9. mai 2010

Estonian compared to English


Today I commented at Facebook a humorous story "The origins of the Estonian language" and referred to Charles Taylor, who has written that "simple, complex, degenerate and primitive languages are figments of the imagination" (Taylor, Charles 1991. Is there any such thing as a primitive language? — Creation, v 13: 2, p 24;
http://bit.ly/cr9ZpA; The Press 2008. — No such thing as a primitive language; http://bit.ly/cryXMT). In Estonian there is fourteen cases, but in English twelve tenses in active voice.