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Poll about the easiness/difficulty of Esperanto

by el_edu, July 22, 2009

Messages: 19

Language: English

ceigered (User's profile) July 29, 2009, 7:59:21 AM

mnlg:
ceigered:[...] those darned counter words are complicated [..]
I have watched a Japanese quiz show once, where contestants have to find the correct counter word for different things in the least possible time.

However I am told that you can be precise enough, even if not perfectly precise, by using just a handful of them.
shoko.gif
Wow!
That's like Chinese dictionary-lookup contests!
I have heard something similar (that there are some very generic counter words) so I might look into that and find out what ones are on the 'high-priority' lists. Language lessons tend to have this terrible habit of forgetting the reasons people find the language in question hard, and so counter words have never been my strong point.

If you don't mind actually, could you give an example? I still haven't figured out if they go after or before the noun malgajo.gif

mnlg (User's profile) July 29, 2009, 8:07:07 AM

The Wikipedia link states, that counters always appear with a number before them. The order seems to be [noun][number][counter]:
犬二匹 (inu nihiki) literally "dog two-small-animal"

ceigered (User's profile) July 29, 2009, 9:32:14 AM

mnlg:The Wikipedia link states, that counters always appear with a number before them. The order seems to be [noun][number][counter]:
犬二匹 (inu nihiki) literally "dog two-small-animal"
Cheers for that! I've tried reading the wikipedia page but I get overwhelmed by the amount of information about Japanese.

Now I feel less stressed about these counter words rideto.gif
Back to la topique!

jchthys (User's profile) July 29, 2009, 3:14:55 PM

Chinese uses counter words too. Maybe there’s a Chinese dictionary-look-up-and-counter-word-remember competition!

ceigered (User's profile) July 29, 2009, 3:53:05 PM

shoko.gif

Francisko1 (User's profile) July 29, 2009, 4:02:13 PM

at least 20 times easier than English

Oŝo-Jabe (User's profile) July 30, 2009, 12:15:27 AM

I think it's cool that there are competitions based around the weird aspects of languages! English has spelling contests, and Japanese apparently has a quiz show about counter words. I'd be interested to know about other competitions like this. rideto.gif

Pharoah (User's profile) July 30, 2009, 2:27:26 AM

I've always wondered if the Chinese have anything like spelling bees for writing characters. There are a lot of hanzi to remember, so I'd imagine there is some sort of competition.

erinja (User's profile) July 31, 2009, 2:20:05 PM

I have heard of a large French grammar contest but I don't remember the details. Perhaps one of our French readers can fill us in. Something like, the quiz proctor reads out a long text, and the test takers must write down what was spoken - correctly. So this involves memorizing exactly what was said and writing it down with the correct grammar and spelling, if I recall correctly.

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