Zauriel
The Angel of Justice
- Messages
- 121
- Reaction score
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- Ethnic group
- Chinese
I am currently learning four different languages at the same time.
French, German, Italian and Filipino/Tagalog.
Even though German has basically a similar grammar to the English, German is the most difficult language for me to learn, because German language's morphology is richer than that of English. It makes the distinction between nominative and accusative cases of three genders. It also distinguishes the cases of "wo" and "wohin".
There are four forms: masculine, feminine, neuter and plural. And there are four grammatical cases: nominative, genitive, dative and accusative. And they apply to all articles like definite articles (der, das, die), indefinite articles (ein, ein, eine), demonstrative articles (dieser, dieses, diese), possessive articles (mein, mein, meine), etc.
In feminine, neuter and plural forms of the German articles, the nominative and accusative cases are the same. But as for masculine form, the articles has a distinction between nominative and accusative. However, I had quite little trouble with the articles and pronouns, except for the dative.
Examples of wo/wohin.
Ich gehe in den Wald
I go into the forest.
Ich bin im Wald
I am in the forest.
I had trouble remembering the differences between the accusative and dative cases of wohin and wo.
Furthermore, some of the German prepositions are different from English prepositions, so I had to remember hard to find a correct preposition to use in a sentence.
Also, There are main clauses (Haupts?tze) and subclauses (Nebens?tze)
the subclauses use SOV (Subject-Object-Verb) word order. So each time I put a subclause in a sentence, I had to make a mental note to put the verb at the end of a subclause, although I till keep making that mistake because I'm not used to SOV.
But one of the factors that made my learning of German easy was that a German verb use a few conjugations, although more conjugations than English has while the person cases of Italian verbs require all conjugations.
German verb conjugation:
ich mache- I make
du machst- you make
er/sie/es macht- he/she/it makes
wir machen- we make
ihr macht- you (pl.) make
sie machen- they make, you (formal) make
Italian verb conjugation:
io parlo- I speak
tu parli- you speak
lui/lei parla- he/she speaks
noi parliamo- we speak
voi parlate- you (plural) speak
loro parlano- they speak
English verbs use only one conjugation: Third person singular. All the other person verb conjugations are the same. That is one of the reasons why English is very easy.
Italian is also very difficult because it has four forms: masculine singular, feminine singular, masculine plural and feminine plural. All the person cases of Italian verbs are required to be conjugated in every tense: present indicative tense, present perfect tense, imperfect tense, future tense, present subjunctive tense, present conditional tense, future perfect tense, past perfect tense, past conditional tense, past subjunctive tense, past absolute (passato remoto), etc. Which can be said similarly about French.
French is relatively easy, because of its simple grammar. In French, the usual word order for affirmative active sentences is SVO (Subject-Verb-Object) except in the case of object pronouns, while the word order for interrogative sentences is usually VSO (Verb Subject Object). But for object pronouns, French uses SOV.
example:
je parle a l'ami.
je lui parle.
Also, in French, to combine an article with the three cases applies to only one article in the masculine and plural forms: Definite articles. Unlike German, French doesn't apply that rule to other kinds of articles like indefinite articles, possessive articles and demonstrative articles.
Le gar?on/les gar?ons
Du gar?on/des gar?ons
au gar?on/aux gar?ons
un gar?on
d'un (de + un) gar?on
? un gar?on
ce gar?on
de ce gar?on
? ce gar?on
son gar?on
de son gar?on
? son gar?on
English is a germanic language with a vocabulary, of which 60% are from French origin. It was my first language, but I had some troubles using English grammatically properly, even though I can clearly understand the rules of the English language.
Lastly, Tagalog is the second most difficult language for me being a native English speaker, because it is not an European language. First, it uses VSO (Verb-Subject-Object) order. And it is an ergative-absolutive language, not a nominative-accusative one. German, French, Italian, Spanish and English are nominative-accusative languages.
Ergative-Absolutive language:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergative-absolutive_language
Tagalog grammar:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tagalog_grammar
Tagalog grammar has pretty complex syntax, semantics and morphology different from European languages . To conjugate a Tagalog/Filipino verb in any tense is pretty difficult. Ligatures and articles of names and nouns are among the easiest linguistic features of the Tagalog/Filipino language. Unlike European languages, Tagalog applies the articles to the persons' names.
For example:
ganda= beauty (noun)
maganda= beautiful (adjective)
French, German, Italian and Filipino/Tagalog.
Even though German has basically a similar grammar to the English, German is the most difficult language for me to learn, because German language's morphology is richer than that of English. It makes the distinction between nominative and accusative cases of three genders. It also distinguishes the cases of "wo" and "wohin".
There are four forms: masculine, feminine, neuter and plural. And there are four grammatical cases: nominative, genitive, dative and accusative. And they apply to all articles like definite articles (der, das, die), indefinite articles (ein, ein, eine), demonstrative articles (dieser, dieses, diese), possessive articles (mein, mein, meine), etc.
In feminine, neuter and plural forms of the German articles, the nominative and accusative cases are the same. But as for masculine form, the articles has a distinction between nominative and accusative. However, I had quite little trouble with the articles and pronouns, except for the dative.
Examples of wo/wohin.
Ich gehe in den Wald
I go into the forest.
Ich bin im Wald
I am in the forest.
I had trouble remembering the differences between the accusative and dative cases of wohin and wo.
Furthermore, some of the German prepositions are different from English prepositions, so I had to remember hard to find a correct preposition to use in a sentence.
Also, There are main clauses (Haupts?tze) and subclauses (Nebens?tze)
the subclauses use SOV (Subject-Object-Verb) word order. So each time I put a subclause in a sentence, I had to make a mental note to put the verb at the end of a subclause, although I till keep making that mistake because I'm not used to SOV.
But one of the factors that made my learning of German easy was that a German verb use a few conjugations, although more conjugations than English has while the person cases of Italian verbs require all conjugations.
German verb conjugation:
ich mache- I make
du machst- you make
er/sie/es macht- he/she/it makes
wir machen- we make
ihr macht- you (pl.) make
sie machen- they make, you (formal) make
Italian verb conjugation:
io parlo- I speak
tu parli- you speak
lui/lei parla- he/she speaks
noi parliamo- we speak
voi parlate- you (plural) speak
loro parlano- they speak
English verbs use only one conjugation: Third person singular. All the other person verb conjugations are the same. That is one of the reasons why English is very easy.
Italian is also very difficult because it has four forms: masculine singular, feminine singular, masculine plural and feminine plural. All the person cases of Italian verbs are required to be conjugated in every tense: present indicative tense, present perfect tense, imperfect tense, future tense, present subjunctive tense, present conditional tense, future perfect tense, past perfect tense, past conditional tense, past subjunctive tense, past absolute (passato remoto), etc. Which can be said similarly about French.
French is relatively easy, because of its simple grammar. In French, the usual word order for affirmative active sentences is SVO (Subject-Verb-Object) except in the case of object pronouns, while the word order for interrogative sentences is usually VSO (Verb Subject Object). But for object pronouns, French uses SOV.
example:
je parle a l'ami.
je lui parle.
Also, in French, to combine an article with the three cases applies to only one article in the masculine and plural forms: Definite articles. Unlike German, French doesn't apply that rule to other kinds of articles like indefinite articles, possessive articles and demonstrative articles.
Le gar?on/les gar?ons
Du gar?on/des gar?ons
au gar?on/aux gar?ons
un gar?on
d'un (de + un) gar?on
? un gar?on
ce gar?on
de ce gar?on
? ce gar?on
son gar?on
de son gar?on
? son gar?on
English is a germanic language with a vocabulary, of which 60% are from French origin. It was my first language, but I had some troubles using English grammatically properly, even though I can clearly understand the rules of the English language.
Lastly, Tagalog is the second most difficult language for me being a native English speaker, because it is not an European language. First, it uses VSO (Verb-Subject-Object) order. And it is an ergative-absolutive language, not a nominative-accusative one. German, French, Italian, Spanish and English are nominative-accusative languages.
Ergative-Absolutive language:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergative-absolutive_language
Tagalog grammar:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tagalog_grammar
Tagalog grammar has pretty complex syntax, semantics and morphology different from European languages . To conjugate a Tagalog/Filipino verb in any tense is pretty difficult. Ligatures and articles of names and nouns are among the easiest linguistic features of the Tagalog/Filipino language. Unlike European languages, Tagalog applies the articles to the persons' names.
For example:
ganda= beauty (noun)
maganda= beautiful (adjective)