Languages! Are! Weird!

That's not much of a problem if the different pronouns don't change anything about the grammar of the rest of the sentence, though, is it?

I guess I might as well share these stupid little observations I made about German and English!

• English: caffeine, coffee
• German: Koffein, Kaffee

• English: snake, snail
• German: Schlange, Schnecke

ENGLISH. FULL STOP.

That is all, carry on.

English actually has a bizarre grammar compared to most other European languages; as one of my Paraguayan friends put it, "Everything about English that should be hard is easy, and everything that should be easy is hard." No genders and only a residual case system^note And whether you could even call the 's a "case" is up for debate, but the present tense isn't the present tense.

English also has an oddly complex system of tense aspects; i.e., things that describe how an action was done rather than when. English-speaking Spanish learners complain about the sometimes opaque difference between the imperfect and the preterit, but imagine how an English learner must feel when they come up against used to vs. would vs. was vs. did vs. has vs. has been. Even high-school level English courses don't bother teaching some of the aspects (notably used to and would typically get left out) because there's just no good way to explain them. And while other languages, especially Romance languages, do have a progressive construction, unlike in most European languages, in English it's rarely if ever optional.

Then you have things like preposition stranding, split infinitives, and zero relative pronoun, which are common in English and Scandinavian languages but virtually unheard of anywhere else.

ok boomer

Yes, but Spanish still has a subjunctive. That's a clear win for English in my semi-bilingual book.

WWWWWWOW // With Which Witticism Would Wilde Wither One's Wellbeing?

Do you imply English does not?

Were I you, I'd look harder.

Not dead, just feeling like it.

If I was you, I'd wonder if the subjunctive was slowly being phased out in English.

WWWWWWOW // With Which Witticism Would Wilde Wither One's Wellbeing?

I doubt it. And I admit Spanish does indeed find more use in it than English.

Not dead, just feeling like it.

Split infinitives,that's all over German,and in a far worse case than English.

And why the hell are there two ways to say "because"? One of which completely changes where the action verb goes. ("weil" und "denn")

And then there's the whole idea of "doch",which is really just a contradiction of something negative. No concept of it in English,no concept in Spanish,probably no concept in Italian.

On the other hand English seems to want to use medicine for rather than against a disease.

Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter

It is not being phased out

Aw, how come memes aren't being phased out?

edited 3rd Feb '14 2:39:22 PM by Demetrios

Princess Aurora is underrated, pass it on.

Yes! And it's so annoying! It's fine when it's a set phrase 'espero que...', but sometimes it's just...I don't even know. When it follows cuando I have no idea when to use it.

WWWWWWOW // With Which Witticism Would Wilde Wither One's Wellbeing?

I don't know nothing.

Not dead, just feeling like it.

The subjunctive enjoys much more use in North American English than it does in other varieties, usually in a relative clause ("The higher-ups demanded that the deadline not be extended").

As for this:

Now, I speak fluent German, and I am not aware of any case where German has a "split infinitive" in the sense that we mean in English (e.g. 'To boldly go where no man has gone before'), unless you mean the "um zu" infinitive, which is split: Wir fahren nach Hamburg, um meinen Bruder zu besuchen.^note We're going to Hamburg to visit my brother. And even that's not quite the same thing.

Bringing other languages into the mix, Afrikaans has largely simple grammar, but it is one of the few cases of a standardized double negative I know of, probably arising under influence from native Khoisan languages. "He doesn't speak Afrikaans" is Hy praat nie Afrikaans nie.

The final nie comes after any dependent clauses or subordinate clauses, so it's sometimes rather surprising when it comes after a long string of clauses and the only negative was in the first one.

edited 3rd Feb '14 3:10:50 PM by somerandomdude

ok boomer

nvm,I was thinking of something else entirely.

Also,I just learned from my roommie that Malagasy has one word you just put at the end of the sentence that pretty much means "I just old you it"

There is also no word for "To be" in that language.

edited 3rd Feb '14 3:24:30 PM by terlwyth

Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter

It's crazy how the Spanish word for year is just one accent mark away from being the word for anus.

I almost made that mistake on my final a few weeks ago. XD

I don’t even know anymore.

Similarly the only thing separating gōd (good) and god (god) in Old English is vowel length.

Not dead, just feeling like it.

What's the most difficult thing to learn when it comes to Icelandic or Finnish? I'm curious.

Also, how different is Icelandic from Norwegian?

edited 3rd Feb '14 3:45:25 PM by Quag15

I dunno anything about Finnish,but I gave up Icelandic before I could really get beyond the simple phrases,just trying to get through the assortment of sounds was hard enough.

But it wasn't wise to try and take it while doing Spanish.

I don't reckon it's too different,but it's closer to Faeroese than anything else.

edited 3rd Feb '14 3:48:03 PM by terlwyth

Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter

& In a lot of languages lengthening is accompanied by a shift in vowel shape, so at least there is a sonic difference beyond timing, but then you get beat-based languages like Japanese and you find yourself checking that your os and ôs don't mixed up, let alone your nas and n'as or your kis and kkis!

edited 3rd Feb '14 3:53:21 PM by JHM

I'll hide your name inside a word and paint your eyes with false perception.

To anyone familiar with Esperanto; I attempted a while back to translate a chapter of My Immortal into Esperanto. I don't speak Esperanto. I figured with my minimal knowledge of grammar and questionable translations, the translation would at least be on par with the original work.

Note I chose several odd translations with the sole purpose of looking stupid. However I do still hope even if very weird, that it is atleast partially understandable.

So here's the author's note: Noto de la aŭtoro: Specialaj colmilloj al mia koramikinon (ne romantike) Raven alias Bloodytearz666 kiu helpis min kun la rakonto. Ŝi elstaras! Justin vi estas la amo de mia deprimiga vivo, vi lulas! MCR lulas!

Not dead, just feeling like it.

Considering that Faroese is kinda close to Danish, and Danish is close to Norwegian (or vice-versa; someone correct me if I'm wrong), I understand what's the relation between them a bit more.

edited 3rd Feb '14 3:58:15 PM by Quag15

I'm not going to try answering the one about Icelandic - I've been taught Swedish, and I know they're similar (but not as similar as Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian are to each other) but I don't know anything about Icelandic (except if something is identical to Swedish) so I won't even try.

I've learned Finnish as my first language so I'm not sure I can give an informed opinion about what is hardest for non-native speakers to learn, but the one where they seem to make the most mistakes is making the parts of the sentence conform to each other - in linguistics, this is called "agreement" or "concord".

I'll show you an example. Let's take a phrase - say, "I have lived in my house for five years." Note that the verb "have" takes a different form depending on the person you're talking about - so for a third person it'd be "x has lived his/her/their house..." Also, you have to include a preposition before the word "house" as well, and it has to agree with the person or you'll change the meaning of the sentence - "I have lived in your house" is different from "I have lived in my house".

So...

"I" in Finnish is "minä". In this case you don't have to do anything to that word, so we'll just start with it (for now). "Minä..."

In English the perfect aspect is marked by the word "have". In Finnish it's "olla" - which would be translated as "to be." "To live" is "asua".

So now you might want to start with "Minä olla asua..." Right? But no. The form the verb takes depends on many things - aspect, tense, person, and so on. The correct form is "minä olen asunut". I you were speaking in the second person - "you" ("sinä") - it would be "sinä olet asunut". If it was third person plural, it would be "he ovat asuneet" - so both words in the verb phrase change to reflect the fact that you're talking about different persons (and also a different number of persons - singular versus plural.) You have to make sure all the verbs agree with the person and the tense. If you're wondering if this is useful in any way, there is one thing - you can omit the pronoun. "Asua" = "to live"; "asun" = "I live" "asuin" = "I lived". (As I said, the tense also affects the verb.) "They lived" = "(he) asuivat" (In this case you'd rarely omit the pronoun). "You (plural) lived" = "asuitte". I think you get the picture.

So, "minä olen asunut" = "I have lived" - but you could just as well omit the pronoun, so "Olen asunut" would also translate as "I have lived".

In English you use prepositions to indicate things you're doing to a noun - so you say "I have lived in my house for five years". In Finnish we use postpositions, so they come after the word - but they're also merged into the word. We don't have particles, so "a house" translates simply as "talo". "In a/the house", then, would be "talossa". ("In a car" would be "autossa" - "car" = "auto".) So now you've got "olen asunut talossa" - but that means you've lived in a house. You want to say it's your house, so you modify the word again: "olen asunut talossani". As you can see, both the word "in" and the word "my" are merged into the word "house". ("You have lived in your house" = "Olet asunut talossasi.")

"Five" is simply "viisi" and "year" is "vuosi" - but because it's plural it becomes "vuotta". Well, actually, it's not even as simple as that - the default plural form of "year" (i.e. "years") is "vuodet" but because it's the object in this sentence you have to change that word, as well. If you were talking about a month ("kuukausi") you'd say "olen asunut talossani kuukauden" ("I have lived in my house for one month") or "olen asunut talossani viisi kuukautta" ("I have lived in my house for five months").

So, finally, we have "Olen asunut talossani viisi vuotta" = "I have lived in my house for five years". You'll notice that the Finnish sentence, which contains the same information as the English one, contains just five words. That's why you can be very concise with Finnish - as long as your grammar is correct.

If you think that's not difficult enough, there's something that we just sort of learn but that can be very difficult for non-native speakers. You see, the things you do to words to indicate what in some other languages would be marked by prepositions or pronouns and such are not consistent. Or rather, they are, but they're based on really obscure rules that most Finns know intuitively but would find very hard to describe. I'll give you some examples.

"I like you" would be "Pidän sinusta". ("To like" = "pitää"; "you" = "sinä".) So something happened to the letter t in "pitää" when it became "pidän". The first person ("I") is indicated by the letter n, but you have to change the words to accommodate the letter n or it'll just sound silly (to us.) A long vowel gets shortened when an n is added to the end: "to drive" = "ajaa"; "I drive" = "ajan". Then there's the t becoming a d - and I can't really explain the rule. If you tried to tell me that you "pidää" me or that you "pitän" me I'd probably not understand what you're trying to say, even though you got half of it right in each case.

Then there's the thing that happens to "sinä" ("you") - it becomes "sinusta" because it's the object in this sentence. If I liked my cat it would be "pidän kissastani" (it's my cat, so there's an ni at the end; oh, and "cat" = "kissa".) You'll notice that the case you use when you're liking your cat is different than the one you used when you were living in your house. There are something like 15 of these cases, and while there's a general feature that is present in every example of a given case, there are still irregularities within each case. So even if you can use a particular word in all 15 cases, that doesn't mean you can use every word in those 15 cases - there are maybe a couple of dozen groups of words, with all of the words in a given group behaving the same way when you do the same things to them.

And that's part of the reason why Finnish is considered a very difficult language.

Just so I don't look completely insane for having learned this language, I'll give you a small defence of it: pronunciation is consistent in Finnish. There is one pronunciation for each letter, so if you can pronounce every letter you can read out loud anything, even if you have no clue what any of the words mean.

Also, people don't usually speak absolutely correct Finnish except in very formal situations. The grammar of everyday speech is almost but not quite as difficult as the formal Finnish I've been talking about here. I don't think it'd affect any of the examples I gave, but I could think of cases where you'd normally say things in an easier way than they would formally have to be said.

For instance, it's very common to use passive voice when you're talking about what your group is doing, or when you're suggesting something. So if you're talking to a friend and you suggest that you should eat and go to your place, formally it would be "kävisimmekö syömässä ja menisimmekö sitten meille?" (I'll break this down soon.) Normally, though, you'd say something like "mentäskö syömään ja sit meille?"

"To go (and do something)" would be "käydä" - and formally you'd have to make sure you're adjusting the verb to match with the person (in this case, first person plural - "we".) Also, because you're suggesting something you add a "kö" in the end - to indicate that it's a question. And one more thing: because you're asking if you "should" do x, the verb also takes the form that corresponds to the English "would" or "should".

"To go (do something) = "käydä"; "we go" = "käymme"; "do we go?" = "käymmekö?"; "should we go?" = "kävisimmekö?".

"To eat" is "syödä" but it also changes - it becomes "syömässä". Just go with it.

"And" = "ja".

"To go (somewhere)" = "mennä". Then you do the same thing you did to "käydä" - so it becomes "menisimmekö".

"Then" = "sitten".

Where an English speaker would say "my place" a Finnish speaker would say "meille". Literally it means something like "to ours" (as in, to our place - so for some reason we use a plural even if we live alone.)

Informally, you'd use passive voice to indicate that you're talking about a "we" - and the passive for "käydä" is "käydään". Then you basically abbreviate the whole notion of "should/would" into a single s - so it becomes "käytäs". Finally, there's a -kö in the end to indicate it's a question. But because you're not so particular about vocabulary, either, you might substitute "käydä" with "mennä" because they're somewhat interchangeable and you'd use the latter in any case when talking about going to your place. Because you've changed the verb, though, the word "syödä" ("to eat") takes a different form: "syömässä" becomes "syömään".

"Sitten" is often abbreviated into "sit" in informal speech.

So, informal Finnish isn't quite as difficult as formal Finnish. Then again, if you're speaking informally you're more likely to speak in your dialect, which can be very difficult for speakers of other dialects to understand.

Well, this became way too long - mostly because of the examples. I doubt that anyone will read all the way through it but if you did, congratulations! You've probably decided never to learn Finnish (if you ever even considered such a notion to begin with - which you really shouldn't.)

EDIT: Oh, but since I talked so much about pronouns: Finnish doesn't have gendered pronouns. Third person singular is "hän" and third person plural is "he". The pronoun alone can't indicate if you're talking about a man or a woman.

edited 3rd Feb '14 4:59:57 PM by BestOf

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

I will say that Finnish's "difficulty" is largely a matter of perception. The difficulty lies in the fact that, for instance, English speakers aren't used to using endings to mark prepositions, but for an Hungarian speaker, or even a Hindi speaker who's used to putting adpositions after nouns, they wouldn't have any trouble with this. But this kind of "paradigm shift" is precisely what makes learning languages so hard for so many people.

Having learned German, I have a pretty good idea of what a grammatical case is; you have to change the article, find the appropriate adjective ending, adjust for gender, and learn which prepositions go with which case. Hungarian exhibits none of these: the "cases" do not affect articles or adjectives, there's no gender to speak of, and in virtually all cases, the preposition and the case are one and the same^note For the few prepositions that don't have their own case, an easy analogy to draw is double prepositions in English: "out of," "except for," etc.. Finnish only takes the extra step of inflecting the adjectives, and even then, it's hardly headache-inducing, as in most situations you just use the same ending as with the noun.

edited 3rd Feb '14 5:14:19 PM by somerandomdude

ok boomer

Bizarrely enough, Hungarian and Finnish are related, so if you know Hungarian Finnish won't seem as difficult to you as it would to someone who didn't speak a Fenno-Ugric language.

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

Wow. I can see why Tolkien was so fixated on the language. To a non-native speaker, Finnish is quite hardcore to learn.

The way you explained was easy. My problem would probably be remembering all the cases and their various uses.

The merging would be relatively easy (if I worked hard on it). The thing about changing the verbs according to person and tense is understandable, for I have that in my language (although it's a bit simpler and more gender-oriented).

I would like to try learning Finnish sometime. But I'll have to invest a lot of time, which, sadly, I can't do right now. Let's see what will happen.

edited 3rd Feb '14 5:28:34 PM by Quag15