Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Reasons some languages are harder to learn

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 215 posts

Re: Reasons some languages are harder to learn

#191

Post by lhorie »

solidsnack9000 wrote: post #187
fenomas wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

All the things described are real features of Japanese counting and are real examples drawn from the Japanese language. There is sometimes variation where a person needs to learn which each number for which thing uses which system. For example, with people, a common way of counting is "hitori", "futari" (your irregular cases), and then "san nin", "yo nin", ... (your regular cases). It's not always that way; but the f…

> The sound change -hon to -ppon and similar sound changes are not actually regular in Japanese -- there's not a clear phonological rule for them.

There is a loose rule for compound word contractions (adding tenten to the first letter of the second word), e.g. "sakura" gains a tenten in "senbonzakura". However, as you said, this is not universally the case. For example, "ehon" (lit. drawing book) is simply "e" (drawing) + "hon" (book), not "ebon".

Re: Reasons some languages are harder to learn

#192

Post by solidsnack9000 »

fenomas wrote: post #190
solidsnack9000 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the things described are real features of Japanese counting and are real examples drawn from the Japanese language. There is sometimes variation where a person needs to learn which each number for which thing uses which system. For example, with people, a common way of counting is "hitori", "futari" (your irregular cases), and then "san nin", "yo nin", ... (your regular cases). It's not always that way; but the f…

Sorry, but I don't follow what you're disagreeing with. For the numeric stems there are two systems, and one learns which to use when, as I said. For the sound change, I didn't say it was "regular" (and I don't know what you mean by that here), I said that it's not specific to counters. wiki: https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%80%A3%E6%BF%81 As for whether it's unique, wiki suggests that Korean has something similar b…

Sorry, but what are you saying is not in accord with the examples I gave or the rules I described?

My earlier comment did discuss Korean, by the way.

Re: Reasons some languages are harder to learn

#193

Post by rsj_hn »

dodobirdlord wrote: post #164
rsj_hn wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Middle English (and Early Modern English) was spelled as it was spoken, to such an extent that there wasn’t consistent spelling, and people would just write whatever sequence of letters would get pronounced as the desired sound.

No, there is no such thing as "spelled as it was spoken" when everyone has inconsistent agreements on how to spell sounds and when a new language comes in with its own Latin spelling conventions that differ from the previous language.

Re: Reasons some languages are harder to learn

#194

Post by tom_mellior »

yosito wrote: post #176
tom_mellior wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is misleading. The translation could trivially make him use incorrect word orders. "Lost in translation" suggests that it would be difficult to make him speak in a quirky way, but that's not the case at all. The translator just couldn't be arsed. They couldn't even be arsed to give him a non-human voice. It's just a shoddy translation/dub, not a statement about the Hungarian language.

The thing is, Yoda doesn't simply use an "incorrect" word order. He uses a word order which emphasizes the focus of his sentence by putting it first. Since Hungarian already does this, there is nothing different in Hungarian about the way Yoda talks.

> Since Hungarian already does this, there is nothing different in Hungarian about the way Yoda talks.

Yes. My point was merely that this is bad. Yoda is supposed to talk differently. If he doesn't, then the translator didn't do their job properly.

Re: Reasons some languages are harder to learn

#195

Post by idlewords »

StavrosK wrote: post #130
idlewords wrote: post #73

There's a really nice essay by David Moser about why Chinese is so hard to learn for English speakers. It comes down to the hot mess of a writing system: http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html My Russian professor had an interesting insight about why that language had such a high attrition rate among college learners. It's not possible to say even simple things in a Slavic language without learning much of the…

> Sentences like "I took something there with me", for example, are almost comically difficult. Did you go on foot, by vehicle, run, crawl, fly? Was it a habitual action or a one-time thing? Are you stressing the trip or its completion? Did you enter there, climb inside, descend down? Did the trip require overcoming an obstacle? Is the object known to the speaker and listener, known only to the speaker, or unknown? I…

It's best to tackle this answer in stages:

1. There are separate categories of "to go" in Russian and other Slavic languages for walking on foot, strolling, climbing, running, crawling, flying, going by vehicle, swimming and probably a few more I'm forgetting. The method of locomotion is baked into the verb. You can read some examples here if the nerdery interests you: http://www.russianlessons.net/grammar/verbs_motion.php

2. Each of these verbs comes in a pair. One is unidirectional, the other is multidirectional. The difference in usage is more subtle than these names suggest, but that's the general idea.

3. You have a ton of prefixes you can stick onto these verbs to indicate action into, through, around, to-and-back, and so on.

4. There's other verbs you use if you carried or conveyed something somewhere. Points 2 and 3 apply to them, too.

5. These verbs also have aspect, but you've suffered enough.

So the choice of verb of motion in a sentence like "I took something there" encodes a lot of meaning, and is as intuitive to native speakers as the proper usage of "the" and "a" is to English speakers—you know exactly how to use it correctly, but good luck trying to articulate the rules to yourself or to people learning the language if you haven't gotten special training.

Re: Reasons some languages are harder to learn

#196

Post by idlewords »

hrktb wrote: post #111
idlewords wrote: post #73

There's a really nice essay by David Moser about why Chinese is so hard to learn for English speakers. It comes down to the hot mess of a writing system: http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html My Russian professor had an interesting insight about why that language had such a high attrition rate among college learners. It's not possible to say even simple things in a Slavic language without learning much of the…

Proficient French after one year is miraculous (German would be realistic for limited domains), it’s an unforgiving language in a lot of unfathomable ways, just matching gender and number in a phrase can be a nightmare

Proficient spoken French (not necessarily correct but usable) is perfectly attainable in an academic year for a native speaker of English. I watched students at my alma mater, which has a summer language program, go from nothing to conversational fluency in a nine-week intensive course. They still made lots of mistakes, but they could freely interact with native speakers and make themselves understood on most topics.

I get that gender especially is hard on learners coming to French from English, but you also get about a quarter of the vocabulary for free, which is a treat.

Re: Reasons some languages are harder to learn

#197

Post by gregopet »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #135
StavrosK wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sentences like "I took something there with me", for example, are almost comically difficult. Did you go on foot, by vehicle, run, crawl, fly? Was it a habitual action or a one-time thing? Are you stressing the trip or its completion? Did you enter there, climb inside, descend down? Did the trip require overcoming an obstacle? Is the object known to the speaker and listener, known only to the speaker, or unknown? I…

Slavic languages (not just Russian) distinguish the mode of transportation for verbs of motion. So, there is no single "go", there is either "go by foot" or "go by vehicle" and choosing the wrong one makes you sound like a silly foreigner. Similarly ,there is no single "bring", there is "bring on foot" or "bring in a vehicle".

As a native speaker of Slovenian and a decent speaker of Serb/Croatian this is not true for these particular Slavic languages. I can say "Grem v trgovino" / "Idem u dučan" (I'm going to the store) and it implies nothing at all about whether I'm taking the bus, going on foot or riding a horse for that matter.

Re: Reasons some languages are harder to learn

#198

Post by idlewords »

gregopet wrote: post #197
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slavic languages (not just Russian) distinguish the mode of transportation for verbs of motion. So, there is no single "go", there is either "go by foot" or "go by vehicle" and choosing the wrong one makes you sound like a silly foreigner. Similarly ,there is no single "bring", there is "bring on foot" or "bring in a vehicle".

As a native speaker of Slovenian and a decent speaker of Serb/Croatian this is not true for these particular Slavic languages. I can say "Grem v trgovino" / "Idem u dučan" (I'm going to the store) and it implies nothing at all about whether I'm taking the bus, going on foot or riding a horse for that matter.

There's a kind of default 'to go' verb in all the Slavic languages I know about, but you can't use it in certain contexts. In Polish, for example, you can similarly say:

Idę do sklepu (I'm going to the store)

With no implication about mode of transit. For that matter, you can even say:

Lecę do sklepu (I'm flying to the store), to imply that you're in a hurry.

But you would never say:

Idę do Moskwy (I'm going to Moscow)

Unless you were actually going there on foot. Sometimes the appropriate verb is required.

Re: Reasons some languages are harder to learn

#199

Post by Tainnor »

bradrn wrote: post #185
Tainnor wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just don’t get me started on the literature on SVCs, alright? Yeah, that seems like a huge minefield. Another one is anything related to aspect, Aktionsart and any combination thereof. Or, one of my favourites, active-stative/split intransitivity/split-S/semantic alignment. > ‘Linguistics will become a science when linguists begin standing on one another's shoulders instead of on one another's toes.’ That's a nice…

> Another one is anything related to aspect, Aktionsart and any combination thereof. Oh yes, that confused me for a very long time. Thankfully I mostly understand it now (with the help of the good people at https://www.verduria.org/index.php ), but no-one seems to be able to agree on terminology. > Or, one of my favourites, active-stative/split intransitivity/split-S/semantic alignment. Ooh, I wrote a whole series of…

I wrote my master's thesis about split intransitivity.[1] You can find some resources in the bibliography, although I'm sure there's tons more.

I'll have to check your essays too!

edit: just had a quick look (not in detail yet). I love that you're using basically the same example sentences from Dixon that I also used in my thesis.

[1] https://github.com/Fryie/thesis

Re: Reasons some languages are harder to learn

#200

Post by Tainnor »

bradrn wrote: post #186
Tainnor wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But how common is it to have the former without the latter? Most languages I read about have either both or neither. Many language seem to have at least a somewhat flexible ordering of constituents. It may often depend on emphasis, information structure, etc. German for example can be quite flexible in that regard, and the effects this has on information structure are rather subtle (however, the verb always has to…

> in English, while you can rearrange constituents up to a point … I would argue that it can often sound slightly archaic This I don’t agree with.† The rest of your post, however, I agree with entirely, and how I forgot the examples you mention I’m not entirely sure. [† see what I did there?]

archaic might have been a bad choice of words, although it probably depends on the exact sentence. I do think it sounds more formal, though, I think I'd be less likely to hear your first sentence in everyday conversation. Then again, I'm not a native speaker of English.
Post reply on HN