English grammar is just fucked up. Especially irregular verb conjugation. You seriously have to learn the whole bloody list and all their forms. And don't get me started on the whole mess with auxiliary verbs. French is easy as pie in comparison, even if the whole intonation thing is annoying. And what language teachers don't tell you about German is that people never actually use anything but two tenses.
The Evils of Feminine Gender (and Other Language Complaints)
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Oh Jesus Christ don't remind me. Every last thing in the German language has a gender or a lack of a gender. Your pencil is a boy, the chalkboard is a girl, the map on the wall is a girl, the table is a boy, and your textbook has no gender? Why? Fuck you that's why, memorize it.T0ad 0f Truth said:The gender in german. Definitely the gender.
It's not even like there's somewhat of an order to it like in spanish. You just have to remember them all and they change based on case. It's horrible
I have just one complaint about english, one that might be a bit stereotypical for a german.
Flipping "th"; i can't pronounce it correctly when i'm not concentrating on it, when i play a game and use my mic.
I have to try hard to say it right, but i'm fluent otherwise, people never assume i'm german, but then i whip out my "th"
and nobody has to ask anymore.
Flipping "th"; i can't pronounce it correctly when i'm not concentrating on it, when i play a game and use my mic.
I have to try hard to say it right, but i'm fluent otherwise, people never assume i'm german, but then i whip out my "th"
and nobody has to ask anymore.
You could always just teach yourself Old English?solemnwar said:I'm also super jelly that you get to learn Old EnglishIt used to be offered at my university but by the time I was able to take it (you needed at least a 2nd year level course as a perquisite) the professor who taught it had retired and it was no longer offered. Closest I got was at the beginning of my Mediaeval English Literature course. I even own a (concise) Anglo-Saxon dictionary.
.
http://www8.georgetown.edu/departments/medieval/labyrinth/library/oe/texts/a3.11.html
Good luck ^^
Hm, one I can think of in Swedish is the adjective scared. It only works when you put one of our two words for "a" before it(got no clue what they're called). The Swedish types are either en or ett. Got no clue about the rule for when we use which, since it seems totally random. En katt, ett marsvin(a cat, a guine pig). Ett hus, en bil(a house, a car). Perhaps some Swede who actually paid attention in school knows.
Anyways, you can say "en rädd människa(a scared human)", but you can't say a scared lion since the word scared doesn't bend right. The worlds that magically appear in your mouth becomes "ett rätt lejon", which translated to English means "a correct lion".
To bypass it you gotta change it to "ett lejon som är rädd(a lion that is scared)" or change the word to "skrämt" which is another word for scared. It's mainly used as a verb though.
Hopefully someone understands. I lost myself a few times.
Can also add, like others have, my minor issues with the English language:
I can't pronounce the double t's without struggling. Letter for example sounds the same as leather out of my mouth. Got plenty of double t in Swedish, but I've never had any issues with those.
Was quite annoying trying to give a tourist directions to the building with the golden letters.
Anyways, you can say "en rädd människa(a scared human)", but you can't say a scared lion since the word scared doesn't bend right. The worlds that magically appear in your mouth becomes "ett rätt lejon", which translated to English means "a correct lion".
To bypass it you gotta change it to "ett lejon som är rädd(a lion that is scared)" or change the word to "skrämt" which is another word for scared. It's mainly used as a verb though.
Hopefully someone understands. I lost myself a few times.
Can also add, like others have, my minor issues with the English language:
I can't pronounce the double t's without struggling. Letter for example sounds the same as leather out of my mouth. Got plenty of double t in Swedish, but I've never had any issues with those.
Was quite annoying trying to give a tourist directions to the building with the golden letters.
Before reading this thread, I've never realized how wacky gendered nouns must seem... it's so natural to me that I've had never even thought about it. But I guess the logic of it is that's not the object that have a gender, it's just the word. So feminine and masculine isn't connected with the idea that objects have sex or traits associated with a gender. For latin languages, at least.
Things that I find weird in English:
- Adjectives before nouns. You listen a list of 10 adjectives about something without knowing what the thing is until the end of the phrase. A big blue sturdy classy happy... a what? A WHAT?! A HOUSE?! A WHALE?!
In my native language the noun always comes first, unless you want to sound poetic or... talk in reverse because you're... weird.
- Verbal phrases. The concept doesn't exist in Portuguese, so when you don't realize it's a phrasal verb and translates it literally, the result is a complete crazy sentence. The translation of "She was told to back off" would be "She was told to return deactivated". The only way to get around this is memorizing a long list of phrasal verbs. ;_;
- On, in, at. The rules for using them aren't rocket science, but it's always hard to remember them in a hurry for me. In Portuguese, there's only one word for it: "na/no" (female/male. Depends on the dreaded gender).
- "th" sound. Fucking "th" sound.
Things that I find weird in English:
- Adjectives before nouns. You listen a list of 10 adjectives about something without knowing what the thing is until the end of the phrase. A big blue sturdy classy happy... a what? A WHAT?! A HOUSE?! A WHALE?!
In my native language the noun always comes first, unless you want to sound poetic or... talk in reverse because you're... weird.
- Verbal phrases. The concept doesn't exist in Portuguese, so when you don't realize it's a phrasal verb and translates it literally, the result is a complete crazy sentence. The translation of "She was told to back off" would be "She was told to return deactivated". The only way to get around this is memorizing a long list of phrasal verbs. ;_;
- On, in, at. The rules for using them aren't rocket science, but it's always hard to remember them in a hurry for me. In Portuguese, there's only one word for it: "na/no" (female/male. Depends on the dreaded gender).
- "th" sound. Fucking "th" sound.
What about 'em'? Em português, em casa, em andamento, em posição, ...BitterLemon said:
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Anyway, I have to say I like gendered words and things, and part of me wishes the English language had them. When you say you have "a friend", for example, that's not enough information, I don't know if your friend is male or female. In portuguese you have 2 words, one for men and one for women, for pretty much everything. Teachers, doctors, lawyers, etc. Imagine if you had friendos and friendas.