"Sorry for my bad english!"

[llauma 0]

Swedish is much like English. They both lack clear rules which decides how words are pronounced/spelled. The reason is that both have borrowed lots of words from other languages but often kept the original spelling. The lack of rules doesn't make the language hard to learn, just bad.

If you wanna learn a hard language try Finnish. It has some clear rules (propably the clearest there is) on how words are pronounced/spelled but the structure of the language is totally different from other western languages. The main difference is the rich use of suffixes for nouns and all the verb forms. Indo-european languages are developing towards the use of prepositions and word order to express the grammatical relation. In finnish you can switch the order of the words in a sentence but the sentence will still mean the same thing. The english sentence 'Adam loves Eve' gets a new meaning if you switch Adam and Eve.

Here's an example of the different cases for Talo (house). English has just two cases (nominative and genitive) while finnish has 15.

Talo - House

Talon - Of a house

Talona - As a house

Taloa - House (as an object)

Taloksi - To a house

Talossa - In a house

Talosta - From a house

Taloon - Into a house

Talolla - At a house

Talolta - From a house

Talolle - To the house

Talotta - Without a house

Taloineni - With my house

+Two more cases.

 

Often one single word requires a whole sentence if you want to translate it. An example is the word 'Talossanikin' which means 'in my house, too'. The same suffix thing goes for verbs like 'kirjoitettuasi' which means 'after you had written'. All nouns and verbs have these suffixes.

It wouldn't be that hard if all words had the same suffixes but to make it harder there's several variations. A thing called vowel harmony decides the form of suffix. A, O or U aren't used in words that contains Ä, Ö or Y and vice versa. E and I are neutral etc. etc. etc. etc.

Does it sound complicated? I haven't even started and I wont.

[ozanzac 0]

This thread was a bit of a suprise for me!

I didn't realise that so many of you aren't native speakers of english, much due to the clarity, and easy to read nature of your posts!

I must congratulate you all then!...because I've never bothered studying a secondary language to the extent where I can communicate clearly with native speakers of it.

Sure, there were the mandatory Language Other Than English classes throughout school. (I studied Indonesian and Italian)..But with no opportunity to use them regularly, I'm left with just basic greetings, farewells, and numbers....."Tourist basics", as I call it.

[-MP-OFP-CRICON 0]

Quote[/b] ]

[shinRaiden 0]

... which is perfectly understandable from Japanese learning with 'no' understanding of Chinese, except the nuances with the Beijing simplified characters...

[redface 1]

Agreed.

I was trying to learn German since I was three. A complete failure. I learned English within half a year

[]

since it's own rules determines the progress.

- I have been trying to learn German since I was three OR I tried to learn German when I was three

- its own rules (it's = it is)

but I don't know what your maternal language is ... mine is Dutch.

this one is from Mexico:

[der bastler 0]

In Europe you only have to travel 100 miles (ok, that was a generalization) in any direction to find another language, giving you a lot of incentive to learn others and plenty of opportunity to use it.

That's right. Travel a 100 miles in Germany and they speak a complete different flavour of German. Op platt, Bavarian, die Hesse komme or someone asks you Gänsefleisch...

the biggest problem for me is trying to avoid using too many i´s & me´s, that makes it sometimes quite hard to not to sound selfish and build a correct sentence.

For me it's to avoid too many "the"s. Or (to make fun of German th pronunciation) to avoid too many "ze"s.

Quote[/b] ]but im still learning, mainly from bi-forums.

Right, plus --in my case-- Pratchett and Dark Age...

Very helpful links:

http://dict.leo.org/

http://dico.leo.org/

[quicksand 0]

Well,I must be part of the few persons who learned an overwhelming majority of the English I curently grasp from the internet.It all started an year and a half ago when I've got hooked up with 24 h cable internet.

I aproached my goal of properly handling this language in a very serious manner.I used to lurk 8-9 hours a day on various sites ranging from forums to one of the most helpful encounter I've stumbled upon:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

This forum helpled me a lot in developing my writing and grammer skill so for that I must thank you all for the intresting discussions we had throughout my life span on this forum.

The ultimate test came for me while I was in Ireland a couple of months ago.After I broke the ice with some of the students in a collage campus where I was staying at,it was incredibly easy to chat with them all though I had little to no experience in face to face verbal communication,the satisfaction feeling I've had was trully imense when people started asking if I was a native.

English was without a doubt the easiest language I've evered learned and this comes from a persons who speaks fluently(at least I belive to) Romanian,Turkish,French and Spanish.

[der bastler 0]

Meet Alfons Derra, Alien Leader (verbatim translation of German tourist guide) talking his makeshift English:

http://www.fsr-shop.de/mp3....gen.mp3

Good ol' Frühstyxradio (breakphast radio) comedy...

[Jezz 0]

I like the fact english is unoffical internationly language, allows me to talk to lots of different people who i would never be able to speak to otherwise, i tried to learn french at school but faild, compared to english i found it quite complex male and female words

I got to go with my friend kenji to japan last year whilst he was visiting his family before he decided to stay there. He managed to learn how to speak pretty much fluent japanese in 2 mounths . Though now his english is now more like engrish especially at about 3 in the morning when speaking to him on msn, anyone that reads what i post in the rhs forum for him will know what i mean

[hardrock 1]

Right, plus --in my case-- Pratchett and Dark Age...

I like you, me too

I also learned a big part of my current English knowledge through OFP. Since I started visiting these forums and reading lots of English tutorials and documentations about different topics in OFP (partially also other programming languages) my language skills improved a lot! When I read some of my first posts on these forums, I often wonder about some (now obvious) mistakes and errors that I made, presumably I'll do the same in a few years with this post

http://dict.leo.org really is a good source for word translations, you can find translations (I think English - French - German) of many words, even technical terms. And the more often you use these terms, the more you get used to it.

Due to visiting these forums regularly I absolutely lost any worries about English tasks in school, so thanks guys

[WhoCares 0]

Learning english as german has its special pitfalls, especially if you are from Bavaria (Note: I am not from Bavaria but moved there ~6.5 years ago; Balschoiw is going to beat me for this one ).

English lesson on a bavarian school:

Quote[/b] ]Zu I soagns Ei, zu Ei soagns Eck, zu Eck soagns koana und zu koana soagns nobody.

(difficult to make it sound right, especially if non-german/bavarians are supposed to read it; it is messing with a verbatim comparison english-bavarian...)

 

[llauma 0]

Quote[/b] ]English                  German                French                Finnish                 Swedish

Singular

1  I see                 ich sehe                je vois                (minä) nään           jag ser

2  you see             du siehst               tu vois                (sinä) näät            du ser

3  he sees             er sieht                 il voit                 (hän) näkee           han ser

Plural

1  we see               wir sehen              nous voyons        (me) näetään         vi ser

2  you see             ihr seht                 vous voyez           (te) näettä            ni ser

3  they see            sie sehen              ils voient              (he) näkevät         de ser

The finnish pronouns are sometimes dropped out.. Like in the question 'Näettekö tulevaisuuteni?' which means 'Do you(plural) see your futures?' and 'Näin tulevaisuuteen' means 'I saw into the future'.

Perhaps I've done a mistake with some suffix and soon a real finn comes to correct me but I blame the fact that I have never lived in Finland and I speak it less each year that goes by.

As you see swedish has the same simplicity as english does.

[soul_assassin 1750]

Quote[/b] ]English German French Finnish Swedish Russian

Singular

1 I see ich sehe je vois (minä) nään jag ser я вижу

2 you see du siehst tu vois (sinä) näät du ser ты видиш

3 he sees er sieht il voit (hän) näkee han ser он видит

Plural

1 we see wir sehen nous voyons (me) näetään vi ser мы видим

2 you see ihr seht vous voyez (te) näettä ni ser вы видите

3 they see sie sehen ils voient (he) näkevät de ser они видят

as you can see russian uses cyrilic alphabet which makes it hard to learn for people used to the latin alphabet, and the language itself makes a big stress on word endings, which is the place where peole who learn to speak russian make mistakes.

EDIT// My bad about the quote forgot that the forum doesnt support cyrillic.

[KingN 251]

Quote[/b] ]English                  German                French                Finnish                 Swedish

Singular

1  I see                 ich sehe                je vois                (minä) näen           jag ser

2  you see             du siehst               tu vois                (sinä) näet            du ser

3  he sees             er sieht                 il voit                 (hän) näkee           han ser

Plural

1  we see               wir sehen              nous voyons        (me) nähdään/näemme         vi ser

2  you see             ihr seht                 vous voyez           (te) näette            ni ser

3  they see            sie sehen              ils voient              (he) näkevät         de ser

Corrected the finnish part.

[llauma 0]

Corrected the finnish part.

Thanx.. Näemme is propably the correct one.

[KingN 251]

Corrected the finnish part.

Thanx.. Näemme is propably the correct one.

I believe actually both are correct but "näemme" is used in more formal occasions. "nähdään" is also correct but it's used more often in spoken language because it's easier to say "nähdään" than "näemme".

[llauma 0]

Corrected the finnish part.

Thanx.. Näemme is propably the correct one.

I believe actually both are correct but "näemme" is used in more formal occasions. "nähdään" is also correct but it's used more often in spoken language because it's easier to say "nähdään" than "näemme".

Nähdään is not present tense. Sure it might be used in the spoken language but it's not correct..

..but what the #$*! do I know?

[BlackScorpion 0]

"Nähdään" is a passive form. Like... "Kivi nähdään" means "The rock is seen". The ones who sees the rock isn't mentioned.

And LLauma... Your "Talo" -example... The 2nd last, was it... Taloineni - With my houses.

I was kinda suprised that no-body mentioned Finnish before the 4th page.

I, myself, am (partially) pentalingual. I study/speak/understand Finnish and English (fluently), French, Swedish and German.

Yes, I'm a Finn.

[llauma 0]

Thanks for the info.. Finnish is truly difficult. I still speak it fluently with a pohjanmaa accent but my vocabulary is getting smaller.

I just know three languages but I know them fluently. Perhaps I'll try to learn some other ones in the future. Chinese would be interesting.

[Peanut 0]

This is a cool thread, a lot of people are coming from different countries than I actually thought

I started to learn english in fifth grade but knew a little before from my sister, family friends living in NZ and the infamous Cartoon Network (actually it was more fun to watch the cartoons on english than the dubbed german version).

Never had serious problems although I don't know any of the grammatic rules. I do it by feeling but manage to get at least 70% right in exercises.

I also had 4 years of french in school but failed miserably. We always had to learn the rules and never actually spoke it.

Maybe I will pick it up again in the future.

As long as that I have to stick to this sentence when I'm in France

Une biére, s'il vous plaît

and to this when I'm in Spain =D

Un cervéza, por favor.

Thats all you need ;)

[iNeo 0]

Finnish doesn't sound very beautiful but the way it's built is impressive. It'd be cool to learn it but most of all I want to learn Icelandic or Old Norse (Scandinavian), pretty much the same since Icelandic has barely changed the last millennium; and I'm going to start this autumn. Been reading some rune stones and it's not that hard to understand what's written, many words aren't that different.

But there's quite a difference between reading and being able to write on your own of course..

[iNeo 0]

I think tv and movies have meant pretty much for me when learning English (passively); IMO it's a damn good thing they don't dub much in Scandinavia, just stuff for the kids which at cinema usually comes in 2 versions, dubbed and subtitled. I think they dub pretty much in Germany, France etc? It doesn't just look stupid, you miss a lot of easy and fun learning.

[hardrock 1]

As long as that I have to stick to this sentence when I'm in France

Une biére, s'il vous plaît

and to this when I'm in Spain =D

Un cervéza, por favor.

Thats all you need ;)

Are you from Bavaria by chance?

[somebloke 0]

Ok, Ok, just to settle it.

What do you call someone who can speak 2 languages? Bi-linugal

What do you call someone who can speak 3 languages? tri-lingual

What do you call someone who speaks one language? English

[BlackScorpion 0]

actually it was more fun to watch the cartoons on english than the dubbed german version

I can believe that!