All languages have the same purpose – to communicate
thoughts- and yet they achieve this single aim in a multiplicity of ways. It
appears there is no feature of grammar or syntax that is indispensable or
universal.
The ways of dealing with matters of numbers, tense,
case, gender and the like are very different from one tongue to the next. In
Russian, nouns can have up to twelve
inflections and adjectives as many as sixteen. In English adjectives
have just one invariable form.
Almost all languages change. A rare exception is
written Icelandic, which has changed so little that modern Icelanders can read
sagas written a thousand years ago. In English by contrast the change has been
much more dramatic.
Languages are not respecters of frontiers. If you drew
a map of Europe based on languages it would bear little resemblance to a
conventional map.
There is also the case of some neighbouring countries
where languages are not so distinct as we are sometimes led to believe. Spanish
and Portuguese are closely enough related that the two can read each other’s
newspapers and books though they have more difficulty understanding speech.
Billy Bryson, Mother
Tongue, abridge and adapted
1 comentário:
This translation is not as hard as i thought. Easy thats the adjective that descrives the translation.
But althought it´s an easy translation it´s s wonderfull text.
Kisses
Pedro Santos 10ªA
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