OKay, rephrasing: do any of the languages you know have a lot of permutations of ordinary words like Hebrew does, and if they do, how many? Like, double-digits?
Still not really sure what you're asking here. Every Latin noun has at a minimum 6*2=12 different variations. Every (Attic) Greek word has 5*3=15 different variations, depending on its role in the sentence. And each case can fall into any number of dozens of meanings. My Latin textbook lists:
13 different expressions of the Accusative
7 different expressions of the Genitive
11 different expressions of the Dative
18 different expressions of the Ablative
A fun Latin sentence:
malo malo malo malo
"I'd rather be in an apple tree than a naughty boy in adversity"
If we're talking verbs, it gets way more complicated. Every Latin verb has:
3 persons (1st, 2nd, 3rd), 2 number (singular, plural), three tenses (present, past, and future), each of which can be expressed in one of two aspects (perfective, and imperfective), three moods (indicative, subjunctive, and imperative), 5 non-finite forms (infinitive, which can be expressed in past, or present, active or passive; gerund; participial, which can be expressed in past, present or future in active or passive; supine, and gerundive), and two voices (active or passive)
All told that gives a total of:
(6*9)+(6*6)+11+5+6+(4*6)
[indicative non-participle forms]+[subjunctive non-participle forms]+[imperative forms]+[non-finite indeclinable forms]+[gerund/supine forms]+[participle declensions]
or 136 forms for every verb, excepting those which are deponent and so have no passive form, and defective verbs which only conjugate in the third person.
(Also, what's your opinion of
this?)
Looks bad.
First I'm hearing that. You mean that rolling rrrrr is actually the easier sound?
The retroflex approximant ([ɻ]) which, at the very least, is what *my* "r" sound is, is extraordinarily rare, existing outside of American English Mandarin Chinese, Pashto, Tamil, and Malayam, only in a handful of nonstandard dialects and some Australian Aboriginal and Indigenous South American languages, and even then only in fits and spurts. It is really quite an uncommon sound.
The dental/alveolar/postalveolar trill ([r]), i.e. the "rolling rrrrr", at least within the context of IE languages exists either as a long-r or as an allophone with the alveolar flap ([ɾ])
It is found in standard forms of: Hungarian, Romanian, Afrikaans, Arabic, Bengali, Czech, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Hebrew, Hindustani, Italian, Kyrgyz, Latvian, Malay, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Tagalog, Welsh, Catalan, and German, among others.
The alveolar flap [ɾ] is found in standard forms of: Russian, Africaans, Basque, Catalan, Danish, English, Greek, Hindustani, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Tagalog, Turkish, Yiddish, and German
And really one only need think about the shape of the two sounds to understand why the retroflex approximant is rare and the alveolar trill/flap is not. The retroflex approximant involves folding the blade of the tongue down towards the bottom of the mouth and curling it up or outwards, while raising the back of the tongue upwards far enough to produce an effect in the sound quality, but not enough to occlude the airflow enough for a fricative or plosive effect. That kind of tongue gymnastics is hard to produce if you haven't been raised with it.
The alveolar flap/trill is a much easier sound to produce. Positionally it's identical to [t] and [d]. Yes the trill can be tricky initially to get the hang of, but it's something you can pick up after a couple months of practice because it's a sound that's rather similar to other very common sounds, unlike the retroflex which entails an obscure shape that can be nigh-impossible to reproduce if you didn't learn it early enough - which is why English-language learners outside of China have such a difficult time with the sound.
I really hope you've misinterpreted what I asked somehow... no language could use that many permutations of a single word.
