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Hardest concept to grasp in any language | ||
Tags: Difficulty | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| kyssäkaali Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5553 days ago 203 posts - 376 votes  Speaks: English*, Finnish | Message 49 of 61 10 April 2010 at 12:21am | IP Logged | |||||
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I never really studied Finnish grammar, only picked it up from conversation, video games etc. but it did take me a long time understand how and when to use the partitive case. I understand most learners of the language find it impossible to wrap their minds around such a grammatical case and it doesn't help that it's extremely rare, only occurring in other finno-ugric languages to the best of my knowledge.
I remember at the very beginning, the idea of inflecting a word PERIOD just did not register with me. As you all know, English just doesn't inflect its words, but I remember it just clicked one day after months of study and reading. I think that little click there sparked something within me and made me hunger for more clicks of that nature, considering I had ZERO interest in foreign languages before that time. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5345 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 50 of 61 10 April 2010 at 12:43am | IP Logged | |||||
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After learning my first self-taught language (German) I don't think I've ever been disconcerted by anything I've encountered since. While learning any language is very hard work, I know now what to expect and how to approach it.
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| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5567 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 51 of 61 10 April 2010 at 2:47am | IP Logged | |||||
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I've never really studied Korean, but I like phonology and I tried to teach myself to distinguish Korean tense consonants from non-tense consonants. I don't think that's something my ear could ever pick up. I hear absolutely no difference.
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| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5347 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 52 of 61 10 April 2010 at 2:48am | IP Logged | |||||
Probably I’m misinterpreting this explanation because I don’t know any Japanese (or Korean), but this example reminds me of the Partizipialkonstruktion in German: Das Buch lesende Mädchen versteht es/das Buch nicht. Not a great example, I know, but maybe these are better: Das laut um Hilfe schreiende Kind konnte rasch gerettet werden. The child, who was crying loudly for help, could be rescued quickly. Die im Krieg durch Bomben zerstörte Stadt war ein schrecklicher Anblick. The town, that had been destroyed by bombs during the war, was a frightful sight. Can anyone tell me if this comparison between German and Japanese makes any sense? I’ve always found the potentially ever-expanding Partezipialkonstruktion both fascinating and intuitive and something that my mother tongue, Italian, sorely lacks. PS. The examples were taken from my old grammar book, because it’s too late for me to come up with any decent ones. Edited by Emme on 10 April 2010 at 11:34pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| kyssäkaali Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5553 days ago 203 posts - 376 votes Speaks: English*, Finnish | Message 53 of 61 10 April 2010 at 3:18am | IP Logged | |||||
Furthermore, how about in Finnish? We phrase things similarly in that language, and I actually just realised it. It never occurred to me that it is different or hard to comprehend. It's just... just Finnish. :P Kalliolla istuva nainen kiikaroi järvelle päin. Translation: The woman who is sitting/sat atop the rock gazed through binoculars in the direction of the lake. Literally: (The) rock-on sitting woman use-binoculars lake-to towards. Elokuvia varten rakennettu Simpukkamökin lavaste Translation: The clam cottage prop that is built for the movies Literally: (The) movies-for built clam-cottage-GEN prop That's what the posts about Japanese sentence construction remind me of. Like I said, I never saw this as strange until now, lol. 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 54 of 61 10 April 2010 at 3:35am | IP Logged | |||||
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Hmm, yes, I think those German and Finnish examples count.
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| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 55 of 61 10 April 2010 at 3:37am | IP Logged | |||||
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I found this great Japanese example in a article about a toilet that made a water sound
to cover up for other embarrassing sounds: トイレに入っている時の音を消すために水の 流れる音が出る機械です。 Roughly: toilet-in entered-are when (poss.part.) sound (obj.part.) erase in-order-to water (poss.part.) pour sound (subj.part.) come out machine it is. It's a machine that makes a water sound to cover up sounds in the restroom. It's ENTIRELY backwards! Edited by Arekkusu on 10 April 2010 at 3:38am 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 56 of 61 10 April 2010 at 3:45am | IP Logged | |||||
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That's exactly a sentence I would have trouble making.
Actually sometimes I do try to speak English in backwards word order... 1 person has voted this message useful |
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