Walter's Famous German Language Essentials Guide

H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d digitalmars-d at puremagic.com
Mon May 2 14:49:21 PDT 2016


On Mon, May 02, 2016 at 06:22:49PM +0200, Jonathan M Davis via Digitalmars-d wrote:
[...]
> In any case, learning any new language is hard - especially the
> farther it is from your own (e.g. Asian languages are going to
> generally be pretty brutal to learn for someone speaking a European
> languages).

Every language is trivial to a native speaker.

As for which languages are brutal or trivial to an L2 learner, that
depends on whether the target language makes distinctions that aren't
present in one's native tongue.

Now, "Asian languages" as a category doesn't make very much sense,
because it encompasses far too wide a scope to be a useful category. You
have language isolates like Japanese and Korean, with rather distinctive
grammars, then the numerous Chinese "dialects" (which are properly
languages in their own right), which are part of the wider Sino-Tibetan
languages (including things like Vietnamese, Burmese, possibly Thai,
among others), the Austronesian languages, and a whole variety of
others, that have basically no resemblance with each other.

As far as the Chinese languages are concerned, one common difficulty for
foreign language learners is the tonal distinctions, which are basically
absent from European languages. Hence, a word like "ma" can mean a whole
variety of different things depending on its pitch contour, but the
problem is your typical European language speaker can't even *hear* the
difference to begin with, so it sounds almost like pulling magical
bunnies out of the air. (Some of the Chinese "dialects" sport up to 9
distinct tones -- L2 learners have enough trouble telling the 4 tones of
standard Mandarin apart, let alone the fine distinctions between 9!)
However, grammar-wise, the Chinese languages are far simpler than the
European languages; so once you get over the tonal hump, it's actually a
lot easier to learn than, say, English or French. Or Russian.

Of course, the other great difficulty is the writing system, which
requires the memorization of between 1000-2000 different glyphs just to
be able to read with some fluency.  But hey, that beats learning
Japanese, which has *three* different writing systems, all of which you
must master in order to be able to read at all!

Austronesian languages, by contrast, are almost trivial in terms of
pronunciation, and for the most part have adopted the Latin alphabet, so
reading and writing isn't hampered by the need to learn a whole new
writing system. However, the grammar, while not exactly as complex as,
say, Russian or Greek, significantly diverges from the way grammar
usually works in European languages, so some amount of effort is
required in order to get it right.

Japanese and Korean appear to be language isolates, and their respective
grammars are quite unique. Korean writing is relatively easy to master
-- it's phonetic, like the Latin alphabet, just composed differently --
but Japanese requires mastery of 3 different writing systems. Both
languages also sport a system of honorifics that mostly doesn't exist in
European languages, and may be difficult for an L2 learner to pick up --
addressing somebody with the wrong honorifics can sound extremely
insulting or needlessly polite.


On Mon, May 02, 2016 at 07:40:29PM +0000, Meta via Digitalmars-d wrote:
[...]
> Many Asian languages are much more straightforward then any of the
> romance languages. In Chinese verbs aren't even inflected for tense,
> voice, etc., much less this silly gendered noun stuff. It's extremely
> refreshing and quite simple grammatically.

Yes, though the tonal system and the writing system are two things that
usually discourage many foreign learners from even trying.



On Mon, May 02, 2016 at 08:33:47PM +0000, tsbockman via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On Monday, 2 May 2016 at 19:09:41 UTC, Iain Buclaw wrote:
> >For every rule, there are 101 exceptions. :-)
> >
> >http://shirah-goes-again.blogspot.de/2011/01/entire-english-language-is-big.html
> 
> As an educated native English speaker, I must say that poem is
> horrifying.
> 
> Clearly, spelling reform is urgently needed:
>     http://www.ashvital.freeservers.com/ze_dream.htm

Spelling reforms have a spotty history... Spanish had one relatively
recently (i.e., within the last few hundred years), and is therefore
much easier to read today than back then.  Russian had a major overhaul
in 1917, which dropped a large number of silent vowels and redundant
consonants, so today Russian is also relatively easy to read once you
master the Cyrillic alphabet. (And so the story goes, this reform saved
millions of dollars (rubles?) in printing and paper costs, due to the
elimination of said silent vowels which were present at the end of
almost every word in the old spelling.) French and English are both
overdue for reform, though, their respective spelling rules having been
codified about a half millenium ago, and between then and now
pronunciation has changed so drastically that, as the above poem shows,
the current spelling conventions are verging on being completely
arbitrary. (The joke goes that "ghoti" is a valid spelling for "fish",
if you take "gh" from "enough", "o" from "women", and "ti" from
"nation".)  Basically, learning English spelling is essentially learning
to reproduce about 500-600 years' worth of gradual sound change since
the codification of English spelling in the 1400-1500's, which is no
trivial feat indeed.

However, various recent attempts to reform English spelling have for the
most part failed, mostly due to inertia and the presence of a
substantial (and very fast growing!) body of literature in current
spelling, which would require a monumental effort to respell. It's
difficult to convince the myriad writers and publishers to adopt a new
spelling system when the current one has been ingrained for so many
centuries.  But hey, if Chinese could simplify the original characters
(at much protest, I must say), and if the Russians could pull it off in
1917, who's to say we can't do it in English too?


T

-- 
They say that "guns don't kill people, people kill people." Well I think the gun helps. If you just stood there and yelled BANG, I don't think you'd kill too many people. -- Eddie Izzard, Dressed to Kill


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