|
 |
Why English is hard to learn | ||
Tags: Difficulty | English | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| japkorengchi Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6681 days ago 334 posts - 355 votes  | Message 9 of 84 10 April 2007 at 2:05am | IP Logged | ||
|
Yes, Korean has much more homonyms than English, at least in daily usage. Korean homonyms have a very rich source and so there are really a lot. They already have some homonyms in their own language; they borrow a lot of Chinese homonyms; they want to get away Japanese influence in their language and so make their own Korean homonyms to replace the Japanese ones, and above all, they borrow homonyms from English or other languages! As a result, the vocabulary size of Korean is very big.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 10 of 84 10 April 2007 at 4:09am | IP Logged | ||
|
Honestly, I don't think any language can compete with Chinese when it comes to homonyms (but I've been wrong before). We're talking about a language where you often have to say things like "sleep-sleep" (using two synonyms for sleep), because if you just use one, it's not clear what you mean, as there are so many homonyms. I remember searching for "xi1" in the dictionary of Zhongwen Development Tool and getting 56 different words, all pronounced exactly the same.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| furrykef Senior Member United States furrykef.com/ Joined 6473 days ago 681 posts - 862 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Latin, Italian | Message 11 of 84 10 April 2007 at 4:40am | IP Logged | ||
Chinese and Japanese both have far more homonyms than English. It wouldn't surprise me if Korean does too, but I know little about that language. It does depend on what you consider a homonym. Chinese has its infamous tones, for example: in Mandarin, the word "ma" can mean one of several things depending on whether it's pronounced with a high pitch, a rising pitch, a low falling-and-rising pitch, or a high falling pitch. Likewise, in Japanese, the word "hashi" can mean several things depending on which syllable is higher in pitch, and whether the following word begins with a higher syllable. That's just the spoken language. Chinese doesn't have many homographs; many words pronounced the same way have different characters, and it's relatively uncommon for Chinese to have multiple pronounciations for a character (in Mandarin, at least). Japanese, on the other hand, has many-to-many relationships: a given sound might be written with any of a number of characters, and a given character can usually be pronounced in at least two ways, and for the most common characters, often many more. - Kef 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Zorndyke Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6959 days ago 374 posts - 382 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Czech | Message 12 of 84 10 April 2007 at 6:26am | IP Logged | ||
These are just no homonyms, because they're pronounced differently. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| winters Trilingual Heptaglot Senior Member Italy Joined 7045 days ago 199 posts - 218 votes Speaks: Croatian*, Serbian*, Russian*, English, Italian, Latin, Ancient Greek Studies: Greek, French, Hungarian | Message 13 of 84 10 April 2007 at 7:09am | IP Logged | ||
|
An example of similar occorrence from Croatian:
Gore gore gore gore. [And yes - that is actually a sentence! :P] Gore: 1) "Up", as in showing direction; 2) "Worse", as comparative [loš, gori, najgori]; 3) 3rd person plural indicative of the present active of the verb "gorjeti" [to burn]; 4) "Hills", nominative plural of the word "gora" which means a hill. So, based on how do you stress things, the sentence could be: "Worse hills are burning up [there]."; "Up [there] are burning worse hills.", etc. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kubelek Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland chomikuj.pl/Kuba_wal Joined 6853 days ago 415 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishC2, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 14 of 84 10 April 2007 at 7:43am | IP Logged | ||
|
sound like the famous 'buffalo' sentence in English (Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo, it's on wikipedia if you're interested in it).
In Polish you'd have to say: Gorsze góry goreją u góry. (it works in any order though). Does it make it simpler than Croatian or on the contrary? I never really had problems with English in this regard. My courses were never really intensive, they gradually introduced vocabulary and I never felt hemmed in by all the homonyms. It is a big hurdle for my parents though, who are trying to learn the language in their forties quickly, and they don't have enough time to learn them one at a time. In French you can distinguish some pairs by their gender eg (le chèvre (goat cheese) vs la chèvre (goat). Now the problem is to remember which one is which. Edited by Kubelek on 10 April 2007 at 7:45am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kubelek Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland chomikuj.pl/Kuba_wal Joined 6853 days ago 415 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishC2, French, Spanish Studies: German | Message 15 of 84 10 April 2007 at 8:03am | IP Logged | ||
|
I just got an e mail that might interest you:
"Can you read these right the first time? 1) The bandage was wound around the wound. 2) The farm was used to produce produce. 3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse. 4) We must polish the Polish furniture. 5) He could lead if he would get the lead out. 6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert. 7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present . 8) A bass wa s pain ted on the head of the bass drum. 9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes. 10) I did not object to the object. 11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid. 12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row . 13) They were too close to the door to close it. 14) The buck does funny things when the does are present. 15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line. 16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow 17) The win d was too strong to wind the sail. 18) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear. 19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests. 20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend? Let's face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. We take English for granted.. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. And why is it that writers write but finge rs don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it? If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally in sane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell? How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on. English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible. PS. - Why doesn't "Buick" rhyme with "quick"? " 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| japkorengchi Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6681 days ago 334 posts - 355 votes | Message 16 of 84 10 April 2007 at 8:07am | IP Logged | ||
|
By the way, it is said that the active vocabulary size of French is smaller than English. Is it really the case? Can I get by in French by knowing fewer words than English?
Chinese carries quite a lot of synonyms, but I will vote for Korean in terms of synonyms over Chinese and Japanese. Most Koreans in Hong Kong have received very high education and when I talk with them, it is unavoidable and necessary to know many synonyms simply for daily conversation. Given the case that a Korean is likely to express an idea in purely Korean terms/purely Sino-Koran terms/Korean and Sino-Korean terms/ Korean-English terms/Korean and other language terms/ Korean and Sino-Korean terms that are used to replace the Japanese elements in their language, their vocabulary size is really very large. The tough part of Korean is that when there is a Sino-Korean verb, there will be a purely Korean one, so I will have to know at least 2 verbs for the same meaning, not to mention the seas of noun synonyms. It is less common in Japanese to have so many verb synonyms. 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
