On Sat, 16 Jun 2012 07:32:23 +0200, Tim Williams <tijawi@gmail.com> wrote:
Thomas Yazbeck <tyazbeck@comcast.net> wrote:I mean people who live in multi-story buildings, wear actual clothes (not loincloths), have electricity, as opposed to primitive men like those in Africa or South America (jungle hunter-gatherers). English and other widely-spoken languages use much fewer sounds than many primitive languages (such as those used by American Indians), which are sometimes rather complicated.This is satire, right?
I surely hope so. But if it isn't, a few examples: Estonian (you know, Estonia, full of multi-story buildings) has twenty-six diphtongs, Hungarian (Hungary, country full of fully clothed people) uses a vocal harmony system that will scare the crap out of you, and anyone looking for linguistic simplicity in Chinese is up for a hard search indeed.
ILja