So, I was talking to griffen.

[conuly]

He's apparently started to internalize ASL, which is just *so cool*, and I said it must be his "natural language". I just invented that to mean that this was easier for him to think in than many other languages, but it started me thinking - is it normal to have an internal cue towards a certain type of language structure - even when it's not your own?

Ages back, I started (but never finished, or even did very much with) a conlang that formed verbs from everything. Even though this never went anywhere, and I was done with it within a few days, since then I think things in terms of "bed-going" or "door-closing". It's just easier to say "I door-closed" than "I closed the door". Clearly, this isn't normal English structure. I'm a monolingual speaker (more's the pity...). So why do I find it easier to use this foreign construction? I shouldn't, should I? But I definitely do.

Comments

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

When I moved back to the United States after living in Germany, I spoke English but with German sentence structure.

Took a while to unlearn.

I don't get what you are saying about there being no nouns in Hopi. You have nouns in your example!

[acheron-hades.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's because it's in English — I don't know, but I suspect in Hopi, "water" is probably a word meaning "flowing" or "that which flows" or something like that. Similarly "bathtub" might be "for washing" or "for containing" or something like that (maybe with modifiers?). If you run into any Hopi speakers, I'd love to explore this in more depth..

[kibbles.livejournal.com]

http://keywords.oxus.net/archives/2004/08/21/whorf/

Now this site says they have no mass nouns, just individual ones...

http://www.native-languages.org/hopi.htm has a small SMALL list of words, some of which are nouns, and the person quoted in the first link, Whorf, is apparently NOT a language expert. http://www.xpdeveloper.com/xpdwiki/Wiki.jsp?page=HopiLanguage and not everyone is too keen on what he has to say about them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopi_language and lastly the wiki entry on it. I think this all stood out because my daughter did a project on them, and this didn't come up.

What was fantastic about doing her project was the resource we had. The Museum of the American Indian, which is free to get into, has a library that they are very generous with. You can walk in without an appointment, and use it, and they are very helpful there.

You know, next time I go I think I will stop in the libary and just ask. :D

[acheron-hades.livejournal.com]

Interesting links - thanks..

[conuly]

Love that museum - best public bathrooms in the city :)

Now, if I recall correctly (which I probably don't), Hopi has a polysynthetic structure, which leads to tons of compound words. Doesn't mean much, though.