History UsefulNotes / GrammarInForeignLanguages

* Have no direct or single equivalent of verbs like [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_copula 'to be']], 'to have', or 'to do' which are kind of a defining feature of IE languages. It's often not just non-Indo-European languages. Irish, the Ibero-Romance languages (Spanish, Portuguese, Galician, etc.) as well as Catalan (Gallo-Romance) have two copulas ('be') (one of the Romance ones usually deriving from the Latin word for "to stand"). Irish and Russian have no auxiliary verb "have". [[note]]have as in "Have you seen my new boots?" not as in, "I have a new pair of boots[[/note]]

** Portuguese, Spanish and other Romance Languages have a variation on this: they can mark some numbers in both gender and ''[[DepartmentofRedundancyDepartment number]]'', but not all of them and not always. For Portuguese, the rule is you can one, two and numbers ending in them (such as one hundred and two) in gender, but not eleven or twelve, nor their derivatives, and only when denoting quantities of specific things, otherwise the male is standard). In number you can mark any number that doesn't end with "S" or "Z", but this is only for denoting quantities of numbers[[note]]''Quatro'' (Four) and ''Quatros'' (Fours) but only "Três" (Three[s])[[/note]].

** Similarly, many non-English languages divide up ''colors'' [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity_and_the_color_naming_debate differently from the Western standard "ROY G. BIV"]], with some having as few as just ''two'' basic colors (black and white)[[note]]Or rather black/dark/cold and white/bright/warm[[/note]]. Quite a few make [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinguishing_blue_from_green_in_language no distinction at all between blue and green]]. On the other hand, some Asian languages have dozens if not hundreds of distinct color names. An author writing a race with a different visual range from humans (such as demihumans from ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'', who frequently possess vision in the infrared range) may forget to create terms for [[FictionalColour colors humans can't see at all]], not even "[[http://www.negativland.com/archives/015squant/story.html squant]]" or "[[Discworld/TheColourOfMagic octarine]]".

** Have many more articles than English. German articles change according to gender, number, and case of the noun, resulting in 16 possible combinations for the definitive article (although those are only expressed through 6 forms).

*** If a number's final digit is 2, 3, or 4, the noun is in the genetive singular form.

** In Polish, it's ''jeden śliczny kotek'' (one cute kitty, nominative singular) and ''dwadzieścia jeden ślicznych kotków'' (twenty one of the same). Numbers ending with two, three or four follow the pattern ''dwa/trzy/cztery kotki'' (two/three/four kitties, with the noun in nominative plural) and numbers with any other ending follow the other pattern (''dwadzieścia pięć ślicznych kotków'' - the noun in genetive plural).

* Have numbers force a specific inflection for the nouns they modify depending on what the number's final digit was, leading to a system like "21 system, 22 system's, 25 systems'". For example, in Russian:
** If a number's final digit is 1 (such as 1, 21, 101, etc.) the nominative singular is always used.
** If a number's final digit is 2, 3, or 4, the noun is in the genetive singular form.
** If a number's final digit is 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, or 0, the noun is in the genetive plural form.
** 11, 12, 13, and 14 force the noun into the genitive plural.

** If a number's final digit is 2, 3, or 4, the noun is in the genitive singular form.
** If a number's final digit is 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, or 0, the noun is in the genitive plural form.

** In Polish, it's ''jeden śliczny kotek'' (one cute kitty) and ''dwadzieścia jeden ślicznych kotków'' (twenty one of the same). Numbers ending with two, three or four follow the pattern ''dwa/trzy/cztery kotki'' (two/three/four kitties) and numbers with any other ending follow the other pattern (''dwadzieścia pięć ślicznych kotków'').

* Have numbers force a specific inflection for the nouns they modify depending on what the number's final digit was, leading to a system like "21 system, 22 system's, 25 systems'". For example, in Russian and Polish:

%%** The nominative plural may never be used with numerals, by the way.
%%*** Erm, no. At least, not in Polish. There is ''jeden śliczny kotek'' (one cute kitty) and ''dwadzieścia jeden ślicznych kotków'' (twenty one of the same). Also: ''dwa kotki'' (two kitties) and ''pięć (sześć, siedem etc.) kotków'' (five, six, seven etc. kitties). Kitties are always pluralised.

** The nominative plural may never be used with numerals, by the way.
*** Erm, no. At least, not in Polish. There is ''jeden śliczny kotek'' (one cute kitty) and ''dwadzieścia jeden ślicznych kotków'' (twenty one of the same). Also: ''dwa kotki'' (two kitties) and ''pięć (sześć, siedem etc.) kotków'' (five, six, seven etc. kitties). Kitties are always pluralised.

* Have nouns with grammatical gender. French has two (masculine and feminine), German has three (masculine, feminine, neuter), and some languages assign "gender" according to whether the topic of the subject is visible, known to be near, or far away. Some languages have a simple animate vs. inanimate. Some confusingly ''combine'' these (e.g. Arabic, which arbitrarily divides non-human objects into masculine and feminine, and proceeds to ignore that division by making all inanimate plurals "singular feminine"; questionable implications aside, it's really confusing). Other languages differentiates gender by properties of the noun, Swahili has a different gender for people, animals, tools, liquids and so on. Or alternatively, are more gender-neutral than English, like the Uralic Languages. Imagine having "he" and "she" be the same word, as well as "him" and "her." It's also possible for languages not to distinguish gender or animacy in their pronouns. Basically, everything is "it", whether it's a man, a woman, a dog or a bit of navel lint.

** Other languages may also have fundamentally different [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_metaphor conceptual metaphors]]. For example, while in most languages the past is "behind" us and the future lies "in front" of us, in Quechua and Aymara it is [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aymara_language#Idiosyncrasies the other way round]].[[note]]Rather like the Literature/{{Discworld}} Trolls idea.[[/note]] Rather than likening the passage of time to the ego's journey from the past toward the future these languages liken it to a movement of events in a queue -- the events of the future are lined up behind the events that have already occurred (this metaphor is also present in English and other languages with words like "before" and "after", but it is only used to relate events to other events, when the ego is not involved).

* Have nouns with grammatical gender. French has two (masculine and feminine), German has three (masculine, feminine, neuter), and some languages assign "gender" according to whether the topic of the subject is visible, known to be near, or far away. Some languages have a simple animate vs. inanimate. Some confusingly ''combine'' these (e.g. Arabic, which arbitrarily divides non-human objects into masculine and feminine, and proceeds to ignore that division by making all inanimate plurals "singular feminine"; UnfortunateImplications aside, it's really confusing). Other languages differentiates gender by properties of the noun, Swahili has a different gender for people, animals, tools, liquids and so on. Or alternatively, are more gender-neutral than English, like the Uralic Languages. Imagine having "he" and "she" be the same word, as well as "him" and "her." It's also possible for languages not to distinguish gender or animacy in their pronouns. Basically, everything is "it", whether it's a man, a woman, a dog or a bit of navel lint.

* Mark the relationship between speaker and audience (register), and occasionally also between speaker and ''subject'', whether through pronouns or verb forms or sentence markers. Most Indo-European languages have this, actually; for example, in French there's 'tu' (informal) and 'vous' (formal). English is one of the few IE languages that ''doesn't'' do this, although it used to and a few dialects still do. Some languages get very elaborate; Japanese marks for formal/informal, plain/polite, and humble/honorific, in any combination of the three (though formal/informal are pretty similar). Korean has about seven degrees of politeness and formality, ''each'' of which also has a humble and an honorific form—though a few of them aren't used much anymore.

** While most languages have words that are considered obscene in any and every situation (for example, it is impossible to use the f-word "politely" in English), swearing in other languages is a much more context dependent matter. In Japanese, for example, registers of politeness is encoded directly into the grammar and failure to employ the polite verb conjugation when speaking to a social superior is ocassion for great offence; however, using the exactly same sentence when speaking to a social inferior could be construed as tactless, but not technically rude.

* Have wildly different syntax (word order). English generally places the subject of a sentence first, the verb second, and the object last, a very common word order. However, in just as many languages, the subject is placed first, the object second, and the verb last. A minority of languages even do things like place the verb or the object first, the subject last, or any other possible combination. Some languages, usually those that are highly inflected, don't even have a hard and fast word order at all. Latin, for instance, generally prefers SOV outside of poetry, but is so inflected that the word order can be changed without changing the meaning of the sentence. The old forms of Semitic languages (like Classical Arabic and Biblical Hebrew) historically preferred VSO, but left SVO as an option because of their inflection--the latter of which became dominant in the contemporary colloquial forms. German can be a word order cluster fuck. On paper, it's SVO. It's also considered a V2 language, which means that if a sentence begins with an adverbial (or even an object, for stylistic effect), the verb must go second, even when that means the subject comes after. And Japanese... Japanese word order has its own PAGE on Wiki/TheOtherWiki.

* Have wildly different syntax (word order). English generally places the subject of a sentence first, the verb second, and the object last, a very common word order. However, in just as many languages, the subject is placed first, the object second, and the verb last. A minority of languages even do things like place the verb or the object first, the subject last, or any other possible combination. Some languages, usually those that are highly inflected, don't even have a hard and fast word order at all. Latin, for instance, generally prefers SOV outside of poetry, but is so inflected that the word order can be changed without changing the meaning of the sentence. The old forms of Semitic languages (like Classical Arabic and Biblical Hebrew) historically preferred VSO, but left SVO as an option because of their inflection--the latter of which became dominant in the contemporary colloquial forms. German can be a word order cluster fuck. On paper, it's SVO. The rest typically go SOV with a split predicate, part of the action, with the main verb turned into an infinitive and then crammed in at the end, with any auxiliary verbs being put into the first person singular form and placed after that. It's also considered a V2 language, which means that if a sentence begins with an adverbial (or even an object, for stylistic effect), the verb must go second, even when that means the subject comes after. And Japanese... Japanese word order has its own PAGE on Wiki/TheOtherWiki.

* Have wildly different syntax (word order). English generally places the subject of a sentence first, the verb second, and the object last, a very common word order. However, in just as many languages, the subject is placed first, the object second, and the verb last. A minority of languages even do things like place the verb or the object first, the subject last, or any other possible combination. Some languages, usually those that are highly inflected, don't even have a hard and fast word order at all. Latin, for instance, generally prefers SOV outside of poetry, but is so inflected that the word order can be changed without changing the meaning of the sentence. The old forms of Semitic languages (like Classical Arabic and Biblical Hebrew) historically preferred VSO, but left SVO as an option because of their inflection--the latter of which became dominant in the contemporary colloquial forms. German can be a word order cluster fuck. On paper, it's SVO. That is true, but questions are VSO. The rest typically go SOV with a split predicate, part of the action, with the main verb turned into an infinitive and then crammed in at the end, with any auxiliary verbs being put into the first person singular form and placed after that. It's also considered a V2 language, which means that if a sentence begins with an adverbial (or even an object, for stylistic effect), the verb must go second, even when that means the subject comes after. And Japanese... Japanese word order has its own PAGE on Wiki/TheOtherWiki.

* Use [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_divider#Types_of_word_divider different methods for dividing words]] other than spaces. Many, such as Japanese and Chinese, have no divisions at all. Other options include interpuncts (Classical Latin), special characters at the beginnings of words (Hebrew), or even elevating the first character in each new word (Persian). German is also famous for not having spaces in its noun compounds -- though in reality, these compounds are grammatically more or less the same as English phrases like ''magical girl anime fan''; the main difference is orthography (where you put spaces in writing), not grammar proper.

** [[GermanLanguage German]], by contrast, has only one used in common speech, ''dies-''. Technically there is a second, ''jen-'', cognate with English ''yon''--and used just about as frequently.

* Have wildly different syntax (word order). English generally places the subject of a sentence first, the verb second, and the object last, a very common word order. However, in just as many languages, the subject is placed first, the object second, and the verb last. A minority of languages even do things like place the verb or the object first, the subject last, or any other possible combination. Some languages, usually those that are highly inflected, don't even have a hard and fast word order at all. Latin, for instance, generally prefers SOV outside of poetry, but is so inflected that the word order can be changed without changing the meaning of the sentence. The old forms of Semitic languages (like Classical Arabic and Biblical Hebrew) historically preferred VSO, but left SVO as an option because of their inflection--the latter of which became dominant in the contemporary colloquial forms. German can be a word order cluster fuck. On paper, it's SVO. That is true, but questions are VSO. The rest typically go SOV with a split predicate, part of the action, with the main verb turned into an infinitive and then crammed in at the end, with any auxiliary verbs being put into the first person singular form and placed after that. It's also considered a V2 language, which means that if a sentence begins with an adverbial (or even an object, for stylistic effect), the verb must go second, even when that means the subject comes after. And Japanese... Japanese word order has its own PAGE on TheOtherWiki.

* Lack relative constructions ("the one that does X" etc.), and have to substitute adjective phrases ("the X-doing one"), or have correlatives: "This is the man who my wife has been sleeping with him!" Or on the other hand, lack adjectival phrases and have to use relative constructions instead. English was way more adjectival phrases than the Romance languages, as many of them can only be translated with relative constructions.

* A language might not have a general term for a group of objects or actions that English takes for granted. For example,an Australian aboriginal cannot say "twenty birds" referring to a group of ten sparrows and ten ostriches. For him it would be like adding rocks and dogs together. In Russian, there are no words meaning "bring" and "put" - you can only say that you ''carried'' or ''rolled'' something in, or that you ''laid'' or ''stood'' something in front of a person.

* Is written using logograms (Chinese)[[note]]Each symbol stands for a word or a morpheme, as in mean-ing-ful[[/note]], abjads (Arabic, Hebrew)[[note]]Vowels are not written[[/note]], syllabaries (Inuktitut)[[note]]Each symbol represents a syllable[[/note]], alphabets constructed into little syllable blocks (Korean), abugida (the languages of India and Ethiopia)[[note]]Vowels are written as attachments to consonants[[/note]], or a hodgepodge of everything (ancient Egyptian and modern Japanese), instead of an alphabetic writing system. And not all writing systems include the concepts of upper and lower case[[note]]Most languages.[[/note]], cursive writing[[note]]For instance, all Arabic writing is cursive, while in Hebrew the "cursive" script is non-connecting[[/note]] and/or punctuation, and if they have them, they may not use them the same way.

* Is written using logograms (Chinese)[[note]]Each symbol stands for a word or a morpheme, as in mean-ing-ful[[/note]], abjads (Arabic, Hebrew)[[note]]Vowels are not written[[/note]], syllabaries (Inuktitut)[[note]]Each symbol represents a syllable[[/note]], abugida (the languages of India and Ethiopia)[[note]]Vowels are written as attachments to consonants[[/note]], or a hodgepodge of everything (ancient Egyptian and modern Japanese), instead of an alphabetic writing system. And not all writing systems include the concepts of upper and lower case[[note]]Most languages.[[/note]], cursive writing[[note]]For instance, all Arabic writing is cursive, while in Hebrew the "cursive" script is non-connecting[[/note]] and/or punctuation, and if they have them, they may not use them the same way.

** Similarly, many non-English languages divide up ''colors'' [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity_and_the_color_naming_debate differently from the Western standard "ROY G. BIV"]], with some having as few as just ''two'' basic colors (black and white)[[note]]Or rather black/dark/cold and white/bright/warm[[/note]]. Quite a few make [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinguishing_blue_from_green_in_language no distinction at all between blue and green]]. On the other hand, some Asian languages have dozens if not hundreds of distinct color names. An author writing a race with a different visual range from humans (such as demihumans from ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragon'', who frequently possess vision in the infrared range) may forget to create terms for [[FictionalColour colors humans can't see at all]], not even "[[http://www.negativland.com/archives/015squant/story.html squant]]" or "[[Discworld/TheColourOfMagic octarine]]".