Last edited by Centurio Nixalsverdrus; 12-14-2009 at 00:42.
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"I do not yet know how chivalry will fare in these calamitous times of ours." --- Don Quixote
"I have no words, my voice is in my sword." --- Shakespeare
"I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it." --- Jack Handey
Weird has always been a funny word to me. Doesn't it just look so weird?
What I have learned over the years is that there is no most difficult/easiest language to learn in the world. All recognized languages have some facets to them that are incredibly easy to learn, and others that are exceedingly difficult.
For example, grammar and conjugation are for the most part simple in English, however pronunciation and learning to read/spell are both supposed to be rather difficult.
Compare that to Spanish, which has fairly simple and rigid pronunciation, but has a rather difficult grammar riddled with tons of rules and even more exceptions.
French, on the other hand, has a much simpler grammar, (only one subjunctive wut?) but pronunciation and spelling can be rather difficult.
"You must know, then, that there are two methods of fight, the one by law, the other by force: the first method is that of men, the second of beasts; but as the first method is often insufficient, one must have recourse to the second. It is therefore necessary for a prince to know well how to use both the beast and the man.
-Niccolo Machiavelli
AARs:
The Aeduic War: A Casse Mini AAR
The Kings of Land's End: A Lusitani AAR
The point is that if I don't have to learn any grammar, there is no grammar, no matter what you say.
It's really strange that I seem to be able to communicate in this language fairly well although I have never made any effort to learn its grammar, whereas my French skills are zero, although I have put the double effort into learning it's ridiculously difficult grammar and orthography.
Yeah but the RRRRRRR still gives me headaches even after eight years... the grammar is not that difficult. OK, it's very difficult to be honest, but "riddled with tons of rules and even more exceptions" is a little strong. I mean,Originally Posted by Owen Glyndwr
theirthey'rethere are like no exceptions at all.
Really? I remember it as the epitome of difficulty. Man how I hated it. Their weird constructions with apostrophs made me sick regularly.Originally Posted by Owen Glyndwr
Last edited by Centurio Nixalsverdrus; 12-14-2009 at 04:43.
l'apostrophes? As far as my mandatory French lessons go, I haven't seen them used except for words that start with vowels. Don't start me on "H" being a vowel. That's just weird.
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
- Proud Horseman of the Presence
"You must know, then, that there are two methods of fight, the one by law, the other by force: the first method is that of men, the second of beasts; but as the first method is often insufficient, one must have recourse to the second. It is therefore necessary for a prince to know well how to use both the beast and the man.
-Niccolo Machiavelli
AARs:
The Aeduic War: A Casse Mini AAR
The Kings of Land's End: A Lusitani AAR
You seem to be equating grammar with morphological complexity. Do you think Mandarin Chinese is an easy language to learn? If so, more power to you, but most of us westerners would not agree. I, for one, struggle tremendously distinguishing tonal differences. Yet English has much more morphological complexity than Chinese, and much more phonotactic complexity, especially in syllable codas. English does not have the morphological complexity that some languages do (including older varieties of English), but like all languages, it makes up for lack of complexity in some areas with greater complexity in others. English phonology is quite complex, including interdental fricatives and highly complex syllable codas and onsets (a single syllable may have three segments in both its onset and its coda), and its syntax is quite complex as well. Word paradigms may be quite easy to pick up; correct word order is likely to cause more problems.
The point of language is communication. To accomplish this it must have a fine balance of complexity, or you won't be able to communicate. Your statement that you are able to communicate fairly well in English is a testament to the complexity of the language's grammar. (edit: and by the way, your written grammar is quite impressive, probably indistinguishable from a native speaker. I'd have to hear you speak to know whether you've mastered English phonology as well as its syntax and morphology)
Ajax
Last edited by ajaxfetish; 12-14-2009 at 05:52.
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"I do not yet know how chivalry will fare in these calamitous times of ours." --- Don Quixote
"I have no words, my voice is in my sword." --- Shakespeare
"I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it." --- Jack Handey
Look up the rules on the usage of por and para, or the subjunctive, or preterite vs imperfect. I guarantee you, your head will explode.It's not that bad. But I guess that's why I got a hundred in Spanish OHHHH SNAAPPPOr the sheer number of different conjugations.... I hate you ir, ser, ar verbs, er verbs, ir verbs, haber, saber, decir, dar, car/gar/zar verbs, 2vv verbs, o-> ue, e->ie, e->i, o->u, ir sole verbs, informal commands, go verbs, and any other verbs I may have missed
Corro ~~ Corremos
Corres ~~ Correis
Corre ~~ Corren
Run ~~ Run
Run ~~ Run
Runs ~~ Run
Last edited by CCRunner; 12-14-2009 at 06:26.
I Run ~~ We RunCorro ~~ Corremos
Corres ~~ Correis
Corre ~~ Corren
Run ~~ Run
Run ~~ Run
Runs ~~ Run
You Run ~~ You (all) Run <----Blame the Spanish for this
He/She/You Run(s) ~~ You/They Run
Last edited by Azathoth; 12-14-2009 at 06:38.
At my school I work with a lot of ESL students. What I've learned is that when people from primarily spanish or deep latin roots countries or households write in english they write how its spelled. Messes a lot of them up.
I tell them they have to add an accent to everything if there is a silent letter. Teach them selves to say their there and they're slightly different so they know which one to write.
Last edited by Veho Nex; 12-14-2009 at 06:44.
Tho' I've belted you an' flayed you,
By the livin' Gawd that made you,
You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!Originally Posted by North Korea
According to my Spanish teacher, everyone in her neighbourhood speaks a kind of Spanglish (ie. advertisements for frozen goods say "freezado" instead of "congelado").I tell them they have to add an accent to everything if there is a silent letter. Teach them selves to say their there and they're slightly different so they know which one to write.
"Drunk Cherokee"
"Frat boy with homosexual tendencies"
"Bingo players in sweatpants"
No, wait, those are redundancies, never mind.
Baby Quit Your Cryin' Put Your Clown Britches On!!!
"You must know, then, that there are two methods of fight, the one by law, the other by force: the first method is that of men, the second of beasts; but as the first method is often insufficient, one must have recourse to the second. It is therefore necessary for a prince to know well how to use both the beast and the man.
-Niccolo Machiavelli
AARs:
The Aeduic War: A Casse Mini AAR
The Kings of Land's End: A Lusitani AAR
It's better then waking up and than missing the train to work.
That's because the Americans are doin' it 'rong.
German is pretty easy, trust me, I grew up with it.
Can't be, I don't know any german who would be an english grammar nazi...
That's deffo correct.
I'd say I pick(ed) up english rather naturally, never learned the grammar either but then it was similar with german, I learned most of the german grammar during latin lessons long after we were supposed to learn it in german lessons. One of the few things I find difficult in both are things like indirect speech in some kind of past tense or whatever.
About conflicting words, 'wand' would be one, in english a magical one can turn you into a frog and in german it divides rooms in a building.
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"Topic is tired and needs a nap." - Tosa Inu
Damn you all to infernity!
Dutch is one of the hardest languages to learn, or so I heard.
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By the way, you're absolutely right that English has an impoverished inflectional morphology. Most of our verbs have just four distinct forms (for instance, jump, jumps, jumped, jumping), though some of our strong verbs have slightly more or fewer. By contrast, classical Latin, a language with a rich inflectional morphology, has I believe about 100 distinct forms for each verb. Other languages blow Latin out of the water. (edit: I understand that Kivunjo has about 500,000 distinct forms for each verb)
But the lack of complexity in that part of the English grammar is made up for in the syntax, with our especially rich system of auxiliary verbs. I can throw out a sentence like
If I were to have been being helped, I wouldn't have come to complain
with a string of five auxiliaries and a main verb in the first subordinate clause. Between them all, I know the verb is subjunctive, non-finite, perfective, passive, and progressive. Replace any of them with a differently inflected form, or change the order, and the sentence would immediately become incorrect. Furthermore, because overt subjects are obligatory in English and the verb and subject agree, I also know the verb is first-person singular. That's some serious complexity. Even with 100 different inflected forms, Latin can't encode more verbal information in a single clause than that.
Ajax
Last edited by ajaxfetish; 12-14-2009 at 17:41.
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"I do not yet know how chivalry will fare in these calamitous times of ours." --- Don Quixote
"I have no words, my voice is in my sword." --- Shakespeare
"I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it." --- Jack Handey
Thats very true, here in Argentina we speak Spanglish every day, mostly because of foreign terms that don't have a proper translation into Spanish; freezado, chateando are examples of every day words we use.
There isn't any single written word in English that conflicts with my language... and there isn't any single spoken word that doesn't![]()
returning to the shadows.....
It's a 'soft' G, as in Geoffrey. Not a 'hard' G as in goal.
Anyroad, these days I have all on speaking in Yorksheer. Ecky thump.
There are times I wish they’d just ban everything- baccy and beer, burgers and bangers, and all the rest- once and for all. Instead, they creep forward one apparently tiny step at a time. It’s like being executed with a bacon slicer.
“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.”
To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticise.
"The purpose of a university education for Left / Liberals is to attain all the politically correct attitudes towards minorties, and the financial means to live as far away from them as possible."
Yes I was. I didn't know there was a difference. Thank your for explaining that.
Wow, thank you very much! Though if you would hear me speak you would be disappointed I think, I haven't actually spoken English a long time. All my practice basically comes from the .Org!
I must confess that I probably get the meaning of your sentence just 75%. You beat my English skills.Originally Posted by ajaxfetish
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Always keep an eye on the accent.Originally Posted by CCRunner
There are fairly simple rules concerning that. The great thing about Spanish is that it's logical. The orthography is completely logical, the use of the accents, even the conjugations. The shift between indicative and subjunctive is logical... Once you have seen and revised all the grammar (morphological changes ;)), you'll suddenly understand and be deeply satisfied.Originally Posted by CCRunner
I *know* all this rules. It's the four great dualisms of Spanish, you forgot ser vs. estar. I don't know if there are so many exceptions to the rules. As stated above, it's really quite logical. Also, I believe you can't learn them all, you better get a feeling to when to use what.
Qu'est-ce que c'est? (What's that?)Originally Posted by A Very Super Market
Est-ce que c'est? (Is that...?)
How can you invent such combinations...
No problem. I just tend to get a little excitable on this topic, since I'm making the study of grammar, and especially the history of English, my pursuit in life. Incidentally, German's one of the other languages I'm working on picking up, though I'm nowhere near fluent yet (and I'm not exactly surrounded by German speakers I can practice using it with over here).
Ajax
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"I do not yet know how chivalry will fare in these calamitous times of ours." --- Don Quixote
"I have no words, my voice is in my sword." --- Shakespeare
"I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it." --- Jack Handey
T'was in Spanish 3, I'm now in Spanish 7/AP Spanish. Mostly we've just been practising for the AP Exam and going over grammar that we should have learned years ago. I think I'll just start a new language next year, I'm getting tired of Spanish.Your skill at the language does not make the language itself any less complex. I got a 5 on the AP test, but I still respect how outrageously difficult Spanish grammar can be. What Spanish are we talking about? Spanish 1 is a lot easier than Spanish 4.
Every single word of English conflicts with my language and plans for global domination.
For specific words, too many to mention:
1) Prix - price, prize. It never dawned on me until I learned English that 'prix' has two distinct meanings.
2) Actuel / actual:
Actuel - present
Actuellement - at the moment
Réel - actual
Réellement - actually
3) To ask = Demander. To demand = Réclamer. To reclaim = Récupérer. Etcetera.![]()
Yet we're closer to French than anything else...
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
- Proud Horseman of the Presence
Yet we're closer to French than anything else...![]()
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