Vitanuova for 2008 January 3 (entry 0)

< Year of Languages
Its own agenda >

I haven't been able to find a database of the shortest complete sentences in various languages.

I'm sure about Latin "i", Portuguese "é", English "go"/"do"/"be", pretty sure of Spanish "es" (also "va", "ve", "sé", "he"(?), "ha"(?), "hé"(?)), and fairly sure of German "geh" (also "sag"/"sei"/"hol"/"übt" and possibly some other three-letter imperatives).

If Hebrew "יש" is a complete sentence, it would probably win.

Maybe I should put up a web page and solicit contributions.

Update: It's not clear to me whether the -e on the familiar German imperative should be considered obligatory (my textbook didn't use it and I found a textbook claiming it's considered optional); without it we can probably form "üb" and maybe "sä" and "öl".

Update 2: if we consider "fi" a mere interjection, the Esperanto winner will be the imperative "amu" and about 15 other possibilities.


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Contact: Seth David Schoen