tim.mccravy Newbie United States Joined 5780 days ago 19 posts - 21 votes Speaks: Spanish
| Message 65 of 118 06 February 2009 at 12:03am | IP Logged |
Dutch: When spoken softly or whispered, sounds like they're speaking English, but you just can't seem to understand what the flip they're saying...
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furyou_gaijin Senior Member Japan Joined 6386 days ago 540 posts - 631 votes Speaks: Latin*
| Message 66 of 118 06 February 2009 at 10:24am | IP Logged |
tim.mccravy wrote:
Dutch: When spoken softly or whispered, sounds like they're speaking English, but you
just can't seem to understand what the flip they're saying... |
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Dutch & Danish: too easily confused when heard at a distance
Volte wrote:
Have you looked at Korean? I'm hard-pressed to think of any ways that it's simpler than Japanese (other than the
writing system), and it's complicated in many of the same ways (ie, the grammar and politeness systems).
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Korean?! Is that the language where every second sentence ends in -seyoooo? I haven't been able to bring up
any interest for it so far, unfortunately. I do plan to go to Seoul for a weekend (it's only a short flight) some time
soon, that may change my perception.
But the writing system in itself justifies my comment. And so does that kambun book on my desk... What a
delightful way to mutilate Classical Chinese. Have Koreans done anything similar? I have no idea.
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Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6439 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese
| Message 67 of 118 06 February 2009 at 11:06am | IP Logged |
furyou_gaijin wrote:
Volte wrote:
Have you looked at Korean? I'm hard-pressed to think of any ways that it's simpler than Japanese (other than the
writing system), and it's complicated in many of the same ways (ie, the grammar and politeness systems).
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But the writing system in itself justifies my comment. And so does that kambun book on my desk... What a
delightful way to mutilate Classical Chinese. Have Koreans done anything similar? I have no idea. |
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Korean used to have an equivalent to kambun, called hanmun (한문), but it's apparently dead now (the Vietnamese apparently did this too, with Hán Văn (漢文)).
Korean still uses Chinese characters (Hanja), but to a much smaller extent than Japanese does; Hangul, an alphabet, is used for most words most of the time.
That said, even taking the differences in writing systems into account, I still think Korean is the harder of the two.
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furyou_gaijin Senior Member Japan Joined 6386 days ago 540 posts - 631 votes Speaks: Latin*
| Message 69 of 118 07 February 2009 at 4:20am | IP Logged |
Volte wrote:
That said, even taking the differences in writing systems into account, I still think Korean is the
harder of the two.
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You might have to educate me more about Korean but even assuming that its grammar is more complex, the fact
that there is no visual reinforcement for drilling vocabulary readings when going through Japanese texts is enough
to drive the student up the wall. If you don't just learn by heart that 人目 is ひとめ in most circumstances and not じ
んもく, you won't remember the correct reading no matter how often you see this word in your texts. Alphabet-
based languages allow for much more effortless vocabulary absorption for advanced students.
Edited by furyou_gaijin on 07 February 2009 at 4:30am
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eoinda Tetraglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 5948 days ago 101 posts - 113 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, Spanish, Mandarin Studies: French
| Message 71 of 118 11 February 2009 at 12:59pm | IP Logged |
Something that irritates me is my friends saying french is such a horribly difficult language and how I have no idea
since I'm studying Spanish. I'm sure french is harder than Spanish but they can barely tell the time and I read novels
(we have studied for the same amount of time approximately 3 years). They blame it on french being harder but it
can't be that much harder. Anyway they will have to watch out because next year I will start learning french :)
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.automne Diglot Groupie Norway Joined 5828 days ago 56 posts - 57 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: French
| Message 72 of 118 12 February 2009 at 3:46am | IP Logged |
eoinda wrote:
I'm sure french is harder than Spanish but they can barely tell the time and I read novels (we have studied for the same amount of time approximately 3 years). They blame it on french being harder but it can't be that much harder. |
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I concur. If they can barely tell the time after 3 years, then it's not just a matter of French being harder. :)
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