Forget English, it's crude and muddy.
Schools should require that all students learn and become fluent in Latin, then it should replace English.
Latin has always been the world language. It remains the world language. Deny that it is the world language, & I will show you a copy of ACTA ACADEMICA SINICA.
Latin does not adapt, it's not flexible. An argo or dialect is unlikely to develop, in contrast with other languages where their richness allows not one, but many expansions.
Should a language be revived, that should be <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek">ancient Greek</a>.
Why exactly do you think Latin is so precise?
Because it is synthetic, and lacks any nasty articles or separable verbs.
>>5 here, I don't know what point you're trying to make.
>>8
http://www.chambersharrap.co.uk/chambers/features/chref/chref.py/main?query=apologise&title=21st
>>9
Add to that, OP seems to know latin and english. When you only know of a turd and a polished turd, clearly you'll think the polished turd is superior and anyone who doesn't like polished turds is insane. Well I like gold and fuck your turds.
No - let me rephrase, Latin is fine. English has poor expressiveness. Ancient Greek tops both. Other languages exist which are more advanced than Latin or English.
Latin is great as a nameing language -- for things like coining new terms and phrases, but considering the number of people who would be unfamiliar with the basic concepts of latin grammar (i.e English and Chinese don't decline nouns, Japanese and Chinese don't use endings for tense, etc.) I think it would get messy pretty quickly as a common speech.
I'd probably go for one of the invented languages, like Interlingua, Ido, Lojban or Esperanto. At least that way we're not trying to teach a language with features that many people are not familiar with.
For a natural language, I'd probably go with either English or Danish. No cases, and a simple structure. Epic win.
I do, what do you think?
Who the fuck are you cunts to say which language is the worst, you cunts probally dont even speak another language apart from your fuckin engrish
in this thread asian people and a few white nerds
Japanese is entirely unlike French, even our Quebec French. The phonotactics differ greatly.
French is more harsh, mainly because of the "r" (voiced uvular fricative). Japanese just flows on the tongue.
Japanese is ok but there's too many final u for my taste.
Cantonese is annoying, VERY ANNOYING.
Mandarin varies, depends on dialect.
Korean sounds kinda like Beijingian.
>>41
This is a thread about opinions. Please respect everyone's point of view. I'm sure you hold somethings close to you which others do not agree with.
no. i learned japanese so i could play visual novels.
>>37
i agree with him french are language that sounds more class
whereas japanese and cantonese you can only show-off to your friend that you can go other country without language problems
No I don't think they sound cool at all. German is the coolest language in my opinion. I also only learned Japanese so I could play there visual novel, but I don't particularly like the language.
Do any of you guys REALLY know any of these languages? I mean can you really explain its structures, writing and sound systems. Can you read newspapers written in any of these languages, or at least able to read cook books?
I'm very doubtful.
"i agree with him french are language that sounds more class" - - how can you really say that, without TRULY mastering, well both French and Japanese or Cantonese.
For those think Japanese sounds really quick - you're all kidding, right? You only feel like that because you don't know the language, LOL.
No wonder American, especially those with Anglo-German decent tend to be so ignorant when come to foreign languages.
Korean sounds horrible to me.... sounds like ppl are gonna fight each other sometimes.
Other times it sounds really whining and grates on my ears.. when ppl speak korean around me i can't concentrate.
Japanese and Chinese are ok I guess although neither sound great.There's one chinese language that is annoying I think cantonese but not entirely sure.
I know this is subjective since a person that knows English would be able to learn Spanish more quickly than say, Chinese. But in light of that please discuss which language you think is the hardest to learn.
Vietnamese
The top 9 hardest languages to learn in the world according to LexiBlog.
The top 9 hardest languages to learn in the world according to LexiBlog.
>>174
Ah, yes, I saw that on reddit. It is very inaccurate in its details, and generally misses the point, IMO.
I was brought to USA when I was 12 years old and I can say that I know English now better than Russian. Russian words can change dozens of times, which is called a highly synthetic morphology. You can mold one word into dozens and then you can mold those words which can create a near unlimited amount of words that is why no one really knows how many words there really are in russian language. then after you done with morphology each word is then subject to six cases of nominal declension – nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, and prepositional.
Many people say that Chinese is the hardest, but I think it is one of the easiest ones. People get scared when they see something unfamiliar, like Chinese characters. But the characters are just pictures basically. each picture means something. there are no tenses as far as I know, which is good.
The hardest language of all, at least for me, are Nordic languages, such as Icelandic and Norwegian. I may break all my that with my tongue if I attempt to pronounce even one sentence in those languages.
Vagina. I try to speak Vagina sometimes but everything comes out muffled.
german, with the hardest grammar.
How about Ubykh? It's phonology is the craziest I've ever seen.
2 phonemic vowels : /a/ and /@/
84 phonemic consonants : 31 plosives, 15 affricatives, 30 fricatives, 3 nasals, 4 approximents, 1 trill
Hello, I'm planning to get a MSc once I've finished my BSc here in Scotland. I study geology. My question is this: how difficult is it to study in a foreign language? I speak German to Zertifikat Deutsch level (B1 on the common european language framework), and I'm aware I have to improve it to Test DaF level. However, I was wondering what it is actually like to study at a German university? I'm thinking about the FU Berlin, although there are many potential unis/Fachhochschulen that I could attend.
Many thanks.
Anyone? I'd really like some info about this, or a pointer to a source of appropriate info.
Hello.
I JUST started learning Mandarin Chinese last Monday. I got a scholarship to an two-week summer course at a local university. Our teacher has assigned us a project and I need to know how to make something past tense. It's in our textbook, but it's kind of vague and I don't really understand. You usually do something with 了, right? I also read that when you are using past tense, you don't use 不 to negate something, you use 没. Is this true?
I would be SO grateful if someone would help me out on this. Thank you for reading! :)
Same poster as >>6:
I just found a bit more about "le" (sorry). It is generally used for (and I'm mostly quoting from my notes, for good or for ill) "le indicates an ongoing process, or something already done or completed". The only good example of this I have is "Shang ke le" [class has started] and "xia ke le" [class has ended]. They use the "le" particle to indicate that the stated condition has already occured - "class has already started", in a way.
I'm really not helping on this whole tl;dr; business. :P
Bak por!
>>9
Etou.
ya it's true, i'm a sort of a native speaker of mandarin and having to think about your question is really a challenge , XD
mandarin usually follows this rule:
each column represents words/phrases
(adjective/descriptive)(main)(situation)(verb)(additive information)((adjective/descriptive again)(object)
eg.
(na zhi) (mao)( zai jie shang)( ci)( zhe) (shi) (laoshu)
which literally means:
that cat in street eat- -ing dead mice
ya no tense in chinese but like japanese which has particles, chinese has zhe to mean -ing, le to mean -done before and many other too
oops typo the main there i meant subject, too bad i can't edit on 4ch, i thought main as subject because zhuyu literally means main phrase (subject)
I'm also a new Chinese speaker (well, not that new in comparison... I've been studying it for 3 years now), but I'm pretty sure verbs themselves don't have a past tense. You add "le" (sorry, my computer doesn't display Chinese - the character is very simple, it looks almost like the number 3) after the verb. Or at the end of the sentence. I can't remember when to use either one.
Eg:
"Wo mai le yi ben shu" means "I bought a book."
"Wo kan shu le" means "I read a book."
I hope that helps... I'm not a native speaker myself, any natives out there feel free to correct me.
@ #2... English does have tenses so don't confuse someone. Chinese has no tenses but English has just as many tenses as spanish (i do, i did, i will do, i would do, i have done, i have been doing, etc.) Tenses are the main foundation of many languages, but, How does Chinese function with no tenses? Or do they just like to say they have no tenses?
I started studying Chinese only 3 months ago, so I can't speak how Chinese really works. But I do know that a language doesn't always need verb tenses. It just need to inform when something happened or will happen (and if it is completed or not and so on).
Even in English this kind of construction is possible:
"I'm going to Brazil."
and
"Next month I'm going to Brazil" (future meaning).
Similarly, it would be possible to say something like:
"Yesterday I finally finish the book"
parlons en francais !
>>35
Parce que tu te touches la nuit.
Salut
Je suis un français, moi ^^
Ya vraiment aucun français ici ?
je ne comprend pas........
>>38
Si si. Français aussi, ici depuis environ 2006. Mais j'passe pas souvent dans /language/.
>>36
Je pense qu'il parlait de la langue, pas des personnages. Et je dirais que cette langue est impopulaire parce que complexe et vachement dur d'assimiler toutes les nuances pour quelqu'un qui ne la maîtrise pas (oui oui, ça inclut plus de 66% de la population Française).
C'est encore plus marrant en français!
Pauvre vous en France qui sont pognés avec Sarko. Mais, il faut dire que nous autres aussi on en mêne pas large avec nos Libéraux...
Au Québec c'est pas mieux... À Montréal, si on demande l'heure à un inconnue sur la rue, on a plus de chance de se faire comprendre si on la demande en anglais qu'en français, c'est dire!
>>32
>>22
EVERYONE SHOULD RESPECT EACH OTHER'S LANGUAGES.
EVERYONE SHOULD RESPECT EACH OTHER'S LANGUAGES.
EVERYONE SHOULD RESPECT EACH OTHER'S LANGUAGES.
EVERYONE SHOULD RESPECT EACH OTHER'S LANGUAGES.
EVERYONE SHOULD RESPECT EACH OTHER'S LANGUAGES.
EVERYONE SHOULD RESPECT EACH OTHER'S LANGUAGES.
EVERYONE SHOULD RESPECT EACH OTHER'S LANGUAGES.
EVERYONE SHOULD RESPECT EACH OTHER'S LANGUAGES.
EVERYONE SHOULD RESPECT EACH OTHER'S LANGUAGES.
EVERYONE SHOULD RESPECT EACH OTHER'S LANGUAGES.
EVERYONE SHOULD RESPECT EACH OTHER'S LANGUAGES.
EVERYONE SHOULD RESPECT EACH OTHER'S LANGUAGES.
EVERYONE SHOULD RESPECT EACH OTHER'S LANGUAGES.
>>42
Maybe it's his own language.
Which would it be?
(I know it depends on a lot of various factors, but fact remains: some languages are just easier than others, right?)
Your internets had a deep inner need to complain.
>>115
Perhaps you're just a complete moron.
I blame Parkinsons.
It's easier to learn a language that shares more in common with a language you already know. This includes vocabulary, grammar rules, and phonology. For example, English borrows a wealth of words from French and Latin, which makes picking up the vocabulary faster. English and French also have both become less inflected and more isolating over time (that is, word order and linking words like prepositions and auxiliary verbs do more to determine syntax than various inflections of verbs, nouns, pronouns, and adjectives do).Mandarin Chinese is an isolating language like English (even more so, actually); but the writing system, lexicon, and phonology are all grossly different.
Other factors are motivational: psychological and sociological. For example, you may be more interested in learning Russian because of romantic notions of old Czarist Russia or the Soviet Union, or you may simply enjoy Russian literature. On the other hand, an immigrant coming to the United States experiences considerable sociological pressure to learn English (employment, fewer xenophobic responses, etc.).
the navajo language is the hardest to learn i know that for sure
Aleut and some Papuan dialects are supposed to be miserably difficult.
I'm learning Russian (7th language up to now) and it's freakingly difficult. The writing more than the speaking though...
I think the easiest language to learn would be Hindi. I understand about 60% of the language, all learned watching Bollywood movies. Never picked up a book about it, seriously. And I don't even count this as a language I know, because i haven't learned to write it yet. Maybe next year.
Thai, I've been told, is remarkably simple.
There's not much to learn about Lojban, and if you're already at least a little familiar with modern programming languages (like Javascript), you can pick it up. There's a huge lack of learning materials for non-nerds, though.
As for understanding it; well, that's another matter. Take for example, the sentence:
.i lo broda cu me ko'a.o'onai co brode.pe'a ko'e
It takes some getting used to. Even after you've learned the grammar, you might want to tell the other speaker to
.i ko jabre lonu tavla
which means "Speak slower."
Keep in mind the method of teaching is most important.
My 8+ years of French in the Canadian school system taught me almost nothing. However, after one summer of self study and four months in Quebec, I could speak and understand French fluently and a friend told me that my French accent was indistinguishable from a native speaker's.
Also, some aspects of languages come easier for some.
For me, tonal languages are extremely difficult, but I have no problem with a new alphabet (Cyrillic fluency took one week). Also, memorizing noun genders comes easily, but I have some trouble with tenses and cases (Finnish rage).
i'm not a english speaker, but i always feel strange when everybody write
'Fxxx' or 'PHACK' or like that. Why ? Everybody knows that hidden word
means 'FUCK', but why transform the word ? Just for fun ?
Eikä me tarvittu mitää sen jälkee = I would like to make love to ur foot
Eikä me ravittu mitää sen jälkee = I would like to have been fed by your foot?
During the period of time that the Normans had control of the British Isles, the Normans, having established themselves as the ruling class, treated many customs of the Saxons as being inferior.
A French-speaking Norman king deemed French superior to the Anglo-Saxon language that existed at that time. In fact, many of the common words and phrases of the old language were deemed to be offensive just because they were common words among the Saxons at that time.
The use of those terms was actually banned.
Instead of them, he had people use the Norman terms and phrases.
The word "fuck" is an old Anglo-Saxon word that means, basically, "to enter", or "penetrate", and was used, very much as it is now-a-days, as a term for sex. The term that the Normans replaced "fuck" with was "fornicate", which is, to this day, considered a more appropriate term.
Some of the old Saxon words, like fuck, shit, piss, etc, managed to survive, and eventually entered into the English language.
I was wrong, the word "fuck" is actually derived from an Old English term, "fokken", which means "to beat against".
>>34
And iirc this word originates in germanic languages.
But all this fuss doesn't explain why people choose to write it and censor themselves, instead of simply not using it. I really don't get that. It's the intent that counts after all, isn't it?
>>1
the simple way to say it is just because it a more discreet words or what the adults always like to think it as "dirty"
If you see Kay,
Tell him he may.
See you in tea,
Tell him from me. ^^
If you see Kay,
Tell him he may.
See you in tea,
Tell him from me.