Hi, Amastan. Sometimes I wonder whether such very short sentences are really helpful in language learning. I don't want to say that the sentence is bad. Not at all. I simply would prefere if there was told a little more about what is going on. For instance, what this word "one" is related to. I think this could help students to understand and remember better. What's your opinion?


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Hi Aleksandro,
Thank you for your message,

I don't want to add sentences that would be perceived as meaningless in any way you interpret them. However, the short ones I'm adding her may have some meaning if we provide some context.

First of all, what I'm trying to do here is to add as many sentences as possible with the pattern "Subject + verb + one [non-specified object]", and people do say sentences like these in many languages. So this sentence is part of a series of other sentences like "I ate one", "I bought one", "I read one", ktp.

Secondly, I think that it is necessary to explore and know how far we can go with some specific patterns. Of course, if there are any illogical sentences, I would gladly delete them. Otherwise, this job is necessary as we often wonder how this or that is said in such or such language and, in my opinion, it's only when you put verbs in as many contexts as possible, that you would be able to find answers to your questions.

Thirdly, I think that translating such short sentences into other languages (in addition to Berber) would make it easier for other people to understand them better and translate them.

Fourthly, I would like to inform you that the smaller the grammatical patterns, the fewer sentences they would have. I have prepared a list of sentences that I'm adding to Tatoeba, and the more complex the sentences get, the less ambiguous they get and the more amusing and interesting it gets to translate them :-) So, more sentences are coming, and I think that you'll like the job of translating them into German, Esperanto and maybe, Norwegian and Russian :-)

Dankon ^^






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Thank you for your answer, Amastan.

WELL there may be some sentences which in your mother tongue may be quite common and easily understandable but nevertheless may seem enigmatic when translated into (for instance) English without adding something essential for understanding in the target language.
BUT in principle I have no doubt that, as you stated, also the short sentences you are adding have some meaning within their contexts.
Often even a very short sentence is very easy to understand — if the situation in which this sentence is commonly used is known to us and we are able to imagine the context without much effort.
Nevertheless I see a possible problem: Thus a sentence may be easily understandable for people from let's say France or Italy, but at the same time it may be completely enigmatic for people from Hungary or Korea (or vice versa).
That's the reason why I've been thinking about the question: May it possibly be sometimes better to add a bit of the context? For instance: "Do you like these roses? I smelled one." I don't know whether this was a good example. But you know what I mean.

That's what came to my mind when I was reading your first paragraph. But there are many valuable thoughts and ideas in the other paragraphs too. So I will return to the topic later.

Thank you. Tanemmirt s tussda. Lemmer ur d kecc ay aɣ-iɛawnen, tili ad newḥel.


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Aleksandro:
Dankon pro via mesaĝo,

You said:
>>>> Nevertheless I see a possible problem: Thus a sentence may be easily understandable for people from let's say France or Italy, but at the same time it may be completely enigmatic for people from Hungary or Korea (or vice versa).
My answer is:
Yes. That's why I said that translating these short sentences in a bigger number of languages would make them less ambiguous.

>>>> May it possibly be sometimes better to add a bit of the context?

With this particular pattern, I think that it's better to keep the sentences short, just as they are. In my opinion, it would be necessary to add comments as annotations giving more context.

>>>> So I will return to the topic later.

You're most welcome :-) Let me just reassure you that there are not many (possible) short (and possibly ambiguous) sentences, and that I'll start, very soon, adding longer, more complete, less ambiguous and more interesting sentences. By the way, in my previous message, I said "it would be more amusing to translate them". What I meant was that there would be more fun or it would be more entertaining (i.e. less boring) to translate them :-DDD

>>>> Tanemmirt s tussda. Lemmer ur d kecc ay aɣ-iɛawnen, tili ad newḥel.

Ulac aɣilif a gma!

S tumert ara k-ɛawneɣ!
I will be very glad to help you!

Tanemmirt ^^
Dankon ^^










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>>>> First of all, what I'm trying to do here is to add as many sentences as possible with the pattern "Subject + verb + one [non-specified object]", and people do say sentences like these in many languages. So this sentence is part of a series of other sentences like "I ate one", "I bought one", "I read one", ...

That's where our preferences differ. ([#2881116]) I prefer to apply specified objects. If I read "I smelled a sweet aroma" it's easier for me to get a grasp of the meaning and to remember the newly learnt words. And to form a sentence like "I smelled on" later won't be difficult neither. But now I know your view on this matter a bit better and I'll try to understand it. ☺


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>>>> That's where our preferences differ.

As soon as I read this sentence (a few hours ago), I knew that it was directed at me :-)








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