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Ask-A-Linguist - Message details
Subject: Limit of tones, cases, gender, plural
Question:
I have been told that Cantonese has 6 (or 9) tones, Finnish has 16 cases, Swahili has 8 genders, and Russian has singular, plural and REALLY plural. Those are very surprising (to me, at least), but I'm sure that there's more. What's the limit of these sorts of differences in language expression and what are some other examples? Thank you for your time and consideration.

From: Jacob Sampson
Date: Sep-06-2009
Replies:
  1. Re: Limit of tones, cases, gender, plural Madalena Cruz-Ferreira   (Sep-10-2009)
  2. Re: Limit of tones, cases, gender, plural Herbert Frederic Stahlke   (Sep-10-2009)
  3. Re: Limit of tones, cases, gender, plural Joseph F Foster   (Sep-10-2009)
  4. Re: Limit of tones, cases, gender, plural Elizabeth J Pyatt   (Sep-10-2009)
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Page Updated: 25-Nov-2009

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