Yes, but position within the sentence and context usually gives the meaning away.
For example, ktb could mean 'books' (kutub) or 'he wrote' (kataba), but kataba would usually come at the beginning of a sentence and kutub would usually be modified with a personal pronoun (kutubka, your books) or with an adjective (kutub jadidah, new books), or with the definite article (al-kutub, the books).
PS - Roots can be modified by consonants too, and not just vowels.
If we say that C = a consonant of the root (in Arabic 90% of words are formed from three consonants, KTB, QWL, SJD, SLM, etc.)
KTB = things to do with writing
SJD = things to do with bowing down
SLM = things to do with peace
Inserting short 'a' vowels between each root consonant, gives you the perfect (or past tense) verb in the 3rd person singular masculine, or 'he'. So, KaTaBa (he wrote), SaJaDa (he bowed down), etc.
But adding a ma/mu to the start gives the place/person who does the thing. So maKTaB (place of writing = office), maSJiD (place of bowing down = mosque), and muSLiM (person who is peaceful = Muslim).
There are many, many more patterns, but you get the idea. All very logical.
CaCaCa = perfect of the thing (past tense, 3rd masc. sg)
yaCCvC = imperfect of the thing (present tense, 3rd masc. sg)
maCCvC = place/person of the thing
CaCiiC = adjective of the thing
'aCCaC = comparative/superlative of the thing (bigger, best, etc)
maktab is office. maktabah is library. kaatib is writer.
kaatib (from the pattern CaaCiC, is the active participle, i.e. -ing words in English). so kaatib is 'masculine-writing-thing' = 'writer'. kaatibah would be a feminine-writing-thing.
But you could also say 'ana kaatib, meaning I'm writing, or I'm going to write.
>>69 Pidgin languages like Swahili
swahili isn't a pidgin dipshit
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Anonymous2011-03-01 4:01
probably chinese because it hardly has any grammar at all.
What do people mean when they say that chinese has no grammar at all? >>16? Or there's something more?
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Anonymous2011-03-01 15:49
>>73
I'm not >>16 but go torrent the Michel Thomas Chinese course
there's very little grammar at all, no conjugation
for I am a man, you say "I to be man"
>>74 there's very little grammar at all, no conjugation
That's like saying a house "doesn't have walls" cos the panelling is wood instead of bricks.
Grammar is the ruleset that defines how words are to be put together to form a sentence. Conjugations is just one element of such a ruleset, just like bricks is one thing you can cover a wall with. A wall isn't any less a wall without them, just as grammar isn't any less grammar without conjugations.
FYI: Chinese grammar doesn't conjugate verbs for the simple reason that there are other ways of marking things like time and subject/object. Chinese is a Subject-Verb-Object language (like English), so it'd say "I see you" like English. Difference is that "I saw you", "I've seen you" and "I'll be seeing you" (and, for that matter "I'm looking at you") still translates as "I see you"; context takes care of the rest. And even in those cases where it doesn't, there are other ways to take up the slack. Like, say, "Yesterday I go town. I see you, you ride bus". A language like Chinese will prefer this kind of sentences rather than, say, "I went to town yesterday and saw you taking the bus".
>>80
Isn't it one of those languages that use punctuation marks as phonemes, thereby sabotaging such insignificant little details like, say, actual punctuation? How very logical.
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Anonymous2011-03-20 21:18
>>74 there's very little grammar at all, no conjugation
That's like saying a house "doesn't have walls" cos the panelling is wood instead of bricks.
Grammar is the ruleset that defines how words are to be put together to form a sentence. Conjugations is just one element of such a ruleset, just like bricks is one thing you can cover a wall with. A wall isn't any less a wall without them, just as grammar isn't any less grammar without conjugations.
FYI: Chinese grammar doesn't conjugate verbs for the simple reason that there are other ways of marking things like time and subject/object. Chinese is a Subject-Verb-Object language (like English), so it'd say "I see you" like English. Difference is that "I saw you", "I've seen you" and "I'll be seeing you" (and, for that matter "I'm looking at you") still translates as "I see you"; context takes care of the rest. And even in those cases where it doesn't, there are other ways to take up the slack. Like, say, "Yesterday I go town. I see you, you ride bus". A language like Chinese will prefer this kind of sentences rather than, say, "I went to town yesterday and saw you taking the bus". Still a structured sentence, just different structure. Structure nonetheless.
>>80
Isn't it one of those languages that use punctuation marks as phonemes, thereby sabotaging such insignificant little details like, say, actual punctuation? How very logical.
WTF? First the server tells me nothing happened (even after I reloaded the page repeatedly, and then closed the tab and then re-clicked the link just to make sure).
So I post again, THEN suddenly it's there, as a double-post! What gives?
(in case you're wondering; I don't like double-posts, they kinda make you look like an attention-whore. Obviously this is how they happen, some sort of server/network error...)
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Anonymous2011-03-20 22:40
>>83
lol thats exactly how I started the "ahh, I'm currently studying the language of the beaners" thing a while ago
No, you can actually learn it in high school as an optional class, at least where I live (Yucatán) but regarding the topic, mayan isn't very logical, it has a very strange grammar and rules.
For the most logical AND complete language, I'd say mexican spanish takes the prize.
Do there exist REAL languages with no irregularities? (Not counting Esperanto or Lojban or Klingon or any of that bullshit.)
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Anonymous2011-04-22 0:09
Well... Japanese only has 3(?) irregular verbs... and pretty strict rules for everything else. Only problem is that when it's actually spoken, people omit about EVERYTHING from their sentences... including the subject.
It could be Chinese... Even their outdated writing system is logical due to being hieroglyphic. Fuck tonal languages though.
What's that clicking noise language that some niggers talk with?
The writing systems is one of the more logical parts...
It has two phonetic alphabets, one specifically for foreign loan words and the other for japanese words and grammar structures...
and a hieroglyphic alphabet (pronounced in speech with the japanese phonetic alphabet) which has the added function of telling words apart that sound or would otherwise appear the same. Makes a lot of sense, unless you're too lazy to learn it... in which case your argument is still invalid.
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Anonymous2011-04-23 0:58
>>96 three writing systems logical
no
plus don't the characters have like 3 readings? you're such a fucking weeaboo you can't see how bad of a language japanese really is
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Anonymous2011-04-23 13:14
I'd say something like Chinese, one symbol, one meaning one sound. No grammatical number or case system minimal conjugation. Although I like the SOUND of Greek, it's pretty complex.
It makes it so there's 0 possibility for confusion when reading the language. Even if the word sounds the same as another word, the hieroglyphic character used to write it won't be the same.
As I said though, actual spoken Japanese is fucked.
Also, asian chicks are the best kind =/
Except vietnamese... fuck those bitches.
>>39
The writing system in Arabic is very simple. It's just 28 letters. The tricky part is learning how to join them, but even kindergarten children learn them in a matter of weeks. Practice makes perfect. "Everything looks the same" for the first while, but you'll get used to them quickly.
You can't compare the difficulty of mastering some 28 letters in 4 or less different shapes (making them about 80 combinations) to mastering ~2000 characters with multiple readings like in Japanese. Now that is overwhelming.
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Anonymous2011-04-23 23:22
Esperanto
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noko2011-04-26 11:38
I'd have to second Japanese assuming we're leaving out Esperanto.
No genders, few/no irregularities (japanese has 2 irregular verbs and 1 irregular adjective in the entire language) plus the grammar itself is very logical.
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Anonymous2011-04-26 11:47
>>103
asian chicks are fugly
white bitches are best
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Anonymous2011-04-26 16:01
I think chinese is the most logical because they had to simplify as the most as possible their grammar.
I'm learning chinese and sentences are very simple : no verb conjugation, etc.
Japanese is the second and it's also sexier to pronnunce.
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Anonymous2011-04-28 8:55
Japanese is not the most logical.
Yes it's regualr, but japanese as spoken by Japanese people is very contextual -- meaning that people when speaking will leave things out and just sort of expect you to know what's going on. There are different ways to speak Japanese if you are a girl or a boy, high ranking or low, and then it will depend on who you are speaking to as well. The idea of changing your numbers based on what you are counting is pants on head retarded, and the particals are confusing as hell. But yeah, logical and easy for nonspeakers to follow -- if by follow you mean watching tenticle porn in the original Japanese language.
Chinese is pretty simple to follow, though again you have the numbers varying by what you are counting, though it's usually a question of adding a word after the number, which is better, though I don't see the need.
I'd say Chinese, Danish, English, Spanish or Italian, French, Japanese, Korean, German, Latin, Greek, Russian, and beyond that, don't bother, it's not logical.
But of inventeds, I'd say Glossa, Lojban and last but not least Esperanto.
>>109
>japanese as spoken by Japanese people is very contextual -- meaning that people when speaking will leave things out and just sort of expect you to know what's going on.
And what's wrong with that? There's no point in resetting the context after every sentence. Think about it like a state machine.
>There are different ways to speak Japanese if you are a girl or a boy, high ranking or low, and then it will depend on who you are speaking to as well.
And what's wrong with that?
>The idea of changing your numbers based on what you are counting is pants on head retarded, and the particals are confusing as hell.
I agree.
>Chinese, Danish, English, Spanish or Italian, French, Japanese, Korean, German, Latin, Greek, Russian
French, logical? What the fuck have you smoked?!
>>110
>>The idea of changing your numbers based on what you are counting is pants on head retarded, and the particals are confusing as hell.
>I agree.
Sorry, I only meant that I agreed with the first part of your sentence. The particle system itself if awesome and very logical.
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Anonymous2011-04-28 11:55
>>110
>japanese as spoken by Japanese people is very contextual -- meaning that people when speaking will leave things out and just sort of expect you to know what's going on.
And what's wrong with that? There's no point in resetting the context after every sentence. Think about it like a state machine.
>There are different ways to speak Japanese if you are a girl or a boy, high ranking or low, and then it will depend on who you are speaking to as well.
And what's wrong with that?
Not who you were responding to but neither of those is logical you moron