What's The Hardest Language To Learn?
Bob
wildly controversial, I think it's clear that some language are easier
to learn and others are harder, especially by adults. That all kids
pick up the L1 no matter the difficulty is irrelevant. Navajo is still
light years harder for an adult to learn than Spanish.
http://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/more-on-the-hardest-languages-to-learn/
Any respectful comments in a peer review sense would be appreciated,
as I certainly don't speak all of the languages listed.
TIA.
Warning: LONG! Runs 120 pages with both posts.
Panu
> Two posts, one non-Indo-European and one IE. Although the subject is
> wildly controversial, I think it's clear that some language are easier
> to learn and others are harder, especially by adults. That all kids
> pick up the L1 no matter the difficulty is irrelevant. Navajo is still
> light years harder for an adult to learn than Spanish.
>
>
> http://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/more-on-the-hardest-lan...
>
> Any respectful comments in a peer review sense would be appreciated,
> as I certainly don't speak all of the languages listed.
Polish difficult? What unmitigated crap. I learnt more Polish in two
years than I learnt Spanish in ten years.
Panu
>
>
> Polish difficult? What unmitigated crap. I learnt more Polish in two
> years than I learnt Spanish in ten years.
And as regards Quechua, it is uncannily regular, more so than Turkish.
The difficulty of Quechua is due to lack of standardization and lack
of learning resources. But only a criminal, a racist, or a lunatic
would call Quechua difficult.
Panu
I think you should be taken out and shot for writing this sort of
iniquitous, criminal, filthy crap. I hate you.
Panu
the languages you are pontificating over, and that you don't know
anything about learning languages either. You are a very bad man.
Please get lost.
Ruud Harmsen
sci.lang:
>"Romance grammar is much more regular than, say, Polish"
Spanish nouns are simpler is having no cases, Spanish verbs are
probably just as complicated or more so. No Polish here:
http://www.verbix.com/languages/ .
>I think you should be taken out and shot for writing this sort of
>iniquitous, criminal, filthy crap. I hate you.
Not only shot, also hanged, quartered and broken on the wheel, in any
order, like they used to know how to do in our grey past. Those were
the days!
--
Ruud Harmsen, http://rudhar.com
António Marques
> Reading the posts, it becomes clear that you don't know anything about
> the languages you are pontificating over, and that you don't know
> anything about learning languages either.
Oh, but he 'must be right' 'since he compared loads of data', 'so' 'even if
some details are wrong', 'the overall picture cannot be'.
That's how it works nowadays the hoi polloi have gotten to have an opinion
on everything under the sun.
António Marques
And then after all that they might even kill him.
Ruud Harmsen
===
French is pretty easy to learn at a simple level, but it�s not easy to
get to an advanced level. For instance, the language is full of
idioms, and it�s often hard to figure them out.
/===
Hasn't any language?
===
There are many genders, but they are not much used anymore.
/===
Two is many? Not used much anymore? Give me one French sentence
without any genders.
Ruud Harmsen
sci.lang:
>On Jan 4, 11:20�am, Bob <lindsay.rob...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>http://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/more-on-the-hardest-languages-to-learn/
===
Portuguese, like Spanish, is also very easy to learn, though
Portuguese pronunciation is harder due to the odd vowels such as nasal
diphthongs and the strange l.
/===
Strange l? Not hard for English speakers, and using a wrong kind
doesn't impede understandability.
===
Writing it is a bit harder, since there are consonants that are
written but not spoken.
/===
Incorrect. Does he refer to things like the p in baptista? No longer
written in the latest official spelling.
Ruud Harmsen
in sci.lang:
And torture with at that.
António Marques
> Mon, 04 Jan 2010 11:24:14 +0000: António Marques<anton...@sapo.pt>:
And it may be not enough:
http://www.eldritchdark.com/writings/short-stories/210/the-testament-of-athammaus
Ekkehard Dengler
What on earth is the need for such viciousness? If you have something
sensible to say, then say it. If you can't be bothered, just ignore him.
Regards,
Ekkehard
Peter T. Daniels
> Two posts, one non-Indo-European and one IE. Although the subject is
> wildly controversial, I think it's clear that some language are easier
> to learn and others are harder, especially by adults. That all kids
> pick up the L1 no matter the difficulty is irrelevant. Navajo is still
> light years harder for an adult to learn than Spanish.
I do not need to look at your web pages.
> Warning: LONG! Runs 120 pages with both posts.
All the more reason not to look at them.
The hardest language (for adults) to learn is the one most unlike
their native language(s).
Panu
Fair enough. The Polish verb only has one past tense, and as far as
the past tense is concerned, the concept of irregular verb hardly ever
exists. The nominal declension is by any standard highly regular,
although there are the usual Slavic cases. On the other hand, the verb
of almost all Romance languages is a nightmare.
I am intimately familiar both with Polish and Spanish grammar, and I
can attest that the assertion quoted above can only be characterized
as a stinking, vicious lie.
Helmut Richter
> Any respectful comments in a peer review sense would be appreciated,
> as I certainly don't speak all of the languages listed.
I have only superficially browsed over it, concentrating on the languages
of which I have a little knowledge. There seem to be (at least) two major
flaws:
1. There are too many aspects: difficulty of grammar compared with the
corresponding things in the English grammar, difficulty of
pronunciation for the English tongue, complexity of the
writing system, dependence of language mastery on knowledge of idioms.
When you compare cars, is the one with less fuel consumption better
than the one with the softer seats, and how important are these
criteria compared with the size of the luggage space?
2. There is again the ineradicable criterion of measuring complexity by
numbers. A language with cases may be harder than one without
(especially if the learner's language has no cases), but there is *no*
reason why a language with 30 cases should be harder to learn than one
with only 6 cases. See also my contribution
<Pine.LNX.4.64.09...@lxhri01.lrz.lrz-muenchen.de>.
In the portion about German, there are two minor mistakes; the corrected words
are in *...*:
| German also has *Schachtels�tze*, box clauses, which are like clauses piled
| into other clauses. The syntax is very rigid but at least very regular. In
| addition, subclauses use SOV word order. German case is also quite
| regular. The case exceptions can be almost counted on one hand.
| An example of German case (and case in general) is here: The leader of the
| group gives the boy a dog. In German, the sentence is case marked with the
| four different German cases: Der F�hrer (nominative) der Gruppe (genitive)
| gibt dem *Knaben* (dative) einen Hund (accusative).
"Knabe" obsolescent, "Junge" (here: "dem Jungen") is a more common word for
"boy".
--
Helmut Richter
Helmut Richter
> I am intimately familiar both with Polish and Spanish grammar, and I
> can attest that the assertion quoted above can only be characterized
> as a stinking, vicious lie.
For something to be a lie, the one telling it must know better. And for
something to be a stinking, vicious lie, the contents of the lie must be
in any way derogatory.
--
Helmut Richter
Harlan Messinger
> Two posts, one non-Indo-European and one IE. Although the subject is
> wildly controversial, I think it's clear that some language are easier
> to learn and others are harder, especially by adults.
Since, in the article, you qualified this by saying, "for English
speakers", you would have helped your case by having specified this
here. I don't know why you think it's so controversial to say that *for
speakers of a specific language*, some related languages with vocabulary
and grammar and phonetic overlap are going to be easier to learn than
unrelated languages with little vocabulary overlap and largely
unfamiliar phonetic inventories and structured in a very different way.
Helmut Richter
> The hardest language (for adults) to learn is the one most unlike
> their native language(s).
That is, if the native language of the learner has many morphological
irregularities, he will find highly irregular languages easier to learn?
--
Helmut Richter
António Marques
It doesn't necessarily work on that level. For instance, I find scottish
gaelic somewhat difficult because of what seems (to me) like an impossible
heap of homophones among frequent words and particles. But doubtless irish
speakers won't have such a hard time with that. Nothing to do with what
people usually conceive of as difficult, such as 'irregularities'. I don't
find the irregularities of celtic verbs (granted, there are few, but those
that are are serious) the least bit difficult. Otoh, I just can't get myself
to use the supposedly regular e*******o verbs.
LEE Sau Dan
[about French ...]
>> There are many genders, but they are not much used anymore.
Ruud> Two is many? Not used much anymore? Give me one French
Ruud> sentence without any genders.
C'est impossible?
--
Lee Sau Dan 李守敦 ~{@nJX6X~}
E-mail: dan...@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee
--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: ne...@netfront.net ---
Ruud Harmsen
sci.lang:
>>And then after all that they might even kill him.
>
>And torture with at that.
With = them. Stupid, stupid, irritating typos. I should be quartered
for that.
António Marques
> Mon, 04 Jan 2010 13:06:28 +0100: Ruud Harmsen<r...@rudhar.eu>: in
> sci.lang:
>
>>> And then after all that they might even kill him.
>>
>> And torture with at that.
>
> With = them. Stupid, stupid, irritating typos. I should be quartered
> for that.
Is such violence really needed? Do you have no respect at all for the person
who made the typo?
Ruud Harmsen
<dan...@informatik.uni-freiburg.de>: in sci.lang:
>>>>>> "Ruud" == Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.eu> writes:
>
> [about French ...]
>
> >> There are many genders, but they are not much used anymore.
>
> Ruud> Two is many? Not used much anymore? Give me one French
> Ruud> sentence without any genders.
>
>C'est impossible?
Merci beaucoup !
Ekkehard Dengler
> On Mon, 4 Jan 2010, Panu wrote:
>
>> I am intimately familiar both with Polish and Spanish grammar, and I
>> can attest that the assertion quoted above can only be characterized
>> as a stinking, vicious lie.
>
> For something to be a lie, the one telling it must know better.
I would say that they must either know the truth or knowingly risk telling
an untruth.
> for something to be a stinking, vicious lie, the contents of the lie
> must be in any way derogatory.
Exactly. Not that such things never happen -- I've seen English and creoles
belittled on account of their supposedly simple grammar, for instance, and
it's not inconceivable that there are people out there who harbour the
opposite prejudice. I'm not saying that that is the case here, but Bob, if
you want to avoid ciritcism along those lines, it would probably be a good
idea to stop using unflattering epithets such as "crazy","worst",
"weirdness", "odd" or "problem".
Regards,
Ekkehard
Ruud Harmsen
in sci.lang:
>Ruud Harmsen wrote (04-01-2010 13:53):
Yes, always, except in the case of self-mockery.
ranjit_...@yahoo.com
> Two posts, one non-Indo-European and one IE. Although the subject is
> wildly controversial, I think it's clear that some language are easier
> to learn and others are harder, especially by adults.
Which conlang is hardest to learn? Have conlangs been rated this way?
> That all kids
> pick up the L1 no matter the difficulty is irrelevant. Navajo is still
> light years harder for an adult to learn than Spanish.
>
> http://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/more-on-the-hardest-lan...
>
> http://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/more-on-the-hardest-lan...
>
> Any respectful comments in a peer review sense would be appreciated,
> as I certainly don't speak all of the languages listed.
>
> TIA.
Ruud Harmsen
<ED...@t-online.de>: in sci.lang:
>> for something to be a stinking, vicious lie, the contents of the lie
>> must be in any way derogatory.
>
>Exactly. Not that such things never happen -- I've seen English and creoles
>belittled on account of their supposedly simple grammar, for instance, and
>it's not inconceivable that there are people out there who harbour the
>opposite prejudice. I'm not saying that that is the case here, but Bob, if
>you want to avoid ciritcism along those lines, it would probably be a good
>idea to stop using unflattering epithets such as "crazy","worst",
>"weirdness", "odd" or "problem".
OTOH, I do insist that EP is a weird language, but I love it.
erilar
<Pine.LNX.4.64.10...@lxhri01.lrz.lrz-muenchen.de>,
Helmut Richter <hh...@web.de> wrote:
> In the portion about German, there are two minor mistakes; the corrected words
> are in *...*:
>
> | German also has *Schachtels�tze*, box clauses, which are like clauses piled
> | into other clauses. The syntax is very rigid but at least very regular. In
> | addition, subclauses use SOV word order. German case is also quite
> | regular. The case exceptions can be almost counted on one hand.
>
> | An example of German case (and case in general) is here: The leader of the
> | group gives the boy a dog. In German, the sentence is case marked with the
> | four different German cases: Der F�hrer (nominative) der Gruppe (genitive)
> | gibt dem *Knaben* (dative) einen Hund (accusative).
>
> "Knabe" obsolescent, "Junge" (here: "dem Jungen") is a more common word for
> "boy".
Well, if you've been reading a mess of old literature before ever using
your German in Germany, that can happen 8-) I used it when I was first
there 8-)
And I haven't read the stuff the URL leads to, but I find it hard to
imagine a non-IE language that could be easier than an IE language for a
native IE speaker.
--
Erilar, biblioholic medievalist
erilar
<632a38ca-0b00-4f83...@m3g2000yqf.googlegroups.com>,
Panu <craoi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Polish difficult? What unmitigated crap. I learnt more Polish in two
> years than I learnt Spanish in ten years.
What is your native language? Believe it or not, this is a major
factor. I'm a native English speaker and found German a cinch. I had
to acquire a reading knowledge of Latin for my M. A. Even that was much
harder than becoming fluent in German. Yet with that background, I
still found French a mess and gave up on it. Old Norse, now. . . .8-)
Peter T. Daniels
"in some way" -- "any" in this sense is a negative polarity item, i.e.
"to be complimentary, the contents of the lie must not be in any way
derogatory."
Probably including mental reservation -- if you say, "No, dear, that
outfit doesn't make you look fat" and leave unsaid "You don't need
some specific outfit to look fat," haven't you lied viciously?.
Peter T. Daniels
What do you mean by "irregular(ity)"?
Peter T. Daniels
Of course in actual discourse there's an antecedent for "ce" that has
a gender, so the sentence does have gender -- you just don't know in
isolation what it is.
Peter T. Daniels
That reminds me ... on Zamenhof's 150th birthday (December 15, 2009),
I went to a little symposium in his honor at the UN. There were five
speakers -- including two linguists, two others, and Humphrey Tonkin,
who is considered the dean of Esperantists. The first linguist, whom I
was happy to meet, was Arika Okrand, and the fourth speaker was the
other linguist (whose name I don't recall), who talked about the
attraction and spread of E-o. After his talk, I noted that the two non-
linguists had invoked what I called "the mythical sixteen rules,"
though they were not mentioned in any of the materials handed to all
the attendees, and asked whether the notion had generally been
abandoned. Most of the panelists joined the discussion and the
consensus seemed to be that while they mean little, they're a useful
advertising gimmick.
(None of them said anything in E-o. They were disappointed that the
Polish ambassador did not appear to read his encomium in person, but
they were thrilled that the ambassador from Benin attended the first
half of the event.)
Peter T. Daniels
<ranjit_math...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Jan 4, 4:20 am, Bob <lindsay.rob...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Two posts, one non-Indo-European and one IE. Although the subject is
> > wildly controversial, I think it's clear that some language are easier
> > to learn and others are harder, especially by adults.
>
> Which conlang is hardest to learn? Have conlangs been rated this way?
The one that's most unlike your native language.
Klingon was supposed to be devised to violate as many of the
Greenbergian implicational universals as possible, to make it as alien
as possible.
Okrand reported that the language of Pandora, in the movie *Avatar*
(which was about to open), grammaticalizes things that are not
grammaticalized in any human language, which seems like a better way
to come up with a truly alien tongue.
Presumably there will soon enough be published grammars and
vocabularies of it.
Peter T. Daniels
> In article
> <Pine.LNX.4.64.1001041309340.4...@lxhri01.lrz.lrz-muenchen.de>,
> Helmut Richter <hh...@web.de> wrote:
>
> > In the portion about German, there are two minor mistakes; the corrected words
> > are in *...*:
>
> > | into other clauses. The syntax is very rigid but at least very regular. In
> > | addition, subclauses use SOV word order. German case is also quite
> > | regular. The case exceptions can be almost counted on one hand.
>
> > | An example of German case (and case in general) is here: The leader of the
> > | group gives the boy a dog. In German, the sentence is case marked with the
> > | gibt dem *Knaben* (dative) einen Hund (accusative).
>
> > "Knabe" obsolescent, "Junge" (here: "dem Jungen") is a more common word for
> > "boy".
>
> Well, if you've been reading a mess of old literature before ever using
> your German in Germany, that can happen 8-) I used it when I was first
> there 8-)
>
> And I haven't read the stuff the URL leads to, but I find it hard to
> imagine a non-IE language that could be easier than an IE language for a
> native IE speaker.
Well ... aside from the vocabulary (where you have no cognates to fall
back on) and phonology, Chinese should be very easy for the English-
speaker because the grammars are so similar.
Panu
Well, morphological irregularity suggests to me that there are many
different declensions or conjugations where morphemes doing the same
work often don't resemble each other.
Panu
>
>
> "Knabe" obsolescent, "Junge" (here: "dem Jungen") is a more common word for
> "boy".
We were taught that Knabe is a regional, Southern word.
Panu
I would mostly agree with Bob on Georgian being a hard one, but there
is one redeeming feature: vocabulary. If you listen to spoken Georgian
you will recognize a lot of Latinate international words. Armenian
makes a much more impenetrably foreign impression, although it is Indo-
European and grammatically less alien.
Panu
> In article
>
> Panu <craoibhi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Polish difficult? What unmitigated crap. I learnt more Polish in two
> > years than I learnt Spanish in ten years.
>
> What is your native language?
Finnish. I was fluent in Swedish, German, and English before tackling
Polish.
Believe it or not, this is a major
> factor.
Certainly.
I'm a native English speaker and found German a cinch. I had
> to acquire a reading knowledge of Latin for my M. A. Even that was much
> harder than becoming fluent in German. Yet with that background, I
> still found French a mess and gave up on it. Old Norse, now. . . .8-)
As an English-speaker, you certainly found all those inflexional
systems complicated. But the fact is that Finnish has one of the most
complicated inflexional systems anywhere in Europe, and still I find
languages with comparable or resembling systems difficult.
Ruud Harmsen
<ranjit_...@yahoo.com>: in sci.lang:
>On Jan 4, 4:20�am, Bob <lindsay.rob...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Two posts, one non-Indo-European and one IE. Although the subject is
>> wildly controversial, I think it's clear that some language are easier
>> to learn and others are harder, especially by adults.
>
>Which conlang is hardest to learn? Have conlangs been rated this way?
For Esperanto that's about the same passively and actively, but for
languages like Interlingua, learning it passively is easy (effort:
almost non-existent for many who already know some related languages),
but active usage is much harder. (I never really did.)
Panu
Uh, are you talking about Mark Okrand or Arika Okrent? They spell the
surname differently, and aren't related, AFAIK.
Helmut Richter
> And I haven't read the stuff the URL leads to, but I find it hard to
> imagine a non-IE language that could be easier than an IE language for a
> native IE speaker.
I found Swahili a lot easier than Russian (these two I have tried at least to
some extent), and I am not at all sure whether Sanskrit, Armenian, Albanian,
or Gaelic would not turn out to be more difficult than Swahili as well -- even
when the (certainly easily mastered) complexity of a foreign script for the
first two is disregarded.
The overlap of vocabulary exists only with other Germanic languages and to
some extent with Romance languages. Vocabulary similarities with other
branches of IE are nice to explore for the linguist but of no real advantage
for the learner. Of the other similarities within IE, many are found also in
many languages outside, so that for these no additional complexity is
incurred. For instance, a Hungarian or Swahili sentence does not really work
much differently from a German or English one. (Other languages *are* more
thoroughly dissimilar, of course.)
I dislike the "similarity" thing as a quick answer to the "easiness"
question because it denies the intrinsic complexity of language features.
A language with the typical 4 to 7 cases of those IE languages that have
not lost their case system *is* more difficult to learn even than a
language with no cases *even* when the learner's native language has a
similar number of cases with a similar semantics. The similarity argument
would predict the contrary. The same holds for morphological
irregularities -- they, too, add complexity for *every* learner.
--
Helmut Richter
Helmut Richter
The regional Southern word would be "Bub".
--
Helmut Richter
Ekkehard Dengler
> On Jan 4, 9:01 am, Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.eu> wrote:
>> Mon, 04 Jan 2010 21:44:10 +0800: LEE Sau Dan
>> <dan...@informatik.uni-freiburg.de>: in sci.lang:
>>
>>>>>>>> "Ruud" == Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.eu> writes:
>>
>>> [about French ...]
>>
>>>>> There are many genders, but they are not much used anymore.
>>
>>> Ruud> Two is many? Not used much anymore? Give me one French
>>> Ruud> sentence without any genders.
>>
>>> C'est impossible?
>>
>> Merci beaucoup !
>
> Of course in actual discourse there's an antecedent for "ce" that has
> a gender
No, because "ce" refers not to a subject, but to a predicate.
>, so the sentence does have gender -- you just don't know in
> isolation what it is.
No, see above.
Regards,
Ekkehard
António Marques
> A language with the typical 4 to 7 cases of those IE languages that have
> not lost their case system *is* more difficult to learn even than a
> language with no cases *even* when the learner's native language has a
> similar number of cases with a similar semantics.
Because you say so?
António Marques
There's a difference though between a regional, Southern word, and the
regional Southern word.
Ekkehard Dengler
More importantly, "Knabe" isn't normally used (in this sense) in any variety
of present-day German.
Regards,
Ekkehard
Joachim Pense
I don't know if Knabe is southern, and I doubt that anyone still uses it.
Joachim
António Marques
I was just pointing out that they were not talking about the same thing.
'Bub' hardly looks like the kind of word you find in dictionaries.
Peter T. Daniels
Just as the names of cities are feminine because of "la ville," so
also would clauses be feminine because of "la phrase"?
Peter T. Daniels
Is it complicated, or is it just rich? Isn't the difficulty
remembering how to match up other languages' impoverished case systems
with Finnish's rich one?
Can the Finnish cases be reduced by analysis to a much smaller number,
as Hungarian's supposed 40 or 80 or whatever can be understood as five
to eight cases interacting?
Oliver Cromm
I seem to remember it is still usual in written Swiss German.
--
dasz jederman sehe, wie falsch unsere gugelm�nche zu ihres ordens
verteidigung der ersten kirchenexempel anziehen Calvin
GRIMM, Deutsches W�rterbuch
Peter T. Daniels
Yes, they're not related, and I can never remember which is which.
They were selling her book for $20 but I'm still waiting for the
paperback.
Joachim Pense
I think it is very common and even standard german (with a slightly smaller
range of usage than in the dialects)
Joachim
Harlan Messinger
It isn't the sentence that's impossible, but the idea expressed by the
sentence! Of course, you'll just swap "idea" for "sentence" in your
question. But then it would be wrong because if the response were "C'est
fou" instead of "C'est folle", we'd see that the adjective is the
masculine one (i.e., the *neutral* one) instead of the feminine one that
"id�e" would call for.
Christian Weisgerber
> > "Knabe" obsolescent, "Junge" (here: "dem Jungen") is a more common word for
> > "boy".
>
> We were taught that Knabe is a regional, Southern word.
That's Bub(e).
--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber na...@mips.inka.de
Panu
> On Jan 4, 10:53 am, Panu <craoibhi...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Jan 4, 5:05 pm, erilar <dra...@chibardun.net.invalid> wrote:
>
> > > In article
> > > <632a38ca-0b00-4f83-b3eb-721aad32b...@m3g2000yqf.googlegroups.com>,
>
> > > Panu <craoibhi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > Polish difficult? What unmitigated crap. I learnt more Polish in two
> > > > years than I learnt Spanish in ten years.
>
> > > What is your native language?
>
> > Finnish. I was fluent in Swedish, German, and English before tackling
> > Polish.
>
> > Believe it or not, this is a major
>
> > > factor.
>
> > Certainly.
>
> > I'm a native English speaker and found German a cinch. I had
>
> > > to acquire a reading knowledge of Latin for my M. A. Even that was much
> > > harder than becoming fluent in German. Yet with that background, I
> > > still found French a mess and gave up on it. Old Norse, now. . . .8-)
>
> > As an English-speaker, you certainly found all those inflexional
> > systems complicated. But the fact is that Finnish has one of the most
> > complicated inflexional systems anywhere in Europe, and still I find
> > languages with comparable or resembling systems difficult.
>
> Is it complicated, or is it just rich?
Maybe it's just rich, but there is also consonant gradation.
Isn't the difficulty
> remembering how to match up other languages' impoverished case systems
> with Finnish's rich one?
You might say that.
>
> Can the Finnish cases be reduced by analysis to a much smaller number,
> as Hungarian's supposed 40 or 80 or whatever can be understood as five
> to eight cases interacting?
No.
Panu
Yes, that too, but IMHO it has the connotation of a snotty, ill-
brought-up brat.
Ekkehard Dengler
Unless I'm very much mistaken, you've just inadvertently provided an
reductio ad absurdum of your own statement that "in actual discourse there's
an antecedent for 'ce' that has a gender". The first word in "C'est
impossible" is analogous to that in "That's impossible" precisely in that
its antecedent has no gender, which is why it's known as a "pronom
d�monstratif neutre".
Regards,
Ekkehard
Ekkehard Dengler
> Joachim Pense wrote (04-01-2010 18:08):
What a strange thing to say. Here's one example:
http://www.wordreference.com/deen/bub
Regards,
Ekkehard
Ekkehard Dengler
> On Jan 4, 6:33 pm, Helmut Richter <hh...@web.de> wrote:
>> On Mon, 4 Jan 2010, Panu wrote:
>>> On Jan 4, 3:02 pm, Helmut Richter <hh...@web.de> wrote:
>>
>>>> "Knabe" obsolescent, "Junge" (here: "dem Jungen") is a more common
>>>> word for "boy".
>>
>>> We were taught that Knabe is a regional, Southern word.
>>
>> The regional Southern word would be "Bub".
>
> Yes, that too, but IMHO it has the connotation of a snotty, ill-
> brought-up brat.
Not in southern standard or near-standard German, where it simply means
"boy". Here are three actual dialect versions I happen to know: "Bu" [bu:]
(Franconian), "Bou" [bOU] (northern Bavarian) and "Bua" [bu@] (central
Bavarian).
Regards,
Ekkehard
erilar
<47bad8ee-e4d7-45a0...@34g2000yqp.googlegroups.com>,
Panu <craoi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Jan 4, 5:05�pm, erilar <dra...@chibardun.net.invalid> wrote:
> > In article
> > <632a38ca-0b00-4f83-b3eb-721aad32b...@m3g2000yqf.googlegroups.com>,
> >
> > �Panu <craoibhi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Polish difficult? What unmitigated crap. I learnt more Polish in two
> > > years than I learnt Spanish in ten years.
> >
> > What is your native language?
>
> Finnish. I was fluent in Swedish, German, and English before tackling
> Polish.
Well, at least they were IE languages, so that ought to have helped.
>
> �Believe it or not, this is a major
> > factor.
>
> Certainly.
>
> � I'm a native English speaker and found German a cinch. �I had
> > to acquire a reading knowledge of Latin for my M. A. �Even that was much
> > harder than becoming fluent in German. �Yet with that background, I
> > still found French a mess and gave up on it. �Old Norse, now. . . .8-)
>
> As an English-speaker, you certainly found all those inflexional
> systems complicated. But the fact is that Finnish has one of the most
> complicated inflexional systems anywhere in Europe, and still I find
> languages with comparable or resembling systems difficult.
German is easy, in my opinion, because it has rules and follows them.
English does not.
My minimal exposure to Finnish was in morphological exercises in a
linguistics course, and I thought at the time that learning it would be
extremely difficult. It seems to me that starting from a language with
such complicated inflections would, in a way, make learning a language
as amorphous in that aspect as English quite difficult. There are, of
course, many kinds of complexity.
And then there's linguistic static. In an OLD German class(it was
called Old High German, but there was really no such thing), one of the
things we read was by a cleric complaining about how German had the
gender "wrong" on so many nouns because he saw Latin as "perfect" and
Germanic languages with gender do NOT agree regularly with Latin or
Romance languages with gender.
--
Erilar, biblioholic medievalist
Peter T. Daniels
> German is easy, in my opinion, because it has rules and follows them.
> English does not.
What a bizarre assertion. What are the 1500 or so pages of the Quirk
Greenbaum et al, the Oxford, and the Cambridge grammars of English?
erilar
<Pine.LNX.4.64.10...@lxhri01.lrz.lrz-muenchen.de>,
Helmut Richter <hh...@web.de> wrote:
> I found Swahili a lot easier than Russian (these two I have tried at least to
> some extent), and I am not at all sure whether Sanskrit, Armenian, Albanian,
> or Gaelic would not turn out to be more difficult than Swahili as well -- even
> when the (certainly easily mastered) complexity of a foreign script for the
> first two is disregarded.
But isn't Swahili a trade language? Trade languages are, I believe,
usually fairly simple.
erilar
> The overlap of vocabulary exists only with other Germanic languages and to
> some extent with Romance languages. Vocabulary similarities with other
> branches of IE are nice to explore for the linguist but of no real advantage
> for the learner.
Oh, vocabulary similarities can also be terribly misleading. Loan
words, in particular, tend to change meanings and pronunciation.
> Of the other similarities within IE, many are found also in
> many languages outside, so that for these no additional complexity is
> incurred. For instance, a Hungarian or Swahili sentence does not really work
> much differently from a German or English one. (Other languages *are* more
> thoroughly dissimilar, of course.)
If a language has something similar to IE nouns and verbs, it will
probably be easier. But some languages are so dissimilar in overall
structure that there are no reference points. An isolating language and
a agglutinative one would be examples of this. A language where tonal
differences make what in IE would be one "word" into multiple "words" of
very different meanings is quite unlike any IE language I know of.
>
> I dislike the "similarity" thing as a quick answer to the "easiness"
> question because it denies the intrinsic complexity of language features.
> A language with the typical 4 to 7 cases of those IE languages that have
> not lost their case system *is* more difficult to learn even than a
> language with no cases *even* when the learner's native language has a
> similar number of cases with a similar semantics. The similarity argument
> would predict the contrary. The same holds for morphological
> irregularities -- they, too, add complexity for *every* learner.
Oh, similarities can also cause "static"; what seems familiar can prove
not to be what is expected at all, whether in vocabulary, gender, case,
or any other aspect of structure.
However, from years of studying and teaching language, there is one
thing I believe is beyond argument: learning a second language makes
learning a third easier, even when they are unrelated.
erilar
<8e79d792-e40d-43a4...@h2g2000vbd.googlegroups.com>,
"Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@verizon.net> wrote:
> Well ... aside from the vocabulary (where you have no cognates to fall
> back on) and phonology, Chinese should be very easy for the English-
> speaker because the grammars are so similar.
Perhaps to speak it, but to write it????? 8-)
António Marques
> António Marques (in sci.lang):
> > 'Bub' hardly looks like the kind of word you find in dictionaries.
>
> I think it is very common and even standard german (with a slightly smaller
> range of usage than in the dialects)
Still, it doesn't look like a standard german word to me. Go figure.
My very old Duden doesn't have it, my younger Langenscheidt's DaF
Grosswoerterbuch does. Both, of course, have Bube, which does look
german to me, isn't pointed out as southern and may be what Panu was
thinking of.
erilar
<98fc55f2-55a0-4557...@f5g2000yqh.googlegroups.com>,
"Peter T. Daniels" <gram...@verizon.net> wrote:
Lists of tendencies that it takes 1500 pages to list?
Panu
> * Ekkehard Dengler:
>
>
>
> > António Marques wrote:
> >> Helmut Richter wrote (04-01-2010 16:33):
> >>> On Mon, 4 Jan 2010, Panu wrote:
>
> >>>> On Jan 4, 3:02 pm, Helmut Richter<hh...@web.de> wrote:
>
> >>>>> "Knabe" obsolescent, "Junge" (here: "dem Jungen") is a more common
> >>>>> word for "boy".
>
> >>>> We were taught that Knabe is a regional, Southern word.
>
> >>> The regional Southern word would be "Bub".
>
> >> There's a difference though between a regional, Southern word, and the
> >> regional Southern word.
>
> > More importantly, "Knabe" isn't normally used (in this sense) in any variety
> > of present-day German.
>
> I seem to remember it is still usual in written Swiss German.
Now I seem to remember a Feuilleton-esque (if such a word exists) in
some Swiss German magazine lamenting the demise of Knabe and the
inroads of Junge in Switzerland. It referred to a popular song, "Ich
bin ein Schweizer Knabe und hab die Heimat lieb", and wondered if it
soon would be sung as "Ich bin ein Schweizer Junge".
ranjit_...@yahoo.com
> Mon, 4 Jan 2010 06:53:02 -0800 (PST): "ranjit_math...@yahoo.com" <ranjit_math...@yahoo.com>: in sci.lang:
>
> >On Jan 4, 4:20 am, Bob <lindsay.rob...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Two posts, one non-Indo-European and one IE. Although the subject is
> >> wildly controversial, I think it's clear that some language are easier
> >> to learn and others are harder, especially by adults.
>
> >Which conlang is hardest to learn? Have conlangs been rated this way?
>
> languages like Interlingua, learning it passively is easy (effort:
> almost non-existent for many who already know some related languages),
> but active usage is much harder. (I never really did.)
Esperanto is supposedly popular in Japan, among the small fraction of
the population interested in conlangs. If they had chosen to learn
Interlingua instead, why would they have had more trouble learning it?
Peter T. Daniels
> In article
> "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > On Jan 4, 6:32 pm, erilar <dra...@chibardun.net.invalid> wrote:
>
> > > German is easy, in my opinion, because it has rules and follows them.
> > > English does not.
>
> > What a bizarre assertion. What are the 1500 or so pages of the Quirk
> > Greenbaum et al, the Oxford, and the Cambridge grammars of English?
>
> Lists of tendencies that it takes 1500 pages to list?
No.
Peter T. Daniels
> In article
> "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > Well ... aside from the vocabulary (where you have no cognates to fall
> > back on) and phonology, Chinese should be very easy for the English-
> > speaker because the grammars are so similar.
>
> Perhaps to speak it, but to write it????? 8-)
There are plenty of introductory manuals, for either Mandarin or
Cantonese, that use only transcription.
Peter T. Daniels
> In article
> Helmut Richter <hh...@web.de> wrote:
>
> > I found Swahili a lot easier than Russian (these two I have tried at least to
> > some extent), and I am not at all sure whether Sanskrit, Armenian, Albanian,
> > or Gaelic would not turn out to be more difficult than Swahili as well -- even
> > when the (certainly easily mastered) complexity of a foreign script for the
> > first two is disregarded.
>
> But isn't Swahili a trade language? Trade languages are, I believe,
> usually fairly simple.
What do you mean by "trade language"?
Swahili is a large and diverse language, and is the lingua franca for
a large part of East Africa.
There have been suggestions of a creole origin, but they have not
found acceptance.
Peter T. Daniels
> In article
> Helmut Richter <hh...@web.de> wrote:
>
> > The overlap of vocabulary exists only with other Germanic languages and to
> > some extent with Romance languages. Vocabulary similarities with other
> > branches of IE are nice to explore for the linguist but of no real advantage
> > for the learner.
>
> Oh, vocabulary similarities can also be terribly misleading. Loan
> words, in particular, tend to change meanings and pronunciation.
>
> > Of the other similarities within IE, many are found also in
> > many languages outside, so that for these no additional complexity is
> > incurred. For instance, a Hungarian or Swahili sentence does not really work
> > much differently from a German or English one. (Other languages *are* more
> > thoroughly dissimilar, of course.)
>
> If a language has something similar to IE nouns and verbs, it will
> probably be easier. But some languages are so dissimilar in overall
> structure that there are no reference points. An isolating language and
> a agglutinative one would be examples of this. A language where tonal
> differences make what in IE would be one "word" into multiple "words" of
> very different meanings is quite unlike any IE language I know of.
Such as Swedish?
> > I dislike the "similarity" thing as a quick answer to the "easiness"
> > question because it denies the intrinsic complexity of language features.
> > A language with the typical 4 to 7 cases of those IE languages that have
> > not lost their case system *is* more difficult to learn even than a
> > language with no cases *even* when the learner's native language has a
> > similar number of cases with a similar semantics. The similarity argument
> > would predict the contrary. The same holds for morphological
> > irregularities -- they, too, add complexity for *every* learner.
>
> Oh, similarities can also cause "static"; what seems familiar can prove
> not to be what is expected at all, whether in vocabulary, gender, case,
> or any other aspect of structure.
>
> However, from years of studying and teaching language, there is one
> thing I believe is beyond argument: learning a second language makes
> learning a third easier, even when they are unrelated.
That's very true. But if you "study and teach" language, how can you
think that English is any less rule-governed than any other human
language?
Yusuf B Gursey
> Two posts, one non-Indo-European and one IE. Although the subject is
> wildly controversial, I think it's clear that some language are easier
> pick up the L1 no matter the difficulty is irrelevant. Navajo is still
> light years harder for an adult to learn than Spanish.
>
> http://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/more-on-the-hardest-lan...
"Dene-Caucasian" is a *very* speculative taxon. there was no need to
mention it in the first place.
>
> http://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/more-on-the-hardest-lan...
>
> Any respectful comments in a peer review sense would be appreciated,
> as I certainly don't speak all of the languages listed.
>
> TIA.
>
> Warning: LONG! Runs 120 pages with both posts.
Yusuf B Gursey
> Two posts, one non-Indo-European and one IE. Although the subject is
> wildly controversial, I think it's clear that some language are easier
> to learn and others are harder, especially by adults. That all kids
> pick up the L1 no matter the difficulty is irrelevant. Navajo is still
> light years harder for an adult to learn than Spanish.
>
> http://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/more-on-the-hardest-lan...
>
>
> Any respectful comments in a peer review sense would be appreciated,
> as I certainly don't speak all of the languages listed.
I wish it would seperate learning the writing system associated with a
language, with learning the language itself more.
Bob
> Helmut Richter wrote:
> > On Mon, 4 Jan 2010, Panu wrote:
>
> >> can attest that the assertion quoted above can only be characterized
> >> as a stinking, vicious lie.
>
> > For something to be a lie, the one telling it must know better.
>
> I would say that they must either know the truth or knowingly risk telling
> an untruth.
>
> > for something to be a stinking, vicious lie, the contents of the lie
> > must be in any way derogatory.
>
> Exactly. Not that such things never happen -- I've seen English and creoles
> belittled on account of their supposedly simple grammar, for instance, and
> it's not inconceivable that there are people out there who harbour the
> opposite prejudice. I'm not saying that that is the case here, but Bob, if
> you want to avoid ciritcism along those lines, it would probably be a good
> idea to stop using unflattering epithets such as "crazy","worst",
> "weirdness", "odd" or "problem".
>
> Regards,
> Ekkehard
Thx, I fixed most of that. Should I use "difficulty" instead of
"problem?"
Bob
> In article
Swahili got a 1, simplest of all, in some of the research I was going
through. I left it out because part of me didn't believe an African
language could be so simple for non-Africans. Now it makes sense
though. It's a trade language. Maybe I'll include it now.
DKleinecke
> And I haven't read the stuff the URL leads to, but I find it hard to
> imagine a non-IE language that could be easier than an IE language for a
> native IE speaker.
I haven't tested all IE languages but i can say that I find Arabic
easier than Classical Greek. I think Chinese would be too - but I
haven't learned enough Chinese to be sure.
It's a kind of vague notion that is in control. You might call it
language strategy. The closer the strategy is to your first language
the easier it will be to learn that language.
Bob
> On Jan 4, 4:20 am, Bob <lindsay.rob...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Two posts, one non-Indo-European and one IE. Although the subject is
> > wildly controversial, I think it's clear that some language are easier
> > to learn and others are harder, especially by adults. That all kids
> > pick up the L1 no matter the difficulty is irrelevant. Navajo is still
> > light years harder for an adult to learn than Spanish.
>
> >http://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/more-on-the-hardest-lan...
>
> "Dene-Caucasian" is a *very* speculative taxon. there was no need to
> mention it in the first place.
>
satisfaction for sure, and I think it's quite solid. Dene-Caucasian,
not at all.
Bob
> On Jan 4, 6:59 am, erilar <dra...@chibardun.net.invalid> wrote:
>
> > And I haven't read the stuff the URL leads to, but I find it hard to
> > imagine a non-IE language that could be easier than an IE language for a
> > native IE speaker.
>
> I haven't tested all IE languages but i can say that I find Arabic
> easier than Classical Greek. I think Chinese would be too - but I
> haven't learned enough Chinese to be sure.
The general consensus was that Koine Greek or Classical Greek was
truly murderous. Modern Greek is not easy, but everyone said it was
way easier than Ancient Greek.
What kept coming up over and over in talks about English to Chinese
was that in order to learn Chinese, you needed to learn a whole new
way of thinking and looking at the world. They said this was the
hardest part of learning the language.
>
> It's a kind of vague notion that is in control. You might call it
> language strategy. The closer the strategy is to your first language
> the easier it will be to learn that language.
Sure, Koreans and Japanese can pick up each other's languages
relatively easily.
Bob
The Interlingua people say it's easier than E-o. The history of these
since E-o has been to try to make conlangs that are easier to learn
than E-o, in many cases. Interlingua was one of those efforts. But I
think Interlingua is mostly for Romance speakers, no?
Most conlangs are focused on IE speakers, and they have totally
ignored the rest of the world. But there are some new ones out that
are based heavily on Chinese, Hindi, Arabic, etc.
Joachim Pense
In today's German, "Bube" has a negative connotation, maybe like 'crook'.
(But the jack in a card deck is also "Bube", without that connotation).
"Bub" is different.
Joachim
Joachim Pense
> On Jan 4, 6:33 pm, Helmut Richter <hh...@web.de> wrote:
>> On Mon, 4 Jan 2010, Panu wrote:
>> > On Jan 4, 3:02 pm, Helmut Richter <hh...@web.de> wrote:
>>
>> > > "Knabe" obsolescent, "Junge" (here: "dem Jungen") is a more common
>> > > word for "boy".
>>
>> > We were taught that Knabe is a regional, Southern word.
>>
>> The regional Southern word would be "Bub".
>
> Yes, that too, but IMHO it has the connotation of a snotty, ill-
> brought-up brat.
No, certainly not. "Bub" is just "boy". What you are thinking of is "Bube"
(normally occurring as "böser Bube").
Kpacjo,
Bob
> On Jan 4, 11:20 am, Bob <lindsay.rob...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >http://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/more-on-the-hardest-lan...
>
> ===
> French is pretty easy to learn at a simple level, but it’s not easy to
> get to an advanced level. For instance, the language is full of
> idioms, and it’s often hard to figure them out.
> /===
> Hasn't any language?
>
> ===
> There are many genders, but they are not much used anymore.
> /===
> Two is many? Not used much anymore? Give me one French sentence
> without any genders.
Thx, I removed that.
Bob
> Mon, 04 Jan 2010 12:25:01 +0100: Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.eu>: in
> sci.lang:
>
> >On Jan 4, 11:20 am, Bob <lindsay.rob...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>http://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/more-on-the-hardest-lan...
>
> ===
> Portuguese pronunciation is harder due to the odd vowels such as nasal
> diphthongs and the strange l.
> /===
> Strange l? Not hard for English speakers, and using a wrong kind
> doesn't impede understandability.
Leaving it in, sorry.
>
> ===
> Writing it is a bit harder, since there are consonants that are
> written but not spoken.
> /===
> Incorrect. Does he refer to things like the p in baptista? No longer
> written in the latest official spelling.
Thx I removed that.
> --
> Ruud Harmsen,http://rudhar.com
Bob
> On Mon, 4 Jan 2010, Bob wrote:
> > Any respectful comments in a peer review sense would be appreciated,
> > as I certainly don't speak all of the languages listed.
>
> of which I have a little knowledge. There seem to be (at least) two major
> flaws:
>
> 1. There are too many aspects: difficulty of grammar compared with the
> corresponding things in the English grammar, difficulty of
> pronunciation for the English tongue, complexity of the
> writing system, dependence of language mastery on knowledge of idioms.
> When you compare cars, is the one with less fuel consumption better
> than the one with the softer seats, and how important are these
> criteria compared with the size of the luggage space?
>
> 2. There is again the ineradicable criterion of measuring complexity by
> numbers. A language with cases may be harder than one without
> (especially if the learner's language has no cases), but there is *no*
> reason why a language with 30 cases should be harder to learn than one
> with only 6 cases. See also my contribution
> <Pine.LNX.4.64.0910171832051.5...@lxhri01.lrz.lrz-muenchen.de>.
>
> In the portion about German, there are two minor mistakes; the corrected words
> are in *...*:
>
> | German also has *Schachtelsätze*, box clauses, which are like clauses piled
> | into other clauses. The syntax is very rigid but at least very regular. In
> | addition, subclauses use SOV word order. German case is also quite
> | regular. The case exceptions can be almost counted on one hand.
>
> | An example of German case (and case in general) is here: The leader of the
> | group gives the boy a dog. In German, the sentence is case marked with the
> | four different German cases: Der Führer (nominative) der Gruppe (genitive)
> | gibt dem *Knaben* (dative) einen Hund (accusative).
>
> "Knabe" obsolescent, "Junge" (here: "dem Jungen") is a more common word for
> "boy".
>
Panu
It is Dene-Yeniseian, not "Yenisien". Yeniseian, as in the river
Yenisei in Siberia. When you don't even take the trouble of spelling
the names correctly, why the fuck do you try to feign knowledge of the
area at all?
Panu
> On Jan 4, 7:09 pm, erilar <dra...@chibardun.net.invalid> wrote:
>
>
>
> > In article
> > <Pine.LNX.4.64.1001041702290.4...@lxhri01.lrz.lrz-muenchen.de>,
> > Helmut Richter <hh...@web.de> wrote:
>
> > > The overlap of vocabulary exists only with other Germanic languages and to
> > > some extent with Romance languages. Vocabulary similarities with other
> > > branches of IE are nice to explore for the linguist but of no real advantage
> > > for the learner.
>
> > Oh, vocabulary similarities can also be terribly misleading. Loan
> > words, in particular, tend to change meanings and pronunciation.
>
> > > Of the other similarities within IE, many are found also in
> > > many languages outside, so that for these no additional complexity is
> > > incurred. For instance, a Hungarian or Swahili sentence does not really work
> > > much differently from a German or English one. (Other languages *are* more
> > > thoroughly dissimilar, of course.)
>
> > If a language has something similar to IE nouns and verbs, it will
> > probably be easier. But some languages are so dissimilar in overall
> > structure that there are no reference points. An isolating language and
> > a agglutinative one would be examples of this. A language where tonal
> > differences make what in IE would be one "word" into multiple "words" of
> > very different meanings is quite unlike any IE language I know of.
>
> Such as Swedish?
As an expression of provincial pride, let me point out that our
Swedish doesn't have those tonal differences, and we perceive them as
stupid and effete.
> > However, from years of studying and teaching language, there is one
> > thing I believe is beyond argument: learning a second language makes
> > learning a third easier, even when they are unrelated.
>
> That's very true. But if you "study and teach" language, how can you
> think that English is any less rule-governed than any other human
> language?
My guess is that this is due to the widespread fallacy of defining
"grammar" as morphology. It is a scourge in Irish-language teaching,
even today. There is very little focus on syntax.
Panu
So, you admit that your musings are mostly based on your own stupid
prejudices.
Yusuf B Gursey
it may be proven to your satisfaction, but it is not generally
accepted by linguists (at least not yet). it would still be classified
as a taxon of "long-rangers", not on a par with the other families
listed, even Altaic (which I won't quibble about). AFAIK the only New
World - Old World relationship that is even remotely accepted is that
of Eskimo-Aleut with Chukchee - Kamchakchan, which I remember seeing
listed in a respected encyclopedia it might have been Britannica)
PaulJK
> Joachim Pense wrote (04-01-2010 18:08):
>> António Marques (in sci.lang):
>>
>>> Helmut Richter wrote (04-01-2010 16:33):
>>>>
>>>>> On Jan 4, 3:02 pm, Helmut Richter<hh...@web.de> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> for "boy".
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> The regional Southern word would be "Bub".
>>>
>>> regional Southern word.
>>
>
> I was just pointing out that they were not talking about the same thing.
> 'Bub' hardly looks like the kind of word you find in dictionaries.
My size-A5 pocket Oxford German Dictionary printed in Spain
in 1995 translates Bub m as (SGer) boy.
My big Gothic-lettered Dictionary published in Dresden in 1909
has Bube translated as boy, lad, or (im Kartenspiel) knave, etc.
pjk
PaulJK
> On Mon, 4 Jan 2010, Panu wrote:
>
>> On Jan 4, 3:02 pm, Helmut Richter <hh...@web.de> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> "Knabe" obsolescent, "Junge" (here: "dem Jungen") is a more common word for
>>> "boy".
>>
>> We were taught that Knabe is a regional, Southern word.
>
> The regional Southern word would be "Bub".
Right! Looking at the packs of cards in my Sitting room: B-D-K-A!
It's: Bub, Dame, Koenig, Ass.
Or: Unter, Ober, Koenig, Ass.
:-)
pjk
PaulJK
> Helmut Richter wrote (04-01-2010 16:32):
>
>> A language with the typical 4 to 7 cases of those IE languages that have
>> not lost their case system *is* more difficult to learn even than a
>> language with no cases *even* when the learner's native language has a
>> similar number of cases with a similar semantics.
>
I'd agree with Helmut. Being a native speaker of a language
with a system of 7 cases I still found German case system
difficult. The advantage was that nobody had to explain to
me what in principle were the cases for. I found the mapping
far from straight forward. One particular case in one language
doesn't always map onto the same one case in another language.
Only after some time and a lot of reading I managed to acquire
sufficient feeling for German language to use the correct cases
automatically. Some decades later I again lost that ability
completely through lack uf use.
pjk
Ruud Harmsen
<ent...@gmail.com>: in sci.lang:
>On Jan 4, 7:42�pm, Joachim Pense <s...@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:
>> Ant�nio Marques (in sci.lang):
>> > 'Bub' hardly looks like the kind of word you find in dictionaries.
>>
>> I think it is very common and even standard german (with a slightly smaller
>> range of usage than in the dialects)
>
>Still, it doesn't look like a standard german word to me. Go figure.
>My very old Duden doesn't have it,
The modern online duden.de has:
==
Duden - Deutsches Universalw�rterbuch:
Bub, der; -en, -en [mhd. buobe] (s�dd., �sterr., schweiz.): Junge,
Knabe: ein aufgeweckter B.
==
Das Synonymw�rterbuch:
4. Bub Bursche, Junge, Kleiner, [kleiner] Kerl; (ugs.): Bambino,
Kerlchen, Knirps; (�sterr. ugs.): Pimpf; (ugs. scherzh.) ...
==
Richtiges und gutes Deutsch:
Bub/Bube:
Die beiden Nominativformen haben sich in der Bedeutung so stark
differenziert, dass sie im heutigen Sprachgebrauch als zwei
verschiedene W�rter empfunden werden: 1. Bub (s�dd., �sterr., schweiz.
f�r:) �Junge, Knabe�. 2. Bube (veraltend f�r:) �Schurke, Schuft�.
Allgemein �blich ist die Verwendung von Bube als
Spielkartenbezeichnung. Auch die k�rzere Form Bub wird aber in
geschriebenen Texten schwach dekliniert. Es hei�t richtig dem, den
Buben (nicht: dem, den Bub). Weglassen der Flexionsendung (2.1.1).
==
.
--
Ruud Harmsen, http://rudhar.com
Ruud Harmsen
<ranjit_...@yahoo.com>: in sci.lang:
>On Jan 4, 10:55�am, Ruud Harmsen <r...@rudhar.eu> wrote:
>> Mon, 4 Jan 2010 06:53:02 -0800 (PST): "ranjit_math...@yahoo.com" <ranjit_math...@yahoo.com>: in sci.lang:
>>
>> >On Jan 4, 4:20�am, Bob <lindsay.rob...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> Two posts, one non-Indo-European and one IE. Although the subject is
>> >> wildly controversial, I think it's clear that some language are easier
>> >> to learn and others are harder, especially by adults.
>>
>> >Which conlang is hardest to learn? Have conlangs been rated this way?
>>
>> For Esperanto that's about the same passively and actively, but for
>> languages like Interlingua, learning it passively is easy (effort:
>> almost non-existent for many who already know some related languages),
>> but active usage is much harder. (I never really did.)
>
>Esperanto is supposedly popular in Japan, among the small fraction of
>the population interested in conlangs. If they had chosen to learn
>Interlingua instead, why would they have had more trouble learning it?
Misunderstanding: I meant Interlingua is harder to learn to write than
just to read it, not the Interlingua is harder than Esperanto.
But perhaps to Japanese it is: the irregularities that make
Interlingua easier for us, may make it harder for them.
Yusuf B Gursey
> Two posts, one non-Indo-European and one IE. Although the subject is
> wildly controversial, I think it's clear that some language are easier
> pick up the L1 no matter the difficulty is irrelevant. Navajo is still
> light years harder for an adult to learn than Spanish.
>
> http://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/more-on-the-hardest-lan...
you exagerate the difficulty of Arabic. the presence of a dual should
not make the language automatically unduly difficult to learn. the
case system is simple, with only three cases and their application is
usually quite straightforward (that's frequently stated as a reason
the case system disappeared in the transition to the colloquials, that
don't have it). the only difficulty is when numbering nouns. the
difficultness of the script is exaggerated, as in most letters there
are only two basic forms: initial - medial and final (which is usually
similar to the first except for a flourish). I don't quite know what
you mean by "idiomatic" as standard arabic has been systematized quite
thoroughly. one difficulty is the richness of he vocabulary, but that
is partially offset by the presence of many loanwords for people
knowing a language spoken by a muslim majority. the difficulty is the
presence of diglossia and the ability to know which register is
appropriate, as to know arabic as an educated arab know it you have to
learn a colloquial as well. this is not much of a matter if one is
talking about standard arabic only.
>
> http://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/more-on-the-hardest-lan...
>
> Any respectful comments in a peer review sense would be appreciated,
> as I certainly don't speak all of the languages listed.
>
Ruud Harmsen
in sci.lang:
>The Interlingua people say it's easier than E-o.
Passively, yes.
>The history of these
>since E-o has been to try to make conlangs that are easier to learn
>than E-o, in many cases. Interlingua was one of those efforts. But I
>think Interlingua is mostly for Romance speakers, no?
It look Romance. But it's word stock is also from English, and even
German and Russian:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlingua
"a set of control languages: English, French, Italian, Spanish and
Portuguese, with German and Russian as secondary references."
"Words in Interlingua may be taken from any language,[35] as long as
their internationality is verified by their presence in seven control
languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, and English, with
German and Russian acting as secondary controls. These are the most
widely spoken Romance, Germanic, and Slavic languages, respectively.
Because of their close relationship, Spanish and Portuguese are
treated as one unit. The largest number of Interlingua words are of
Latin origin, with the Greek and Germanic languages providing the
second and third largest number. The remainder of the vocabulary
originates in Slavic and non-Western languages.[4]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlingua_and_eligibility_of_international_words
"The languages selected are called control languages. The primary
controls are English, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, with
Spanish and Portuguese taken as one language. The secondary controls
are German and Russian. According to the rule of three, a word is
eligible for Interlingua if it occurs in at least three of the four
primary control languages, with either or both of the secondary
control languages acting as possible substitutes."