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Czech, Polish, Greek? case heavy langs | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6588 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes  4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 9 of 38 30 October 2013 at 4:14pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Uralic languages have no genders so no declensions. The endings are always the same, apart from a tiny bit of phonetic variation.
Try out Finnish, it's awesome and very regular! Even as a native speaker of a language with cases, I found it muuuuch easier than for example German. Also, indirect object is mostly a relevant concept in languages that have 2-4 cases. In Finnish the allative is used for moving towards a place (as opposed to going inside it), and also for what you probably mean by indirect object, ie "to whom" (send, give, this sort of stuff). Also just anecdata of course but there are quite a few successful Finnish learners who didn't learn a language with cases first. (in fact, this applies to all Swedish native speakers in Finland! of course they have more favourable conditions, but still) 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4698 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 10 of 38 30 October 2013 at 4:25pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
There's always a balance between them. German also has cases and it has strict word order rules, much more than Russian. Romanian also has cases but it uses them quite differently.
Languages with this many "cases" only have a bit of phonetic variation in them for ease of pronunciation usually. Korean has lots of particles and markers you could call cases, but they're always the same ones, give or take an extra consonant/vowel to ease pronunciation.
Slavic languages also have verb aspect. That is more challenging than the cases. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| samfrances Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4043 days ago 81 posts - 110 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 11 of 38 30 October 2013 at 4:51pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Thanks all. So why did you decide to learn the particular case-oriented languages that you have learned, as opposed to others? Edited by samfrances on 30 October 2013 at 4:52pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7147 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 12 of 38 30 October 2013 at 4:55pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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As much as I love Finnish (not to mention Serpent's persona ;-)), I think that getting your feet wet with Hungarian is a clearer path to seeing the interplay between the degree of case-marking and flexibility in syntax.
When it comes to inflection in either of these languages, the tendency indeed is agglutinative or attaching suffixes to some stem. The difference is that in Hungarian the stem is more likely to be the same as the basic form (i.e. the nominative singular) than in Finnish. In Finnish, the stem differs (albeit predictably once you get some practice) because of adherence to a process involving changes to 'k', 'p' or 't' in the basic form, reflections of older reflexes of that basic form or changes to the stem's final vowel because of the following suffix. One can divide Finnish nouns into several declensional groups on the strength of the stem changes that occur, whereas in Hungarian it's not as elaborate since it doesn't entail changes to the internal consonants. E.g. "house" (nom sing.), "in [a] house" (inessive sing.), "houses" (nom plur.), "in houses" (inessive plur.) FI: talo, talossa, talot, taloissa (secondary plural infix '-i-' rather than primary one of '-t') HU: ház, házban, házak, házakban "book" (nom sing.), "in [a] book" (inessive sing.), "books" (nom plur.), "in books" (inessive plur.) FI: kirja, kirjassa, kirjat, kirjoissa (secondary plural infix '-i-' changes stem's final vowel from 'a' to 'o') HU: könyvek, könyvben, könyvek, könyvekben "shop" (nom sing.), "in [a] shop" (inessive sing.), "shops" (nom plur.), "in shops" (inessive plur.) FI: liike, liikkeessä, liikkeet, liikkeissä (that consonant change i.e. k > kk, stem's final vowel is lengthened as a remnant of an earlier basic form of *liiket) HU: bolt, boltban, boltok, boltokban "machine" (nom sing.), "in [a] machine" (inessive sing.), "machines" (nom plur.), "in machines" (inessive plur.) FI: kone, koneessa, koneet, koneissa (as with liike, the stem's final vowel is lengthened as a remnant of an earlier basic form of *konet) HU: gép, gépben, gépek, gépekben The trend is that inflecting in Hungarian typically involves jumping over fewer hurdles than in Finnish because of the need to account for changes to stems' internal consonants or vowels before even attaching the case suffix). At the same time the killer is in Hungarian word order. My (mis)use of word order is most likely to make me sound like a non-native even when I have all of the cases in order. See here for a taste of how Hungarian word order conveys different nuances while still adhering to the rule that the sentence's focused element immediately precedes the verb. It's made complicated by needing to know how to deal with the verb prefixes and negating particles, in addition to what "sounds better" to a native Hungarian (for lack of a better expression) when placing adverbial phrases in the sentence. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4698 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 13 of 38 30 October 2013 at 5:03pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
For reasons other than linguistic ones - I never choose languages because they are "difficult" (I don't consider cases difficult anyway) or to show off how I learned X "hard" language (omg, I speak Chinese, those kinds of folks). I think they distract from what you're actually doing. I learn languages because they allow me to communicate with a particular subset of people who speak that particular language. Some of them have cases. Some of them do not. I don't have a bias or preference for either, once you've seen 2 or 3, you've pretty much seen it all anyways. And sometimes I don't have a choice (German was forced on me in school, I had Latin as an elective). Some I learned because I fell in love with somebody from that linguistic background. Some for travel (Russian). 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7147 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 14 of 38 30 October 2013 at 5:10pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
See here. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| samfrances Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4043 days ago 81 posts - 110 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 15 of 38 30 October 2013 at 5:33pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I'm not trying to show off or do something difficult for the sake of it. I am fascinated by the different ways languages work e.g. the idea that a word ending could change a noun from a doer to done-to, or that a change in tone could make a completely different word etc. But my question was mainly about the non-linguistic benefits of learning particular languages, as I'm aware that being "awed" by a language will wear off once the hard work kicks in. My main question was "why do you love this language / culture?", "what did you gain from learning the language", directed at Czech, Polish, Greek or other case-heavy languages. Edited by samfrances on 30 October 2013 at 6:11pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6588 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 16 of 38 30 October 2013 at 6:04pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I know you're not showing off, we just generally don't see anyone succeed with a similar kind of motivation. "I want to learn a language" is not enough.
Only you can decide what culture you will enjoy. Get exposure, find some music on youtube, maybe subtitled movies etc, whatever you enjoy. Here's an amazing Polish audiobook for example. And here's an awesome song in Finnish, I can give you 356834 more (rock/heavy metal is definitely an important reason why people learn Finnish - I have no idea whether you're into these genres so I chose something fairly sweet :))) 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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