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What qualifies as "difficult vocabulary" | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Thatzright Diglot Senior Member Finland Joined 5676 days ago 202 posts - 311 votes  Speaks: Finnish*, English Studies: French, Swedish, German, Russian | Message 9 of 22 13 May 2011 at 1:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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I concur with Iversen. My native language mostly consists of words that are like 'auouyökol' (not a real word), mostly vowels, a few consonants in there to keep things in check - and I've found that I can easily remember foreign words that are similar. Spanish words tend to stick with me quite easily as it has a lot words that are similar in that they're vowel-heavy. Russian on the other hand often causes annoyance with its monstrosities of consonant clusters, and I suppose a lot of English words would too had I not started learning from a very young age. One other thing I have specific difficulties with is words that contain the same 'pieces' as others - Swedish has this with all kinds of verbs starting with 'för' (förlöra, förbjuda), German with 'ver' and Russian with things like за, неза and вы. In a way it's helpful too, but mostly they just cause me to confuse them with other words. Edited by Thatzright on 13 May 2011 at 1:36pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tritone Senior Member United States reflectionsinpo Joined 6124 days ago 246 posts - 385 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, French | Message 10 of 22 13 May 2011 at 4:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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For me the most difficult vocabulary in the languages I'm studying are the names of objects...
Most of the 'high level' vocabulary is easy because there's usually an obvious cognate in English. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| marvolo Tetraglot Newbie Finland Joined 5710 days ago 20 posts - 30 votes Speaks: Finnish*, French, English, Spanish | Message 11 of 22 13 May 2011 at 5:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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For me the most difficult words are those that have thousand different meanings. And I'm not speaking about homonyms but polysemes.
But it's not maybe the issue here. Edited by marvolo on 13 May 2011 at 6:04pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5770 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 12 of 22 14 May 2011 at 2:18am | IP Logged | ||
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Chameleons. Meaning, words that can either carry their own meaning or are function words depending on the sentence; words that have several different meanings and you have to hear/read hundreds and thousands of sample sentences to figure out how to use them correctly every time and words that are synonymous and exchangeable with other words in some contexts but not in others.
5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| AlexBlackman Newbie Australia Joined 5513 days ago 11 posts - 13 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 13 of 22 23 May 2011 at 4:24am | IP Logged | ||
I have only learnt 碳水化合物，but I managed to correctly guess all of them except for 水仙花 as they are very descriptive. I knew 胆 was the gall blader, and 固醇 was steroid, so it was easy to guess that it was cholestrol , the steroid formed in the gall bladder. 分期付款 is 分期（stage by stage）+ 付款 （payments） = instalments 温室效应 is 温室（greenhouse,literally warm chamber) + 效应 （effect）= greenhouse effect. 防患未然 =防（prevent)+患(harm)+ 未然(in advance) Many chengyu can be hard, but most technical terms I've come across are actually easier to understand than more basic words, and in certain cases, even easier than their English equiv. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Nguyen Senior Member Vietnam Joined 5097 days ago 109 posts - 195 votes Speaks: Vietnamese | Message 14 of 22 23 May 2011 at 6:07am | IP Logged | ||
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Large numbers 1,000,000, 1,000,000,000 with some others thrown in 1,652,985,314 are not easy in any language? Time derivitives also; half past, quarter to etc. Most languages have these and the native speaker will throw them at you rapid fire; full force, with impunity!
Edited by Nguyen on 23 May 2011 at 6:09am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5434 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 15 of 22 23 May 2011 at 7:22am | IP Logged | ||
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For me the most difficult words are idioms because there is often little clue as to the real meaning of the whole set.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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