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Hardest concept to grasp in any language | ||
Tags: Difficulty | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| ericspinelli Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5783 days ago 249 posts - 493 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Korean, Italian | Message 33 of 61 09 April 2010 at 8:14am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Though I remember having some problems with this initially, I am surprised to hear that this is one of the most difficult aspects of these languages. Perhaps if more textbooks and grammars focused more on the similarities between verbs and adjectives it would be easier. Though there are differences between the two, they fundamentally work the same way and saying 赤いりんご (akai ringo / red apple) and 落ちたりんご (ochita ringo / fallen apple / the apple that fell) isn't really any different, just as りんごが赤い (ringo ga akai / the apple is red) and りんごが落ちた (ringo ga ochita / the apple fell) aren't really any different. I've never heard somebody complain that the structure ～することができる (suru koto ga dekiru / can do _ing) is difficult, but I've also never seen a text that draws the parallel between this structure and all relative clauses. Either way, to those studying Japanese, the language is full of relative clauses (I just scanned 5 sentences and found 6 of them) and I wish you the best of luck. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| QiuJP Triglot Senior Member Singapore Joined 5855 days ago 428 posts - 597 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Czech, GermanB1, Russian, Japanese | Message 34 of 61 09 April 2010 at 8:15am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Prepositions.
Each language seems to have an unique system for prepositions and there is no 1 to 1 mapping that can convert form your native language to your target language. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| ennime Tetraglot Senior Member South Africa universityofbrokengl Joined 5904 days ago 397 posts - 507 votes Speaks: English, Dutch*, Esperanto, Afrikaans Studies: Xhosa, French, Korean, Portuguese, Zulu | Message 35 of 61 09 April 2010 at 9:29am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Gender... as in arbitrary noun classes (when they're more or less semantic, like in bantu
languages, I can deal)... in French, Latin, Nama/Khoekhoegowab, Russian... any language that was either 2 or 3 genders I mess up... oh and tones... never been able to get that right... I can do 4 different click consonants... but tones, nope... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6151 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 36 of 61 09 April 2010 at 12:55pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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The tones in Thai,
ใกล้ - near ไกล - far They sound almost exactly the same apart from a change in tone. As mentioned before, the perfective\imperfective verbs in Russian, and also the particles.E.g. себя Hungarian definite\indefinite verb uses and the agglutination of the various cases. E.g. Láttam könyvében - I saw it in his book 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Frieza Triglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 5353 days ago 102 posts - 137 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishC2, French Studies: German | Message 37 of 61 09 April 2010 at 12:59pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I'd say prepositions as well.
Each language has its own and there's no exact correspondence. Even in languages where I'm fluent like English, when it comes down to prepositions every now and then I still wonder. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6272 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 38 of 61 09 April 2010 at 2:15pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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In Turkish, the general structure. It's a highly agglutinative (and non-Indo-European) language and if you have never studied one of those before, it takes some getting used to.
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| chucknorrisman Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5448 days ago 321 posts - 435 votes Speaks: Korean*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, Mandarin, Lithuanian, French | Message 39 of 61 09 April 2010 at 2:38pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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The implosive consonants, as used in Vietnamese or Zulu. I have no idea how it works at all.
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| Miznia Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5351 days ago 37 posts - 42 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Cantonese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese | Message 40 of 61 09 April 2010 at 4:30pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I don't think textbook changes would make any difference... The problem is not difficulty with the concept, it's that a lot of more complicated thoughts need to be rearranged from the English order that comes intuitively. I don't see it as a beginner's problem. I don't expect "suru koto ga dekiru" to be difficult. Though the English is "can do," in Japanese it isn't possible to try to say "dekiru" without saying "suru koto" first. But it is possible to say "ringo" before remembering you wanted to describe it as "ki kara ochita" or something. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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