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Hardest concept to grasp in any language | ||
Tags: Difficulty | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Miznia Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5351 days ago 37 posts - 42 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Cantonese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese | Message 41 of 61 09 April 2010 at 4:33pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Yes this is confusing me a bit in Vietnamese. I feel I can approximate the sounds but not as implosive. The "d" one sounds retroflex to me, and the "b" sounds like forcing the lips open with a little air. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5535 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese | Message 42 of 61 09 April 2010 at 5:47pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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In Spanish: Gender and number matching. Having to change every word in a short sentence, because you made one noun plural, is a pain. It's not really difficult, it just requires thinking very differently than in English or Korean.
In Korean: The fact that Korean is so context heavy that you often know every single word in a sentence (and understand all the grammar structures) but still aren't 100% sure what the sentence means, because you don't know the context to fill in the missing implied subject and/or object. Edited by Warp3 on 09 April 2010 at 5:50pm 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 43 of 61 09 April 2010 at 6:34pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Not really a grammar point but I must say that the reverse thing in German numbers 21-99 took me some serious getting-used to.
And even now that I'm close to completing A2 level I still struggle a little to understand those numbers on a first hearing. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Miznia Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5351 days ago 37 posts - 42 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Cantonese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese | Message 44 of 61 09 April 2010 at 7:13pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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there's also French "quatre-vingt-dix-sept" etc. (four twenty seventeen = 97)
Chinese explicitly noting where there are zeroes in the number Also the importance of 10,000 in big numbers (what is 100 ten-thousands?) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
 Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6894 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 45 of 61 09 April 2010 at 7:23pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I was surprised too. This particular construction felt totally natural to me right from the beginnning when I started with Mandarin. Maybe I had an advantage from having dabbled a little in Japanese many years ago, though I can't actually remember if I dabbled deep enough at the time to come across this language feature. Edited by Hencke on 09 April 2010 at 7:24pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Miznia Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5351 days ago 37 posts - 42 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Cantonese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese | Message 46 of 61 09 April 2010 at 7:45pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Well, I think Chinese is not as hard, because it's more likely that a complicated relative clause won't be used, but I wonder what sort of thing you regard as difficult when studying a language, if not something like having to rearrange the order in which you come up with words.
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| vb Octoglot Senior Member Afghanistan Joined 6422 days ago 112 posts - 135 votes Speaks: English, Romanian, French, Polish, Dutch, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Russian, Swedish | Message 47 of 61 09 April 2010 at 7:48pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I'm finding these somewhat difficult to teach to my Polish friend. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Fat-tony Nonaglot Senior Member United Kingdom jiahubooks.co.uk Joined 6140 days ago 288 posts - 441 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian, Esperanto, Thai, Laotian, Urdu, Swedish, French Studies: Mandarin, Indonesian, Arabic (Written), Armenian, Pali, Burmese | Message 48 of 61 09 April 2010 at 8:08pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
You've just reminded me of my pet nemesis: numbers in the languages of North India, for me Urdu and Panjabi. Essentially you have to learn every number up to 100 individually, there is no pattern. Although the 80s and 90s are more regular, the 20s/30s/40s are frustrating similar and the 50s go all over the place. Oh, yeah and there are unique words for 1.5 and 2.5. I think the most telling fact is that most expats never really learn the system and just adopt that of the country they live in. Here's l0=num"> best link I could find - just go by the phonetic transcriptions. Oh and Russian aspect - there are loads of rules but in the end a native will just pick the most natural sounding one. Much like the trouble Slavs have with the in/definite articles I imagine. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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