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Favourite Aspect of a Language | ||
Tags: Reasons for study | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6599 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 33 03 July 2013 at 8:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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lol :) the Portuguese one too? btw I use j for ж if i write an sms in Russian (example: Jirkov ;PPP)
but yeah I love diacritics too. and long vowels written as double, like in Finnish and Dutch. as for grammar, I'm fascinated by it but by now very few things manage to surprise me. And actually when they do, i'm annoyed (like the Spanish "a mi me gusta"). It helps to think of the countless people that were previously called uneducated for saying things like that, though :P Edited by Serpent on 03 July 2013 at 8:18pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Amerykanka Hexaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5173 days ago 657 posts - 890 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Polish, Latin, Ancient Greek, Russian | Message 10 of 33 03 July 2013 at 9:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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Grammar is definitely one of my favorite aspects of language learning! The more complicated and different
from English grammar, the better. I think this is why Polish is my favorite language and why Spanish, while very dear to me, has never really fascinated me. I like Spanish because of the smooth, flowing sound and the way the words roll off my lips, but the grammar isn't terribly interesting. That said, learning grammar is one of my favorite parts of learning any language. I like to discover how everything fits together and to see how what was previously incomprehensible is suddenly crystal clear. I especially enjoy complicated noun, pronoun, and adjective declensions - and interlocked word order enchants me every time. When I was reading Pan Tadeusz (and when I read pretty much anything in Latin), I loved the way words were jumbled together as if they'd simply been dumped onto the page, and how the only way of determining the meaning was to pay close attention to case endings. Edited by Amerykanka on 03 July 2013 at 9:03pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Bruno87 Diglot Groupie Argentina Joined 4384 days ago 49 posts - 72 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: German, Portuguese | Message 11 of 33 03 July 2013 at 9:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm so crazy in love with German that I would spend the whole day giving my reasons, but
to sum up: -How it sounds, especially that crazy "EN" endings, like "Guten Morgen" which is a kind of "GutN MoOgN", anbietN, ArbeitN, trinkN, etc. -The word order. If you translate from German to Spanish (my mothertongue) word by word, even the most simple clause sounds like a Spanish poetry. It's a crazy aspect! Isn't it? -Some words like "fernseher"(TV) which means see from far, "kühlschrank" (fridge) cool box. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7158 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 12 of 33 03 July 2013 at 11:49pm | IP Logged | ||
It's when I can use it usefully with people who mean a lot to me. I don't feel particularly excited about any feature in my target languages although there's sometimes a faint sense of euphoria when I've figured out something unfamiliar (e.g. Finnish direct object, Slavonic aspect, Saamic consonant gradation). 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5264 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 13 of 33 04 July 2013 at 2:26am | IP Logged | ||
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As I've said many times before, it's not the language itself- it's "beauty", or it's "cool script" or the way it conjugates verbs or other aspects- it's what I can do with it. It's who I can talk to, what I can listen to or read in a language. It's what I can learn about a culture and its people that isn't so transparent to my monolingual kin.
I think that anybody can like or dislike any aspect of a language, but for me, I don't look at a language as a thing to be admired or studied. I look at it as a way to talk to people who I couldn't before, to show them that I care enough about them to want to learn their language so I can learn more about them and their culture. So, I'm with Chung on that. Edited by iguanamon on 04 July 2013 at 2:53am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Sizen Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4341 days ago 165 posts - 347 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Catalan, Spanish, Japanese, Ukrainian, German | Message 14 of 33 04 July 2013 at 5:31am | IP Logged | ||
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@Chung @iguanamon
Of course we love using our languages to a meaningful end, and all the superficial attraction we have for a language isn't (usually) enough to motivate us to learn it to a high level. Even still, every now and then I find something in my languages that just excites me: a clever way of expressing an idea, a sound that resonates within me, or a surprising feature not present in one of my languages. You never get a rush from that? And I agree, iguanamon: a language doesn't have to be admired. But we can do it anyway! ;) It's so much better than being frustrated by that new conjugation or that concept we just don't get. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Hekje Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4705 days ago 842 posts - 1330 votes Speaks: English*, Dutch Studies: French, Indonesian | Message 15 of 33 04 July 2013 at 6:10am | IP Logged | ||
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My favorite things about Dutch are the diphthongs (ui, eu) and, as Serpent mentioned, the
doubled vowels. I also enjoy the accents that are sometimes used to indicate stress. Overall, I find the language very beautiful to hear and read. I've also become very fond of separable verbs in Dutch - how sometimes the verb is chunked together, sometimes split. Also, a lot of common separable verbs in Dutch are strong, so the verb can morph into quite a few aesthetically distinct forms depending on whether the clause is subordinate or not, in the past tense or not, or paired with other verbs. It's like watching a Transformer. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| espejismo Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5053 days ago 498 posts - 905 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Spanish, Greek, Azerbaijani | Message 16 of 33 04 July 2013 at 7:07am | IP Logged | ||
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The loss of intervocalic l and n in Portuguese.
2 persons have voted this message useful |
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