SilentSeeker said:
Languages are so interesting haha
I'm a native English speaker myself, and it's definitely a funny language. There's a Youtube video i found:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=A8zWWp0akUU
It was interesting haha
I've heard people say English is one of the hardest languages to learn. Because i grew up with it, i can obviously speak it well enough. But in school, when it came to language arts and English classes, the technical stuff got me. I still don't know what a gerund is (or even if i spelled it correctly). English is crazy.
But learning other languages is fun. I've been studying Romanian for a while, and recently became interested in Irish. I like to look up the alphabets for other languages and their grammar rules. I believe it's easier to learn a language if i know how it works, you know?
Like, in English, the adjective is usually placed before the noun. But in Romanian, the adjective is placed AFTER the noun. It applies to possessives too. "He is my father" in Romanian is "El este tatăl meu." "El" is "he", "este" is "is", "tatăl" is "father", and "meu" is "my".
Languages are so fun haha
Sorry if my post here is kinda off topic. Everyone seemed to be talking about English mostly, but i got excited when i saw there was a language thread and hoped maybe other languages would be discussed too haha
Lol, I payed more attention to the changes in accent than to the subject of the video itself haha xD.
But that's true, I also used to struggle with these different "ough" sounds in the beginning. This is a consequence of starting to learn a new language by reading and writing, rather than by listening. With listening only, the way words are written don't get in the way of our learning as much.
This reminded me of a fun English pronunciation poem:
http://ncf.idallen.com/english.html
As for English being one of the hardest languages to learn, I disagree. To cite an example, look at how many different forms there are of the verb "to go" in English:
Go, goes, going, went, gone.
Now look at how many forms of the same verb there are in Portuguese, which is my native language:
Ir, irem, irmos, vá, vou, vais, vai, vamos, vão, indo, fui, fostes, foi, fomos, foram, ia, ias, íamos, iam, fosse, fôssemos, fossem, irei, irás, irá, iremos, irão, for, formos, forem, iria, irias, iríamos, iriam, ido.
These change according to pronoun, tense, etc. English in my opinion is much more simple haha. That's probably why it's so popular.
A gerund, by the way, would be when you describe an action that's continually happening:
"I am studying"
"She is showering"
Which is often described simply as "present continuous".
Interesting about Romanian. It sounds a bit like Portuguese. The masculine possessive for "my" in Portuguese is also "meu". Only we don't use possessives in the end of a sentence: "Ele é o meu pai" (He is my father)
And it's not off topic
Like the title says, it's a language topic, so if a certain language hasn't been talked about here yet, it can always be included.