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Greek and Turkish : Which is Harder? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| clumsy Octoglot Senior Member Poland lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5182 days ago 1116 posts - 1367 votes  Speaks: Polish*, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Mandarin, Italian, Vietnamese Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swedish Studies: Danish, Dari, Kirundi | Message 9 of 21 10 January 2011 at 9:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think Greek is Harder, the spelling is inconsistent, the grammar is hard, Turkish writing is easy and grammar is very regular.
The vocab may be difficult with Turkish, but Greek is not so easy as well. I tried to learn both of them, but nothing great. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ponape Pentaglot Groupie Spain Joined 5966 days ago 42 posts - 58 votes Speaks: Spanish*, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Greek, Basque, Swahili, Tagalog, Arabic (classical), Quechua, Vietnamese, Turkish, Korean, Serbo-Croatian, Hindi | Message 10 of 21 11 January 2011 at 12:21am | IP Logged | ||
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For me, being a Spanish speaker, Turkish is much harder because of the radically different word order inside a sentence. Take this sentence for example:
WWF-Türkiye'den alınan bilgiye göre, ''Akdeniz'de Kuraklık ve WWF'nin Önerileri'' adını taşıyan rapor ile Akdeniz havzasında yer alan hükümetler kuraklık konusunda uyarıldı. According to the information obtained from WWF-Turkey, the governments of the Mediterranean basin were warned about the possibility of a draught by means of a report bearing the title "Draught at the Mediterranean and WWF proposals". Litteral: WWF-Turkiye-from taken-from information-to according, "Mediterranean-in Draught and WWF-of Proposals" title bearing report by-means-of Mediterranean basin-in area governments draught possibility was-warned Edited by Ponape on 16 January 2011 at 8:40pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6276 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 11 of 21 15 January 2011 at 4:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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The last word in the example, a verb, is in the past passive and is better translated as "was warned" or "were warned".
The text is a good example of written Turkish, with its very non-Indo-European structure, its repeated use of present participles (typically ending in - an) and the verb going right at the end. Edited by William Camden on 15 January 2011 at 4:09pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ponape Pentaglot Groupie Spain Joined 5966 days ago 42 posts - 58 votes Speaks: Spanish*, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Greek, Basque, Swahili, Tagalog, Arabic (classical), Quechua, Vietnamese, Turkish, Korean, Serbo-Croatian, Hindi | Message 12 of 21 16 January 2011 at 8:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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You are right! The dictionary that I used confused me, I have checked again and "uyarmak" is "warn", so "uyarılmak" is the passive form. And it makes more sense to say that "governments were warned about the possibility of a draught".
I have changed it in my post, thanks. By the way, the text is taken from a site of the US Defense Language Institute which has a lot of exercises in many languages: http://gloss.dliflc.edu/ Edited by Ponape on 16 January 2011 at 8:42pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6276 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 13 of 21 18 January 2011 at 4:08pm | IP Logged | ||
Useful website. I did not know about it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Mithridates Newbie Korea, South pagef30.com Joined 5680 days ago 21 posts - 36 votes | Message 14 of 21 23 January 2011 at 6:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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Turkish is easier. Here's how it feels to learn Turkish as an English speaker:
Stage 1: this language is easy! Just take off -mak/-mek to form the imperative! Plurals are regular! Var (there is) and yok (there isn't) is so easy! Fun fun fun! Stage 2: this is when Turkish starts to feel really hard. Actually not so much hard as that it doesn't seem to stick at this stage. New vocabulary is nearly impossible to recognize and your brain doesn't want to put it in your long-term memory, word order is weird as Ponape's example above. Most people will quit here. Keep going though and you reach: Stage 3: the rain stops, the sky clears and all of a sudden Turkish is one of the easiest and most logical languages out there. Most other languages look ridiculous in comparison with their irregularities. You don't need to be fluent to reach this stage, but you will reach it once you internalize the way the language works. In comparison with this most Indo-European languages feel more like a constant journey, where you are always on the watch for some new irregularity or weirdness that you haven't taken note of yet. At the same time you will recognize quite a bit of the language even from stage 1 so your passive understanding will be quite good even early on, but exactly when you feel fluent is kind of uncertain. 12 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Gorgoll2 Senior Member Brazil veritassword.blogspo Joined 5150 days ago 159 posts - 192 votes Speaks: Portuguese* | Message 15 of 21 24 January 2011 at 1:03am | IP Logged | ||
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The Turkish Ortoghraphy is one among the easiest of the world, Greek is member of the
hardest group. Turkish Syntax is aglutinative and near to Japanese , Korean and Esperanto, while Greek´s similar to Indoeuropean tongues - Mainly to Romance. Turkish words are fully stranger to English Speakers, while European languages has many words derivated from Greek. I personally, think Turish is easier, mainly for its granmar, but simple isn´t common. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6276 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 16 of 21 26 January 2011 at 1:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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Turkish speakers still make spelling mistakes, especially the less well educated. Also, there are millions living in Turkey whose first language is not Turkish.
Re Mithridates, although my spoken Turkish is now quite fluent, I wouldn't say that the rain has stopped. Internalising this very non-Indo-European language is the hardest part of all for an English speaker. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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