When I was in school, our teachers told us that English was a very difficult language to learn. I didn't quite buy that, I mean I get by with it. Hell I picked it up fairly early. Now that I'm older I look at other languages and it doesn't have things like grammatical gender, or bizarre cases like "instrumental". It's not tonal and has an alphabet which seems to make it easier then say, Chinese. Spelling and syntax can be a bit of a chore, but "good enough" acceptable in most settings. Now I know a lot of your learned English in school, so this is more directed at you guys. Was it difficult?
Also, I had a teacher that taught us that when no one is looking, the French secretly speak German rather then their ridiculous difficult language and that the French language is actually a way to trip up foreigners. I don't know if that's true either.
Rather easy, except for stupid articles.
I'm still struggling with it.
Quote from: The Brain on March 15, 2015, 11:59:19 PM
I'm still struggling with it.
:console:
We can survive your occasional bork bork bork.
Quote from: Razgovory on March 15, 2015, 11:56:07 PM
When I was in school, our teachers told us that English was a very difficult language to learn. I didn't quite buy that, I mean I get by with it. Hell I picked it up fairly early. Now that I'm older I look at other languages and it doesn't have things like grammatical gender, or bizarre cases like "instrumental". It's not tonal and has an alphabet which seems to make it easier then say, Chinese. Spelling and syntax can be a bit of a chore, but "good enough" acceptable in most settings. Now I know a lot of your learned English in school, so this is more directed at you guys. Was it difficult?
Depends how closely related the native language of the english language learner is to English. If it's very close like German or French it's easy. If it's distant like Korean or Mandarin it's difficult. Just like you'd expect.
In my experience, the biggest issues for English learners are 1) that it's only semi-phonetic, and 2) the vast number of irregular simple past tense verbs.
Very easy compared to say German, French or even Russian (and that's despite Russian came easier to me due to similarities to Polish).
There are no declinations of nouns, there are hardly any conjugations outside of a handful verbs (like "to be" and even then there are separate forms for masculine, feminine and neuter), adjectives can be built by placing a noun in front of another noun etc.
It is difficult for people with Chinese as their first language.
Quote from: Grinning_Colossus on March 16, 2015, 01:14:29 AM
In my experience, the biggest issues for English learners are 1) that it's only semi-phonetic, and 2) the vast number of irregular simple past tense verbs.
Yes, but compared to Polish, for example, it is much more phonetic and in Polish you conjugate all verbs in simple past tense not just according to a person (I, you, he/she/it, we, you, they) but you often have different forms for if you are talking about male, female, neuter, a group of males, a group of females and a mixed group. (for example, "we were" uses a different form of the verb depending on whether the "we" is a bunch of guys, a bunch of girls, or guys and girls).
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 16, 2015, 12:05:21 AM
Quote from: Razgovory on March 15, 2015, 11:56:07 PM
When I was in school, our teachers told us that English was a very difficult language to learn. I didn't quite buy that, I mean I get by with it. Hell I picked it up fairly early. Now that I'm older I look at other languages and it doesn't have things like grammatical gender, or bizarre cases like "instrumental". It's not tonal and has an alphabet which seems to make it easier then say, Chinese. Spelling and syntax can be a bit of a chore, but "good enough" acceptable in most settings. Now I know a lot of your learned English in school, so this is more directed at you guys. Was it difficult?
Depends how closely related the native language of the english language learner is to English. If it's very close like German or French it's easy. If it's distant like Korean or Mandarin it's difficult. Just like you'd expect.
Yes, but it is true for any language. But the fact is that within its group (Indo-European languages) English seems like one of the easier ones to me.
Chinese doesn't even use alphabets. There are no tenses, no concept of singular or plural. Lots of English pronounciations, like "th", "v", and "r", are not found in Cantonese at all. There are around 3,000 common Chinese characters. I think there are far more common English words than that.
Considerably easier for me than learning French and Spanish. I haven't learned any other languages, so I can't say how it compares to Slavic or non-European languages.
Quote from: Monoriu on March 16, 2015, 01:48:42 AM
Chinese doesn't even use alphabets. There are no tenses, no concept of singular or plural. Lots of English pronounciations, like "th", "v", and "r", are not found in Cantonese at all. There are around 3,000 common Chinese characters. I think there are far more common English words than that.
Probably depends on how you define common.
When you look at international usage of English as a lingua franca, you'll probably find a huge variety. For tourism in many countries, people will only speak very basic English with a very small vocabulary. And there are observations among EU diplomats that while everybody understands the English of everybody just fine, the British seem to speak a different language that is not understood by everybody... ;)
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.worldaccent.com%2Fblog%2Fimages%2Fbritish_english_translation_angloEU_guide.jpg&hash=7453bfdae2fb8b6d56a47d2ec49862a16d6a3aa2)
English is easier to learn than other languages. Grammar is relatively straightforward and easy enough to get sufficiently proficient to carry simple conversations, but it can get harder if you want to write grammatically correct, with how adverbs work, which tense to use when etc.
Pronunciation is tricky, because how a word is spelled isn't always a clear indication of how it's spoken (think "oo" in blood, food, foot, moot, or ough in though and cough, or word vs. sword). If you're used to a letter (or short group of letters) almost always being pronounced the same way (as is the case in German) then this can be all kinds of confusing.
That said, it's the easiest language to immerse yourself in, even if you're not living in an English language country. Internet, movies, TV shows, games are readily available if you have access to the internet, and it has become the lingua franca of the 21st century. And exposure to a language makes it easier to learn.
Quote from: Monoriu on March 16, 2015, 01:48:42 AM
Chinese doesn't even use alphabets. There are no tenses, no concept of singular or plural. Lots of English pronounciations, like "th", "v", and "r", are not found in Cantonese at all. There are around 3,000 common Chinese characters. I think there are far more common English words than that.
How do you communicate that something happened in the past or will happen in the future without tenses?
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 16, 2015, 02:17:19 AM
Quote from: Monoriu on March 16, 2015, 01:48:42 AM
Chinese doesn't even use alphabets. There are no tenses, no concept of singular or plural. Lots of English pronounciations, like "th", "v", and "r", are not found in Cantonese at all. There are around 3,000 common Chinese characters. I think there are far more common English words than that.
How do you communicate that something happened in the past or will happen in the future without tenses?
"I eat an Apple yesterday."
Quote from: Monoriu on March 16, 2015, 02:21:02 AM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 16, 2015, 02:17:19 AM
Quote from: Monoriu on March 16, 2015, 01:48:42 AM
Chinese doesn't even use alphabets. There are no tenses, no concept of singular or plural. Lots of English pronounciations, like "th", "v", and "r", are not found in Cantonese at all. There are around 3,000 common Chinese characters. I think there are far more common English words than that.
How do you communicate that something happened in the past or will happen in the future without tenses?
"I eat an Apple yesterday."
Lame and inefficient. :yucky:
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 16, 2015, 02:39:18 AM
Quote from: Monoriu on March 16, 2015, 02:21:02 AM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 16, 2015, 02:17:19 AM
Quote from: Monoriu on March 16, 2015, 01:48:42 AM
Chinese doesn't even use alphabets. There are no tenses, no concept of singular or plural. Lots of English pronounciations, like "th", "v", and "r", are not found in Cantonese at all. There are around 3,000 common Chinese characters. I think there are far more common English words than that.
How do you communicate that something happened in the past or will happen in the future without tenses?
"I eat an Apple yesterday."
Lame and inefficient. :yucky:
In more efficient English, with tenses:
"I eat an apple yesterday"
becomes
"I ate an Apple yesterday."
:hmm:
Easiest language I've ever tried.
I find English pretty easy compared to other languages. Lack of gendered words is a big deal; when I was learning German, learning the genders of every word - particularly when they don't have to correspond with Spanish genders - was a nightmare.
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Quote from: Zanza on March 16, 2015, 01:57:55 AM
Quote from: Monoriu on March 16, 2015, 01:48:42 AM
Chinese doesn't even use alphabets. There are no tenses, no concept of singular or plural. Lots of English pronounciations, like "th", "v", and "r", are not found in Cantonese at all. There are around 3,000 common Chinese characters. I think there are far more common English words than that.
Probably depends on how you define common.
When you look at international usage of English as a lingua franca, you'll probably find a huge variety. For tourism in many countries, people will only speak very basic English with a very small vocabulary. And there are observations among EU diplomats that while everybody understands the English of everybody just fine, the British seem to speak a different language that is not understood by everybody... ;)
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.worldaccent.com%2Fblog%2Fimages%2Fbritish_english_translation_angloEU_guide.jpg&hash=7453bfdae2fb8b6d56a47d2ec49862a16d6a3aa2)
Yeah, I also heard that "adequate" means something completely different in the EU/Brussels speak and when a Brit says it.
Quote from: celedhring on March 16, 2015, 02:52:04 AM
I find English pretty easy compared to other languages. Lack of gendered words is a big deal; when I was learning German, learning the genders of every word - particularly when they don't have to correspond with Spanish genders - was a nightmare.
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.qwantz.com%2Fcomics%2Fcomic2-1926.png&hash=78d1d08e014e9007bdb67de69d53644d305f17b7)
That's nothing. In Polish there is also a neutral gender.
So, a table or an armchair is a "he", a gate or a curtain is a "she" but a chair or a door is an "it" (each with its own verb and pronoun form - so "this chair" and "this door" has a different word for "this" each).
Well, that's exactly like German, it has a neutral gender too, alongside different demonstratives. Spanish technically has a neutral gender but it has limited usage and it's not a big deal.
Quote from: Tonitrus on March 16, 2015, 02:43:08 AM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 16, 2015, 02:39:18 AM
Quote from: Monoriu on March 16, 2015, 02:21:02 AM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 16, 2015, 02:17:19 AM
Quote from: Monoriu on March 16, 2015, 01:48:42 AM
Chinese doesn't even use alphabets. There are no tenses, no concept of singular or plural. Lots of English pronounciations, like "th", "v", and "r", are not found in Cantonese at all. There are around 3,000 common Chinese characters. I think there are far more common English words than that.
How do you communicate that something happened in the past or will happen in the future without tenses?
"I eat an Apple yesterday."
Lame and inefficient. :yucky:
In more efficient English, with tenses:
"I eat an apple yesterday"
becomes
"I ate an Apple yesterday."
:hmm:
Why would you eat a global corporation?
Quote from: celedhring on March 16, 2015, 03:12:41 AM
Well, that's exactly like German, it has a neutral gender too, alongside different demonstratives. Spanish technically has a neutral gender but it has limited usage and it's not a big deal.
Yup. And despite the similarities, I stopped learning German - it was just too difficult (admittedly I got into it when I was over 30). That being said, I am thinking of going back to French - I used to learn French when I was in high school and it is a beautiful language.
So... what's an easy/easier language to learn? Any thoughts? I dabbled with Spanish in High School and Dutch in College.
Quote from: Benedict Arnold on March 16, 2015, 03:14:31 AM
So... what's an easy/easier language to learn? Any thoughts? I dabbled with Spanish in High School and Dutch in College.
To me English is by far the easiest of all I tried (Russian, German, French and Latin are the others I studied at various points).
Quote from: Martinus on March 16, 2015, 03:14:18 AM
Quote from: celedhring on March 16, 2015, 03:12:41 AM
Well, that's exactly like German, it has a neutral gender too, alongside different demonstratives. Spanish technically has a neutral gender but it has limited usage and it's not a big deal.
Yup. And despite the similarities, I stopped learning German - it was just too difficult (admittedly I got into it when I was over 30). That being said, I am thinking of going back to French - I used to learn French when I was in high school and it is a beautiful language.
I have tried twice to learn German. I don't think it was "hard", rather laborious; it was easy to understand and learn the Grammar, but learning the words/declensions/genders made it such a chore. In English, I only needed to learn what "chair" meant and I could use the word straight away in my conversations. In German, I have to learn half a dozen terminations for "Stuhl" plus its gender (Der).
Yeah. English is very logical. You can almost see why the world's greatest scientific and computer achievements of the last century were developed by people who speak English.
Old English was, apparently, a rather difficult language similar to German, from Wikipedia "...it was fully inflected with five grammatical cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, and instrumental), three grammatical numbers (singular, plural, and dual) and three grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter)".
Somehow all that was dropped and by Chaucer's time (flourished 1370-1400) the English used is comprehensible (if tricky) to modern speakers. For some 300 years French was used by the elite and that coincides with the simplification of the language, but was it a cause?
Quote from: Martinus on March 16, 2015, 03:41:03 AM
Yeah. English is very logical. You can almost see why the world's greatest scientific and computer achievements of the last century were developed by people who speak English.
I think there are a whole host of reasons why English speakers made so many important contributions, including the relative strength of the English speaking countries like the US and that English is the international business and academic language. Somehow I don't doubt the ability of other major languages in conveying ideas.
Quote from: Monoriu on March 16, 2015, 03:52:26 AM
Quote from: Martinus on March 16, 2015, 03:41:03 AM
Yeah. English is very logical. You can almost see why the world's greatest scientific and computer achievements of the last century were developed by people who speak English.
I think there are a whole host of reasons why English speakers made so many important contributions, including the relative strength of the English speaking countries like the US and that English is the international business and academic language. Somehow I don't doubt the ability of other major languages in conveying ideas.
I don't know. I think simplicity of language helps too in international trade and exchange of ideas. Plus, anyone who has ever tried to translate an English game/computer programme into another language will tell you how much more complex the language interface needs to be for that (and often, early English games/programmes were too simple for that).
So, in other words, a programmer wanting to write a working German or French language interface must dedicate a lot more resources than one doing it in English.
Quote from: Martinus on March 16, 2015, 04:01:28 AM
Quote from: Monoriu on March 16, 2015, 03:52:26 AM
Quote from: Martinus on March 16, 2015, 03:41:03 AM
Yeah. English is very logical. You can almost see why the world's greatest scientific and computer achievements of the last century were developed by people who speak English.
I think there are a whole host of reasons why English speakers made so many important contributions, including the relative strength of the English speaking countries like the US and that English is the international business and academic language. Somehow I don't doubt the ability of other major languages in conveying ideas.
I don't know. I think simplicity of language helps too in international trade and exchange of ideas. Plus, anyone who has ever tried to translate an English game/computer programme into another language will tell you how much more complex the language interface needs to be for that (and often, early English games/programmes were too simple for that).
So, in other words, a programmer wanting to write a working German or French language interface must dedicate a lot more resources than one doing it in English.
That's nothing compared to a translation of a Japanese (same goes with Chinese) game to any European language. English is a bit more concise but less detailed than French or German. French text is say 25 -30 % longer than English, while German is even longer than French. If it's too long and it can't fit in the text box there are ways to deal with that. The real problem is wasting money on advertising stunts and/or bribing the videogame press while not caring about the translation.
Back to topic, Globish English is easy to learn, BBC English is is tougher.
Quote from: Martinus on March 16, 2015, 04:01:28 AM
So, in other words, a programmer wanting to write a working German or French language interface must dedicate a lot more resources than one doing it in English.
Modern frameworks (available for about 15-20 years now) definitely support internationalization and localization. As long as the programmer knows what he's doing, there is no connection between the application logic and the user interface language.
It can get tricky with non-European alphabets though as some logics (ordering items etc.) don't work well for Chinese or Japanese and user interfaces have to be extremely flexible to allow for right-to-left languages like Arabic or Hebrew.
I think the dominance of English in science, business etc. is just down to the dominance of the USA over the last century, supported by the still big influence of the former British Empire. If the US was speaking Spanish or so, that would be the dominant language in the world now. It has not much to do with the ease of learning it. Humans are quite capable of learning other languages, so it just a question of utility.
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on March 16, 2015, 04:07:42 AM
That's nothing compared to a translation of a Japanese (same goes with Chinese) game to any European language. English is a bit more concise but less detailed than French or German. French text is say 25 -30 % longer than English, while German is even longer than French. If it's too long and it can't fit in the text box there are ways to deal with that. The real problem is wasting money on advertising stunts and/or bribing the videogame press while not caring about the translation.
Back to topic, Globish English is easy to learn, BBC English is is tougher.
Well, I didn't just mean text length.
For example, in English language game like Civilization you can have a message "X built Y" with any noun, in its denominative form, being usable in place of X and Y and the sentence still having proper grammar.
To have this sentence work in Polish you would have to use a different declention for the same word when put in place of X and Y, and you would have to use three different forms of "built" for each gender of the noun.
I recall the pain of beta-testing Paradox translations and trying to fix text blocks that were in a certain order but ran counter to German syntax. :bleeding:
Quote from: Zanza on March 16, 2015, 04:27:37 AM
It has not much to do with the ease of learning it. Humans are quite capable of learning other languages, so it just a question of utility.
It is why, despite my interest, my abilities in other languages are rather abysmal as there hasn't really been much need. :Embarrass:
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Quote from: Martinus on March 16, 2015, 03:08:54 AM
That's nothing. In Polish there is also a neutral gender.
So, a table or an armchair is a "he", a gate or a curtain is a "she" but a chair or a door is an "it" (each with its own verb and pronoun form - so "this chair" and "this door" has a different word for "this" each).
In Swahili there is
15 grammatical genders.
It doesn't help that grammatical gender can be very arbitrary. In German, sun is f. and moon is m. In French it's vice versa. In German, tree is m., but most specific trees (oak, ash etc.) are f.
Not to mention that the gender can be different over time, and there's currently differences between Germany and Austria, e.g. Cola is f. in Germany, but n. in Austria, or Schranke (the bar you'd find at e.g. a level crossing) is f. in Germany and m. in Austria.
Oh, and rivers can be either - Rhine is m., Elbe is f.
Quote from: Benedict Arnold on March 16, 2015, 03:14:31 AM
So... what's an easy/easier language to learn? Any thoughts? I dabbled with Spanish in High School and Dutch in College.
I found French pretty simple. I went from knowing nothing to being basically fluent in just a few years (then forgot it all because 'murica). The grammar is pretty simple and English already commandeered a lot of their vocabulary so that was nice. The thing that is horrible is the spelling, dear God what happened there? Fortunately not a big deal if you are just learning it to speak it and not learning it in school. I hear Spanish is even easier, it has the advantages of French but with easy spelling.
Spanish spelling is essentially WYSIWYG.
Quote from: Martinus on March 16, 2015, 04:44:56 AM
Well, I didn't just mean text length.
For example, in English language game like Civilization you can have a message "X built Y" with any noun, in its denominative form, being usable in place of X and Y and the sentence still having proper grammar.
To have this sentence work in Polish you would have to use a different declention for the same word when put in place of X and Y, and you would have to use three different forms of "built" for each gender of the noun.
There are tags for the relevant cells for this to work in translation software. This happens in Romance languages as well.
Quote from: Monoriu on March 16, 2015, 01:48:42 AM
no concept of singular or plural.
Ok that clarifies one of the most signature mistakes Chinese speakers make speaking English.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 16, 2015, 02:17:19 AM
How do you communicate that something happened in the past or will happen in the future without tenses?
Apparently, it functions similarly to the subject/object mechanism in Japanese- it's explicitly stated at one point, then implied in subsequent sentences until changed, when it's explicitly stated again.
Quote from: Syt on March 16, 2015, 06:01:54 AM
It doesn't help that grammatical gender can be very arbitrary. In German, sun is f. and moon is m. In French it's vice versa. In German, tree is m., but most specific trees (oak, ash etc.) are f.
Not to mention that the gender can be different over time, and there's currently differences between Germany and Austria, e.g. Cola is f. in Germany, but n. in Austria, or Schranke (the bar you'd find at e.g. a level crossing) is f. in Germany and m. in Austria.
Oh, and rivers can be either - Rhine is m., Elbe is f.
Same in Polish. Vistula is f., but Bug is m.
Quote from: Syt on March 16, 2015, 02:09:38 AM
English is easier to learn than other languages. Grammar is relatively straightforward and easy enough to get sufficiently proficient to carry simple conversations, but it can get harder if you want to write grammatically correct, with how adverbs work, which tense to use when etc.
Pronunciation is tricky, because how a word is spelled isn't always a clear indication of how it's spoken (think "oo" in blood, food, foot, moot, or ough in though and cough, or word vs. sword). If you're used to a letter (or short group of letters) almost always being pronounced the same way (as is the case in German) then this can be all kinds of confusing.
That said, it's the easiest language to immerse yourself in, even if you're not living in an English language country. Internet, movies, TV shows, games are readily available if you have access to the internet, and it has become the lingua franca of the 21st century. And exposure to a language makes it easier to learn.
Yeah, the odd and inconsistent pronunciation must be difficult to learn. There are many examples of that. What I find difficult and odd about other languages I've studied (French, German, Spanish) is the masculine, feminine, neuter stuff.
I've always thought that the American "r" (as distinct from the English r) is not a very easy sound to pronounce for someone not born to it.
Thoughts?
In French it is usually masculine. You can tell when it is feminine when the last consonant is pronounced because it has that silent -e thing. Like Jean vs. Jeanne or Loire vs. Rhin for rivers.
Of course there are exceptions but I didn't find it hard. But man will people get confused when you get it wrong.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on March 16, 2015, 08:42:51 AM
I've always thought that the American "r" (as distinct from the English r) is not a very easy sound to pronounce for someone not born to it.
Thoughts?
The Spanish "rr" is worse.
English is relatively easy to learn due to the reach of English speaking culture. If you're regularly exposed to attractive entertainment products in a language, it makes it easier to learn it.
From my perspective, with Danish as a mother tongue, English was relatively easy due to similarities of the two languages, as well as early and continued exposure. The "th" sound is tricky for Danes, and I find I occasionally still mess up was/were when I'm not paying attention. Another significant challenge with English is the fact that things frequently aren't pronounced the way they're spelled.
Danish is roughly the same as English, but with a few more wacky sounds (depending on where you're coming from).
Chinese is relatively easy in terms of grammatical structure, but the pronunciation is challenging (with the tones in particular) and the characters are pretty daunting.
Japanese is relatively easy in terms of pronunciation; generally if you pronounce something like it's spelled you won't be far off. Of course, the kanji is challenging, and the grammatical structures are unintuitive coming from Germannic.
Spanish isn't too bad in my limited experience. The conjugations are kind of a pain, but the pronunciation seemed fairly consistent with the spelling.
I don't think there's anything particularly easy or logical about English.
Quote from: Martinus on March 16, 2015, 04:01:28 AM
I don't know. I think simplicity of language helps too in international trade and exchange of ideas. Plus, anyone who has ever tried to translate an English game/computer programme into another language will tell you how much more complex the language interface needs to be for that (and often, early English games/programmes were too simple for that).
So, in other words, a programmer wanting to write a working German or French language interface must dedicate a lot more resources than one doing it in English.
I can't really speak to the relative ease of English, but if it is relatively easy it may be due to the fact that the simplified global english that is prevalent internationally has already been simplified through that cycle many times. American english in particular is the result of a synthesis of italian, german, spanish, and many other language speakers mixing with english speakers. British english before that was the language of the british empire, and even in britain there were a number of diverse languages present.
Quote from: Zanza on March 16, 2015, 01:57:55 AM
Quote from: Monoriu on March 16, 2015, 01:48:42 AM
Chinese doesn't even use alphabets. There are no tenses, no concept of singular or plural. Lots of English pronounciations, like "th", "v", and "r", are not found in Cantonese at all. There are around 3,000 common Chinese characters. I think there are far more common English words than that.
Probably depends on how you define common.
When you look at international usage of English as a lingua franca, you'll probably find a huge variety. For tourism in many countries, people will only speak very basic English with a very small vocabulary. And there are observations among EU diplomats that while everybody understands the English of everybody just fine, the British seem to speak a different language that is not understood by everybody... ;)
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.worldaccent.com%2Fblog%2Fimages%2Fbritish_english_translation_angloEU_guide.jpg&hash=7453bfdae2fb8b6d56a47d2ec49862a16d6a3aa2)
:)
I've used some of those phrases in that exact fashion in meetings; hopefully they were correctly interpreted by my (majority British) colleagues.
Quote from: Razgovory on March 15, 2015, 11:56:07 PM
When I was in school, our teachers told us that English was a very difficult language to learn. I didn't quite buy that, I mean I get by with it. Hell I picked it up fairly early. Now that I'm older I look at other languages and it doesn't have things like grammatical gender, or bizarre cases like "instrumental". It's not tonal and has an alphabet which seems to make it easier then say, Chinese. Spelling and syntax can be a bit of a chore, but "good enough" acceptable in most settings. Now I know a lot of your learned English in school, so this is more directed at you guys. Was it difficult?
I thought it was easy. Until College (pre-university), when the teacher started removing points for bad grammar. Now, it was suddenly difficult. But I learned a lot.
Otherwise, no, it's not difficult to learn the language and speak it decently enough so you can be understood. But I live in a small nation drowned in a sea of anglo-speakers, and I've watched english television since we had cable in my teenage years and mostly english tv shows since university. And I have family outside of Quebec that we visited regularly when I was younger, it helped a lot. And I had pretty good english teachers at the private school I attended for my 3 first years of high school.
Currently only particular accents give me trouble. Afro-american slang is extremely difficult to understand, some British localized accents, some New Zealanders or Australian actors, when they don't use an american or international accent give me trouble too. And non native english speakers, like Indians or Pakistanis, that too is problematic to me.
So, no, not too terribly difficult. But you have to consider that I had a lot of exposure to the language. For those not as fortunate, it can be difficult. By comparison, Spanish is reputed to be fairly easy for a French speaker, but since I never travelled in a spanish speaking country and don't fancy much about latin american socialism & general Che-loving culture, my only spanish class was a very moderate success. I can understand that people not exposed to the english language&culture come to see it as difficult.
Quote
Also, I had a teacher that taught us that when no one is looking, the French secretly speak German rather then their ridiculous difficult language and that the French language is actually a way to trip up foreigners. I don't know if that's true either.
It's a very good technique at counter-spying. The Vietnamese army used it during Vietnam war, they spoke in French instead of their native language, that way, Americans could not understand their battle plans and that's why they lost the war. Or so they say.
it has the advantage of being hard to avoid if you want to be an educated person in most of the world.
Quote from: Benedict Arnold on March 16, 2015, 03:14:31 AM
So... what's an easy/easier language to learn? Any thoughts? I dabbled with Spanish in High School and Dutch in College.
the one you'll get the more exposure to. If you live in China or travel there frequently, it won't be so hard to pick up, I guess.
If you try alone to learn Chinese while never having the opportunity to hear it and speak it, you'll likely fail.
Quote from: Martinus on March 16, 2015, 03:41:03 AM
Yeah. English is very logical. You can almost see why the world's greatest scientific and computer achievements of the last century were developed by people who speak English.
it probably has more to do with the wealth of the British Empire, developped over centuries, and the development of the United States as a world power with the two world wars.
Given the number of english speakers in 1st world countries vs other languages, it kinda comes naturally that they'll have more great scientists in absolute numbers. They also have more actors than other non english nations, probably more poets and singers too.
I have been wondering with this myself. I want to learn another language, and initially I went with German since I like their literature a lot, etc... until I realized I'm not likely to ever use German in any practical situation. So all the effort felt a bit like a waste.
Problem is that I can't think of any language that I'm likely to "need" or get exposed to besides the ones I already know (Spanish, Catalan, English); unless I order a Russian bride.
Quote from: celedhring on March 16, 2015, 03:41:24 PM
I have been wondering with this myself. I want to learn another language, and initially I went with German since I like their literature a lot, etc... until I realized I'm not likely to ever use German in any practical situation. So all the effort felt a bit like a waste.
Problem is that I can't think of any language that I'm likely to "need" or get exposed to besides the ones I already know (Spanish, Catalan, English); unless I order a Russian bride.
If you learn Arabic it will give you an advantage in the coming Caliphate.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on March 16, 2015, 08:42:51 AM
I've always thought that the American "r" (as distinct from the English r) is not a very easy sound to pronounce for someone not born to it.
Thoughts?
how is it distinct?
I think the most difficult thing is that "th" sound.
Quote from: viper37 on March 16, 2015, 03:43:56 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on March 16, 2015, 08:42:51 AM
I've always thought that the American "r" (as distinct from the English r) is not a very easy sound to pronounce for someone not born to it.
Thoughts?
how is it distinct?
I think the most difficult thing is that "th" sound.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhotic_and_non-rhotic_accents
Quote from: celedhring on March 16, 2015, 03:41:24 PM
I have been wondering with this myself. I want to learn another language, and initially I went with German since I like their literature a lot, etc... until I realized I'm not likely to ever use German in any practical situation. So all the effort felt a bit like a waste.
Problem is that I can't think of any language that I'm likely to "need" or get exposed to besides the ones I already know (Spanish, Catalan, English); unless I order a Russian bride.
Yeah, I was looking into learning German but what's the point? All the Germans can speak English.
Quote from: viper37 on March 16, 2015, 03:43:56 PM
how is it distinct?
Not sure it's all that distinct. But you do have to contort your tongue and throat to pronounce it.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on March 16, 2015, 03:42:43 PM
Quote from: celedhring on March 16, 2015, 03:41:24 PM
I have been wondering with this myself. I want to learn another language, and initially I went with German since I like their literature a lot, etc... until I realized I'm not likely to ever use German in any practical situation. So all the effort felt a bit like a waste.
Problem is that I can't think of any language that I'm likely to "need" or get exposed to besides the ones I already know (Spanish, Catalan, English); unless I order a Russian bride.
If you learn Arabic it will give you an advantage in the coming Caliphate.
From the recent events in Iraq it seems to be a going Caliphate.
Quote from: Razgovory on March 16, 2015, 03:46:11 PM
From the recent events in Iraq it seems to be a going Caliphate.
Not in Spain.
Quote from: celedhring on March 16, 2015, 03:41:24 PM
I have been wondering with this myself. I want to learn another language, and initially I went with German since I like their literature a lot, etc... until I realized I'm not likely to ever use German in any practical situation. So all the effort felt a bit like a waste.
Problem is that I can't think of any language that I'm likely to "need" or get exposed to besides the ones I already know (Spanish, Catalan, English); unless I order a Russian bride.
the Russian bride is a good idea, you'll likely save on the purchase price ;)
Portuguese, maybe? It's close to Spanish, Portugal is close to Spain and if you ever want to visit Brazil, Mozambique or East Timor.
Quote from: garbon on March 16, 2015, 03:45:05 PM
Quote from: viper37 on March 16, 2015, 03:43:56 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on March 16, 2015, 08:42:51 AM
I've always thought that the American "r" (as distinct from the English r) is not a very easy sound to pronounce for someone not born to it.
Thoughts?
how is it distinct?
I think the most difficult thing is that "th" sound.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhotic_and_non-rhotic_accents
That explains why the Brisith pronounce Iron with a silent 'r'. I-on Maiden, I-on islands.
Thanks :)
Quote from: viper37 on March 16, 2015, 03:47:09 PM
Quote from: celedhring on March 16, 2015, 03:41:24 PM
I have been wondering with this myself. I want to learn another language, and initially I went with German since I like their literature a lot, etc... until I realized I'm not likely to ever use German in any practical situation. So all the effort felt a bit like a waste.
Problem is that I can't think of any language that I'm likely to "need" or get exposed to besides the ones I already know (Spanish, Catalan, English); unless I order a Russian bride.
the Russian bride is a good idea, you'll likely save on the purchase price ;)
Portuguese, maybe? It's close to Spanish, Portugal is close to Spain and if you ever want to visit Brazil, Mozambique or East Timor.
The only remotely useful language to me would be French (we work with a lot of French people in my industry). However I already speak two romance languages; seems overkill.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on March 16, 2015, 03:42:43 PM
If you learn Arabic it will give you an advantage in the coming Caliphate.
I toyed with learning Arabic several years ago after reading that translators in Iraq were making six figures.
Quote from: celedhring on March 16, 2015, 03:54:56 PM
The only remotely useful language to me would be French (we work with a lot of French people in my industry). However I already speak two romance languages; seems overkill.
French is never overkill. ;)
I also have French ancestry (yuck), hell, my mother still sort of speaks it.
German is easier for me to read & write (and to listen to, to some extent) than it is to speak. I have to rehearse something a few times to speak it correctly and even then I might get it wrong. I get angrily jealous whenever I hear little German kids speaking it perfectly without effort :P
The craziest thing about traveling in Europe is listening to all the little kids speak foreign languages so well.
French :bleeding:
Quote from: derspiess on March 16, 2015, 04:19:53 PM
German is easier for me to read & write (and to listen to, to some extent) than it is to speak. I have to rehearse something a few times to speak it correctly and even then I might get it wrong. I get angrily jealous whenever I hear little German kids speaking it perfectly without effort :P
It was really useful to me when I took that German conversational course before I'd ever learned how to spell any German words. :)
Quote from: viper37 on March 16, 2015, 04:10:05 PM
Quote from: celedhring on March 16, 2015, 03:54:56 PM
The only remotely useful language to me would be French (we work with a lot of French people in my industry). However I already speak two romance languages; seems overkill.
French is never overkill. ;)
I can figure out a lot of written French based on what I know of Spanish. It's like a more elegant form of Spanish. Italian seems like a "cooler" version of Spanish, while Portuguese is just wacky and not nearly as similar to Spanish as I would have thought.
Quote from: derspiess on March 16, 2015, 04:24:29 PM
It's like a more elegant form of Spanish. Italian seems like a "cooler" version of Spanish
I think these might say more about your views of Spanish then anything else. :D
I tend to agree. Spanish to me sounds more utilitarian than artsy-fartsy.
For Scandinavians, English is easier because we are exposed to it a lot.
German is actually a lot easier once you get to grips with the grammar. We Nordic types have more problems learning Latin languages or anything remotely Slavic.
Russian and Polish make me want to just push a pencil so far up my nose I can tickle my frontal lobe.
Quote from: garbon on March 16, 2015, 04:28:57 PM
I think these might say more about your views of Spanish then anything else. :D
Well, it's something I've known in some form since 9th grade. So it's kind of old hat. I love the language, but it's almost become plain.
FWIW, I taught English for several years and can speak decent German, French and Mandarin Chinese. IMO...
French - Relatively easy vocabulary for an English speaker, but tricky pronunciation and certain elements of grammar. Oral language is much harder than written language. If I were, say, a Chinese speaker learning French or English, I imagine I would find French the more difficult of the two.
German - Words are almost always spelled exactly as they are pronounced, which is wonderful, and I find the spoken language clearer and easier to understand than French. Personally what I find difficult are the large number of similar sounding verbs but with different prefixes that change the meaning. I actually find the grammar less complicated than French, in spite of the cases, which are easy enough to get the hang of fairly quickly. Though it has 3 genders for its nouns compared to 2 for French, I never found learning gender together with a noun difficult for some reason.
Mandarin Chinese: Grammar is generally simple and straightforward. The most difficult parts of learning Chinese are the relatively few sounds that exist in Mandarin, which makes it IMO easy to confuse words, a problem complicated by tones. Also, the huge number of dialects make understanding Chinese from region to region (especially as spoken by the older / less educated) extremely difficult. Speaking with young educated people (who can generally speak very good standard Mandarin) is a lot easier.
English: I can't speak to it objectively because it's my native language. However, my sense from having taught it for a few years is that common difficulties with English are: pronunciation of unfamiliar words is difficult given the non-phonetic spelling of many words, past and conditional tenses (especially for non-Indo-European speakers), idioms, and a supposedly larger vocabulary (e.g. pork, pig, swine).
Quote from: Camerus on March 16, 2015, 05:26:20 PM
French - Relatively easy vocabulary for an English speaker, but tricky pronunciation and certain elements of grammar. Oral language is much harder than written language. If I were, say, a Chinese speaker learning French or English, I imagine I would find French the more difficult of the two.
Huh. Weird I thought the oral version was much easier, the wacky spelling does not come into play.
Quote from: Tyr on March 16, 2015, 04:21:49 PM
French :bleeding:
:unsure:
QuoteI also have French ancestry (yuck), hell, my mother still sort of speaks it.
Man you are lucky I heard this after I could have gone and heckled your friend at SXSW :ultra:
Quote from: Valmy on March 16, 2015, 05:36:35 PM
Quote from: Camerus on March 16, 2015, 05:26:20 PM
French - Relatively easy vocabulary for an English speaker, but tricky pronunciation and certain elements of grammar. Oral language is much harder than written language. If I were, say, a Chinese speaker learning French or English, I imagine I would find French the more difficult of the two.
Huh. Weird I thought the oral version was much easier, the wacky spelling does not come into play.
Maybe it's from how I learned it in school, which was all about the reading and less about the listening and speaking. But for whatever reason, I guess I just found it easier understanding the huge number of cognates in writing rather than by listening. However, I've gradually gotten better at understanding the spoken language thanks to Radio Canada and Youtube documentaries. :Canuck:
Quote from: viper37 on March 16, 2015, 03:33:58 PM
Quote from: Benedict Arnold on March 16, 2015, 03:14:31 AM
So... what's an easy/easier language to learn? Any thoughts? I dabbled with Spanish in High School and Dutch in College.
the one you'll get the more exposure to. If you live in China or travel there frequently, it won't be so hard to pick up, I guess.
If you try alone to learn Chinese while never having the opportunity to hear it and speak it, you'll likely fail.
Hmm... where I live, Bosnian or Khmer would be popular second languages that I would actually encounter. Alas, outside of Utica, NY and their native locations, they aren't widely used. I've contemplated learning French, German, or Polish for a while. We shall see what I end up with.
Quote from: Valmy on March 16, 2015, 05:36:35 PM
Quote from: Camerus on March 16, 2015, 05:26:20 PM
French - Relatively easy vocabulary for an English speaker, but tricky pronunciation and certain elements of grammar. Oral language is much harder than written language. If I were, say, a Chinese speaker learning French or English, I imagine I would find French the more difficult of the two.
Huh. Weird I thought the oral version was much easier, the wacky spelling does not come into play.
I did poorly in French when I took it in H.S., but I found written French much easier than oral. I think my bad hearing played a part in that, though. Heck, I have enough trouble making out what people are saying when they're speaking English, even other people from southern WV who are supposedly speaking the same dialect as I am.
Quote from: Valmy on March 16, 2015, 05:36:35 PM
Huh. Weird I thought the oral version was much easier, the wacky spelling does not come into play.
What wacky spelling?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioUK6I73_bk
Quote from: dps on March 16, 2015, 06:52:06 PM
Quote from: Valmy on March 16, 2015, 05:36:35 PM
Quote from: Camerus on March 16, 2015, 05:26:20 PM
French - Relatively easy vocabulary for an English speaker, but tricky pronunciation and certain elements of grammar. Oral language is much harder than written language. If I were, say, a Chinese speaker learning French or English, I imagine I would find French the more difficult of the two.
Huh. Weird I thought the oral version was much easier, the wacky spelling does not come into play.
I did poorly in French when I took it in H.S., but I found written French much easier than oral. I think my bad hearing played a part in that, though. Heck, I have enough trouble making out what people are saying when they're speaking English, even other people from southern WV who are supposedly speaking the same dialect as I am.
Same problem here, I was utterly useless at languages at school. I recently got some spanish language 'tapes' to learn with, because they used an authentic spanish speaking woman, I could literally not decipher a single word to repeat and that was with full volume and using headphone. <_<
Yesterday I was at the supermarket till and the cashier said something and I said, "sorry my hearing isn't good today", which it wasn't and it was a slightly noisy environment, and she thought I was being rude and using it as an excuse not to engage in conversation.
Quote from: viper37 on March 16, 2015, 07:31:26 PM
Quote from: Valmy on March 16, 2015, 05:36:35 PM
Huh. Weird I thought the oral version was much easier, the wacky spelling does not come into play.
What wacky spelling?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioUK6I73_bk
:lmfao:
Quote from: Camerus on March 16, 2015, 05:26:20 PMPersonally what I find difficult are the large number of similar sounding verbs but with different prefixes that change the meaning.
I hadn't thought of that.
rinnen = to trickle/to flow
gerinnen = to clot/to curdle/to coagulate
entrinnen = to escape
Zeit verrinnt = time is running out
greifen = to grab/to grasp (physically)
begreifen = to understand/to grasp (mentally)
Yeah, I can see how that can be confusing.
I love that from German myself. The Kompositums and verbs with prefixes feel like a mathematical formula sometimes.
Quote from: Valmy on March 16, 2015, 05:36:35 PM
Quote from: Camerus on March 16, 2015, 05:26:20 PM
French - Relatively easy vocabulary for an English speaker, but tricky pronunciation and certain elements of grammar. Oral language is much harder than written language. If I were, say, a Chinese speaker learning French or English, I imagine I would find French the more difficult of the two.
Huh. Weird I thought the oral version was much easier, the wacky spelling does not come into play.
You're not the only one. Written French with its literary tenses, tense agreement (same as in Castilian and Portuguese actually) even scares lots of native speakers.
Quote from: derspiess on March 16, 2015, 04:24:29 PM
Quote from: viper37 on March 16, 2015, 04:10:05 PM
Quote from: celedhring on March 16, 2015, 03:54:56 PM
The only remotely useful language to me would be French (we work with a lot of French people in my industry). However I already speak two romance languages; seems overkill.
French is never overkill. ;)
I can figure out a lot of written French based on what I know of Spanish. It's like a more elegant form of Spanish. Italian seems like a "cooler" version of Spanish, while Portuguese is just wacky and not nearly as similar to Spanish as I would have thought.
Portuguese is still the closest to Castilian in terms of vocabulary unless you are talking of Asturleonese. Much more vowels in Portuguese though, which is actually a plus when learning foreign languages. The pentavocalist system in Castilian is more like a hindrance when learning languages.
Something that always confused me about French was whether an adjective goes before or after a noun.
Quote from: Syt on March 17, 2015, 12:32:14 AM
Quote from: Camerus on March 16, 2015, 05:26:20 PMPersonally what I find difficult are the large number of similar sounding verbs but with different prefixes that change the meaning.
I hadn't thought of that.
rinnen = to trickle/to flow
gerinnen = to clot/to curdle/to coagulate
entrinnen = to escape
Zeit verrinnt = time is running out
greifen = to grab/to grasp (physically)
begreifen = to understand/to grasp (mentally)
Yeah, I can see how that can be confusing.
raten, abraten, beraten, zuraten, anraten, verraten, bevorraten, braten... ;)
Quote from: Syt on March 17, 2015, 06:25:59 AM
Something that always confused me about French was whether an adjective goes before or after a noun.
Both, depending on the meaning. Usually after, as in more neutral. Before the noun is more like poetry or some idiom.
Quote from: Zanza on March 17, 2015, 07:03:58 AM
Quote from: Syt on March 17, 2015, 12:32:14 AM
Quote from: Camerus on March 16, 2015, 05:26:20 PMPersonally what I find difficult are the large number of similar sounding verbs but with different prefixes that change the meaning.
I hadn't thought of that.
rinnen = to trickle/to flow
gerinnen = to clot/to curdle/to coagulate
entrinnen = to escape
Zeit verrinnt = time is running out
greifen = to grab/to grasp (physically)
begreifen = to understand/to grasp (mentally)
Yeah, I can see how that can be confusing.
raten, abraten, beraten, zuraten, anraten, verraten, bevorraten, braten... ;)
raden, afraden, beraden, aanraden, verraden, bevoorraden, braden we can alos to this silliness :P
For us Flemish English is easy to learn a lot of it is around day to day. we use subtitles on tv.
Seeing that German and Dutch share the same Dialectcontinuum, most of the basic stuff is understandable for Dutch speakers.
I even once was asked in a café in Trier by and Anglophone which kind of German we spoke (Schwyzerdeutsch, ...).
German was extremely easy for me, but I got to skip the trouble most Americans have with the phonetics- switching accents has always come naturally to me, so I didn't have the trouble with ä, ö, or ü that Americans typically have, or the vowel + consonant + ch construction (like in mädchen or brötchen).
Quote from: Archy on March 17, 2015, 07:29:47 AM
Quote from: Zanza on March 17, 2015, 07:03:58 AM
Quote from: Syt on March 17, 2015, 12:32:14 AM
Quote from: Camerus on March 16, 2015, 05:26:20 PMPersonally what I find difficult are the large number of similar sounding verbs but with different prefixes that change the meaning.
I hadn't thought of that.
rinnen = to trickle/to flow
gerinnen = to clot/to curdle/to coagulate
entrinnen = to escape
Zeit verrinnt = time is running out
greifen = to grab/to grasp (physically)
begreifen = to understand/to grasp (mentally)
Yeah, I can see how that can be confusing.
raten, abraten, beraten, zuraten, anraten, verraten, bevorraten, braten... ;)
raden, afraden, beraden, aanraden, verraden, bevoorraden, braden we can alos to this silliness :P
For us Flemish English is easy to learn a lot of it is around day to day. we use subtitles on tv.
Seeing that German and Dutch share the same Dialectcontinuum, most of the basic stuff is understandable for Dutch speakers.
I even once was asked in a café in Trier by and Anglophone which kind of German we spoke (Schwyzerdeutsch, ...).
Similar with Dutch for Germans. Most of the time I can guess what's being talked about, and more so in writing. Similar but to a lesser extent with Swedish or Norwegian. Not so much with Danish for some reason.
Quote from: Zanza on March 17, 2015, 07:03:58 AM
raten, abraten, beraten, zuraten, anraten, verraten, bevorraten, braten... ;)
I just had a sudden urge to run off into the forest. :blush:
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on March 17, 2015, 06:17:23 AM
Quote from: derspiess on March 16, 2015, 04:24:29 PM
Quote from: viper37 on March 16, 2015, 04:10:05 PM
Quote from: celedhring on March 16, 2015, 03:54:56 PM
The only remotely useful language to me would be French (we work with a lot of French people in my industry). However I already speak two romance languages; seems overkill.
French is never overkill. ;)
I can figure out a lot of written French based on what I know of Spanish. It's like a more elegant form of Spanish. Italian seems like a "cooler" version of Spanish, while Portuguese is just wacky and not nearly as similar to Spanish as I would have thought.
Portuguese is still the closest to Castilian in terms of vocabulary unless you are talking of Asturleonese. Much more vowels in Portuguese though, which is actually a plus when learning foreign languages. The pentavocalist system in Castilian is more like a hindrance when learning languages.
Yeah, fortunately I'm Catalan and I have eight vowels. When I want to annoy Spaniards I exaggerate my accent by using them when speaking Spanish :lol:
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on March 17, 2015, 06:17:23 AM
Portuguese is still the closest to Castilian in terms of vocabulary unless you are talking of Asturleonese. Much more vowels in Portuguese though, which is actually a plus when learning foreign languages. The pentavocalist system in Castilian is more like a hindrance when learning languages.
Yeah, but the problem is I somehow managed to convince myself that it was a lot more similar to Castilian than it actually is before I bothered to explore it. Plus I kept hitting a couple annoying mental blocks when I took an online introductory Portuguese course.
Quote from: derspiess on March 17, 2015, 11:23:36 AM
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on March 17, 2015, 06:17:23 AM
Portuguese is still the closest to Castilian in terms of vocabulary unless you are talking of Asturleonese. Much more vowels in Portuguese though, which is actually a plus when learning foreign languages. The pentavocalist system in Castilian is more like a hindrance when learning languages.
Yeah, but the problem is I somehow managed to convince myself that it was a lot more similar to Castilian than it actually is before I bothered to explore it. Plus I kept hitting a couple annoying mental blocks when I took an online introductory Portuguese course.
Did you achieve Portuñol proficiency? Should be doable with your Argentinian connections.
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on March 17, 2015, 03:13:45 PM
Did you achieve Portuñol proficiency? Should be doable with your Argentinian connections.
Nope. I'm only vaguely familiar with the concept. My wife and her family & friends all seem to be able to understand Portuguese fine, but never really speak it. The few times we've hung around Brazilians, they all defaulted to Spanish. Which I kind of liked, because the Brazilians spoke Spanish very slowly.
I do wonder what my mother- and father in law speak when they travel to Brazil on vacation (which they do fairly frequently). I'll have to ask them. One thing I find odd and slightly annoying is that they stubbornly refer to São Paulo as "San Pablo" when they make mention of flying through there. Seems to smack of Argentine arrogance but I suppose there could be another explanation.
Related question: How do you pronounce 'São'? Is it "sano"?
Quote from: Caliga on March 17, 2015, 03:35:26 PM
Related question: How do you pronounce 'São'? Is it "sano"?
That tripped me up to. It is pronounced like a female pig, sow.
I pronounce it sow, with a very slight nasal n at the end.
Quote from: Valmy on March 17, 2015, 03:38:27 PM
Quote from: Caliga on March 17, 2015, 03:35:26 PM
Related question: How do you pronounce 'São'? Is it "sano"?
That tripped me up to. It is pronounced like a female pig, sow.
Except you need to go nasal on this one since it's a nasal diphtong.
Valmy has an advantage here, since he may use his French phonetic knowledge on this one. Sã=s
aint/
sein in French (NOT
sans).
IPA for those interested
[sɐ̃w ˈpawlu]
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/Br-SaoPaulo.ogg (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/Br-SaoPaulo.ogg)
Quote from: derspiess on March 17, 2015, 03:24:22 PM
One thing I find odd and slightly annoying is that they stubbornly refer to São Paulo as "San Pablo" when they make mention of flying through there. Seems to smack of Argentine arrogance but I suppose there could be another explanation.
Not too different from English speakers referring to Vienna, Moscow, Copenhagen, Naples and so on. Most languages I'm passingly familiar with have names for places that are similar to but different from the name in the local language; it may be arrogance, but I don't think it's Argentine specific.
"In Naples where love is king" just doesn't work.
Quote from: DGuller on March 17, 2015, 10:56:32 AM
Quote from: Zanza on March 17, 2015, 07:03:58 AM
raten, abraten, beraten, zuraten, anraten, verraten, bevorraten, braten... ;)
I just had a sudden urge to run off into the forest. :blush:
I laughed.
Quote from: Jacob on March 17, 2015, 06:45:11 PM
Quote from: derspiess on March 17, 2015, 03:24:22 PM
One thing I find odd and slightly annoying is that they stubbornly refer to São Paulo as "San Pablo" when they make mention of flying through there. Seems to smack of Argentine arrogance but I suppose there could be another explanation.
Not too different from English speakers referring to Vienna, Moscow, Copenhagen, Naples and so on. Most languages I'm passingly familiar with have names for places that are similar to but different from the name in the local language; it may be arrogance, but I don't think it's Argentine specific.
Yeah, it's very common to develop particular names in your own language for cities, particularly if your country has historically had a significant relationship with that place. Being adjacent countries, it doesn't surprise me at all that Argentinians have Spanish names for some Brazilian cities. For example, we have lots of Spanish names for major French towns: Marsella, Burdeos, Niza, Estrasburgo, Tolosa...
Up to like 10 years ago, Seoul was known in Chinese as the "City of Han". The Koreans aren't happy about that, because it implies that their capital is a Chinese colony. So they led a successful PR campaign to get the Chinese to change the name to a neutral translation based on the English pronounciation of "Seoul". No idea how they did it but they did it. Now, nobody calls it City of Han anymore.
Quote from: celedhring on March 18, 2015, 03:27:33 AM
Quote from: Jacob on March 17, 2015, 06:45:11 PM
Quote from: derspiess on March 17, 2015, 03:24:22 PM
One thing I find odd and slightly annoying is that they stubbornly refer to São Paulo as "San Pablo" when they make mention of flying through there. Seems to smack of Argentine arrogance but I suppose there could be another explanation.
Not too different from English speakers referring to Vienna, Moscow, Copenhagen, Naples and so on. Most languages I'm passingly familiar with have names for places that are similar to but different from the name in the local language; it may be arrogance, but I don't think it's Argentine specific.
Yeah, it's very common to develop particular names in your own language for cities, particularly if your country has historically had a significant relationship with that place. Being adjacent countries, it doesn't surprise me at all that Argentinians have Spanish names for some Brazilian cities. For example, we have lots of Spanish names for major French towns: Marsella, Burdeos, Niza, Estrasburgo, Tolosa...
Funnily enough this is a quite hit and miss system. For instance I've never heard Sao Paulo being referred to as San Pablo in Spain, but it seems that South Americans do the translation. Rio de Janeiro gets a free pass from becoming Rio de Enero, though.
I have to say I think Vienna and Viennese sounds sophisticated and better fits the city in English than 'Wien' and 'Weiner'. The latter makes me think of Jewish last names, ballpark hotdogs, and slang for penises.
Quote from: The Larch on March 18, 2015, 04:59:58 AM
Funnily enough this is a quite hit and miss system. For instance I've never heard Sao Paulo being referred to as San Pablo in Spain, but it seems that South Americans do the translation. Rio de Janeiro gets a free pass from becoming Rio de Enero, though.
Speaking of Spain, calling it España would make you sound more pretentious than culturally sensitive.
Quote from: Valmy on March 18, 2015, 07:37:23 AM
Quote from: The Larch on March 18, 2015, 04:59:58 AM
Funnily enough this is a quite hit and miss system. For instance I've never heard Sao Paulo being referred to as San Pablo in Spain, but it seems that South Americans do the translation. Rio de Janeiro gets a free pass from becoming Rio de Enero, though.
Speaking of Spain, calling it España would make you sound more pretentious than culturally sensitive.
:yes:
Quote from: Valmy on March 18, 2015, 07:35:27 AM
I have to say I think Vienna and Viennese sounds sophisticated and better fits the city in English than 'Wien' and 'Weiner'. The latter makes me think of Jewish last names, ballpark hotdogs, and slang for penises.
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Finthepress.happysocks.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2011%2F10%2FWiener-OST-Style-2011-10-1-Cover.jpg&hash=ac51dcc2928f7fb7717cac57c837fe13e6f1630c)
The strong Viennese dialect would pronounce "Wien" more like it was written "Wean" in German; bit difficult to transcribe into an English equivalent, though. Maybe Veh-un, with a very short "un."
Quote from: Valmy on March 18, 2015, 07:37:23 AM
Quote from: The Larch on March 18, 2015, 04:59:58 AM
Funnily enough this is a quite hit and miss system. For instance I've never heard Sao Paulo being referred to as San Pablo in Spain, but it seems that South Americans do the translation. Rio de Janeiro gets a free pass from becoming Rio de Enero, though.
Speaking of Spain, calling it España would make you sound more pretentious than culturally sensitive.
Don't discriminate on the poor letter ñ. :(
Quote from: Monoriu on March 18, 2015, 03:35:17 AM
Up to like 10 years ago, Seoul was known in Chinese as the "City of Han". The Koreans aren't happy about that, because it implies that their capital is a Chinese colony. So they led a successful PR campaign to get the Chinese to change the name to a neutral translation based on the English pronounciation of "Seoul". No idea how they did it but they did it. Now, nobody calls it City of Han anymore.
Yet the Korean effort to rename the Sea of Japan has failed till now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_of_Japan_naming_dispute (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_of_Japan_naming_dispute)
East Sea anyone?
Quote from: The Larch on March 18, 2015, 08:06:52 AM
Don't discriminate on the poor letter ñ. :(
If it wanted to be used, it should have secured itself a key on my keyboard!
Quote from: Valmy on March 18, 2015, 08:15:33 AM
Quote from: The Larch on March 18, 2015, 08:06:52 AM
Don't discriminate on the poor letter ñ. :(
If it wanted to be used, it should have secured itself a key on my keyboard!
They were taking a siesta when the keyboard meeting was going on.
It is in mine. :P
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on March 18, 2015, 08:15:27 AM
East Sea anyone?
The Japanese would insist on calling it the 'West Sea'.
Quote from: Valmy on March 18, 2015, 07:37:23 AM
Speaking of Spain, calling it España would make you sound more pretentious than culturally sensitive.
Like all the broadcasters talking about "Torino" during the Olympics. :yes:
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on March 18, 2015, 08:23:42 AM
Like all the broadcasters talking about "Torino" during the Olympics. :yes:
Yeah I was going to bring that up. I couldn't decide whether it was douchey or maybe the Italians had insisted it be pronounced the Italian way.
Quote from: Valmy on March 18, 2015, 08:25:57 AM
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on March 18, 2015, 08:23:42 AM
Like all the broadcasters talking about "Torino" during the Olympics. :yes:
Yeah I was going to bring that up. I couldn't decide whether it was douchey or maybe the Italians had insisted it be pronounced the Italian way.
It's actually Turin in the local Piedmontese dialect. :lol:
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on March 18, 2015, 08:38:51 AM
It's actually Turin in the local Piedmontese dialect. :lol:
So the former. 'Look how ever so sophisticated I am, saying this city in the authentic European way. I shall celebrate with champagen'
Quote from: Valmy on March 18, 2015, 08:40:02 AM
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on March 18, 2015, 08:38:51 AM
It's actually Turin in the local Piedmontese dialect. :lol:
So the former. 'Look how ever so sophisticated I am, saying this city in the authentic European way. I shall celebrate with champagen'
Oh I just love champagne from California! :)
Quote from: Jacob on March 17, 2015, 06:45:11 PM
Not too different from English speakers referring to Vienna, Moscow, Copenhagen, Naples and so on. Most languages I'm passingly familiar with have names for places that are similar to but different from the name in the local language; it may be arrogance, but I don't think it's Argentine specific.
But for a neighboring country IMO you owe a little extra consideration. For example, I try to pronounce "Quebec" correctly, while I might not take so much care when trying to pronounce a town or province in France.
Quote from: derspiess on March 18, 2015, 09:00:01 AM
Quote from: Jacob on March 17, 2015, 06:45:11 PM
Not too different from English speakers referring to Vienna, Moscow, Copenhagen, Naples and so on. Most languages I'm passingly familiar with have names for places that are similar to but different from the name in the local language; it may be arrogance, but I don't think it's Argentine specific.
But for a neighboring country IMO you owe a little extra consideration. For example, I try to pronounce "Quebec" correctly, while I might not take so much care when trying to pronounce a town or province in France.
Well we are also a bit of an odd bird. After all, think of all the names that we have for places in our own country that we didn't try and anglicize (though certainly are pronunciations are not on point).
I was wondering to myself how to explain a nasal n to an English speaker, then it struck me: words like monk have a nasal n.
I feel so proud of myself. :smarty:
Quote from: Admiral Yi on March 18, 2015, 11:17:03 AM
I was wondering to myself how to explain a nasal n to an English speaker, then it struck me: words like monk have a nasal n.
I feel so proud of myself. :smarty:
:secret:
The vowel is nasal, not the consonant.
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on March 17, 2015, 06:28:08 PM
Quote from: Valmy on March 17, 2015, 03:38:27 PM
Quote from: Caliga on March 17, 2015, 03:35:26 PM
Related question: How do you pronounce 'São'? Is it "sano"?
That tripped me up to. It is pronounced like a female pig, sow.
Except you need to go nasal on this one since it's a nasal diphtong.
Valmy has an advantage here, since he may use his French phonetic knowledge on this one. Sã=saint/sein in French (NOT sans).
IPA for those interested
[sɐ̃w ˈpawlu]
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/Br-SaoPaulo.ogg (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/Br-SaoPaulo.ogg)
Ok, thanks. I had a TA in college from Cape Verde. His name was João, and he told us to just call him "Joe" but the one time I remember him saying his name I think it sounded pretty much like "Juan".
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on March 18, 2015, 11:38:23 AM
:secret:
The vowel is nasal, not the consonant.
My French teachers always talked about the nasal n. N is a consonant.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on March 18, 2015, 02:48:09 PM
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on March 18, 2015, 11:38:23 AM
:secret:
The vowel is nasal, not the consonant.
My French teachers always talked about the nasal n. N is a consonant.
They probably meant that the -n nasalises the vowel in French.
Quote from: Monoriu on March 16, 2015, 01:48:42 AM
Chinese doesn't even use alphabets. There are no tenses, no concept of singular or plural. Lots of English pronounciations, like "th", "v", and "r", are not found in Cantonese at all. There are around 3,000 common Chinese characters. I think there are far more common English words than that.
Chinese is easy after about 3 years aif intense study. I loved learning it.
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on March 18, 2015, 08:15:27 AM
Quote from: Monoriu on March 18, 2015, 03:35:17 AM
Up to like 10 years ago, Seoul was known in Chinese as the "City of Han". The Koreans aren't happy about that, because it implies that their capital is a Chinese colony. So they led a successful PR campaign to get the Chinese to change the name to a neutral translation based on the English pronounciation of "Seoul". No idea how they did it but they did it. Now, nobody calls it City of Han anymore.
Yet the Korean effort to rename the Sea of Japan has failed till now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_of_Japan_naming_dispute (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_of_Japan_naming_dispute)
East Sea anyone?
Probably because that name only makes sense in relation to the geographic position of Korea.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 18, 2015, 06:15:28 PM
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on March 18, 2015, 08:15:27 AM
Quote from: Monoriu on March 18, 2015, 03:35:17 AM
Up to like 10 years ago, Seoul was known in Chinese as the "City of Han". The Koreans aren't happy about that, because it implies that their capital is a Chinese colony. So they led a successful PR campaign to get the Chinese to change the name to a neutral translation based on the English pronounciation of "Seoul". No idea how they did it but they did it. Now, nobody calls it City of Han anymore.
Yet the Korean effort to rename the Sea of Japan has failed till now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_of_Japan_naming_dispute (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_of_Japan_naming_dispute)
East Sea anyone?
Probably because that name only makes sense in relation to the geographic position of Korea.
I'd rather say East is too vague while Japan is much more precise. That and the PC aspect :x
French is pretty easy to learn. Very difficult to master but my personal experience (YMMV) is that outside of a few stereotypical Parisian waiter types most regular sort of French blokes are quite patient if you make a sincere effort and the worst thing that happens is you get a smile and a correction of your incorrect gendered noun or adjective or use of subjunctive etc.
The same I think holds for German, at least for native English speakers. If you want to be truly fluent at a UN interpreter level and read Heidegger yes you need to devote your life to it. If you want to be able to order kebabs and get train tickets and get the gist of articles in Der Spiegel then the bar is not so high.
My main goal at this point in life is being able to read texts so getting declensions down 100% is not critical.
My biggest problem with French is the lack of clearly pronounced consonant word endings makes it difficult to tell what people are saying.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on March 19, 2015, 02:16:42 PM
My biggest problem with French is the lack of clearly pronounced consonant word endings makes it difficult to tell what people are saying.
RFI has a daily 10 minutes podcast in "francais facile" where they try to pronounce more clearly.
good for practicing listening skills.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on March 19, 2015, 02:32:07 PM
RFI has a daily 10 minutes podcast in "francais facile" where they try to pronounce more clearly.
good for practicing listening skills.
Which would be great if every French person spoke like Jaques Chirac. But they don't.
It's like they're playing a game in which you have to guess the word based on the first two letters.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on March 19, 2015, 02:37:21 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on March 19, 2015, 02:32:07 PM
RFI has a daily 10 minutes podcast in "francais facile" where they try to pronounce more clearly.
good for practicing listening skills.
Which would be great if every French person spoke like Jaques Chirac. But they don't.
It's like they're playing a game in which you have to guess the word based on the first two letters.
but what Minsky spoke about can help making what you're talking about easier.
I grew up bilingual with a German parent / American parent ( I think Hans when he used to post here was in the same boat?), anyway I think that knowing German strengthens your English, particularly your grammar. At least relative to monolingual kids speaking English. There are a lot of things with English grammar or word usage that are vague (because the rules have eroded so much and are inconsistently applied), and knowing German gives you sort of the perspective of "ah, this is a general if not well enforced rule because of this", which in turn helps you better understand what's correct and incorrect grammar in English. The converse is not as true, knowing English arguably makes German grammar more difficult.
I think both English and German are similar in that both are easy to learn for someone who speaks another European language, at least to get to "conversational" level. But extremely difficult and nuanced when it comes to being able to understand higher level literature. But I've heard Russian trumps both in that regard (fortunately only evil people learn or know Russian.)
FWIW I feel like I half know Dutch, so that'd be the easiest language for me the learn I think. They say it's one of the closest relatives of both German and English and I find myself picking out a lot from Dutch when I hear it despite literally having never deliberately tried to learn any of it.
Oddly Italian is also a language where I find myself understanding bits and snippets despite having never studied the language. Spanish which I did study at one point, I found far harder. I think it's because the cadence and pronunciation of the typical Spanish speakers results in less clearly pronounced words (to my ears) than the guineas, who often strongly enunciate a lot of words.
Studying French and Spanish has helped me with my English grammar I feel, for the same reason Biscuit mentioned.
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on March 21, 2015, 08:09:48 AM
I grew up bilingual with a German parent / American parent ( I think Hans when he used to post here was in the same boat?), anyway I think that knowing German strengthens your English, particularly your grammar. At least relative to monolingual kids speaking English. There are a lot of things with English grammar or word usage that are vague (because the rules have eroded so much and are inconsistently applied), and knowing German gives you sort of the perspective of "ah, this is a general if not well enforced rule because of this", which in turn helps you better understand what's correct and incorrect grammar in English. The converse is not as true, knowing English arguably makes German grammar more difficult.
I think both English and German are similar in that both are easy to learn for someone who speaks another European language, at least to get to "conversational" level. But extremely difficult and nuanced when it comes to being able to understand higher level literature. But I've heard Russian trumps both in that regard (fortunately only evil people learn or know Russian.)
FWIW I feel like I half know Dutch, so that'd be the easiest language for me the learn I think. They say it's one of the closest relatives of both German and English and I find myself picking out a lot from Dutch when I hear it despite literally having never deliberately tried to learn any of it.
Oddly Italian is also a language where I find myself understanding bits and snippets despite having never studied the language. Spanish which I did study at one point, I found far harder. I think it's because the cadence and pronunciation of the typical Spanish speakers results in less clearly pronounced words (to my ears) than the guineas, who often strongly enunciate a lot of words.
Well, how the hell are we supposed to spy on the Russians if we don't have people learning it?
Quote from: Razgovory on March 21, 2015, 08:30:00 PM
Well, how the hell are we supposed to spy on the Russians if we don't have people learning it?
With NSA. Russians haven't got a clue about what it can do.
Yeah, but the NSA needs people to read it. And that language is hard. Why does 'X' make a 'kh' sound and "4" make a 'ch' sound. It's the same goddamn sound! And you have a letter that makes a "sh" sound why the fuck do you need to make a separate letter for "Sh-sh"? Also, how many "y" type sounds do you need? I read that that commies eliminated even more letters. God only knows what they stood for.
Quote from: Razgovory on March 21, 2015, 10:42:50 PM
Yeah, but the NSA needs people to read it. And that language is hard. Why does 'X' make a 'kh' sound and "4" make a 'ch' sound. It's the same goddamn sound! And you have a letter that makes a "sh" sound why the fuck do you need to make a separate letter for "Sh-sh"? Also, how many "y" type sounds do you need? I read that that commies eliminated even more letters. God only knows what they stood for.
Х and Ч are not the same sound at all. It's like the difference between pronouncing "hops" and "chops".
Though I'll agree on the Sh and Sh-sh (though it's really transliterated as "Sh-ch"). And there is the also-nearly-the-same И and Ы
Quote from: Admiral Yi on March 19, 2015, 02:37:21 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on March 19, 2015, 02:32:07 PM
RFI has a daily 10 minutes podcast in "francais facile" where they try to pronounce more clearly.
good for practicing listening skills.
Which would be great if every French person spoke like Jaques Chirac. But they don't.
It's like they're playing a game in which you have to guess the word based on the first two letters.
I'd say there's less dialectal variety in French than in German or Italian for instance. So RFI's standard French is not as élite as BBC/Queen's/Oxbridge English.
I'm even tempted to say there's more dialectal variety in Portuguese with Brazilian, Portuguese (North and South basically) and Galician.
dr
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on March 19, 2015, 02:13:01 PM
French is pretty easy to learn. Very difficult to master but my personal experience (YMMV) is that outside of a few stereotypical Parisian waiter types most regular sort of French blokes are quite patient if you make a sincere effort and the worst thing that happens is you get a smile and a correction of your incorrect gendered noun or adjective or use of subjunctive etc.
The same I think holds for German, at least for native English speakers. If you want to be truly fluent at a UN interpreter level and read Heidegger yes you need to devote your life to it. If you want to be able to order kebabs and get train tickets and get the gist of articles in Der Spiegel then the bar is not so high.
My main goal at this point in life is being able to read texts so getting declensions down 100% is not critical.
My experience of French is very different, it's part of what makes it so hard.
In many other countries people have the attitude of "you can't speak my language? Oh... I can't speak English either... Sorry I can't help you, wish I could, but I can't", in japan this also often comes out as "a foreigner? Oh shit. I don't know any English. Run away to hide my shame!"
Whilst with French speakers I do encounter an awful lot of "you don't speak French? wtf is wrong with you"
Also once you do begin to learn... With Japanese people treat the simplest of phrases with complements and encouragement.
With French.... It is just so disheartening to try to learn. People don't attempt to understand poor grammar and bad pronunciation , it's just straight to "you can't speak French".
It really is pretty crappy, and a big part of why I'm not really trying as I did with the language when I lived elsewhere. Another part being of course that the language doesn't really interest me. But maybe this too isn't a neutral judgment standing alone.
Quote from: Tyr on March 22, 2015, 04:43:50 AM
Whilst with French speakers I do encounter an awful lot of "you don't speak French? wtf is wrong with you"
With French.... It is just so disheartening to try to learn. People don't attempt to understand poor grammar and bad pronunciation , it's just straight to "you can't speak French".
you should stay away from Paris and from Parisians. ;)
Québécois have the same problems you do with them, even if we speak the same language. I wonder if the BBC puts subtitles on when they interview an American or an Australian?
Quote from: Tyr on March 22, 2015, 04:43:50 AM
With French.... It is just so disheartening to try to learn. People don't attempt to understand poor grammar and bad pronunciation , it's just straight to "you can't speak French".
Huh. Everybody in both Angers and Nice practically gave me a hug when they found out I spoke French, even heavily American accented French. But maybe it is as Viper says and it is just Paris.
But on the Riviera it was usually 'Oh thank God a foreigner who speaks French!'
In Quebec (or at least in Montreal and near the border with Ontario), a lot of people will switch to English if they hear your accent isn't up to snuff, even if they initially begin the conversation in French, I think out of politeness and convenience. It's a testament to your skills when that starts to happen less often. :lol:
Quote from: Valmy on March 23, 2015, 07:37:34 AM
Quote from: Tyr on March 22, 2015, 04:43:50 AM
With French.... It is just so disheartening to try to learn. People don't attempt to understand poor grammar and bad pronunciation , it's just straight to "you can't speak French".
Huh. Everybody in both Angers and Nice practically gave me a hug when they found out I spoke French, even heavily American accented French. But maybe it is as Viper says and it is just Paris.
But on the Riviera it was usually 'Oh thank God a foreigner who speaks French!'
When I was in Paris last year the Parisians appreciated and encouraged my attempts to butcher their language, and corrected my pronunciation politely. I think that things have changed a lot in that respect over the last 20 years or so.
In viper's case, I don't think it is Paris that is causing people to treat him like shit. :ph34r:
I'm considering attempting some basic level of Spanish - it would be useful if I keep up with the 'visiting Mayan ruins' hobby. Is Spanish considered a hard language to learn?
Probably one of the easier ones.
Memorize a Taco Bell menu and you pretty much have it.
Quote from: Malthus on March 23, 2015, 12:33:00 PM
I'm considering attempting some basic level of Spanish - it would be useful if I keep up with the 'visiting Mayan ruins' hobby. Is Spanish considered a hard language to learn?
No, not at all. Then again we probably have a bit more exposure to it down here than you would up in Canuckistan.
Quote from: Valmy on March 23, 2015, 07:37:34 AM
Huh. Everybody in both Angers and Nice practically gave me a hug when they found out I spoke French, even heavily American accented French. But maybe it is as Viper says and it is just Paris.
But on the Riviera it was usually 'Oh thank God a foreigner who speaks French!'
I actually got hugs/pats on the back from some Italians who I spoke Italian to while I was there. They were like freaking amazed or something.
I took a couple online courses in Italian and had a hard time not over-enunciating everything. I've seen too many mafia movies.
One thing I would warn you about Malthus, is if you get used to listening to Latin Americans speak Spanish, Spaniards can sound like bees buzzing.
Quote from: Malthus on March 23, 2015, 12:33:00 PM
I'm considering attempting some basic level of Spanish - it would be useful if I keep up with the 'visiting Mayan ruins' hobby. Is Spanish considered a hard language to learn?
depens on the teacher, I guess. I had a Che loving anti-american socialist teacher for my introductory class to spanish. And a class filled with people who already spoke spanish. An experience similar to your mandarin class, in that regard.
Quote from: Razgovory on March 15, 2015, 11:56:07 PM
When I was in school, our teachers told us that English was a very difficult language to learn. I didn't quite buy that, I mean I get by with it. Hell I picked it up fairly early. Now that I'm older I look at other languages and it doesn't have things like grammatical gender, or bizarre cases like "instrumental". It's not tonal and has an alphabet which seems to make it easier then say, Chinese. Spelling and syntax can be a bit of a chore, but "good enough" acceptable in most settings. Now I know a lot of your learned English in school, so this is more directed at you guys. Was it difficult?
Also, I had a teacher that taught us that when no one is looking, the French secretly speak German rather then their ridiculous difficult language and that the French language is actually a way to trip up foreigners. I don't know if that's true either.
Englese is very easy to learn to read, somewhat easy to write, hard to spell, and extremely dificult to pronounce correctly.
Quote from: viper37 on March 23, 2015, 01:27:54 PM
Quote from: Malthus on March 23, 2015, 12:33:00 PM
I'm considering attempting some basic level of Spanish - it would be useful if I keep up with the 'visiting Mayan ruins' hobby. Is Spanish considered a hard language to learn?
depens on the teacher, I guess. I had a Che loving anti-american socialist teacher for my introductory class to spanish. And a class filled with people who already spoke spanish. An experience similar to your mandarin class, in that regard.
I'd probably try the self-study thing, with something like Rosetta Stone.
Anyone here attempted that?
Quote from: viper37 on March 23, 2015, 01:27:54 PM
Quote from: Malthus on March 23, 2015, 12:33:00 PM
I'm considering attempting some basic level of Spanish - it would be useful if I keep up with the 'visiting Mayan ruins' hobby. Is Spanish considered a hard language to learn?
depens on the teacher, I guess. I had a Che loving anti-american socialist teacher for my introductory class to spanish. And a class filled with people who already spoke spanish. An experience similar to your mandarin class, in that regard.
Why would people who already spoke spanish go to a spanish class?
Are spaniards stupid?
Quote from: Admiral Yi on March 23, 2015, 01:24:05 PM
One thing I would warn you about Malthus, is if you get used to listening to Latin Americans speak Spanish, Spaniards can sound like bees buzzing.
Explain. For me it's a breath of fresh air to hear Spaniards speak. It's the way I learned it.
Quote from: derspiess on March 23, 2015, 01:37:03 PM
Explain. For me it's a breath of fresh air to hear Spaniards speak. It's the way I learned it.
Hablan muy rapido.
Quote from: Malthus on March 23, 2015, 01:34:29 PM
I'd probably try the self-study thing, with something like Rosetta Stone.
Anyone here attempted that?
Everyone I know who has used it seems to have liked it. I haven't used it but I've played around with that Livemocha free crowd-sourced language learning site that they bought.
Quote from: derspiess on March 23, 2015, 01:37:03 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on March 23, 2015, 01:24:05 PM
One thing I would warn you about Malthus, is if you get used to listening to Latin Americans speak Spanish, Spaniards can sound like bees buzzing.
Explain. For me it's a breath of fresh air to hear Spaniards speak. It's the way I learned it.
Me too. I cannot understand mexicans no matter how slow they speak.
"Andele guero, meta cochinga!"
"Hummm...que dijo?"
Quote from: Siege on March 23, 2015, 01:36:10 PM
Why would people who already spoke spanish go to a spanish class?
Are spaniards stupid?
They do it all the time in Texas. They want an easy A. But it makes Spanish classes pretty crap if you actually want to learn the language.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on March 23, 2015, 01:38:55 PM
Quote from: derspiess on March 23, 2015, 01:37:03 PM
Explain. For me it's a breath of fresh air to hear Spaniards speak. It's the way I learned it.
Hablan muy rapido.
In my experience they speak more clearly and I can't recall much of a difference in tempo.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on March 23, 2015, 01:38:55 PM
Quote from: derspiess on March 23, 2015, 01:37:03 PM
Explain. For me it's a breath of fresh air to hear Spaniards speak. It's the way I learned it.
Hablan muy rapido.
Everybody does, in every language.
When I say somebody speaks fast, its ussually because I do not speak that languish that well, like italian. Have you ever seen a calabresi speaking slow?
Quote from: Valmy on March 23, 2015, 07:37:34 AM
Quote from: Tyr on March 22, 2015, 04:43:50 AM
With French.... It is just so disheartening to try to learn. People don't attempt to understand poor grammar and bad pronunciation , it's just straight to "you can't speak French".
Huh. Everybody in both Angers and Nice practically gave me a hug when they found out I spoke French, even heavily American accented French. But maybe it is as Viper says and it is just Paris.
But on the Riviera it was usually 'Oh thank God a foreigner who speaks French!'
I'm in Romandie.
Though half of the people here do seem to be from Paris.
Quote from: Siege on March 23, 2015, 01:48:00 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on March 23, 2015, 01:38:55 PM
Quote from: derspiess on March 23, 2015, 01:37:03 PM
Explain. For me it's a breath of fresh air to hear Spaniards speak. It's the way I learned it.
Hablan muy rapido.
Everybody does, in every language.
When I say somebody speaks fast, its ussually because I do not speak that languish that well, like italian. Have you ever seen a calabresi speaking slow?
Siege has a point there, but Mexicans actually speak faster than Spaniards . As to what Spaniards speak, careful about the Andalusian dialect.
Anyways, it's not like there's a unified Latin American speak. At least Castilians make it easy to distinguish s from c/z before vowels and some even keep the ll/y different (distinction is disappearing though unfortunately).
Quote from: Tyr on March 23, 2015, 02:06:06 PM
With French.... It is just so disheartening to try to learn. People don't attempt to understand poor grammar and bad pronunciation , it's just straight to "you can't speak French".
I'm in Romandie.
Though half of the people here do seem to be from Paris.
As a matter of fact, the Romands are supposed to speak way slower than other Francophones.
So I'm told. But its rare to meet them.
Quote from: Duque de Bragança on March 23, 2015, 02:22:28 PM
Quote from: Tyr on March 23, 2015, 02:06:06 PM
With French.... It is just so disheartening to try to learn. People don't attempt to understand poor grammar and bad pronunciation , it's just straight to "you can't speak French".
I'm in Romandie.
Though half of the people here do seem to be from Paris.
As a matter of facts, the Romands are supposed to speak way slower than other Francophones.
That's what my French colleague says (she's from the Bourgogne, with family in Switzerland).
Quote from: Valmy on March 23, 2015, 01:39:59 PM
Quote from: Siege on March 23, 2015, 01:36:10 PM
Why would people who already spoke spanish go to a spanish class?
Are spaniards stupid?
They do it all the time in Texas. They want an easy A. But it makes Spanish classes pretty crap if you actually want to learn the language.
Yeah, I was going to ask Viper if they were there for an easy grade or for the political indoctrination. :)
Quote from: Valmy on March 23, 2015, 01:39:59 PM
Quote from: Siege on March 23, 2015, 01:36:10 PM
Why would people who already spoke spanish go to a spanish class?
Are spaniards stupid?
They do it all the time in Texas. They want an easy A. But it makes Spanish classes pretty crap if you actually want to learn the language.
exactly that. lots of people coming from international schools and many people used to traveling in central/south america.
I just yell loudly at the wogs. They understand.