Hardest concept to grasp in any language (General discussion) Language Learning Forum

Hardest concept to grasp in any language
Tags: Difficulty
Share with: Delicious Digg reddit Facebook StumbleUpon
Language Learning Forum : General discussion

61 messages over 8 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Next >>

MarcoDiAngelo
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Yugoslavia
Joined 6447 days ago
208 posts - 345 votes

Speaks: Serbian*, English, Spanish, Russian
Studies: Thai, Polish

Message 17 of 61

09 April 2010 at 12:49am | IP Logged

Aineko wrote:

Definite and indefinite articles, in any language. There's just no such thing in Serbian
and I think I'll never be able to use them with the same accuracy as natives (or at least
not any time soon :) )

Haha, the same here. ;)
At first, when I was a kid at school, I could never understand what the heck was their use. Later I learned that because of that feature the language doesn't need cases.

1 person has voted this message useful

Arekkusu
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Canada
bit.ly/qc_10_lec
Joined 5381 days ago
3971 posts - 7747 votes

Speaks: English, French*, German^C1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto
Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian

Message 18 of 61

09 April 2010 at 12:53am | IP Logged

MarcoDiAngelo wrote:

Aineko wrote:

Definite and indefinite articles, in any language. There's just no such
thing in Serbian
and I think I'll never be able to use them with the same accuracy as natives (or at least
not any time soon :) )

Haha, the same here. ;)
At first, when I was a kid at school, I could never understand what the heck was their use. Later I learned
that because of that feature the language doesn't need cases.

German has cases and articles. Having articles does not imply that cases are not necessary.
1 person has voted this message useful

MarcoDiAngelo
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Yugoslavia
Joined 6447 days ago
208 posts - 345 votes

Speaks: Serbian*, English, Spanish, Russian
Studies: Thai, Polish

Message 19 of 61

09 April 2010 at 1:00am | IP Logged

Arekkusu wrote:

German has cases and articles. Having articles does not imply that cases are not necessary.

Yes, but German could do without cases. Plus, German declinations are minimal. Serbian couldn't. A good example is Bulgarian. Besides Macedonian, it's the only Slavic language that doesn't have cases - and it does have articles.

Edited by MarcoDiAngelo on 09 April 2010 at 1:00am
2 persons have voted this message useful

Chung
Diglot
Senior Member
Joined 7156 days ago
4228 posts - 8259 votes

20 sounds
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish

Message 20 of 61

09 April 2010 at 1:05am | IP Logged

MarcoDiAngelo wrote:

Arekkusu wrote:

German has cases and articles. Having articles does not imply that cases are not necessary.

Yes, but German [B]could do[/B] without cases. Plus, German declinations are minimal. Serbian couldn't. A good example is Bulgarian. Besides Macedonian, it's the only Slavic language that doesn't have cases - and it does have articles.

Cases and the use of articles don't appear to be mutually exclusive. Hungarian regularly uses a definite article but Estonian and Finnish do not have one at all. However all three languages have cases (16 to 24 for Hungarian, 14 for Estonian and 15 or 16 for Finnish).
1 person has voted this message useful

Arekkusu
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Canada
bit.ly/qc_10_lec
Joined 5381 days ago
3971 posts - 7747 votes

Speaks: English, French*, German^C1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto
Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian

Message 21 of 61

09 April 2010 at 1:11am | IP Logged

Loads of languages have neither cases nor articles (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc.)
1 person has voted this message useful

MarcoDiAngelo
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Yugoslavia
Joined 6447 days ago
208 posts - 345 votes

Speaks: Serbian*, English, Spanish, Russian
Studies: Thai, Polish

Message 22 of 61

09 April 2010 at 1:15am | IP Logged

I didn't say they were mutually exclusive.
Chinese, Japanese and Korean surely must have some grammatical concept I'm not aware of (as I know very little about non-Indo-European languages) to handle that, am I right?

Edited by MarcoDiAngelo on 09 April 2010 at 1:16am
1 person has voted this message useful

Arekkusu
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Canada
bit.ly/qc_10_lec
Joined 5381 days ago
3971 posts - 7747 votes

Speaks: English, French*, German^C1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto
Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian

Message 23 of 61

09 April 2010 at 1:20am | IP Logged

MarcoDiAngelo wrote:

I didn't say they were mutually exclusive.
Chinese, Japanese and Korean surely must have some grammatical concept I'm not aware of
(as I know very little about non-Indo-European languages) to handle that, am I right?

Of course; my point is that there is nothing that articles offer that render cases
unnecessary.
1 person has voted this message useful

Delodephius
Bilingual Tetraglot
Senior Member
Yugoslavia
Joined 5403 days ago
342 posts - 501 votes

Speaks: Slovak*, Serbo-Croatian*, English^C1, Czech
Studies: Russian, Japanese

Message 24 of 61

09 April 2010 at 1:26am | IP Logged

global_gizzy wrote:

I think its pretty interesting that (apparently) many languages do NOT have definite articles. If you dont say "close the door" what do you say? "Close door"?

"Zatvor dvere" in Slovak, or "Zatvori vrata" in Serbian. See, no article. However, Macedonian and Bulgarian have articles, except they are attached to the end of nouns, so "Close the door", if my Macedonian isn't that bad, would be "Zatvori vratata".

1 person has voted this message useful

This discussion contains 61 messages over 8 pages: << Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Next >>

Printable version

You cannot post new topics in this forum - You cannot reply to topics in this forum - You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum - You cannot create polls in this forum - You cannot vote in polls in this forum

This page was generated in 0.3125 seconds.