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To: kosta50

Still it is a matter of choice. Serbian is not inherently uncapable of parcticiple use, it is for whatever reason not in vogue.

In English there were times when simple “telegraph” style of speech — think of Hemingway prose — was considered low-class. Linguists tried to inculcate the use of complex flowery vocabulary (citation needed, as Wikipedia would say, but nothing comes to mind by way of example). In Russian Pushkin had that revolutionary attitude that the simples expression is also the most beautiful. Today in English simple short sentence structure is in vogue, as it is you say, in Serbian. But this does not make English inherenty a more primitive language than it was in the times of Daniel Webster. It may, one day, swing back.

Overuse of participles may at times sound archaic in Russian as well.


74 posted on 05/29/2010 8:16:52 PM PDT by annalex
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To: annalex
You are absolutely right, Alex. Both Serbian and English have the structural components of a well developed language, except that in Serbian the participle use has been actively suppressed, along with a forceful introduction of the Latin script. It is not just a matter of not being in vogue.

Church Slavonic and Russian words were actively and selectively thrown out and replaced with German and the French, and English in that order. Like I said, the structures exist but ti is not possible to use them without being subjected to "corrective" criticism or, worse, ridicule.

In short, Serbian has been subjected to a linguistic, grammatical, orthographic, and cultural "genocide" since 1868. and it hasn't stopped yet.

75 posted on 05/29/2010 8:32:14 PM PDT by kosta50 (The world is the way it is even if YOU don't understand it)
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