this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2023
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I’m moving my posts from Reddit to Lemmy before delete them.

This post is from 2021-03-09.

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (1 children)

"Cat red" makes Japanese sounds way more vague than it really is, you're just not bothering to attempt to transliterate the grammar structures because it's too hard for English speakers to understand without a half-hour lecture.

It's "Cat (topic marker) red (basic copula)", which obviously carries a lot more information than just "cat red" to a person who intuitively understands what those weird grammar markers signify

Japanese not having articles is just as weird as PIE languages not having things like topic markers.

[–] lemmington_steele 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

topic markers are just a fancy way to say case endings

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Not really, topic markers are... uh... and case endings... analytical instead of... wait a minute
Der Hund ist rot; 犬は赤いです
Ich esse den Hund; 犬を食べる
no it can't be
Der Knochen des Hundes; 犬の骨
fuck
Ich gebe dem Hund einen Knochen; 犬に骨をあげます