Grammatical Complexity

[Serpent]

b) the number of cases (which isn't a measure of complexity in my opinion).

I used to think it's about the number of tenses (English has 16)

How many does Russian have? Just out of curiosity?

We're usually taught that it's three - past, present and future, but technically perfective verbs have only past and future, whereas imperfective ones form the future with to be+infinitive. Slavic languages generally don't have that many tenses, apart from Bulgarian. Though it's more common to have more than one kind of past tense it seems.

Here's a nice link about English tenses, btw. Though I was taught that "to be going to" is simply an expression, not a separate tense.

[Jar-Ptitsa]

I thought that English had 3 tenses (past, present, future) and that the others were aspects.

I agree that cases seems so difficult to accurately use that the people think it means that the language's grammar is complex. for example, this is why German feel so muhc more complex than Dutch: German has 4 cases, but Dutch hasn't cases at all. But those are the little details. I think that if you make a mistake with the case, normally, it doesn't mean that they won't udnerstand or misinterpret you and you can understand it / the other person.

For me, the more persons for whom you must conjugate the more complex for each verb, then connected with this the formality and contexts, also the extra expressions or words for the politeness. Especially on a forum, for example the old htlal, they thought that I was rude when I didn't intend this at all. One time (the admin asked me to not say the name) banned me becuase of my "tone", but I didn't know I had used any tone, it was some years ago and I was about 17 and didn't know so much about the extra words. of course, this is also becuase we are not visible, I mean you can see only some text. Also, in my opinion, the moderators on an international languages forum MUST be multilingual and understand the difficulty of speaking or writing in a foreign langauge.

Editted to remove the name (by vogeltje)

[tarvos]

We're usually taught that it's three - past, present and future, but technically perfective verbs have only past and future, whereas imperfective ones form the future with to be+infinitive. Slavic languages generally don't have that many tenses, apart from Bulgarian. Though it's more common to have more than one kind of past tense it seems.

Here's a nice link about English tenses, btw. Though I was taught that "to be going to" is simply an expression, not a separate tense.

English has many tenses but they are nearly all periphrastic constructions, and rather weakly dependent on morphology. This means that the actual amount of forms that you have to learn is very small (+ing, +ed, +s), and some modal verbs. Effectively the real kicker isn't the verb conjugation but remembering all the irregular verb forms such as cut cut cut, cost cost cost, shine shone shone, read read read etc

Russian has 3 actual tenses - just one isn't applicable to the perfective aspect. And technically the perfective aspect doesn't have a future morphologically speaking - it's of course a present - it just semantically implies the future. The morphology is still that of the present tense.

[tarvos]

We're usually taught that it's three - past, present and future, but technically perfective verbs have only past and future, whereas imperfective ones form the future with to be+infinitive. Slavic languages generally don't have that many tenses, apart from Bulgarian. Though it's more common to have more than one kind of past tense it seems.

Here's a nice link about English tenses, btw. Though I was taught that "to be going to" is simply an expression, not a separate tense.

English has many tenses but they are nearly all periphrastic constructions, and rather weakly dependent on morphology. This means that the actual amount of forms that you have to learn is very small (+ing, +ed, +s), and some modal verbs. Effectively the real kicker isn't the verb conjugation but remembering all the irregular verb forms such as cut cut cut, cost cost cost, shine shone shone, read read read etc

And technically the perfective aspect doesn't have a future morphologically speaking - it's of course a present - it just semantically implies the future. The morphology is still that of the present tense.

[galaxyrocker]

Look what happens to a pidgin when it turns into the native language of the children. It becomes a Creole with syntax. Creolization is fascinating. Eventually you end up with a mess like English

Two things:

1) Not all creoles come from Pidgins. In fact, it seems likely the number that do is a minority.

2) English isn't a creole. Not saying you meant that, but it's a common enough misconception and could be inferred from what you did say.

[sfuqua]

I'm not sure what you mean by "creole". The definition we used in grad school and which you find on the web is, a mother tongue formed from the contact of two languages through an earlier pidgin stage.
"a Portuguese-based Creole"

Are there languages that are called creoles which did not develop this way? Sure.

Did many of the processes involved in pidginization and creolization take place in the development of English? Absolutely.

It all depends on definitions.

[sfuqua]

This topic, although completely appropriate for a language forum, makes me nervous. Overseas I listened to some very colonial sounding discussions, usually from some bozo who only speaks English, based on a version of the Whorf Sapir hypothesis. "The children who speak X have late homework because their language lacks the wonderful English future perfect tense. They have simple ideas which match their simple language. They have a simple language because they only think simple thoughts."

Again, nobody here said anything like that.

[Serpent]

English has many tenses but they are nearly all periphrastic constructions, and rather weakly dependent on morphology. This means that the actual amount of forms that you have to learn is very small (+ing, +ed, +s), and some modal verbs. Effectively the real kicker isn't the verb conjugation but remembering all the irregular verb forms such as cut cut cut, cost cost cost, shine shone shone, read read read etc

I found these much easier than actually choosing between the many tenses/structures.

[Via Diva]

They have simple ideas which match their simple language.

While this sounds utterly arrogant and disrespectful, one has to admit that different languages present different ways to express oneself. I end up feeling like three different persons while using the three languages I know the best simultaneously. I just don't judge whether any of these persons is smarter (and there is a difference!).

[sfuqua]

When I speak English I always miss the inclusive/exclusive and singular/dual/plural distinctions in Samoan.

In Samoan, when you say, "Let's go." you can mean many things. Everything changes based on the first person plural pronoun you use.

Let's (you and me alone) go.
Let's (you and me and others) go.
Let's (me and somebody else, you're not invited) go.
Let's (me and a bunch of folks, not you) go.

If you talk to a woman at a party, and you say "Ta o." it has a completely different implications than if you say "matou o."