|
 |
Hardest concept to grasp in any language | ||
Tags: Difficulty | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Sierra Diglot Senior Member Turkey livinginlights.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 7124 days ago 296 posts - 411 votes  Speaks: English*, SwedishB1 Studies: Turkish | Message 57 of 61 10 April 2010 at 6:49am | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
In general, prepositions give me the most trouble. They just tend to match up so poorly
between languages. A more specific trouble spot: I've just started studying Turkish and I'm finding it horribly difficult to wrap my mind around the way it handles possession. Turkish would express "my father" as: (1st person singular pronoun with genitive ending) + ("father" with ending indicating that it is being possessed) The first part, okay, no problem, every language I've studied has a word meaning "my". But the second part? I just can't think of any way to express it to myself which makes it feel natural in the slightest. Every time I construct a sentence like that, I start by saying "father" without an ending. No, wait, that isn't right. Accusative ending? Hmmm... no, not that either... Guessing this is going to be a case of repetition, repetition, repetition. Edited by Sierra on 10 April 2010 at 6:50am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Kounotori Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 5344 days ago 136 posts - 264 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Russian Studies: Mandarin | Message 58 of 61 10 April 2010 at 12:07pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Definiteness was the most tedious and difficult part to digest when I was studying Swedish back in school. Otherwise the grammar of the language was pretty straightforward.
Yes, Finnish has the same kind of construction (which has helped me greatly in understanding the logic of Japanese sentences). The first example sentence in Emme's post would go like this in Finnish: Pommien sodassa tuhoama kaupunki oli pelottava näky. Die im Krieg durch Bomben zerstörte Stadt war ein schrecklicher Anblick. The town, that had been destroyed by bombs during the war, was a frightful sight. Lit. Bombs-GENITIVE war-in destroyed-AGENT.PARTICIPLE city was frightful sight. By the way Emme, your nick means "we don't" in Finnish :P
You could express that sentence in a similar way in Finnish: Se on vessan äänten peittämiseksi veden ääntä päästävä kone. トイレに入っている時の音を消すために水の流れる音が出る機械です。 It's a machine that makes a water sound to cover up sounds in the restroom. Lit. It is toilet-GENITIVE sound-PL.GENITIVE cover-TRANSLATIVE water-GENITIVE sound-PARTITIVE emit-PRES.ACT.PARTICIPLE machine. The sentense, while grammatically correct, sounds kind of convoluted and would never be used in natural Finnish. We'd rather say "Se on kone, joka päästää veden ääntä peittääkseen vessan äänet." Edited by Kounotori on 10 April 2010 at 12:12pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Emme Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5347 days ago 980 posts - 1594 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian, Swedish, French | Message 59 of 61 10 April 2010 at 5:04pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Emme is actually how you spell the letter M (the initial of my name) in Italian. But thank you Kounotori for letting me know it has a different meaning in Finnish. I am always curious about this kind of unforeseeable coincidences when a word in a language has a totally unrelated meaning in another. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Bookends Triglot Newbie Sweden Joined 5387 days ago 6 posts - 6 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Mandarin | Message 60 of 61 10 April 2010 at 8:14pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
This is my problem as well. I understand basically all spoken french but I still have problems to grasp it when I hear any number bigger than 1000, like deux mille trois cent soixante-dix sept. Otherwise I think it is the subjunctive mood: I felt like an alien the first time I heard of it. Same thing with the cases in German, even though I developed a feel for it quite fast. Edited by Bookends on 10 April 2010 at 8:15pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Yukamina Senior Member Canada Joined 6264 days ago 281 posts - 332 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean, French | Message 61 of 61 10 April 2010 at 9:25pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
The 10,000 thing used to give me trouble too, but I started thinking about it in a different way. Instead of parsing it as 10,000, I look at it as 1,0000. It makes more sense this way: 10 100 1000 10000 10,0000 100,0000 (a hundred "man"s) 1000,0000 (a thousand "man"s) 1 person has voted this message useful |
If you wish to post a reply to this topic you must first login. If you are not already registered you must first register
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
