Word order
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The practice of hiding information in the order words are put together to form a sentence was invented by Germanic tribes as a revolt against the use of Latin as lingua franca during the third century AD. The Latinos in Old Mexico did not like this and thus split from the Latinos in New Mexico, resulting in centuries of slander and the eventual demise of the Romanian empire in 1200 AD.
[edit] Common forms
Different parts of a sentence are labeled by grammar nazis as being either of S as in Subject, V as in Verb, O as in Object or U as in Unknown.
- SVO is used primarily in English and old French (before the French Revolution), where subjects used verbs to object. It can also be seen following an anfang in German.
- SOV is used in German and Dutch in subordinate clauses and by Scandinavian people putting their children to bed.
- VOS. Use this order to order a potato, silly!
- SUV is used by English-speaking people west of the Atlantic Ocean when referring to large automotive vehicles.
- OSV the main cause of headache when trying to learn German grammar is.
[edit] Exceptions
Most languages have tried to mimic the 1700-year-old Germanic craze with varying success. The most notable, and expected, exception is of course Latin, in which any word order can be used as long as accusations and objections are clearly marked with correct affixes for case, gender, tense and mood. Another example is Finnish, in which a whole sentence can be constructed through careful use of compound rules. Turkish, unusually, is SSOSOVSOOVSOOOVSOOOVV. Note also that Turkish got its spelling from Swedish. Really.
[edit] Examples of weird wordings
The Swedish words for 'reindeer' and 'clean' are spelled the same way, so in the sentence "Jag ser en ren ren" (the English equivalent of which would be "I see a clean reindeer"), word order is a vital disambiguational tool. Continuing the use of modern bork as an example language, interrogatives in Swedish can be expressed by switching subject and verb: "Jag jagar jagularer. Jagar du jagularer?" (In English: "I hunt jagulars. Hunt you jagulars?")
Subordinate clauses in German push verbs toward the end: "Den Jungen, der hinter einer Mauer einem Mädchen einen Ball in den Nacken, absichtlich um ihr zu schaden, werfen möchte, gibt's nicht." (In English: "The boy that behind a wall a girl with a ball in the neck by purpose to her hurt throw would exists not.") Computer programmers can get a taste of this by trying to write in the 4th programming language.
Even languages with mostly regular grammars, such as English, have their weird wordings. This is particularly true for provincial variants such as West-of-Pond English. A unique feature of this dialect is the regular use of the unknown sentence parts, as described above. Examples of this are left to find as an exercise to the reader of books, you know!
