ellen@ucla-cs.UUCP (10/26/84)
BOY! Poster of "Language Deficiencies"! You really make my blood boil! (high flame, i guess :-> ) Deficient, indeed! What a `linguo-centrist' you are! There are many parts of speech (whatever linguists may call them) in other languages, which are missing in English! This does not indicate a deficiency in English, merely (merely?) cultural differences, different foci indicated within the language (a famous and controversial example being the ways of describing snow in Inuit languages (that's Eskimo, for those who don't know)). I'm no linguist, but i've studied French, German, Chinese, and Indonesian. (no, i'm only fluent in French and Indonesian (and English, obviously(?)).) Neither Indonesian nor Chinese languages conjugate verbs, but, as was pointed out in a previous posting, context will indicate the tense. English, for example, has no third person singular, non-sex specific, with which to refer to people (or animals, for that matter) in a general way. Indonesian (and other related languages, such as those of the Philippines) has no third person singular which indicates the sex of the person in question. Which is the deficient language? It depends on what you are used to, and what you feel necessary to express (culturally determined, for the most part).