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To: tero kuittinen who wrote (2176)	9/15/1999 1:24:00 PM
From: Wyätt Gwyön	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 34857

OT...maxytoksi (to the max--hah!) Basically nobody can learn the language after turning three. But it makes learning English a snap. Somehow, native speakers of all rare languages (Finnish, Hungarian, Korean, Basque--the Devil's Tongue) seem to think that their language is inherently difficult and that the most commonly spoken languages are simple. I think from a linguistics perspective, that doesn't hold up too well. Usually, complexity in one area of the language is compensated for by simplicity in another. This applies both to syntax and phonology. For example (and knowing nothing in particular about your language), in the case of the word you gave (kahdenneksikymmenenneksikahdeksanneksi), I would say, that's a very long word (complex), but the sounds look relatively simple. In fact, you could say it is the simplicity (lack of distinctiveness) of the syllables which necessitates long words, or you could say it is the length of the words which allows the individual syllables to be relatively indistinct. Contrast this with Chinese, where each morpheme (unit of linguistic meaning) is one syllable (simple syntax), but each syllable is made highly distinctive by the introduction of five to nine (or more) different tonal variations. A different way of accomplishing the same thing. What does Finnish have--five, maybe seven vowels (I'd guess the umlauts represent distinct vowels as opposed to allophones, but don't know as I haven't heard studied the language)--compared to 13-14 distinct vowels in some dialects of English, plus the rare retroflex "r" and the "th" labiodental fricative set in English which most foreigners have trouble with, and the rare mixture of aspirant and non-aspirant as complementary allophonic consonants (compare the "p" sound of "pin" vs. "spin"--two different sounds for the same letter in allophonic variation). Can't say anything about the syntax of your example as I don't know how to parse it. However, I'd still maintain that English is a "snap" for the Northern Europeans because of their exposure to it, not because English is inherently "simpler" (although the ubiquity of English exposure from an early age probably makes it seem like a snap). To put it another way--if Finnish was the language of the US and the lingua franca of the world, and if only Finns spoke English, I believe the exact reverse situation would obtain. JMHO, Greg