Syntax: The formation of the sentence

Basically it all boils down to the basic part of a language, the sentence. Several sentences make a paragraph. Several paragraphs make a story. We all like stories; they help us create a world of fantasy and freedom. Now all languages have stories, and they tell them differently. The chance that all languages developed the same formation is essentially zero. Less than half of the word's languages (based on population) follow a Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) formation. about the same portion uses Subject-Verb-Object (SVO). The rest of the world uses Verb-Subject-Object (VSO)(Meyer, 2010).

SOV essentially means that in a sentence, verb comes last (Boeree). In a way it similar to speaking like Yoda would. For example, if I were to say "That meal was delicious," in a standard SOV language it would become, "That meal delicious it was." "I fed my dog this morning before work," would become "My dog this morning before work I fed."

SOV Languages:
• Japanese
• Korean
• Hindi
• Turkish
• Hungarian

SVO is used in English syntax. As you read this sentence, you can clearly see its usage. This would be an easy concept for a beginner in a foreign language to grasp. If you were visiting Sweden and wanted to tell someone that you wanted to eat pizza you would say: "Jag vill äta vissa pizza." It means exactly that and no worry of having to rearrange parts of the sentence to match its order. Jag, the subject (I), vill äta, the verb (want to eat), and vissa pizza, the object (some pizza).

SVO Languages:
• Romance Languages
  • French
  • Spanish
  • Italian
• Germanic Languages
  • English
  • German
  • Swedish
  • Norwegian
• Spoken Arabic
• Greek
• Thai
• Vietnamese

The last type of syntactical formation is VSO. This mainly applies to the Semitic and Celtic languages (Boeree). "I discovered the cure" becomes "discovered I the cure." This can become confusing since there are some languages that invert their structure to VSO to form questions. English is one of them. "There is a storm today," becomes "Is there a storm today?"(Boeree)

VSO Languages:
• Semitic Languages
  • Literary Arabic
  • Hebrew
• Celtic Languages
  • Welsh
  • Gaelic
• American Indian Languages

Basically there are three main structures in use. Of course they will seem different to you, but that is normal. If you want a challenge, you could attempt Russian. It has no rules on order and all are used in common day speak (Meyer, 2010). So saying, "I like apples," "Like I apples," and "I apples like," mean the same thing.

Sources
Boeree, G. (n.d.). Basic language structures. Retrieved from http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/basiclangstruct.html
Meyer, C. F. (2010). Introducing English linguistics. (p. 36). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Retrieved from http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=MWbrvUiYzSkC&pg=PA36