"Sorry for my bad english!"

[crashdome 3]

Personally, I'm diggin the Chinese language... I took one semester so far and I like to study things that are completely different. I must say it is extremely difficult for me to learn. Others may do better than I, but I don't care.. For me, it's like the ultimate puzzle. It's also refreshing to understand that there is more than one way to develop anything.. languages included.

[4 IN 1 0]

Personally, I'm diggin the Chinese language... I took one semester so far and I like to study things that are completely different. I must say it is extremely difficult for me to learn. Others may do better than I, but I don't care.. For me, it's like the ultimate puzzle. It's also refreshing to understand that there is more than one way to develop anything.. languages included.

even living in china ourself, we still cant understand them 100%

[blackdog~ 0]

Japanese has two character sets with something like 28 characters each; Katakana which is used when the word is derived from Engrish (ie Hamburger: ハHAンNバBAァwAガ) and Hiragana which is used for Japanese words (ie Ohayoo Gozaimasu: おOはHAよYOぉwO ごGOざZAいIまMAすSU).

Kanji is different - it is largerly derived from Chinese (they are the symbols). I think there are like 17,000 of them. Nihongo being one of them;

[Daddl 10]

Hehe, started learning english when I got my old Atari 800XL ages ago. Trying to figure out the old Infocom 'Hitchhikers's Guide to the Galaxy' text adventure helped me quite a bit getting some extra sleep (without affecting my scores) when I started to learn the language at school later. Nowadays I communicate more in english than german (as far as written communication is concerned), and half my library is in that language, too.

It's always good having a strong motivation when trying to learn a language (be it a game, books, movies, internet forums, whatever). I never learned proper french - not even with 9 years of studying it in school. But I learned to speak fluent spanish (although with a strong andalusian accent and a 'not so formal' vocabulary) within a year when I went there to study.

[shinRaiden 0]

The official mandatory set in Japanese is about 1800. Add in the newspaper standard and names for another ~2500. Extended literary, technical, and historical runs up to about another ~12-15k depending on your resource. Morohashi's DaiKanWa Jiten supposedly has 20~30k, and it's the esoteric Chinese ones that supposedly reach 50k. Add in the Korean Hangul and Vietnamese variations and the paeleo-hanzi turtle-bone cracks and that adds up to a discombobulating amount of characters.

[SpeedyDonkey 0]

People here say that Finnish is a hard language to learn.

I've spoken to immigrants who’ve come to Finland and been there for a couple of months, and then moved to Sweden. Their experience has been that Finnish was much easier to learn, mainly because you usually pronounce the word the way it is written, on the contrary to Swedish witch apparently made less sense to them.

[llauma 0]

Sure Finnish is logical compaired to Swedish which is quite unlogical (or should we just say terribly bad) when it comes to spelling, ie. some sounds can be spelled in several different ways due to their foreign origin. The difference though is that Swedish resembles English much more than Finnish does which is basicly an alien language in Western Europe. So people who knows English or any Indo-European language for that matter would propably find swedish easier to learn.

I agree that it might take longer for people to learn to pronounce the words right 'cause that can't be learned by some simple rules but just by listening to swedish being spoken by those who speaks it fluently.

The question is when do you know a language, when you speak it fluently or when you understand it? The Swedish Queen Silvia has lived in Sweden for 30 years but still doesn't speak Swedish fluently (ie. pronounce the words right) but she sure does know swedish. The question is also when can you start calling it an accent and when does it cease to be lack of knowledge of the language.

Perhaps you know a language when you can write and spell the words right but that would mean that those who can't write doesn't know Swedish.

[Ares1978 0]

People here say that Finnish is a hard language to learn.

I've spoken to immigrants who’ve come to Finland and been there for a couple of months, and then moved to Sweden. Their experience has been that Finnish was much easier to learn, mainly because you usually pronounce the word the way it is written, on the contrary to Swedish witch apparently made less sense to them.

Sure, it eliminates some problems.

Written Finnish was basically made from scratch. They heard the words and wrote them down almost phonetically. That's why you don't have to guess how to pronounce a Finnish word.

[BlackScorpion 0]

Written Finnish was basically made from scratch.

A priest-learnt farmer who combined Latin, German, French e.g. and made up a whole new (first) written form of language...

Yep, made from scratch...

[Ares1978 0]

Written Finnish was basically made from scratch.

A priest-learnt farmer who combined Latin, German, French e.g. and made up a whole new (first) written form of language...  

Yep, made from scratch...

I meant there wasn't anything to work with when they started. Everything had to be borrowed from completely unrelated languages.

[BlackScorpion 0]

I know, just what I meant!

[-MP-OFP-CRICON 0]

Play OFP and other games is a good way to learn english or any other languages.

[4 IN 1 0]

CRICON @ May 03 2005,05:30)]Play OFP and other games is a good way to learn english or any other languages.

well english yes, while others not

edit: as a side notes, OFP sure as hell improved my speed typing skill

[Mr_Tea 0]

well english yes, while others not

True, I played fdf mod and had no idea what the guys are talking about. I have no idea of finish language.