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Totally opposite concepts in languages. | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| embici Triglot Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4425 days ago 263 posts - 370 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Greek | Message 25 of 43 20 January 2013 at 1:02am | IP Logged |
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Not exactly the opposite but potentially confusing...
redactar in Spanish means to write (a letter, an essay, etc.) redact in English often means to black out or obscure text (in a confidential document). 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6971 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 26 of 43 20 January 2013 at 3:29am | IP Logged |
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This isn't a true opposite between English and my other languages, but the difference in frequency of usage did take some time for me to internalize and use without hesitation.
In English, we typically use "like" as a transitive verb when expressing approval of something abstract or a characteristic among other things that's based on a brief first impression (e.g. "I like your new haircut / your way of thinking" etc.). The relatonship is where the one giving off the sense of admiration is the sentence's subject. However I've noticed that several of my target languages typically use a construction which turns the relationship the other way around. Namely the object that sets off the sense of admiration is the sentence's subject. E.g. "I like your hair(cut) / hairdo." Minä pidän kampauksestasi (Finnish) J'aime ta coiffure (French) Mun liikon du vuoktačohkosii (Northern Saami - I think that I got the declension correct!) Dopada/Sviđa mi se tvoja frizura (BCMS/SC) Líbí se mi tvůj účes (Czech) Mulle meeldib su soeng (Estonian) Dein Haarschnitt gefällt mir. (German) Tetszik nekem a frizurád (Hungarian) Man patīk tava frizūra (Latvian) Podoba mi się twoja fryzura (Polish) Páči sa mi tvoj účes (Slovak) Všeč mi je tvoja frizura (Slovenian) Мені подобається твоя зачіска (Ukrainian) All of the expressions in the second set are structurally comparable to the infrequently used structure with "appeal"* (i.e. "Your haircut appeals to me"). The one that's admiring something/someone is put in the canonical dative case (i.e. "to/for me") or in the case of Estonian, its figurative counterpart in the allative case. (*However my native speaker's sense makes me classify "appeal" as referring to the attraction inherent in something abstract (e.g. "Your thinking appeals to me") rather than the physical ("Your haircut appeals to me" seems to be an unidiomatic "translation" of "I like your haircut").) I should add that it's not this binary since at least two of the languages in the second set do have constructions that resemble the English order. However my understanding of them is that they signal a somewhat deeper attachment or sense of permanence in how it's done. Here it's something akin to "I like your haircut / hairstyle and I can't help but compliment you whenever you get a new haircut / hairdo since they always turn out well for you." Ich mag deinen Haarschnitt (German) Lubię twoją fryzurę (Polish) P.S. Make that at least three languages: Hungarian slipped my mind at that time. However as in German and Polish, using an expression that is structurally analogous to the English "I like sg" signals a deeper sense of admiration or permanence rather than a favourable but brief first impression. Szeretem a frizurádat (Hungarian) Edited by Chung on 22 January 2013 at 9:26pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| ling Diglot Groupie Taiwan Joined 4401 days ago 61 posts - 94 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Indonesian, Thai | Message 27 of 43 20 January 2013 at 5:32am | IP Logged |
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Mandarin: 班 ban - work (上班 go to work); class (班代表 class representative)
Thai: บ้าน baan - house, home Cantonese: 平 peng - cheap Thai: แพง phaeng - expensive Edited by ling on 20 January 2013 at 5:36am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Ojorolla Diglot Groupie France Joined 4780 days ago 90 posts - 130 votes Speaks: French*, English | Message 28 of 43 20 January 2013 at 9:35am | IP Logged |
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I tend to disagree with most people here to some degree. When it comes to vocabulary, I find it much easier to pick it up if it's exactly the opposite thing of what I already know instead of a random thing. For instance, In Japanese, 'no' is 'i-ye' and in Korean 'yes' is 'ye'. I don't find it particularly difficult to learn. Easier, rather. On the other hand, I also find an unfamiliar or opposite logic difficult to internalize like others. For instance, we don't have anything resembling the definite/indefinite articles in Korean, so they were/are very difficult for me. And the answer to a negative question is opposite in Korean and in English, it was extremely confusing when I was young.
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| Luai_lashire Diglot Senior Member United States luai-lashire.deviant Joined 5643 days ago 384 posts - 560 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: Japanese, French | Message 29 of 43 21 January 2013 at 4:00pm | IP Logged |
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I cannot for the life of me use the accusative -n in Esperanto correctly. I've improved, but I'm still really bad at it.
I don't even know why it confuses me so much, because I can handle the accusative in other languages much more readily (most notably, the particle wo in Japanese). In Japanese, I never had trouble with things that lots of beginners told me were hard- the question particle ka, for example, or the SOV word order, or dropping parts of the sentence, or even relative clauses, which are totally backwards from English. However, some things confuse the heck out of me. The worst is probably verbs that imply the relationship in space or action between two people- coming, going, giving, receiving, making someone do something, being made to do something, etc. It's totally unintuitive to me, and I screw it up frequently. I mostly have the hang of coming/going and giving/receiving now, after a lot of practice, but the passive, causative, and passive-causative constructions still boggle my mind. Also, using the present tense to refer to the future (they are one tense in Japanese) still sounds wrong to my ear, although I don't screw it up at all. It just feels weird to use. Every now and then I have trouble interpreting a sentence because I'm not sure which tense is being implied, but that's pretty rare; context usually gives it to you. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 4945 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 30 of 43 21 January 2013 at 5:14pm | IP Logged |
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One thing that I'm finding difficult as I start out learning Ojibwe is that so much of
the language is based on verbs. For instance, all weather adjectives and adverbs are actually verbs, for example: it's sunning, it's winding, it's colding. I say it's difficult, but it's really not a difficult concept. It's just unlike anything I've studied before, and makes for more time-consuming dictionary look-ups. Somewhere I read that Ojibwe is grammatically 85% verbs. R. == 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Hekje Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4518 days ago 842 posts - 1330 votes Speaks: English*, Dutch Studies: French, Indonesian | Message 31 of 43 22 January 2013 at 7:55pm | IP Logged |
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I've honestly always found it very funny that brutaal in Dutch means something like "bold" or "cheeky", whereas
of course in English brutal is more like violent/cruel/savage. There's a cheesy Dutch pop song I love where the chorus goes: Geef een teken of signaal (Give a sign or a signal) Heel verlegen of brutaal (Really shy or bold) Maar als je stapelgek verliefd bent (But if you're completely in love) Geef je helemaal (Give it your all) When I hear that, I always think "Go shy! Go shy!" because giving a "brutal" sign, to me, sounds like you're going to come to someone's house and leave a horse's head in their bed. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| embici Triglot Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4425 days ago 263 posts - 370 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Greek | Message 32 of 43 22 January 2013 at 8:13pm | IP Logged |
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Another example from Latin America.
To say that something is really great Ecuadorians often exclaim, "Que bestia," or "que bestialidad." Depending on the context, they can both mean something is really bad as well. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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