Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!harpo!ihnp4!inuxc!pur-ee!uiucdcs!uiuccsb!grass From: grass@uiuccsb.UUCP Newsgroups: net.nlang Subject: Re: Orphaned Response - (nf) Message-ID: <4927@uiucdcs.UUCP> Date: Mon, 16-Jan-84 22:38:49 EST Article-I.D.: uiucdcs.4927 Posted: Mon Jan 16 22:38:49 1984 Date-Received: Wed, 18-Jan-84 06:33:06 EST Lines: 31 #R:gatech:-180400:uiuccsb:10500015:000:1587 uiuccsb!grass Jan 16 10:42:00 1984 It never seemed to me that Russian was all that bad. The formation of verbs is pretty regular (with a few exceptions that have fairly consistent rules of their own). The biggest hassle is getting the difference between the imperfective and perfective straight, and that's really not that bad either. The difference is a lot like the difference between the preterate and imperfect in Spanish. Bulgarian is MUCH worse because it retained all the simple past tenses from Common Slavic as well as many forms of the compound pasts that are the only surviving past tenses in Russian (forms like "byl" and "chytal" are derived from what was a past active participle. Russian lost the helping verb, other Slavic languages didn't. See Czech.. ja jsem byla, or Serbo-croatian.. my jsmo byli). Add to this the fact that Bulgarian (and Macedonian) ALSO have the perfective, imperfective sets of verbs and you get a very difficult problem. A small consolation is that THOSE languages lost most of the case declention of the nouns (only personal pronouns decline). By the way, in Canadian French the simple past (passe simple) is an active tense used ORALLY, rather than just in writing as in "academy" French. They also use compound tenses built with avoir and etre in that form. Right now, Japanese wins my award for inscrutable verb systems. It's the only language I know that declines verbs on the basis of formality. Lots of verb forms with meanings that usually don't turn up as part of the verb in any language I have studied. (which includes Romance, Germanic and Slavic ones).