[ot] Swedish langauge

[tarchon]

This really makes me wonder....

Is English really harder than the other languages in the world? Is German pretty easy?

Agreeing with Liquide, it all depends on what languages you know already. Written English probably rates a little higher on the difficulty scale than most because of the spelling oddities, but beyond that, the general consensus among linguists is that most languages are of similar complexity in absolute terms. I've found that generally borne out in my experience.

 

[CrazyMage]

Different languages present their own challenges. Once you've learned one language using the Roman alphabet, you can more easily pick up others just because you don't need to relearn how to write, save for a few special symbols here or there. Japanese or Chinese are "harder" because they have many more symbols to learn in order to read and write (though one could still speak those languages just fine).

How about the sounds a language uses? Ones that use sounds closer to what we are used to are going to be "easier", especially if there's a close match between symbol and sound. How about tonal languages? Usually considered "hard" just because we're not used to it.

English has trimmed away most of the endings on verbs and nouns; a language like Russian or Sanskrit preserves those elements and so is "harder."

Some of it depends on what one wants to do with the language as well--just converse in German or read a paper vs. picking up a copy of Der Zauberberg by Thomas Mann to read for fun. We recognize that even native English speakers pass on certain books or magazines because they are "hard" because of vocabulary or presentation or the knowledge that they assume.

In short, the majority of whether a language is "easy" or "hard" to learn comes down to "what do you already know?", though there are still some languages at the edges of the spectrum (e.g. more people will find Apache "hard" rather than "easy")

Also sprach CrazyMage

 

[Plane Sailing]

We can use a noun as a verb , never actually thought of this before and it became quite funny to experience this.

Users of British english often note that users of American english are often particularly good at nouning verbs (or verbing nouns). English seems to be a particularly fluid language and over time there are many of these linguistic crossovers which have become commonplace (still more in America than in Britain, however).

IIRC in english a verb which is acting as a noun is officially known as a "gerund". I forget whether there is a specific term for the reverse.

A great book for unravelling strangeness in the history of the english language is "Mother Tounge" by Bill Bryson. A great read, and it helps to answer some of the questions that have plagued me for years, such as "why do all the other european languages have gender for words, when english doesn't. Is it just to frustrate us?"

Cheers

 

[Liquide]

Re: Re: [ot] Swedish langauge

Users of British english often note that users of American english are often particularly good at nouning verbs (or verbing nouns). English seems to be a particularly fluid language and over time there are many of these linguistic crossovers which have become commonplace (still more in America than in Britain, however).

IIRC in english a verb which is acting as a noun is officially known as a "gerund". I forget whether there is a specific term for the reverse.

A great book for unravelling strangeness in the history of the english language is "Mother Tounge" by Bill Bryson. A great read, and it helps to answer some of the questions that have plagued me for years, such as "why do all the other european languages have gender for words, when english doesn't. Is it just to frustrate us?"

Cheers

Well for gender (or genus ) it is quite simple a way for us to categorize words. It is easier to relate to a word if you know where to place it so to speak. Still no idea why English doesn't have them please enlighten me since I havn't read "Mother Tounge".

Still I find the "a" and "an" in front of every noun a lil bit hard to learn, since we construct them in a diffrent way in Swedish .

If you wore (LOL cannot remember if it is wore or were let's hope for the best) to say:

"I'm a man" you would say "I'm one man" since we have no specific words that are "a" or "an" instead we just the words that mean "one".

I am a man! - Jag är en man!
He's a man! - Han är en man!
One man. - En man.

An Apple - Ett Äpple.
That's an Apple - Det är ett äpple.
One Apple - Ett Äpple.

Still "a" or "an" means "one" so you maybe would say that we do have it after all in swedish after all BUT the English langauge have specific words for this while the swedish just use the words for "one".

ett - "a,an,one"
en - "a,an,one"

Why is "a" and "an" listed at both words you might ask , well "ett" and "en" doesn't work the same way in swedish as in english, for example we have no general rule(s) when to use either "ett" or "en" as in the english langauge, you just know when the correct usage is applied and when to apply the correct usage (if you are brought up with the langauge that is).

Well that is enough for this time.

(to be continued)

 

[KitanaVorr]

Hehe discussion on languages! One of my faves...

Asian languages are pretty difficult to learn, especially the characters. Memorizing thousands and thousands of characters...not on the to do list of most people. So unless you've been learning from birth, I think few foreigners can really grasp the language at a level beyond grade school or even highschool at least for a reading level.

I find big differences myself in the spoken.

For example, Vietnamese like most asian languages is a tonal language. Meaning of words are different based on the tone a word is spoken. There are five different accents which determine how a word is spoken. To make this even more confusing...its different depending on which region of the country you're from.

So depending on how you say it...you can say the exact same word and still mean something different. Call your friend a table and vice versa.

And even weirder...we refer to ourselves in the third person.

Thankfully, there is no conjugation...you just add a word to indicate time.

I don't think American English (which is very different from British English) is easier...sometimes its more confusing because it is such a melting pot language now. So many words in American English comes from the many different cultures which get changed until it slides effortlessly in. American English is always changing and yes we do make verbs out of nouns constantly.

There are lot of idioms and slang in American English that confuse the non-native speaker. My mom has been trying to grasp this for many years now and still has trouble.

 

[Sixchan]

Well, I know German to Standard Grade (Scottish age 16 Base Qualification) level, small bits of Japanese (I can sing in it by learning though sound, and I can say basic Geek level phrases, like 'you idiot' and 'I am the TV'), various words and phrases in other languages, British English, and the Glaswegian Dialect of it (Also known as Nedese).

I've still got no clue as to the purpose of Genders to words in German. It doesn't seem to affect much aside from the ending to put on certain words. A german person could understand what I mean even if I put the wrong gender on, right? So why have them?

There is also the matter of Dialects. Particularly with English, I guess (due to its wide spread), dialects can drasticly change a language. Word order is completely different in Glaswegian, hell, even word use is completely different. Even the simplest sentence in English doesn't survive. "I am" is spoken in Glaswegian as "Am are" or "Amur". So anyone who had learned English in a classroom would stand no chance in many areas. I wouldn't, and I'm a native speaker!

 

[Psionicist]

In some of the northen regions of sweden you only use the subject of personal pronouns, such as I instead of me, even if you are refering to the object.

I like apples. --- Jag gillar äpplen.
Give the apple to me. --- Ge äpplet till jag.

 

[tarchon]

Well, I know German to Standard Grade (Scottish age 16 Base Qualification) level, small bits of Japanese (I can sing in it by learning though sound, and I can say basic Geek level phrases, like 'you idiot' and 'I am the TV'), various words and phrases in other languages, British English, and the Glaswegian Dialect of it (Also known as Nedese).

I've still got no clue as to the purpose of Genders to words in German. It doesn't seem to affect much aside from the ending to put on certain words. A german person could understand what I mean even if I put the wrong gender on, right? So why have them?

Because you're only dealing with simple utterances. The primary function of gender (and number) is to sort out references in the sentence, so it doesn't come up much on a basic level (plus English speakers speaking German intentionally avoid using it since they're uncomfortable with it, same as with modals and subjunctives). English of course has gender as well, and it serves the same purpose. The main difference is that we associate gender with the meaning of the noun rather than the form of the noun.
Consider the sentence:
"I saw him giving it to her."
If you knew the context of this sentence, it would be perfectly clear what it meant because the pronoun genders identify who/what they refer to. If your pronoun was the invariant "ta,"
"I saw ta giving ta to ta"
would be a little vague even if you knew the context.
The system used in German isn't the best example since it's a little fossilized, but the formal gender of nouns does still function to clarify references to some extent. I've certainly run into cases where I caused confusion by muddling gender.
This is the function of the person, animation, gender, noun class, number, speaker distance, and social level that various languages base their agreement features on, and given the widespread use of agreement features, we have to conclude that some form of it must be indispensible.

 

[Tonguez]

All languages have some sort of syntactic structure with their verbs (naturally). All you're doing here is taking a verb and calling it something else. It acts like a verb, therefore it is a verb. The key question is whether there exist nouns (like tangata) that cannot be used the way haere is. If a large class of such nouns exist, haere and words like it are clearly verbs.

In the first examples, I agree that we are seeing a "verbal noun" constructed as if it were part of noun phrase, but, again, that's common as dirt. If that denies the existence of verbs in Maori, it denies the existence of verbs entirely. I don't know of any languages that don't do that in some way. The English/Germanic "to" infinitive construction is a perfect example.

Celtic languages often construct sentences similarly, the only major difference being that the particles corresponding to "ke", "ko", and "ka" are interpreted as forms of an auxiliary verb meaning "to be" ("verbal particles" is probably a better term). Celtic languages also share the preference for VSO syntax, which might suggest that there are deep similarities in the grammars (they use postpositive modifiers as well). In fact, looking at a small online Maori course, many of the examples translate into Gaelic with identical word order.
Your last example however would appear to be an entirely straightforward use of haere as a finite verb with "ka" as an aspect marker, since it lacks any of the trappings of a noun phrase. Maori imperatives as well don't appear to be constructed as noun phrases, e.g.
"Homai te rakau kura."
"Hoatu te ipu ki a Mere."

I think the main issue is that all 'verbs' in Maori (and most other Polynesian languages) act as both Verbs and Nouns. Thus the division becomes one of
1. Words that can Act as Verbs or Nouns according to syntax
2. Words that can be used as Nouns only

It is possible to call Class 1 Verbs but it would also be correct to call all of them nouns.

An interesting word in class 1 is that of Wahine - woman

it is possible to say

Kua wahine te kotiro
The girl (kotiro) has become a woman
(kua = present perfect tense marker)

it is NOT possible to say

Kua Tane te tama = the boy (tama) has become a man (Tane) (eek that hurt my ears!)

So Wahine whilst mainly acting as a noun can be used as a verb here. Its male equivalent however Tane is a pure noun (and I have no idea why this is so) * note Maori is also otherwise gender neutral eg ia means both he and she, him and her

um for more see Here

 

[Impeesa]

Verbing weirds language.

Having only ever learned a bit of French (aside from English, of course), I really can't say much for the relative difficulty of other languages. However, compared to French at least, I've always found English to be a much less strictly structured language - knowing nothing, I would much rather try to learn French than English.

--Impeesa--