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Reasons some languages are harder to learn

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Re: Reasons some languages are harder to learn

#181

Post by [deleted] »

Tainnor wrote: post #172
q-big wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Native German speaker: Many people confuse the grammatical genus (as used in practice in contemporary German) of German words with the biological concept of sex. This is made even more complicated by SJWs who confuse these two unrelated concepts (genus, sex) with their concept of gender. So, it is better to imagine the genus of German word as something like the "'color' of a word" ("color" in the sense of the "color…

I'm very skeptical about some of the attempts to change the German language to be more "gender-neutral" due to a number of reasons, but I feel it's not correct to frame this as a misunderstanding between "genus" and "sexus", as I've now read a number of times. If people really confused grammatical gender with "the biological concept of sex", then we'd have a lot more arguments about random nouns needing to have femin…

[deleted]

Re: Reasons some languages are harder to learn

#182

Post by Tainnor »

bradrn wrote: post #177
Tainnor wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Latin would be an example that more people might be familiar with. There's a difference between "free ordering of constituent phrases", where you may rearrange subject noun phrases, object noun phrases, adverbial phrases and the verb into any order depending on emphasis etc., and completely free word order - like in the languages you mentioned - where "the little man walked through the big door" could end up as "man…

You’re completely right — indeed, Latin would have been a much better example than the ones I chose. (But I had been reading about Yimas a few hours before posting and it was on my mind.) > There's a difference between "free ordering of constituent phrases", where you may rearrange subject noun phrases, object noun phrases, adverbial phrases and the verb into any order depending on emphasis etc., and completely free…

> 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 go in the second position, so it's not totally free). There are probably languages where it's even more free, but I don't have any examples off the top of my head. By contrast, there are languages where word order is very rigid (even in English, while you can rearrange constituents up to a point, it's not nearly as common as in German, and I would argue that it can often sound slightly archaic)

Re: Reasons some languages are harder to learn

#183

Post by Tainnor »

bradrn wrote: post #179
Tainnor wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

linguists rarely agree on definitions, unfortunately. Greville Corbett, for example, who has written a textbook about "Gender" (in the linguistic sense), defines gender as a type of noun classification which triggers agreement . In that sense, he doesn't require that it be centered around male/female or animate/inanimate. Other linguists will use different terminology.

> linguists rarely agree on definitions, unfortunately. Aargh… I don’t want to think about it. Just don’t get me started on the literature on SVCs, alright? (My favourite linguistics quote, from Anderson’s A-Morphous Morphology : ‘Linguistics will become a science when linguists begin standing on one another's shoulders instead of on one another's toes.’ Oddly enough, he spends the rest of the book stepping on the to…

> 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 quote. One reason why I became annoyed with linguistics is exactly this feeling that there wasn't enough progress because people couldn't even agree on basic definitions.

Re: Reasons some languages are harder to learn

#184

Post by Tainnor »

bradrn wrote: post #38
Robotbeat wrote: post #32

Have any of you learned any Malay/Indonesian? Fantastically easy. Purely phonetic, simple grammar, not tonal or anything else weird. I seriously think, as an English speaker, it’s easier to learn than German or French or whatever, even though it has no relationship with European languages (unlike Hindi, which is part of the same Indo-European languages... in spite of the “Indo” prefix, there’s no relation). It helps…

That’s basically because Standard Indonesian has been artificially Europeanicised, or so I hear: > In both Malaysia and Indonesia, there is a misguided belief that in order for a language to be able to fulfil the functions of a "national language", it must have a "well-developed" system of grammar. Unfortunately, the only type of grammar that the language planners are usually familiar with is the Eurocentric grammar…

I'm pretty sure I have read that same paper back when I was in university. Odd coincidence. :)

Re: Reasons some languages are harder to learn

#185

Post by bradrn »

Tainnor wrote: post #183
bradrn wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> linguists rarely agree on definitions, unfortunately. Aargh… I don’t want to think about it. Just don’t get me started on the literature on SVCs, alright? (My favourite linguistics quote, from Anderson’s A-Morphous Morphology : ‘Linguistics will become a science when linguists begin standing on one another's shoulders instead of on one another's toes.’ Oddly enough, he spends the rest of the book stepping on the to…

> 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 essays on that! [0] Morphosyntactic alignment is a favourite topic of mine. (I perhaps didn’t spend as much time on split intransitivity as I should have… I really should write an addendum or something which properly covers split intransitivity. Know any good resources, by any chance?)

[0] https://www.verduria.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=545

Re: Reasons some languages are harder to learn

#186

Post by bradrn »

Tainnor wrote: post #182
bradrn wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re completely right — indeed, Latin would have been a much better example than the ones I chose. (But I had been reading about Yimas a few hours before posting and it was on my mind.) > There's a difference between "free ordering of constituent phrases", where you may rearrange subject noun phrases, object noun phrases, adverbial phrases and the verb into any order depending on emphasis etc., and completely free…

> 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?]

Re: Reasons some languages are harder to learn

#187

Post by solidsnack9000 »

fenomas wrote: post #160
solidsnack9000 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 flexibility exists and that is quite different from Chinese.

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. Although counters don't generally vary in pronunciation for each count of the counter, many of the common ones do; and these variations must be learned per number, per counter.

The earlier commenter spoke to characteristics of Japanese that might seem unique to a student. Counters certainly are shared with Chinese; but these other things -- the variation in the numbers and the variation in the counter, itself -- are not.

Re: Reasons some languages are harder to learn

#188

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…

Although "glitter" and "slippery" may sound onomatopoeic, neither one is actually onomatopoeia.

The latter case is perhaps the easiest, since "slippery" is an adjective derived from the verb "slip", still in use. (The word "glitter" is also derived from a verb, but this verb is no longer used.) Generally, words that are onomatopoeia don't have an etymology like that; if they did, then the sound would not be the result of trying to create the impression of something. For example, the "-y" in "slippery" is there because it's an adjective. The extent of onomatopoeia in Japanese is indeed quite different from English (and Chinese).

Re: Reasons some languages are harder to learn

#189

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Reasons some languages are harder to learn

#190

Post by fenomas »

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…

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 but I wouldn't know.

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