|
 |
Pashto’s difficulty | ||
Tags: Pashto | Difficulty | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| chucknorrisman Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5449 days ago 321 posts - 435 votes  Speaks: Korean*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, Mandarin, Lithuanian, French | Message 1 of 10 29 May 2010 at 5:57am | IP Logged |
|
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Language_Aptitude_Batte ry
The DLI places Pashto as a category IV language, along with the usual Arabic, Chinese, etc. The grammar description of Pashto on Wikipedia does not portray the language as too complex, except for the split ergativity which is different rather than difficult. It doesn't seem like the Wiki page didn't do a good job of delving into the details of the grammar, but since it is placed in the highest category, I would like to know what is hard about it. Edited by chucknorrisman on 29 May 2010 at 5:57am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| andee Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 7078 days ago 681 posts - 724 votes 3 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Korean, French | Message 2 of 10 30 May 2010 at 5:14am | IP Logged |
|
I could be totally wrong here since I have never looked at either of these languages from a learner perspective, but I was under the impression Pashto and Persian were fairly similar. As in, both IE > Iranian languages. So from this, I would guess that the 'language battery' article has an error. I've never seen Pashto listed at Cat IV on other sources with respect to DLI or FSI, but have always noticed Persian as Cat III.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| onebir Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7164 days ago 487 posts - 503 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin | Message 3 of 10 31 May 2010 at 3:24pm | IP Logged |
|
Perhaps this makes Pashto significantly more difficult than Persian (for English speakers):
"Unlike Persian, which has lost almost all forms of declensions, Pashto still inflects nouns into four grammatical cases: direct, oblique I, oblique II and vocative. The oblique I case is used as prepositional case as well as in the past tense as the subject of transitive verbs, and the oblique II case is used as ablative case." (from Wikipedia on Pashto grammar). An observation that seems to support this is that German is rated II, compared to I for Dutch, which uses cases in a much more limited way (see .Wikipedia on Dutch grammar). I wouldn't have thought phonology, vocabulary etc would account for this difference in difficulty... 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Danac Diglot Senior Member Denmark Joined 5349 days ago 162 posts - 257 votes Speaks: Danish*, English Studies: German, Serbo-Croatian, French, Russian, Esperanto | Message 4 of 10 31 May 2010 at 3:49pm | IP Logged |
|
If you scroll down to the last pages, Pashto is listed as a category 3 language.
http://www.dliflc.edu/archive/documents/DLPT_Credit_by_Exam_ Policy.pdf 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Remy Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5546 days ago 10 posts - 13 votes | Message 5 of 10 31 May 2010 at 7:52pm | IP Logged |
|
If you have a good background in any Indo-Aryan language with split ergativity and oblique cases it shouldn't be
too much trouble. In fact, in my opinion the biggest difficulty with the language is simply the lack of standardisation. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 strickvl Bilingual Tetraglot Pro Member Jordan alexstrick.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4699 days ago 27 posts - 41 votes Speaks: English*, Dutch*, Arabic (Written), Arabic (Levantine) Studies: Persian, Pashto, Dari Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 10 25 March 2012 at 11:55am | IP Logged |
|
Part of the problem with Pashto is also the lack of good language learning materials. I have heard that the best
textbooks for Pashto are all written in Russian. Is it useful to learn Russian in order to study Pashto? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Afgjasmine16 Triglot Newbie United States Joined 6007 days ago 29 posts - 55 votes Speaks: Pashto*, English, Hindi Studies: Bengali, Tamil, Indonesian, Turkish | Message 8 of 10 25 March 2012 at 10:12pm | IP Logged |
|
Pashto is hard! It even creates trouble with native speakers. I wouldn't consider it as hard as Arabic and Chinese though. Pashto is very different from Persian. Pashto has gender and cases. There is a lot of loanwords from Persian but I don't think knowing Persian will help you with Pashto's grammar at all. I have tried to learn Persian and it's difficult for me. I think Pashto's pronunciation might be hard for English speakers, we use a lot of consonant clusters like:
zma mrastiyal tsu ghwanda dzghastel dzan azmisht I think Pahsto is also difficult because there is hardly any good textbooks for it and it's hard to immerse yourself in Pashto speaking areas. 3 persons have 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. |
