves, there's a
    Steven> different word (xie) which can be used to pluralize "this" and
    Steven> "that".

It is much more similar to an inflection.  It has the same position as the
"measure word" that you describe next.

    Steven> The set of such words is fairly small (a couple dozen or so, I
    Steven> think); my teacher called them "measure words".  This could be
    Steven> described as analogous to agreement between adjectives and nouns
    Steven> in inflecting languages;

    Steven> it is conceivable that they could become suffixes on the number
    Steven> word in some far-future version of Mandarin, which would thereby
    Steven> become more of an inflecting language.

I'd say it's much more similar to prepositions in English, where words form
groups rather than is used in isolation.  Just like that non-native speakers
have difficulty understanding and memorizing prepositions, non-native
speakers have difficulty understanding and memorizing "measure words".  Just
like that the preposition actually give some "life" to the verb ("catch up"
might give me some sort of upwards feeling), the "measure words" also give
some "life" to the Chinese nouns ("fish" have the measure word which
identify it as something long rather than flat or spherical).

It is far from an inflection, however.  In particular, every noun has one
(or, if there are a few different "life" of the noun, a few) "measure word",
and you cannot mix them up---just like you cannot say "catch down a
meeting".

Regards,
Isaac.




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