> > What do you think about invented languages such as Esperanto and Volapuk or even the almost-completely-regular Turkish, versus our own chaotic tongue? I personally like the irregularity of English, and would use "dreamt" over "dreamed" anytime, or "yclept" over "cleped," or "dove" over "dived." I like the Anglic forms much better than the Latinate, and much prefer "feckless" over "ineffectual."
> >
> > Now that I'm nowhere near where I began, I'll stop and leave it to you to reply however you may.
> >
> > gab"hmmm... no ideas"by
>
> I was just thinking about this very topic quite recently and thinking about how the English language has several words that mean very similar things and several words that mean several things !
>
> We have whole dictionaries dedicated to this (known as a thesaurus, but you all knew that).
>
> Although I like the simplicity that a contrived language creates, very subtle nuances of meaning can be produced in English that can't be created in other languages.
>
> ladada(Mmmmm... syntax)dada

I was also thinking about the subtle nuances of English, like the diference between "look at" and "watch". These are both sort of a visual "hear" and "listen to". When you look at something, you may not be thinking about it. Watching something is almost always associated with motion. If you are watching something, it's moving (watch the movie, watching the birds fly by, etc.). Looking at something is either looking at an unmoving thing or looking at something but not concentrating on it.

I also like created languages. I like the one I'm working on. It's insanely difficult, and would be even more so if I had continued with my original plan (hundreds of first person plural pronouns). It's loads of fun to create, and if you have the psychotic willpower to learn it, well, more power to you. I'm going to create hundreds of maniacally subtle differences in meaning between various words.

Back to English: I love English. I like Middle English enough to have started speaking "Street" in Middle English ("Yo, homey, how hangeth it in thine 'hood?"). I wish there were someplace on the Internet where I could learn it without having to actually pay money. I've gotten some of it figured out, but not nearly enough.
English has wonderful irregularities. I love the verbs that have the bizarre "I have _____" conjugations. Those rule. Sometimes I speak like that just so I can say "dreamt" instead of "dreamed". Language is something really special to me. It's hard to describe. I'm fascinated by it, though. The subtleties, the irregularities, the etymologies, the way we can, in English, bend the language and words we have to make what we mean known when we think of something we have no words for. I love the flexibility we've got. I love how we can take almost any word and trace the history of its development and find out the literal meaning, and also find words we never knew were related to it. Someone was saying in RinkChat yesterday (I believe it was Enigma) that "amateur" comes from a Latin word meaning "to love". He said that calling someone a professional used to be kind of an insult. It implied that you were just in it for the money. Amateur, according to Enigma, means someone who does what they do, not because they get paid, but because they love to do it.

In German class, while some people are eager to get out and go away and not have to take anymore of their stupid bloody notes, I tend to stay behind and ask questions. Half the time they're not even about what we've been learning, but of some unresolved issue about German that I've got. I can tell my teacher is as passionate about language as I am. He got all excited when I asked him about the imperative form of the verb "sein". I can tell he loves to teach German. He seems like me about it, in a way. It's actually somewhat rejuvenating to ask him questions after class.

I love languages. I love language. Some of you non-linguistic types may not understand any of it, or even why, but still...

-eric "Can't think of a good way to close that sentence" sleator
Thu 13 Apr A.D. 2000