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Reasons some languages are harder to learn

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Re: Reasons some languages are harder to learn

#141

Post by glandium »

lhorie wrote: post #31
tjpnz wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>* Topic/subject languages, like Japanese, where previously defined context can radically alter meaning. "Watashi wa hamburger desu" can mean "I'm a hamburger", "I'll have a hamburger", "If you ask me, it's a hamburger", etc. It also works for "I have" as in "Watashi wa korona da" or "I have Covid 19".

"be" and "have" can be quite quirky from language to language. For example, in portuguese, "I am healthy" can be translated to "eu sou saudavel" (meaning, the person lives a healthy lifestyle) or "eu estou saudavel" (meaning, the person is currently temporarily healthy). "I am 20 years old" translates to "eu tenho vinte anos" (or "I have 20 years of age")

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

Re: Reasons some languages are harder to learn

#142

Post by mcqueenjordan »

corey_moncure wrote: post #28
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…

The real roadblock with Japanese, in my opinion, is how kanji makes it impossible to absorb new vocabulary through casual reading. We naturally infer the meaning of words from their syntactical and semantic context, but with kanji there's no "name" to hang the inferred meaning to as you read. You can't pronounce it in your head, or out loud. Kanji make it possible to sometimes guess the meaning and pronunciation of a…

In case it's useful to someone: https://kanji.club/ is a wonderful bushu -> kanji "reverse lookup" resource.

Re: Reasons some languages are harder to learn

#143

Post by mattkrause »

glandium wrote: post #141
lhorie wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"be" and "have" can be quite quirky from language to language. For example, in portuguese, "I am healthy" can be translated to "eu sou saudavel" (meaning, the person lives a healthy lifestyle) or "eu estou saudavel" (meaning, the person is currently temporarily healthy). "I am 20 years old" translates to "eu tenho vinte anos" (or "I have 20 years of age")

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.

Re: Reasons some languages are harder to learn

#144

Post by glandium »

greggman3 wrote: post #78
lhorie wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To say "it was delicious", you need to say "it is delicious-ed" The "desu" isn't strictly necessary. You can just say "oishikatta". With that said, Japanese does have a bunch of curious features, like different words for ordinal numbers depending on what you're counting (e.g. "one, two" can be translated to "hitori, futari" for people, or "ippon, nihon" for long objects, or "ippiki, nihiki" for small animals, etc),…

ippon, nihon, and ippiki, nihiki are numbers with counter units added (different from hitori, futari). Counter units exist in English. It's common to say "I have 600 head of cattle" vs "I have 600 cattle". "600 head of cattle" is exactly the same in Japanese, "牛６００頭". The counters in Japanese are also often similar to the way we use the words in English. You don't say "I have 12 wines". You say "I have 12 bottles of…

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 need to remember when e.g. いち becomes いっ and when a h becomes a b or a p (ippon, nihon, sanbon...)

Edit: and there are the fun cases where it's not always on or kun: ichinichi, futsuka... or other fun exceptions.

Re: Reasons some languages are harder to learn

#145

Post by pseudalopex »

hprotagonist wrote: post #137
pseudalopex wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your point is unclear to me. Gender doesn't mean genre in contemporary English. And context is enough to distinguish grammatical gender from other meanings usually.

except when context is not enough; i.e., when a grammatical gender form applies to nouns that describe persons with social genders. And then people usually get very huffy about which non-sentient nouns “share” “their” “gender”.

Nouns that describe persons with social genders have matching grammatical genders usually. And you have to distinguish when talking about both at once obviously.

> And then people usually get very huffy about which non-sentient nouns “share” “their” “gender”.

Seems rare to me.

Re: Reasons some languages are harder to learn

#146

Post by deeteecee »

glandium wrote: post #144
greggman3 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ippon, nihon, and ippiki, nihiki are numbers with counter units added (different from hitori, futari). Counter units exist in English. It's common to say "I have 600 head of cattle" vs "I have 600 cattle". "600 head of cattle" is exactly the same in Japanese, "牛６００頭". The counters in Japanese are also often similar to the way we use the words in English. You don't say "I have 12 wines". You say "I have 12 bottles of…

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.

Re: Reasons some languages are harder to learn

#147

Post by princeb »

alisonatwork wrote: post #90
RandomWorker wrote: post #7

When I started learning Chinese the grammar really made think hard about what I needed to say first. Then put it in the right grammar order, then translate the words, which is like a inverted 3D lookup table, sounds/tone/meaning. Memorizing the lookup table which people say is the hard part is actually the easy bit. It’s the restructuring of my thoughts to fit in the grammar. I find English I get you can get away wit…

I think this is one of those things that teachers tend to make a big deal out of that doesn't matter too much in real life communication. It's not unusual in Chinese for someone to structure a meandering sentence like "let's go for a run ba, next Monday hao bu hao, around noon we can meet ne, just us two a, there is a nice track, it's my house nearby de yige, what do you think?" The sentence order is more important w…

> Personally i think getting the tones right is the most important part of being understood in Chinese

yea.

it really doesn't matter where you are from, the UK, the US, Japan, Korea or Hongkong. if you can't get the tones right, you will be misunderstood. If you are of Chinese heritage (like the HKers), you will be viciously mocked.

Re: Reasons some languages are harder to learn

#148

Post by Kalium »

fpig wrote: post #120
VoodooJuJu wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>distances were always expressed as travel time I'd like to see more of this kind measurement expression in our modern vernaculars. For example, an acre could be defined as 43560 sq ft, or 4047 meters, or .405 hectares, but these are arbitrary and don't tell me much. A more useful definition of acre is "the amount of land that a pair of oxen can plow in a day". Then, as a farmer, I don't really care how many square f…

How is such a definition more useful? It's certainly not more useful to me. If someone tried to sell me such a quantity of land, the first thing I'd ask would be what the actual size is in standard units. A universal, precisely defined system of units is superior because it works in any context, you just need to know the system. Expressing distance by travel time is a similarly stupid concept. I can tell someone some…

It's a tool that can be very helpful for describing the logistics of travel.

Depending on where you are and the context of the conversation, knowing that something is fifteen miles away might tell you shockingly little about the experience of getting there. There are places where that distance in one direction might take hours, but in another direction minutes. As you might imagine, this can be important to know.

Re: Reasons some languages are harder to learn

#149

Post by solidsnack9000 »

euske wrote: post #125
lhorie wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To say "it was delicious", you need to say "it is delicious-ed" The "desu" isn't strictly necessary. You can just say "oishikatta". With that said, Japanese does have a bunch of curious features, like different words for ordinal numbers depending on what you're counting (e.g. "one, two" can be translated to "hitori, futari" for people, or "ippon, nihon" for long objects, or "ippiki, nihiki" for small animals, etc),…

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 case and "i-" and "ni-" in the second. In the second example, the counter is "-ppon", with a plosive stop; in the second, it's "-hon" with an affricate. The combination of varying number pronunciations and the

Japanese shares many, many grammatical features with Korean, including much of the politeness grammar system; however, when I looked over a Korean grammar linguistics book recently, I wasn't able to find anything to indicate that counting was as complicated as this.

Re: Reasons some languages are harder to learn

#150

Post by jwhitlark »

dheera wrote: post #105
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…

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.
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