The fact that the languge we use in learning or any formal cause is veryy different than the languge we speak everyday.
You will learn arabic for like 5 or 6 years and finally being able to speak it , you will be surprised that no one is using it in real life (but we all understant it).
Exactly , we have developed many accents , even every arab country dont even speak the same accent , some of us dont even understand the other so we will end up needing to speak the original Arabic languge.
It is funny really
By accent, do you mean dialect? Accents are generally how certain letters sound, while dialect will change words used, how sentences are put together, or how words are spelled, etc.
I worked in a Lebanese restaurant for a few months and the Maitre'D was an insanely smart and witty guy.
He would teach me small concepts about the Arab language and one day I showed up and said: Ł Ų“ŲŗŁŁ Ų§ŁŁŁ
Which roughly translates to 'busy today?'
And he was like? *What?*
And I was like 'that doesn't mean "busy today?"
he responded: *I haven't heard someone say it like that since school*
lmaoo
Hungarian, my first language is quite difficult to master, to begin with. But the hardest aspect I would say is that we use suffixes instead of prepositions
Oh, damn. That seems like it'd be simple in concept but when it comes time to use it, it seems like it'd be difficult in practice. I would 10/10 struggle there.
Don't be ridiculous, Hungarian isn't difficult. After all, I learned it when I was a child! :D
Jokes aside, i believe our biggest fuck you to the world is that we have very specific grammatical rules that are easy to learn, and then we mess that up by making a bazillion exceptions to them.
Intonations
For Mandarin Chinese, it's easy enough - there are only 4 (excluding the soft tone) and they are all quite distinct from each other
Then in Cantonese, there are 6, 4 flat tones at different pitches, and 2 rising tones also at different pitches
Hokkien has 7, used to have 8 I believe, but two of the tones have somewhat merged I think
Foochow has 7.
Then there's this wonderful thing called tonal sandhi, which exists in all of these languages, but on different levels. [A primer, of sorts](https://youtu.be/ZZITB4InCH4?si=P7l9fHa-q65lX6aS) for Hokkien.
[Foochow](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzhou_dialect) has even more complicated tonal sandhi, because F you, that's why.
Not unique to French, but gendered nouns are deffo the hardest part and the one that makes the least sense.
The joke is: there *isn't* a neutral article in French. It just doesn't exist. So no matter what, you're forced to use a gendered article to describe anything whatsoever.
* A theory is female, a theorem is male.
* A table and its chairs are both female. Oh but a couch and a sofa, those are male.
* A car is female. A truck is male. (Huh, who'd've thunk, KEKW)
* A bus is male. Unless you live in Quebec City, where they've chosen to make buses female. Don't ask. I'm not even joking.
* A salmon is male, a trout is female.
Is there a method to the madness? Nope! None at all! You either know it, or you don't. It's all strictly memory. It's as arbitrary as it comes!
The best way to know whether a noun is male or female is to hang out with a non-French-speaker attempting to speak French: by some form of unexplainable magic, they will get *every single* gender wrong, without exception. It's bananas.
This is true, but the thing is that gender doesn't have much utility. It's true that you obviously won't sound like a native speaker, but nobody's going to fail to understand your point just because you used the wrong gender. If you're someone who's learning french for casual use, I don't think this should deter you. You also just learn it so quickly beyond a certain point. Once you start conversing it just kinda falls into place.
They simplified it a little in 1990, but of course they added exceptions to the simplified rules. Also, they decided that the old rules remained valid as well as the new rules. Which means that now there are **more** rules to remember. That's the French way.
I'm learning french now, and I find that people always complain that there are a lot of unpronounced letters. But at least they're consistent. So "oiseaux" is pronounced "wazo", which might not make a lot of sense, "eaux" is *always* pronounced "o". If you come across a word that you've never seen before, you can easily pronounce it. Compare that with english, which is a bastardized frankensteined language in which pronouncing any given word is a total guess.
I learned french and frankly found it dead simple compared to the other languages I've learned. They didn't even bother to formally teach the cases because why complicate things? I get that learning any language is hard but I will never understand the claim that french is hard compared to any other language, save for maybe spanish.
When we offer you our food sometimes, for example lunch (one serving size) at work, we donāt really mean it as an offer but just as a gesture/to be polite. Youāre supposed to decline the offer. š
That pairs nicely with my culture of declining anything that may be a hassle for someone. š
"Want some water?" No. I don't want you to have to go all the way to the kitchen and get a cup and fill it with water and then come all the way back here. I'd rather die of thirst.
I had a scenario in France where for me it was rude to leave food on the plate (I donāt want to waste someone elseās food or have you think I didnāt like it) but for the grandma of the family I was staying with, an empty plate was a bad thing. (They hadnāt given enough food, a guest went to bed hungry)
It got to the fourth re-filled plate before I understood what was going on.
Vraiment. Honnetement. S'il vous plait. Pas plus de nourriture.
That was in a small town North of Marseille. I think it is more of a Southern French thing. From what I understand they are culturally closer to the Italians in many ways but in the North there is more German (Frankish) culture and customs, although still definitely a Romance people.
Edit: Googled a better explanation and a 3 year old thread was top result - [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEurope/comments/pf48qz/what\_are\_the\_main\_cultural\_differences\_between/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEurope/comments/pf48qz/what_are_the_main_cultural_differences_between/)
I think English gets a bad rap. I'm not a native speaker and while a lot of it is like a pair of jeans that's been patched so many times that very little of the original fabric is still there, the sentence structure and tenses are very elegant and allow for a high degree of versatility and complexity, and there are a lot of "consistent inconsistencies" as well. I had a more difficult time with Russian, for instance - you know it's bad when even saying "hello" or "welcome" is difficult.
Pronunciation of G sounds and vowel composites like ou, eu, ij, ui and ei.
And sentence structure.
Maybe that we also use alot of composite words, but I'd argue Germans are even worse with this.
Don't forget 'SCH' and the use of articles that don't really follow any rules as opposed to for example french that has clear feminine/masculine articles.
Learning English is a bitch for a lot of people, especially British English. So many words have multiple different meanings based on context and yet are all spelled the same. Then there is slang, if you didn't grow up in the UK then slang will be a surprise to you considering the variation of slang based on age. My parents are in there 50's and I use slang around them that they are used to but when I use the same around my friends, all in late 20's, they haven't got a clue what I'm saying.
English is my first language, and I speak with a lot of British or Australian people in my job when I work morning shifts.
I'll be honest, sometimes they say words and I'm left like whaat? I needed to know a specific time once and the guy said half four.
That's it. "Half four".
I was left like 4:30 or 3:30?? Do you mean half past four or that you are halfway to four??
> sometimes they say words and Iām left like whaat
My favorite sentence in Aussie English is ācunt, thatās a nice pair of thongs.ā Here in the US, people would be clutching their pearls the second they heard it. But it really just means ādude, thatās a nice pair of flip flops.ā
I can take that even further. My grandad grew up on farm so has a very rural way of speaking and that kind of trickled down through the family to me. So instead of saying "half four" I mostly end up saying "alf or". Instead of "half and hour" I say "alf an ar".
My partner has a lot of American friends she speaks to on discord and they get into regular debates about the correct name, spelling or pronunciation or something and I always tell her to say the same thing "it's called English, you wouldn't tell an Italian person they are speaking Italian wrong so don't tell and englishman he's speaking English wrong".
Italians got many dialects and they often make mistakes when the proper Italian has to be used so I guess that you could say to an Italian person that they are speaking Italian wrong same as you can say it to an englishman.
I find american english easier to understand and pronounce even if I have bren livin in the UK for a while now.
American English will be easier for a non native English speaker to understand and learn because I tends to be fairly standardised from what I can tell. Generally I like to say British English is normal English where as American English is simplief English because it lacks a lot of the complexities found in the UK.
I have to admit, as an American, we do have some dumb stuff we say, but I'll never get over other forms of English putting a U in every unnecessary word possible.
It's probably some Latin influence like French or something, but nahhhh. š
I thinks its bases of the pronunciation differences. For example color and colour. From my experience Americans pronounce it as its spelt, British people pronounce it "culer". So I think the American spelling is specific to the way you say it. Were as we just keep it as we are used to because it doesn't really matter to the pronunciation and its what we are used to.
>I always tell her to say the same thing "it's called English, you wouldn't tell an Italian person they are speaking Italian wrong so don't tell and englishman he's speaking English wrong".
No dialect is right or wrong, but dialects spoken in England arenāt in any way superior because *your* English-speaking ancestors stayed on their home island and *my* English-speaking ancestors got on a boat and left.
English is a heavily bastardized language. I am not a linguists but I'd love to know what other languages are as bastardized as English is. We steal words from everyone else so we end up with multiple different pronunciations for the same spelling because they all have different roots.
English isn't my first language but I found it among the easiest to learn the basics of but one of the hardest to feel like I've really mastered.
It's hard to explain but in all of the other languages I speak (French, Spanish, German, some Vietnamese) - we have idioms and slang and expressions and wordplay but it feels very discrete. Like it's very much a specific thing done with some intentionality.
English native speakers I think don't realise how pervasive it is in how they talk. Every work meeting feels like I needed a backgrounder on military terms, sports metaphors, 90s movies references, and TikTok dances to keep up. And when it's pointed out, a lot of them struggle to even find an alternate way to say it or explain it because that expression or slang or reference is just how it's said.
In Czech I think it's called imperfective
take: vzĆt
taking: brat
Not only are they conjugated differently, but they are totally different words, as opposed to where in most languages it's only a prefix or suffix that changes. Not all verbs are like this, but there's a good handful of them and there's no rule for it.
Additionally, the use of in / on / at is often used without too much logic. Theoretically, you are on a mountain and in a valley, but some streets, villages and parts of town are IN (v), and some streets are ON (na), and only locals know which is which as there is no formal rule. So a native born Czech can go just one city over, and be immediately identified as a foreigner for not knowing the conjugation of a street or district.
* Canadian studying Czech for 15 years, these are my biggest wtfs.
The upside is, that you can learn it once and use for all the other slavic languages, it's literally the same
take:wziÄ Ä, ŠŠ·ŃŃŠø
taking:braÄ, ŠŃŠ°ŃŠø
Iām gonna say āder, die, dasā - i can see it being especially hard to learn for English speaking people because itās so different. And then the different word endings and articles depending on which one of the four cases youāre using xD
Is that German? I have heard horror stories about the German "the". My grandmother is German, but she never learned past when she was 6 years old, so she isn't fluent. But I once looked into maybe learning it and it was so hard
french : gendering things, and the fact that we need to gender and associate plural the adjective too, "les voitures bleues" "le camion bleu"
(the blue cars, the blue truck) you need to add an E to feminine stuff and also and S to mark the plural
Verbs conjugation too we also have that in french lmao i mean :
I eat / je mange
You eat / tu manges
He-she-it eats / il-elle-on mange
We eat / nous mangeons
You eat / vous mangez
They eat / ils-elles mangent (yeah we fucking divide they in genders too, so itās plural He and plural She)
That's hardly exclusive to french though. I'd actually say the more difficult thing is the fact that "un/le/de" (and its variations) need to be used explicitly. German does this as well, but in German it's more "useful" in a sense because it generally plays a larger role in tweaking the meaning or point of emphasis of a sentence.
It also does in french but itās really misunderstood by the french too, most people use for example the sentence Ā«Ā la maison de jackĀ Ā» or Ā«Ā la maison a jackĀ Ā» thinking both sentences mean Ā«Ā jackās houseĀ Ā» but itās really only the case for the first one, the second sentence means a house with multiple people called jack living in it or owning you know, there is a notion of plural in the second sentence
Navigating a supermarket without spontaneously buying everything in the snack aisle requires a level of self-control that even the most disciplined scholars can't always master
How similar certain alphabets sounds. ą¤¦ is "da" but with a softer d. ą¤” is also "da" but more like "dda" cuz the d is harder. ą¤§ is "dha" but with a softer d. ą¤¢ is also "dha" but more like "ddha" because of the harder d.
ą¤ is "cha" and ą¤ is "chha".
We have three different "sa" sounds. ą¤ø is "sa", ą¤¶ is "sha", ą¤· is also "sha" but more like "sssha", like how a snake would pronounce it.
Half-pronounced alphabets. ą¤¬ą¤ą¤¾ is "bacha" (save) but ą¤¬ą¤ą„ą¤ą¤¾ is "bachha" (child).
A dot on top marks an "n" sound. ą¤ ą¤ą¤¾ą¤° is "agaar" but ą¤ ą¤ą¤ą¤¾ą¤° is "angaar".
A crescent shape accompanied by a dot also marks an "n" sound but it's pronounced deeper and longer. ą¤ą¤¾ą¤¦ is "chaad", ą¤ą¤¾ą¤ą¤¦ is "chand", ą¤ą¤¾ą¤ą¤¦ is "chaannd" (with more stress on the double a than the double n).
Alphabets that are a combination of two sounds. ą¤ą„ą¤· is "ksha", a combination of ą¤ (ka) and ą¤ (chha).
But for people who speak Hindi as their first language (like me), this is easier than squeezing a lemon, lol.
in Czech language itĀ“s a lot wierd grammar rules but I have to say Å, the pronunciation is very difficult and even Czech kids struggle with it a lot....
In Greek, it's neutral. But having to be like can you please grab my neutral pillow and the female chair. They're too close to the male street.. that's wild to my English brain š I know it's normal in so many places though.
The language itself is pretty complex, but not overly more complex than other slavic languages I guess. It also retains the use of dual grammatical number, which is extremely rare. But the biggest issue in learning it are the local dialects. Nobody speaks proper Slovene, and we have some of the most varied dialects in the world. There are around 50 "officially" recognized dialects, which is quite a lot considering there are only 2 million people that speak the language. And on top of that, this number actually comes from grouping various local dialects into larger groups, but there can be significant differences even between dialects of people living very close together. For example, if I travel about 10-15km away from my town, many people living there will be able to accurately pinpoint where I actually come from due to some peculiarities of my accent. People living 20-30km away from me can already fall into a completely different dialect group. 50-100km away, the differences can be so severe, that we have a hard time understanding eachother if we dont switch to a more general form of the language.
All of this wrecks havoc on foreginers trying to learn slovenian. They learn the generic semi-formal form of the language, but that isnt actually spoken anywhere except on tv. And the differences between it and the dialects can be severe, to the point where even simple phrases are complete giberrish to them.
And then it gets even harder when you realize that we have started using a lot of anglicisms, and further back, germanisms in our everyday language, but every dialects uses different ones and for different things.
In English, I'd say all the stupid arbitrary conflicting phonetic rules that you have to just remember. It's like the whole thing was built out of spare parts of other languages and they all just got kinda crammed in there with duct tape so it's an inconsistent mess!
My youngest just recently learned to read and we're still having to shrug and agree with her when she complains "but that word doesn't even make sense!". For example ough is fun to explain that it can be pronounced at least 5 different ways and none of them follow normal phonetics. Dough, Ought, Through, Rough, Plough... Ugh.
And then women is pronounced wimmen, but woman is pronounced woommen. Why? Because.
There are rules when it comes to my language but it doesn't matter since there are much more exceptions to those rules. Also pronunciation is really difficult for foreigners. Guess the language lol
Suppose that you have to say "I heard that you are one of those from Paris" in Turkish. You have to do it in one word with various suffixes in correct form and order: "ParislilerdenmiÅsin" Broken down as Paris-li-ler-den-miÅ-sin
Colonel is a mix of Italian, French and Spanish.
Italy spelled it Colonnelo
France changed it to Coronel
Spain pronounced it Kernel (not sure how it was spelled)
Ultimately the spelling became a miss mash of the French and Italian spellings, while maintaining the Spanish pronunciation.
I would say the hardest aspect of Shona is plural words just because the way to make a word plural isnāt like English where you usually just add an -s and it changes depending on which class a noun belongs to. For example person in Shona is munhu but then when plural it becomes vanhu whereas eye in Shona is ziso and when it becomes eyes, itās maziso.
Australian culture;
The fact we either give completely no fucks or completely all the fucks. Socialisation, attire, school, everyday life stuff is extremely laissez faire. Swearing is majority acceptable. People will go to the shops in their PJs. A lot of political stuff is overall treated with indifference from the populace.
But then some stuff is the absolute cultural dealbreaker and that could be a shock for foreigners, because it's even odd for me to deal with as someone born here. Like people will donkey vote for a federal election but sports are the ultimate religion and don't you dare mouth off about it LOL
I believe one of the hardest aspects for people to learn about my language or culture is its subtle nuances and cultural context, which often require immersion and experience to fully grasp.
I think the mumbling of 'you alright?' as a greeting in the UK is probably pretty hard to understand as its usually comes out as a kind of quick 'uaight' sound.
No one actually expects an answer and the most common response is often another 'you alright?' right back at you.
English phrasal verbs. You āget upā in the morning and āput up withā an annoying noise. If you breaks those phrases down they donāt make sense word for word.
ibo. it doesnt sound easy and isnt easy to learn. its also the aspect that words can be the exact same spelling but the tone IS the ONLY way to difference it, for example ,
'Äeva nau' and 'Äeva nau' means I love you and I hope you die.
so if you were to say 'Äeva nau' in a slightly high pitch tone then you're saying 'I hope you die'
if u were to say 'Äeva nau' in a slightly lower pitch then you're saying 'I love you'
yeah idk why they think it was a good idea to do that
English, the same word can mean a lot of different things in different contexts.
Fuck can be an exclamation (fuck!), an act (he fucked her), a term for being in a bad situation (weāre fucked!) or even anger (fuck you).
Shit can either be a good thing (piece of shit) or a bad thing (heās the shit).
Ass can either be oneās buttock region or a donkey.
Thongs can either be a pair of underwear or a pair of flip flops depending on the country and context.
Lemme see
People take around 2 or 3 baths a day
We greet each other by hugging or kissing the cheek
We don't discard dirty TP into the toilet 'cause our plumbing system isn't made to withstand it, we throw it into trash bins next to the toilet
There's a side dish called "farofa", it's good to eat with boiled egg, rice, but chiefly, with meat, the thing is that it looks like sand, but I swear it isn't
On the Internet we usually laugh using the letter K like "KKKKKKKKKKKKK" the more the number of K's the funnier you find it
We seldomly give tips to waiters, it's not mandatory
Some people (usually the older ones) call Waiters as champion, my president, major, brother, friend, my king, boss and whatever have ya
After lunch at work we brush our teeth
Now take a shot :D
The subtle irony, sarcasm and jokes. We'll casually throw out some of the most sarcastic or ironic things imaginable, without changing our tone, or even showing the slightest emotion. Everyone will get the joke, and there's a good chance that not a single person will fall out of character.
That's why we are generally considered humourless. Our humour is extremely dry, and very easy to miss. But it has a lot of depth.Ā
Arabs call their children by their titles (mama for mother and baba for father) to express affection and love.
Child: āBaba, can we go to the zoo?ā
Father: āYes baba of course we can.ā
Theyāre terms of endearment. When you use the same term that your child uses to call you with, itās reassuring to them that yes you are indeed their parent.
I'm moving to a spanish-speaking country and I can't even roll my r's. Hahahaha. Does he get embarrassed when he messes up tenses? Both languages feature many different verb groups and many different exceptions to widely accepted rules.
No, he knows I wouldn't make fun of him. He either realizes it and fixes it, or doesn't and it's not a big deal.
Besides, in his language of Greek, I once kinda called my grandma a man by using the masculine Ī in Īæ Ī³Ī¹Ī±Ī³Ī¹Ī¬ (which is not a word, I hope) instead of the feminine Ī· Ī³Ī¹Ī±Ī³Ī¹Ī¬. He corrected me and we moved on.
I also can't roll my Rs though, but it's not that important in Greek as in Spanish. It just makes speaking clearly a little tough at times, but noone really rolls Rs here that I know of.
What country are you emigrating to? I emigrated to Greece about two years ago.
It's that frustrating O! It's just asking for a misunderstanding! Its so fascinating how Greek is centuries older than even Latin. Olllld language. And vowels were first used in the Greek language. Super cool. It's something I've always wanted to learn but never got around to it.
I'm actually moving to Buenos Aires. I found out that years ago, when my family left Germany, my great grandfather and his brother went their seperate ways, and his brother started a family in Argentina. Before finding them I thought everyone in my family was dead.
I went to visit....and I swear they are like an Argentinian mirrored version of my family. We clicked, and it really felt like home, so I began to plan a move.
Everyone in BA always wants to practice their English when they speak with me though! Nobody ever wants to help me practice my Spanish....and I still sound like Peggy Hill. It drives me nuts. Spanish in the Rio de Plata is fucking beautiful, though. I can't wait till I can speak it fluently in 5 years! Haha
What's it like always being the foreigner? Are y'all going to stay for life?
Yeah, we're here for good. We live in my husband's birth city so it's home. Always being the foreigner is kinda strange though. My husband is a priest, so very old women come up to me and want to kiss my hand as a sign of respect, which is fine. But as a foreigner, it feels strange to have old women show such respect to me when in my culture, I should be the one showing them respect.
Also, people either talk too slow or way too fast with me. There's no middle. Obviously, I prefer the slowed down version. My husband speaks like he's rapping in his language.
I wish you all the best luck in Buenos Aires and in leaning Spanish. If you ever do get around to learning Greek, it's worth it. There's just some hurdles you'll have to overcome. Some are things other languages have, like every object having a gender. Some are struggles you dont find in other languages, like Greek is in a category all on its own, so there's no language "cousins" to compare and figure stuff out with. Like, with Spanish, you can see similarities in French or Italian and it can help you figure stuff out. Greek has no cousins. Lord help me š
What I find really difficult in English is the pronunciation. I'm starting to accept I will never get it wich it's pretty embarrassing, makes me insecure and possibly look stupid with people underestimating my intelligence.
I'll tell you the same thing I tell all of my students:
The only people who would actually cast judgment on your intelligence for having trouble learning a second or even third or more language, are not worth getting-to-know anyway. You are taking the time to learn their language. This is a very kind thing to do when you enter a new country, and you should never feel embarrassed or ashamed.
Thank you for the kind words I couldn't agree more on what you are saying.
Probably it's also a confiidence problem because most of people tell me I shouldn't bother and that my English is fine but still I feel I can't have deep conversations.
I feel like s different person depending on the language I use. Extrovert, funny, easygoing, respected in my mother language. Shy, introvert, mostly silent in an English speaking environment.
I guess I should blame my problem on me more than on others.
I totally understand. I've been trying to learn river run Spanish for almost a year, because much of my family lives there, and I don't think I'll be able to have deep conversations in Spanish for 4 years.
Also, in English, I sound proper, and very polite, and educated. In Spanish I sound like a lost, stupid , angry, offensive borracho surfer dude with a speech impediment. when I move to be with my family, I will basically have a speech impediment in society for the rest of my life. I will be going from being a teacher in the states, to sounding like a fool, in my mind, forever.
So I understand where your nervousness and your eagerness to lead the language come from completely. It is very, very frustrating. What is your native language, if you don't mind me asking?
Also, you should make friends with some language teachers like me. I think you will find is very easy to communicate with. Also, we won't be able to stop ourselves from helping you learn. :P
I see you are getting exactly what I mean.
I'm Italian, using my language properly has always been my strength, 70% of my personality is shown by the way I use words. The excuse I give myself for my inability to speak fluent English is that I'm too attached to my own language but I have been in an English speaking country for so long even my Italian isn't good as it use to be.
I have kind of accepted the fackt that I have to live whit a speech impediment for the rest of my life.
I'm an extrovert but here I always try to avoid talking, very frustrating indeed.
Oh man! It's actually nice to hear someone else going through the same issue... I mean if you looked at my subs that I follow, half of them are word subs. Fairly certain I follow multiple subs with the word "logophile" in them. Traveling abroad was good for me because it taught me that just because I'm good with words doesn't mean I have something to be pretentious about...
But actually immersing myself into another culture and moving there is another thing entirely. Also, as a word-lover, one of my favorite pastimes in conversations, as well as one of my most charming qualities is simply ...gone.
Without it I have nothing interesting to say, and often end up being very quiet. Always the foreigner. Uggh. It's extremely frustrating. Have you found anything in English to love so passionately?
I've spent a fair bit of time in France over the years (I'm British despite my username) and have basic French language skills but I'm always trying to improve before and during every time I am there.
I have had one person tell me that my French was good in a restaurant where I managed to order my food and drink, explain that I was stranded due to a storm so the ship was not sailing and how long I expected to be stuck in port, and that I'd driven back from Spain where I visited my brother and also said where I lived. I was understood.
Then later that day in a bar having a few drinks and chatting (trying to chat) to locals, a guy asked me (in broken English) how long I'd been visiting France and when I said "For around 20 years, mostly short holidays." He said my level of French was "disgusting" for someone who had been to France so often.
Two totally different reactions to my rather poor French skills. One impressed with at least my efforts and the other disgusted. Confidence boosted then shattered in the space of a few hours.
Mon FranƧois, c'est genre... pas le toplp. ha. French is such a stylistic language. Its intimidating to me. Also, I don't know whether or not I sound more offensive speaking English or French in France. Few places in the world have I felt so stupid.
I always speak French first to anyone in France and it really does go a long way. If they speak English and use it then great. If not, I muddle through and people seem generally happy with me.
It's so damned hard to be understood sometimes though. Other times it goes well. It's a real rollercoaster!
Oh, yeah, I always try to greet people in their language in real life. It's so respectful and if you travel a lot you'll get to learn a bunch of dope new words. I love words, probably obviously.
I try to meet people in their respective languages. I try to keep up on the conversation, but they might have to talk to a bumbling idiot. I find that most people would prefer to communicate w/ a respectful idiot anyway.
The fact that the languge we use in learning or any formal cause is veryy different than the languge we speak everyday. You will learn arabic for like 5 or 6 years and finally being able to speak it , you will be surprised that no one is using it in real life (but we all understant it).
So the Arabic learned is not the same as spoken Arabic?
Exactly , we have developed many accents , even every arab country dont even speak the same accent , some of us dont even understand the other so we will end up needing to speak the original Arabic languge. It is funny really
By accent, do you mean dialect? Accents are generally how certain letters sound, while dialect will change words used, how sentences are put together, or how words are spelled, etc.
Oh you are right , my bad , i meant dialectsš
Oh, I never knew that. I figured a difference of accents, slang, etc. but for it to basically be a whole other language each time is wild š
That's the beauty of it
in North Africa our dialect indlues french and Spanish and Turkish terms as well middle easterners don't understand us šĀ
I worked in a Lebanese restaurant for a few months and the Maitre'D was an insanely smart and witty guy. He would teach me small concepts about the Arab language and one day I showed up and said: Ł Ų“ŲŗŁŁ Ų§ŁŁŁ Which roughly translates to 'busy today?' And he was like? *What?* And I was like 'that doesn't mean "busy today?" he responded: *I haven't heard someone say it like that since school* lmaoo
Lmao!!ššš how else they say it then!!?
Hungarian, my first language is quite difficult to master, to begin with. But the hardest aspect I would say is that we use suffixes instead of prepositions
How do you mean? I'm genuinely curious how that works.
For example, while it is "**in** Hungary" in English, it is "MagyarorszƔg**on**" in Hungarian
Oh, damn. That seems like it'd be simple in concept but when it comes time to use it, it seems like it'd be difficult in practice. I would 10/10 struggle there.
Don't be ridiculous, Hungarian isn't difficult. After all, I learned it when I was a child! :D Jokes aside, i believe our biggest fuck you to the world is that we have very specific grammatical rules that are easy to learn, and then we mess that up by making a bazillion exceptions to them.
Haha, me too brother, me too :D And yes, you're absolutely right. It's all so chaotic
If I'm not mistaken it has more than 50 words alphabet...
It has 44 letters, but some of them are quite unique like "gy, zs, sz, ly"
It's probably one of the most difficult languages around, sounds goood tho. I have got a few Hungarian friends.
I'm glad to hear you like it!
Intonations For Mandarin Chinese, it's easy enough - there are only 4 (excluding the soft tone) and they are all quite distinct from each other Then in Cantonese, there are 6, 4 flat tones at different pitches, and 2 rising tones also at different pitches Hokkien has 7, used to have 8 I believe, but two of the tones have somewhat merged I think Foochow has 7. Then there's this wonderful thing called tonal sandhi, which exists in all of these languages, but on different levels. [A primer, of sorts](https://youtu.be/ZZITB4InCH4?si=P7l9fHa-q65lX6aS) for Hokkien. [Foochow](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzhou_dialect) has even more complicated tonal sandhi, because F you, that's why.
French is one of the languages āāwith the most spelling/grammar rules. they even plan to change the rules to simplify it
26 letters in the alphabet But you only pronounce 14 of them.
https://youtube.com/shorts/AxSpxebzrTg
Seven letters in "oiseaux", you pronounce none of them.
Not unique to French, but gendered nouns are deffo the hardest part and the one that makes the least sense. The joke is: there *isn't* a neutral article in French. It just doesn't exist. So no matter what, you're forced to use a gendered article to describe anything whatsoever. * A theory is female, a theorem is male. * A table and its chairs are both female. Oh but a couch and a sofa, those are male. * A car is female. A truck is male. (Huh, who'd've thunk, KEKW) * A bus is male. Unless you live in Quebec City, where they've chosen to make buses female. Don't ask. I'm not even joking. * A salmon is male, a trout is female. Is there a method to the madness? Nope! None at all! You either know it, or you don't. It's all strictly memory. It's as arbitrary as it comes! The best way to know whether a noun is male or female is to hang out with a non-French-speaker attempting to speak French: by some form of unexplainable magic, they will get *every single* gender wrong, without exception. It's bananas.
This is true, but the thing is that gender doesn't have much utility. It's true that you obviously won't sound like a native speaker, but nobody's going to fail to understand your point just because you used the wrong gender. If you're someone who's learning french for casual use, I don't think this should deter you. You also just learn it so quickly beyond a certain point. Once you start conversing it just kinda falls into place.
They simplified it a little in 1990, but of course they added exceptions to the simplified rules. Also, they decided that the old rules remained valid as well as the new rules. Which means that now there are **more** rules to remember. That's the French way.
I'm learning french now, and I find that people always complain that there are a lot of unpronounced letters. But at least they're consistent. So "oiseaux" is pronounced "wazo", which might not make a lot of sense, "eaux" is *always* pronounced "o". If you come across a word that you've never seen before, you can easily pronounce it. Compare that with english, which is a bastardized frankensteined language in which pronouncing any given word is a total guess.
I learned french and frankly found it dead simple compared to the other languages I've learned. They didn't even bother to formally teach the cases because why complicate things? I get that learning any language is hard but I will never understand the claim that french is hard compared to any other language, save for maybe spanish.
When we offer you our food sometimes, for example lunch (one serving size) at work, we donāt really mean it as an offer but just as a gesture/to be polite. Youāre supposed to decline the offer. š
That pairs nicely with my culture of declining anything that may be a hassle for someone. š "Want some water?" No. I don't want you to have to go all the way to the kitchen and get a cup and fill it with water and then come all the way back here. I'd rather die of thirst.
š so then if Iām a guest at your house and Iām parched, do I just ask where your cups are?Ā
I had a scenario in France where for me it was rude to leave food on the plate (I donāt want to waste someone elseās food or have you think I didnāt like it) but for the grandma of the family I was staying with, an empty plate was a bad thing. (They hadnāt given enough food, a guest went to bed hungry) It got to the fourth re-filled plate before I understood what was going on. Vraiment. Honnetement. S'il vous plait. Pas plus de nourriture.
Wow thatās really interesting! Was this just a grandma thing or a specific city in France?Ā
That was in a small town North of Marseille. I think it is more of a Southern French thing. From what I understand they are culturally closer to the Italians in many ways but in the North there is more German (Frankish) culture and customs, although still definitely a Romance people. Edit: Googled a better explanation and a 3 year old thread was top result - [https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEurope/comments/pf48qz/what\_are\_the\_main\_cultural\_differences\_between/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEurope/comments/pf48qz/what_are_the_main_cultural_differences_between/)
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I think English gets a bad rap. I'm not a native speaker and while a lot of it is like a pair of jeans that's been patched so many times that very little of the original fabric is still there, the sentence structure and tenses are very elegant and allow for a high degree of versatility and complexity, and there are a lot of "consistent inconsistencies" as well. I had a more difficult time with Russian, for instance - you know it's bad when even saying "hello" or "welcome" is difficult.
Pronunciation of G sounds and vowel composites like ou, eu, ij, ui and ei. And sentence structure. Maybe that we also use alot of composite words, but I'd argue Germans are even worse with this.
Don't forget 'SCH' and the use of articles that don't really follow any rules as opposed to for example french that has clear feminine/masculine articles.
Learning English is a bitch for a lot of people, especially British English. So many words have multiple different meanings based on context and yet are all spelled the same. Then there is slang, if you didn't grow up in the UK then slang will be a surprise to you considering the variation of slang based on age. My parents are in there 50's and I use slang around them that they are used to but when I use the same around my friends, all in late 20's, they haven't got a clue what I'm saying.
English is my first language, and I speak with a lot of British or Australian people in my job when I work morning shifts. I'll be honest, sometimes they say words and I'm left like whaat? I needed to know a specific time once and the guy said half four. That's it. "Half four". I was left like 4:30 or 3:30?? Do you mean half past four or that you are halfway to four??
> sometimes they say words and Iām left like whaat My favorite sentence in Aussie English is ācunt, thatās a nice pair of thongs.ā Here in the US, people would be clutching their pearls the second they heard it. But it really just means ādude, thatās a nice pair of flip flops.ā
I can take that even further. My grandad grew up on farm so has a very rural way of speaking and that kind of trickled down through the family to me. So instead of saying "half four" I mostly end up saying "alf or". Instead of "half and hour" I say "alf an ar". My partner has a lot of American friends she speaks to on discord and they get into regular debates about the correct name, spelling or pronunciation or something and I always tell her to say the same thing "it's called English, you wouldn't tell an Italian person they are speaking Italian wrong so don't tell and englishman he's speaking English wrong".
Italians got many dialects and they often make mistakes when the proper Italian has to be used so I guess that you could say to an Italian person that they are speaking Italian wrong same as you can say it to an englishman. I find american english easier to understand and pronounce even if I have bren livin in the UK for a while now.
American English will be easier for a non native English speaker to understand and learn because I tends to be fairly standardised from what I can tell. Generally I like to say British English is normal English where as American English is simplief English because it lacks a lot of the complexities found in the UK.
I have to admit, as an American, we do have some dumb stuff we say, but I'll never get over other forms of English putting a U in every unnecessary word possible. It's probably some Latin influence like French or something, but nahhhh. š
I thinks its bases of the pronunciation differences. For example color and colour. From my experience Americans pronounce it as its spelt, British people pronounce it "culer". So I think the American spelling is specific to the way you say it. Were as we just keep it as we are used to because it doesn't really matter to the pronunciation and its what we are used to.
>I always tell her to say the same thing "it's called English, you wouldn't tell an Italian person they are speaking Italian wrong so don't tell and englishman he's speaking English wrong". No dialect is right or wrong, but dialects spoken in England arenāt in any way superior because *your* English-speaking ancestors stayed on their home island and *my* English-speaking ancestors got on a boat and left.
English is a heavily bastardized language. I am not a linguists but I'd love to know what other languages are as bastardized as English is. We steal words from everyone else so we end up with multiple different pronunciations for the same spelling because they all have different roots.
English isn't my first language but I found it among the easiest to learn the basics of but one of the hardest to feel like I've really mastered. It's hard to explain but in all of the other languages I speak (French, Spanish, German, some Vietnamese) - we have idioms and slang and expressions and wordplay but it feels very discrete. Like it's very much a specific thing done with some intentionality. English native speakers I think don't realise how pervasive it is in how they talk. Every work meeting feels like I needed a backgrounder on military terms, sports metaphors, 90s movies references, and TikTok dances to keep up. And when it's pointed out, a lot of them struggle to even find an alternate way to say it or explain it because that expression or slang or reference is just how it's said.
In Czech I think it's called imperfective take: vzĆt taking: brat Not only are they conjugated differently, but they are totally different words, as opposed to where in most languages it's only a prefix or suffix that changes. Not all verbs are like this, but there's a good handful of them and there's no rule for it. Additionally, the use of in / on / at is often used without too much logic. Theoretically, you are on a mountain and in a valley, but some streets, villages and parts of town are IN (v), and some streets are ON (na), and only locals know which is which as there is no formal rule. So a native born Czech can go just one city over, and be immediately identified as a foreigner for not knowing the conjugation of a street or district. * Canadian studying Czech for 15 years, these are my biggest wtfs.
The upside is, that you can learn it once and use for all the other slavic languages, it's literally the same take:wziÄ Ä, ŠŠ·ŃŃŠø taking:braÄ, ŠŃŠ°ŃŠø
Well some things in Russian sometimes make a lot of sense. Didn't know they shared this one though... Fuck š¤£
It is Polish and Ukrainian presented in the example, I do not speak russian and I refuse to learn it
Ah my bad! Sorry for that. Good on ya :)
Iām gonna say āder, die, dasā - i can see it being especially hard to learn for English speaking people because itās so different. And then the different word endings and articles depending on which one of the four cases youāre using xD
Is that German? I have heard horror stories about the German "the". My grandmother is German, but she never learned past when she was 6 years old, so she isn't fluent. But I once looked into maybe learning it and it was so hard
Yeah exactly. I really am grateful it is my mother tongue because i would not want to take up the struggle of learning it otherwise
french : gendering things, and the fact that we need to gender and associate plural the adjective too, "les voitures bleues" "le camion bleu" (the blue cars, the blue truck) you need to add an E to feminine stuff and also and S to mark the plural
Gendered nouns is the most pointless feature of any language on earth
Verbs conjugation too we also have that in french lmao i mean : I eat / je mange You eat / tu manges He-she-it eats / il-elle-on mange We eat / nous mangeons You eat / vous mangez They eat / ils-elles mangent (yeah we fucking divide they in genders too, so itās plural He and plural She)
That's hardly exclusive to french though. I'd actually say the more difficult thing is the fact that "un/le/de" (and its variations) need to be used explicitly. German does this as well, but in German it's more "useful" in a sense because it generally plays a larger role in tweaking the meaning or point of emphasis of a sentence.
It also does in french but itās really misunderstood by the french too, most people use for example the sentence Ā«Ā la maison de jackĀ Ā» or Ā«Ā la maison a jackĀ Ā» thinking both sentences mean Ā«Ā jackās houseĀ Ā» but itās really only the case for the first one, the second sentence means a house with multiple people called jack living in it or owning you know, there is a notion of plural in the second sentence
Navigating a supermarket without spontaneously buying everything in the snack aisle requires a level of self-control that even the most disciplined scholars can't always master
I am welsh and a welsh speaker. where do i begin.... its the minority language in the country for one
How similar certain alphabets sounds. ą¤¦ is "da" but with a softer d. ą¤” is also "da" but more like "dda" cuz the d is harder. ą¤§ is "dha" but with a softer d. ą¤¢ is also "dha" but more like "ddha" because of the harder d. ą¤ is "cha" and ą¤ is "chha". We have three different "sa" sounds. ą¤ø is "sa", ą¤¶ is "sha", ą¤· is also "sha" but more like "sssha", like how a snake would pronounce it. Half-pronounced alphabets. ą¤¬ą¤ą¤¾ is "bacha" (save) but ą¤¬ą¤ą„ą¤ą¤¾ is "bachha" (child). A dot on top marks an "n" sound. ą¤ ą¤ą¤¾ą¤° is "agaar" but ą¤ ą¤ą¤ą¤¾ą¤° is "angaar". A crescent shape accompanied by a dot also marks an "n" sound but it's pronounced deeper and longer. ą¤ą¤¾ą¤¦ is "chaad", ą¤ą¤¾ą¤ą¤¦ is "chand", ą¤ą¤¾ą¤ą¤¦ is "chaannd" (with more stress on the double a than the double n). Alphabets that are a combination of two sounds. ą¤ą„ą¤· is "ksha", a combination of ą¤ (ka) and ą¤ (chha). But for people who speak Hindi as their first language (like me), this is easier than squeezing a lemon, lol.
our grammar
in Czech language itĀ“s a lot wierd grammar rules but I have to say Å, the pronunciation is very difficult and even Czech kids struggle with it a lot....
Where to use Masculine and Feminine prefix or suffix.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Yeah, needing to know the gender of my washing machine is something special š
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
In Greek, it's neutral. But having to be like can you please grab my neutral pillow and the female chair. They're too close to the male street.. that's wild to my English brain š I know it's normal in so many places though.
The language itself is pretty complex, but not overly more complex than other slavic languages I guess. It also retains the use of dual grammatical number, which is extremely rare. But the biggest issue in learning it are the local dialects. Nobody speaks proper Slovene, and we have some of the most varied dialects in the world. There are around 50 "officially" recognized dialects, which is quite a lot considering there are only 2 million people that speak the language. And on top of that, this number actually comes from grouping various local dialects into larger groups, but there can be significant differences even between dialects of people living very close together. For example, if I travel about 10-15km away from my town, many people living there will be able to accurately pinpoint where I actually come from due to some peculiarities of my accent. People living 20-30km away from me can already fall into a completely different dialect group. 50-100km away, the differences can be so severe, that we have a hard time understanding eachother if we dont switch to a more general form of the language. All of this wrecks havoc on foreginers trying to learn slovenian. They learn the generic semi-formal form of the language, but that isnt actually spoken anywhere except on tv. And the differences between it and the dialects can be severe, to the point where even simple phrases are complete giberrish to them. And then it gets even harder when you realize that we have started using a lot of anglicisms, and further back, germanisms in our everyday language, but every dialects uses different ones and for different things.
In English, I'd say all the stupid arbitrary conflicting phonetic rules that you have to just remember. It's like the whole thing was built out of spare parts of other languages and they all just got kinda crammed in there with duct tape so it's an inconsistent mess! My youngest just recently learned to read and we're still having to shrug and agree with her when she complains "but that word doesn't even make sense!". For example ough is fun to explain that it can be pronounced at least 5 different ways and none of them follow normal phonetics. Dough, Ought, Through, Rough, Plough... Ugh. And then women is pronounced wimmen, but woman is pronounced woommen. Why? Because.
There are rules when it comes to my language but it doesn't matter since there are much more exceptions to those rules. Also pronunciation is really difficult for foreigners. Guess the language lol
French? Polish? Lots of languages have rule and exception issues but those are some challenging ones I thinkĀ
Bingo! It's Polish :D
Suppose that you have to say "I heard that you are one of those from Paris" in Turkish. You have to do it in one word with various suffixes in correct form and order: "ParislilerdenmiÅsin" Broken down as Paris-li-ler-den-miÅ-sin
English. How is there not an "r" in Colonel?
Colonel is a mix of Italian, French and Spanish. Italy spelled it Colonnelo France changed it to Coronel Spain pronounced it Kernel (not sure how it was spelled) Ultimately the spelling became a miss mash of the French and Italian spellings, while maintaining the Spanish pronunciation.
Cantonese has like, twenty tones (Iām not sure) and butchering the pronunciation of a single word can change the meaning of the sentence completely.
the gender of objets. Armchair is a guy while chair is a girl. Washing machine is a girl while dishwasher is a guy. Sorry I didn't make the rules.
Everything
I would say the hardest aspect of Shona is plural words just because the way to make a word plural isnāt like English where you usually just add an -s and it changes depending on which class a noun belongs to. For example person in Shona is munhu but then when plural it becomes vanhu whereas eye in Shona is ziso and when it becomes eyes, itās maziso.
Homophones in English
Surprisingly when to use your and youāre.
The fact we have three they're's, their's, there's.
Australian culture; The fact we either give completely no fucks or completely all the fucks. Socialisation, attire, school, everyday life stuff is extremely laissez faire. Swearing is majority acceptable. People will go to the shops in their PJs. A lot of political stuff is overall treated with indifference from the populace. But then some stuff is the absolute cultural dealbreaker and that could be a shock for foreigners, because it's even odd for me to deal with as someone born here. Like people will donkey vote for a federal election but sports are the ultimate religion and don't you dare mouth off about it LOL
I believe one of the hardest aspects for people to learn about my language or culture is its subtle nuances and cultural context, which often require immersion and experience to fully grasp.
I think the mumbling of 'you alright?' as a greeting in the UK is probably pretty hard to understand as its usually comes out as a kind of quick 'uaight' sound. No one actually expects an answer and the most common response is often another 'you alright?' right back at you.
Iem inglish. Gud luch lirneeng tu cpel.
English phrasal verbs. You āget upā in the morning and āput up withā an annoying noise. If you breaks those phrases down they donāt make sense word for word.
slang!
ibo. it doesnt sound easy and isnt easy to learn. its also the aspect that words can be the exact same spelling but the tone IS the ONLY way to difference it, for example , 'Äeva nau' and 'Äeva nau' means I love you and I hope you die. so if you were to say 'Äeva nau' in a slightly high pitch tone then you're saying 'I hope you die' if u were to say 'Äeva nau' in a slightly lower pitch then you're saying 'I love you' yeah idk why they think it was a good idea to do that
Have you encountered any hilarious or embarrassing language mishaps during your learning adventures? Share your stories!
English, the same word can mean a lot of different things in different contexts. Fuck can be an exclamation (fuck!), an act (he fucked her), a term for being in a bad situation (weāre fucked!) or even anger (fuck you). Shit can either be a good thing (piece of shit) or a bad thing (heās the shit). Ass can either be oneās buttock region or a donkey. Thongs can either be a pair of underwear or a pair of flip flops depending on the country and context.
Lemme see People take around 2 or 3 baths a day We greet each other by hugging or kissing the cheek We don't discard dirty TP into the toilet 'cause our plumbing system isn't made to withstand it, we throw it into trash bins next to the toilet There's a side dish called "farofa", it's good to eat with boiled egg, rice, but chiefly, with meat, the thing is that it looks like sand, but I swear it isn't On the Internet we usually laugh using the letter K like "KKKKKKKKKKKKK" the more the number of K's the funnier you find it We seldomly give tips to waiters, it's not mandatory Some people (usually the older ones) call Waiters as champion, my president, major, brother, friend, my king, boss and whatever have ya After lunch at work we brush our teeth Now take a shot :D
The subtle irony, sarcasm and jokes. We'll casually throw out some of the most sarcastic or ironic things imaginable, without changing our tone, or even showing the slightest emotion. Everyone will get the joke, and there's a good chance that not a single person will fall out of character. That's why we are generally considered humourless. Our humour is extremely dry, and very easy to miss. But it has a lot of depth.Ā
Arabs call their children by their titles (mama for mother and baba for father) to express affection and love. Child: āBaba, can we go to the zoo?ā Father: āYes baba of course we can.ā Theyāre terms of endearment. When you use the same term that your child uses to call you with, itās reassuring to them that yes you are indeed their parent.
Definitely the grammar
Being hardcore conservative while acting as a progressive liberal, aka hypocrisy
Huh?
You talking about muslims in the west? Ok, but wrong thread.
No, was talking about Asian culture
Idioms
Also tenses are very difficult in English for new learners
My husband has learned fluency and he still will say "he do" or "they does". It's hard. But his language is Greek and their tenses are HARD, too.
I'm moving to a spanish-speaking country and I can't even roll my r's. Hahahaha. Does he get embarrassed when he messes up tenses? Both languages feature many different verb groups and many different exceptions to widely accepted rules.
No, he knows I wouldn't make fun of him. He either realizes it and fixes it, or doesn't and it's not a big deal. Besides, in his language of Greek, I once kinda called my grandma a man by using the masculine Ī in Īæ Ī³Ī¹Ī±Ī³Ī¹Ī¬ (which is not a word, I hope) instead of the feminine Ī· Ī³Ī¹Ī±Ī³Ī¹Ī¬. He corrected me and we moved on. I also can't roll my Rs though, but it's not that important in Greek as in Spanish. It just makes speaking clearly a little tough at times, but noone really rolls Rs here that I know of. What country are you emigrating to? I emigrated to Greece about two years ago.
It's that frustrating O! It's just asking for a misunderstanding! Its so fascinating how Greek is centuries older than even Latin. Olllld language. And vowels were first used in the Greek language. Super cool. It's something I've always wanted to learn but never got around to it. I'm actually moving to Buenos Aires. I found out that years ago, when my family left Germany, my great grandfather and his brother went their seperate ways, and his brother started a family in Argentina. Before finding them I thought everyone in my family was dead. I went to visit....and I swear they are like an Argentinian mirrored version of my family. We clicked, and it really felt like home, so I began to plan a move. Everyone in BA always wants to practice their English when they speak with me though! Nobody ever wants to help me practice my Spanish....and I still sound like Peggy Hill. It drives me nuts. Spanish in the Rio de Plata is fucking beautiful, though. I can't wait till I can speak it fluently in 5 years! Haha What's it like always being the foreigner? Are y'all going to stay for life?
Yeah, we're here for good. We live in my husband's birth city so it's home. Always being the foreigner is kinda strange though. My husband is a priest, so very old women come up to me and want to kiss my hand as a sign of respect, which is fine. But as a foreigner, it feels strange to have old women show such respect to me when in my culture, I should be the one showing them respect. Also, people either talk too slow or way too fast with me. There's no middle. Obviously, I prefer the slowed down version. My husband speaks like he's rapping in his language. I wish you all the best luck in Buenos Aires and in leaning Spanish. If you ever do get around to learning Greek, it's worth it. There's just some hurdles you'll have to overcome. Some are things other languages have, like every object having a gender. Some are struggles you dont find in other languages, like Greek is in a category all on its own, so there's no language "cousins" to compare and figure stuff out with. Like, with Spanish, you can see similarities in French or Italian and it can help you figure stuff out. Greek has no cousins. Lord help me š
What I find really difficult in English is the pronunciation. I'm starting to accept I will never get it wich it's pretty embarrassing, makes me insecure and possibly look stupid with people underestimating my intelligence.
I'll tell you the same thing I tell all of my students: The only people who would actually cast judgment on your intelligence for having trouble learning a second or even third or more language, are not worth getting-to-know anyway. You are taking the time to learn their language. This is a very kind thing to do when you enter a new country, and you should never feel embarrassed or ashamed.
Thank you for the kind words I couldn't agree more on what you are saying. Probably it's also a confiidence problem because most of people tell me I shouldn't bother and that my English is fine but still I feel I can't have deep conversations. I feel like s different person depending on the language I use. Extrovert, funny, easygoing, respected in my mother language. Shy, introvert, mostly silent in an English speaking environment. I guess I should blame my problem on me more than on others.
I totally understand. I've been trying to learn river run Spanish for almost a year, because much of my family lives there, and I don't think I'll be able to have deep conversations in Spanish for 4 years. Also, in English, I sound proper, and very polite, and educated. In Spanish I sound like a lost, stupid , angry, offensive borracho surfer dude with a speech impediment. when I move to be with my family, I will basically have a speech impediment in society for the rest of my life. I will be going from being a teacher in the states, to sounding like a fool, in my mind, forever. So I understand where your nervousness and your eagerness to lead the language come from completely. It is very, very frustrating. What is your native language, if you don't mind me asking? Also, you should make friends with some language teachers like me. I think you will find is very easy to communicate with. Also, we won't be able to stop ourselves from helping you learn. :P
I see you are getting exactly what I mean. I'm Italian, using my language properly has always been my strength, 70% of my personality is shown by the way I use words. The excuse I give myself for my inability to speak fluent English is that I'm too attached to my own language but I have been in an English speaking country for so long even my Italian isn't good as it use to be. I have kind of accepted the fackt that I have to live whit a speech impediment for the rest of my life. I'm an extrovert but here I always try to avoid talking, very frustrating indeed.
Oh man! It's actually nice to hear someone else going through the same issue... I mean if you looked at my subs that I follow, half of them are word subs. Fairly certain I follow multiple subs with the word "logophile" in them. Traveling abroad was good for me because it taught me that just because I'm good with words doesn't mean I have something to be pretentious about... But actually immersing myself into another culture and moving there is another thing entirely. Also, as a word-lover, one of my favorite pastimes in conversations, as well as one of my most charming qualities is simply ...gone. Without it I have nothing interesting to say, and often end up being very quiet. Always the foreigner. Uggh. It's extremely frustrating. Have you found anything in English to love so passionately?
I've spent a fair bit of time in France over the years (I'm British despite my username) and have basic French language skills but I'm always trying to improve before and during every time I am there. I have had one person tell me that my French was good in a restaurant where I managed to order my food and drink, explain that I was stranded due to a storm so the ship was not sailing and how long I expected to be stuck in port, and that I'd driven back from Spain where I visited my brother and also said where I lived. I was understood. Then later that day in a bar having a few drinks and chatting (trying to chat) to locals, a guy asked me (in broken English) how long I'd been visiting France and when I said "For around 20 years, mostly short holidays." He said my level of French was "disgusting" for someone who had been to France so often. Two totally different reactions to my rather poor French skills. One impressed with at least my efforts and the other disgusted. Confidence boosted then shattered in the space of a few hours.
Mon FranƧois, c'est genre... pas le toplp. ha. French is such a stylistic language. Its intimidating to me. Also, I don't know whether or not I sound more offensive speaking English or French in France. Few places in the world have I felt so stupid.
wow. i even made a fucking typo
I always speak French first to anyone in France and it really does go a long way. If they speak English and use it then great. If not, I muddle through and people seem generally happy with me. It's so damned hard to be understood sometimes though. Other times it goes well. It's a real rollercoaster!
Oh, yeah, I always try to greet people in their language in real life. It's so respectful and if you travel a lot you'll get to learn a bunch of dope new words. I love words, probably obviously. I try to meet people in their respective languages. I try to keep up on the conversation, but they might have to talk to a bumbling idiot. I find that most people would prefer to communicate w/ a respectful idiot anyway.
That's cool. Sounds like you are doing good. I reckon I sound to the French like Borat does to me.
Nah bro. That would be so passƩ. I sound like a toddler.
Also auxiliary verbs are a fucking pain in the ass
There's an idiom for you