"Imagine how different politics would be if debates were conducted in Tariana, an Amazonian language in which it is a grammatical error to report something without saying how you found it out."
Very appropriate right now, though the focus of the New Scientist interview the quote above comes from is how losing a language is like losing a world. If you have an interest in languages, it is well worth the read. As an aside, my two Finnish readers will be interested to read what I have oft been told:
"What's the most difficult language you've come across?"
"It took me 10 years to get the grammar of Tariana. Of course, Finnish is probably harder."
Posted by Joe at January 29, 2004 09:21 AMOh, this is a wonderful piece, Mr. Bloggs. Can't praise you enough. Thank you.
Posted by: martin at January 29, 2004 04:54 PMAhh you're so kind and encouraging. You're welcome.
Posted by: Joe at January 29, 2004 05:32 PMWell, many foreigners have managed to learn Finnish, so it can't be impossible. Even I speak it pretty fluently, so...
Finnish is hard, I know. Spelling is easy, though. But because the language doesn't have a relation with Latin, the vocabulary can be hard to learn (no familiar words to get hold of - or not many in any case). Grammar is pretty bad. Lots of rules and cases, and it uses postfixes rather than prefixes which means that the body of the word is affected unlike in English. Example (post/prefix in parentheses):
(In) the house
Talo(ssa)
(By) the house
Talo(lla)
(To) the house
Talo(on)
The problem is, sometimes (often) the body changes as well. On the other hand, we don't have the masculine/feminine/neutral division, so no wondering if you need "a" or "an" etc., and as anyone who has studied languages like Spanish or German, this can get a bit complicated.
But what about Japan? I've understood it's not exactly the easiest language to learn...
In some respects a walk in the park. No cases, no articles, no number ...
But don't even think about status and verb inflections. Forget it! You're a gaijin; be happy if you can make yourself understood at the level of a three-year-old.
And then there's the kinda sorta semitonal accent and the *length* for goodness sake, of the sound, for which task speakers of English just don't have the hardware, and have to emulate in software, which we all know is slower and prone to bugginess.
Posted by: DJ at February 2, 2004 11:20 PMFinnish looks darned difficult. I'm glad the Finnish weren't marauding invaders in the colonialist fashion - imagine if it'd had been the world's lingua franca. :+(
Japanese is the easiest language in the world to pronounce. Seriously. Italian sounds positively difficult in comparison. Grammar is not fantastically difficult. What is VERY difficult is reading. Too many ways of reading the same character - which are all Chinese anyway. And if you can't read, then you never get better. :+(
Posted by: Joe at February 2, 2004 11:23 PMPosted 3 minutes apart and we seem to have contradicted each other. :+/
The length of sounds can be a problem, but you just have to be careful - I very often am not and really do mess up frequently:
Aunty or elder woman: obachan
Grandmother: obaachan
The accent? Come on DJ. When in doubt - flatten out. That's my policy anyway. :+)
Posted by: Joe at February 2, 2004 11:32 PMYes, always do. But there are times then when the fam look at me and say '????'
Posted by: DJ at February 2, 2004 11:38 PMI don't know about family - I think they've got used to having a foreigner in their midst - but I definitely still get those looks when I'm interpreting. :+/
Posted by: Joe at February 3, 2004 03:27 PM