Louis,
Ah, I see. So both German and Dutch are difficult ;-).
I didn't mean that in English we rely on simple words. Rather, that our grammar rules are so loose that we must rely on the sequence of words in a sentence to determine if a word is a noun, verb, object, or subject. I think (not really sure) in German and probably Dutch that there are modifiers for words to indicate if they are subject or object, so the order in which words are spoken may not be as important as in English. For example, in English we say, "I am taking her to the park". We cannot say "I her am taking the park to" as is perhaps possible (again perhaps, I'm in way over my head here) in some other more structured languages where the listener knows which words are subjects, objects or verbs from how the words are modified.
The idea being that German is a more precise language - which makes it more difficult to learn, but perhaps makes it easier to be clear about what one is trying to communicate.
Does that make any sense?
Maybe I just need to study German. I've learned a little French, Spanish and even Mandarin, but for some reason, even though my degree is in a science, I avoided German.
Ah, I see. So both German and Dutch are difficult ;-).
I didn't mean that in English we rely on simple words. Rather, that our grammar rules are so loose that we must rely on the sequence of words in a sentence to determine if a word is a noun, verb, object, or subject. I think (not really sure) in German and probably Dutch that there are modifiers for words to indicate if they are subject or object, so the order in which words are spoken may not be as important as in English. For example, in English we say, "I am taking her to the park". We cannot say "I her am taking the park to" as is perhaps possible (again perhaps, I'm in way over my head here) in some other more structured languages where the listener knows which words are subjects, objects or verbs from how the words are modified.
The idea being that German is a more precise language - which makes it more difficult to learn, but perhaps makes it easier to be clear about what one is trying to communicate.
Does that make any sense?
Maybe I just need to study German. I've learned a little French, Spanish and even Mandarin, but for some reason, even though my degree is in a science, I avoided German.