| ▲ | TZubiri 2 hours ago | |
Right, and we descend from amphibians, but we diverged quite a lot. I took a look into german, it seems that their case system is much more stable than latin, based on suffixes mostly, and most words having the same form for many cases. Why genders or specific declensions exist? Being a native spanish speaker I can say: - Error correcting code: If a gender or number doesn't match, you can reparse what you heard, or ask for clarification. - Proof of consistent thought: Forces to think ahead in sentences, you can't just make things up as you go, if you used an article early in a sentence it's because you already know what you are referring to. If someone can't even match their genders or numbers, you can pretty much discard what they are saying, or surmise they are intoxicated. Consider how basic autopredict would fail and instantly be detected in spanish, while not necessarily so in english. As for latin declensions: - Classism: I don't think the purpose of language is always to increase communication, I think that a high bar for communicating was placed, no doubt there existed simpler languages that could have reached more penetration, but I believe that the incredible amount of cases serves as a test of memorization, a display of mental virtue which one must pass through in order to be worthy of communicating. It would not doubt be a more extreme form of proof of consistent thought, but I imagine it would be much more notable, it would be easy for a roman citizen to detect a non citizen or a slave by how they talk based on their lack of schooling, maybe they couldn't even form complete sentences to collude, they could just be limited to saying yes/no. | ||
| ▲ | andoando 2 hours ago | parent [-] | |
My native language is Armenian which also has cases, no definite word order, and word endings, but no genders. I think cases are great. Latin sucks cause it has 3 genders and neuter has like 3 different forms, each changing the word endings. The system overall is great, its the inconsistency that makes it difficult. In english, you still have to denote the intent behind the decelerations somehow. https://latindiscussion.org/attachments/declensions-1-jpg.24... To everything else you said: I think language develops more naturally without such intent. | ||