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What makes a foreign language difficult to learn?

de robinast, 5 de julio de 2009

Aportes: 34

Idioma: English

robinast (Mostrar perfil) 5 de julio de 2009 07:57:12

It was long time ago when I last used lernu! and it felt good to arrive - a lot of interesting postings had appeared during last months. I was afraid that I had forgotten nearly all I had learned here - but luckily, this is not the case and I do not need to start again from the very beginning.

Would be interesting to get to know, what the others consider difficult in learning languages (including Esperanto). If something worth of mentioning, is not in poll, don't hesitate to say in a message.

My own answers:
3 main difficulties: prepositions instead of suffixes, grammar irregularities and different logic.

I also would like to ask which feature(s) of Esperanto made it especially easy for you to learn and which one(s) caused problems when you started with learning.

For me:
Easy: regular grammar, international word stems
Problems: understanding of proper usage of prepositions and suffixes (I still am in the very beginning of learning the language! rido.gif )

Amike,
Harri.

EDIT: Unfortunately, I did not made possible to mark more than one choice in the poll. And as I understand, the poll can't be edited... What a pity! ploro.gif

Matthieu (Mostrar perfil) 5 de julio de 2009 09:12:06

I'd say the most difficult thing for me is the irregularities in grammar.

For example, I am trying to learn Finnish. Using suffixes and postpositions is not difficult for me, although it's different from my mother tongue (we use prepositions in French).
In Finnish, the suffix -ssa/-ssä is used when English uses the preposition “in”. It's quite simple. But what is difficult is that this ending (as well as other cases) can trigger modifications in the stem:
talo > talossa (house)
sade > sateessa (rain)
vesi > vedessä (water)
rikas > rikkaassa (rich)
Amerikka > Amerikassa (America)
nainen > naisessa (woman)
harjoitus > harjoitukessa (exercise)
rakkaus > rakkaudessa (love)

Now I think I know most of those changes for singular (except for -us words, which can be declined as -ukse- or -ute-), but some cases like plural genitive are really tough.
Vocabulary can also be hard to learn, but fortunately Finnish uses a lot of suffixes to create new words.

What made Esperanto easy to me:
- the vocabulary: many words come from French or Latin, and the affixes greatly lower the number of roots to learn;
- the pronunciation: only H, Ĥ and R don't exist in French, but I can say them easily;
- the regularity of grammar: adding a -j to make the plural is very simple. It's a lot easier than Finnish and its complicated rules for plural, or German and its plurals that have no real rules. Also, the endings in Esperanto are clear, so we can't confuse a verb with a noun or a case with another.

mnlg (Mostrar perfil) 5 de julio de 2009 09:23:53

Mutusen:this ending (as well as other cases) can trigger modifications in the stem
I tried to learn astevaihtelu as if it was a derivative; first picking it up and learning examples, then trying to recognize the degraded consonants in indirect cases and reconstructing the nominative. Every time I found a word model (sanatyyppi) different than the ones I knew, I added it to a page in my notebook. Events of life forced me to pause my studies, but I was quite pleased with the level I had reached in recognizing consonant gradation. Which is however just a small part of the language, as you point out...

robinast (Mostrar perfil) 5 de julio de 2009 10:11:51

Mutusen: Using suffixes and postpositions is not difficult for me, although it's different from my mother tongue (we use prepositions in French).
Yes, there actually are not so big differences in the usage. But at least for me, it took quite a long time before I got used to prepositions instead declining nones (as we do in Estonian; we have only a very limited amount of prepositions). Russian (the first foreign language I started to learn) combines both and English (the second one) nouns do not decline at all (except in genitive, if I don't mistake).
Mutusen:In Finnish, the suffix -ssa/-ssä is used when English uses the preposition “in”. It's quite simple. But what is difficult is that this ending (as well as other cases) can trigger modifications in the stem:
You're absolutely right, the stem changes are a real nightmare. I'm not aware how it is in Finnish, but in Estonian, the stem changes may occur in the genitiv, partitive and illative while the remaining 10 cases are regular in the sense that they all base on the genitiv. Only short form of the plural illative bases in the plural partitive, which in turn is irregular again. Estonian equivalents for your Finnish words:
talo > talossa (house); talu > talusse/tallu (farmstead)
sade > sateessa (rain); sade > sademesse (precipitation)
vesi > vedessä (water); vesi > (veesse)/vette
rikas > rikkaassa (rich); rikas > rikkasse
Amerikka > Amerikassa (America); Ameerika > Ameerikasse;
nainen > naisessa (woman); naine > naisesse
harjoitus > harjoitukessa (exercise); harjutus > harjutu(se)sse
rakkaus > rakkaudessa (love); armastus > armastu(se)sse

In most cases, shorter forms of illative are in use.
Mutusen:What made Esperanto easy to me:
...
- the pronunciation: only H, Ĥ and R don't exist in French, but I can say them easily;
...
ŝ, ĝ, ĉ, ĥ, and ĵ are absent in Estonian but as I knew Russian and English already, the pronunciation was not a problem for me either.

Harri.

le_chaz (Mostrar perfil) 5 de julio de 2009 11:12:58

How can I select more than one answer? demando.gif

ceigered (Mostrar perfil) 5 de julio de 2009 11:19:41

I swear there are about 1000 other threads on this topic ridulo.gif

I'd say that pronunciation is hardest. I can cope with learning new ways to do things, but pronunciation just gets painful because its hard to restrict yourself to learning just the written language, and also speaking the language badly can leave people feeling unconfident in themselves and prevent people from understanding, even if everything else is correct.

robinast (Mostrar perfil) 5 de julio de 2009 11:31:17

le_chaz:How can I select more than one answer? demando.gif
You just can not malgajo.gif and it's purely my fault: before submitting the poll, I did not change the default method of choosing answers (which allows only one). And as it occurred, I can not change it later...

Harri.

Rogir (Mostrar perfil) 5 de julio de 2009 13:19:49

While it is often very hard to learn all the grammatical exceptions, I don't mind them very much because I can understand people and make myself understood without learning them fully. The many, many words to learn are always the hardest for me.

Rodrigoo (Mostrar perfil) 5 de julio de 2009 18:49:44

Itself, ehe.

Sammondane,
Ĥod

russ (Mostrar perfil) 8 de julio de 2009 09:56:04

Speech comprehension. Other speakers speak too fast or unclearly or with too high level grammar/vocabulary for the learner, in my experience (especially as a current learner of Polish). The same text would be no problem for me if I saw it written. E.g. if I watch a Polish film, I understand almost none of the dialog, but if I watch a foreign (or Polish) film with Polish subtitles, I can understand a fair amount.

Even with a much easier language like Esperanto, I found speech comprehension to be the most challenging hurdle for me that took the longest to conquer. My brain is much more wired for grammar and text than for speech than the average person's, it seems.

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