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Reasons some languages are harder to learn

economist.com

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Re: Reasons some languages are harder to learn

#151

Post by [deleted] »

anthk wrote: post #64
Clewza313 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is that language either influences or constrains the speaker's world view. I don't see the author claiming this: English speakers are perfectly capable of seeing the difference between light blue and dark blue, we just happen to use the same basic word for both. The bit about words not mapping 1:1 across languages is something every learner will run into though, and it's perhaps most obviou…

In English too. Mesa in English is a plateau, while in Spanish it's just a table (furniture), while sierra is not just a mountain range, but a carpenter's saw too.

[deleted]

Re: Reasons some languages are harder to learn

#152

Post by rsj_hn »

jwhitlark wrote: post #150
dheera wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reverse is true as well, i.e. English has plenty of things that are alien to other languages. Conjugating verbs, inflection, capitalization, and plural forms of nouns are alien to at least Chinese and probably many other Sino-Tibetan languages. The lack of phoenetic/spelling consistency is alien to many European languages, especially Spanish, which is remarkably consistent.

IIRC English was phonetic/spelled consistently before the great vowel shift. The spelling solidified but pronunciation continued to change.

The great vowel shift happened after the Norman conquest, and there is no way that an infusion of French would create a language in which there is phonetic spelling.

Re: Reasons some languages are harder to learn

#154

Post by SavantIdiot »

Clewza313 wrote: post #9

Some examples of language features alien to English speakers: * Conjugated adjectives, as in Japanese. To say "it was delicious", you need to say "it is delicious-ed" ( oishikatta desu ). * Agglutinative languages, like Finnish or Hungarian, where word order is largely irrelevant and conjugations, not word order, determine meaning. * Topic/subject languages, like Japanese, where previously defined context can radical…

Doesn't Japanese have different words for numbers depending on the shape of the object (e.g., "one" for flat things, "one" for cylindrical things, etc...)? Some languages (Hindi, Japanese, Chinese) I can't even figure out where words begin/end (or sentences), even with a dictionary. (I'm looking at you, Japanese particle).

Re: Reasons some languages are harder to learn

#155

Post by glandium »

mattkrause wrote: post #143
glandium wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same in French and Spanish. It's probably similar in all Romance languages.

Wait really? I thought French mostly just had être (and occasionally avoir) for “to be”, and you’d need context to determine if “Elle est heureuse” means she is happy now or generally.

Translating the GP example literally in French: Je suis en bonne santé vs. J'ai une bonne santé.

Funnily enough, Google Translate gives the former for both portuguese versions. I guess it is still translating through English.

Re: Reasons some languages are harder to learn

#156

Post by tape_measure »

kaiwen1 wrote: post #118

Most languages also have examples of single words that convey concepts requiring many words to express in English. Always fun to discover these gems. Here's one that I learned yesterday in Visayan: "Manginhas ta". This means "Let's go the beach at low tide and turn over stones and collect small shrimp and other edibles."

Let's go tidepooling!

Almost the same, but it doesn't imply collection, just observation.

Re: Reasons some languages are harder to learn

#157

Post by glandium »

deeteecee wrote: post #146
glandium wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me the most annoying thing about Japanese counters is not so much that there are so many, but that you also have to remember when the numbers that go with them will need on-yomi or kun-yomi (ichi, ni... vs. hito, futa...) (well, okay, that essentially depends on the counter itself being on or kun. Makes me wonder if there are jūbako-yomi or yutō-yomi cases, never looked it up). And if that wasn't enough you also n…

I'd stick to the common ones, you don't need to learn them all.

Whether you want it or not, you'll end up encountering them, not necessarily with enough context to tell you what they are. Example from regular news: 1000軒停電.1000世帯停電.1000戸停電.(and they all point to something slightly different)

Of course, it depends what you use Japanese for.

Re: Reasons some languages are harder to learn

#158

Post by Cerium »

SavantIdiot wrote: post #154
Clewza313 wrote: post #9

Some examples of language features alien to English speakers: * Conjugated adjectives, as in Japanese. To say "it was delicious", you need to say "it is delicious-ed" ( oishikatta desu ). * Agglutinative languages, like Finnish or Hungarian, where word order is largely irrelevant and conjugations, not word order, determine meaning. * Topic/subject languages, like Japanese, where previously defined context can radical…

Doesn't Japanese have different words for numbers depending on the shape of the object (e.g., "one" for flat things, "one" for cylindrical things, etc...)? Some languages (Hindi, Japanese, Chinese) I can't even figure out where words begin/end (or sentences), even with a dictionary. (I'm looking at you, Japanese particle).

Japanese and Chinese uses counting words. Saying how many bottles of beer you have and how many sheets of paper you have use the same number but a different counting word. These are analogous to the following English sentences: "one bottle of beer" vs "one sheet of paper" except you cannot drop the counting word, saying "one beer" or "one paper" is incorrect.

Re: Reasons some languages are harder to learn

#159

Post by sdiq »

throw0101a wrote: post #56
slibhb wrote: post #12

It's true that alphabets are easy to learn. But, in my opinion, all of this opining about language differences is navel gazing. Human languages are all fundamentally the same. The differences are cosmetic. That's the Chomskyan hypothesis and it seems true to me. > Foreign languages really become hard when they have features that do not appear in your own—things you never imagined you would have to learn. Which is ano…

> All languages are easy to learn if you have to learn them. The people who think "Arabic and Chinese are hard" are people who don't have to learn them, they're doing it as a hobby or for school. The US State department has the Foreign Service Institute, which is its primary training centre. With-in there they have the School of Language Studies, which teaches more than seventy languages, and over the years/decades i…

I speak both Swahili and Somali. While the two languages are written in Latin alphabet, I find Somali harder than Swahili. Yet, Somali is supposed to be my mother tongue. Thus, this grouping in many ways reflects ny experience too.

Re: Reasons some languages are harder to learn

#160

Post by fenomas »

solidsnack9000 wrote: post #149
euske wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counters are often depicted as a unique feature in Japanese but I think it originated in Chinese, as their use of counters are more systematic (e.g. instead of saying "this book", you can say "this [book-counter]" in Chinese, which is not allowed in Japanese "*この冊"). Also many onomatopoeic words exist in English, but they just exhibit in a different way (e.g. "glitter" or "slippery" sounds very onomatopoeic to me). P…

A very singular feature of Japanese, if not a unique feature, that stands out to most learners of it, is the variation in the numbers with the counters and the sound changes for how the counter sounds vary with the number sounds. Consider the examples offered: ..."hitori, futari" for people, or "ippon, nihon" for long objects... . The "number part" varies considerably: one and two are "hito-" and "futa-" in the first…

I don't think it's as complicated as you're describing. There are just two systems; the regular case with regular numbers, and irregular cases using hito/futa/etc. One has to learn which counters use which system, but there are just the two of them.

Note also that ~hon changing to ~bon/~ppon is a general feature of Japanese compound words, it's nothing to do with counters specifically.

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