Yes, they have some interesting formations. The new word formation system is one of my favourites: while rén means “person,” rénren means somthing like “each individual”—but also “everybody.” In a similar way, tiān means day, while tiāntian means “each day.”
Repeating verbs is also possible, so while kàn means “to look,” kànkan means “to peek.” You can also make adverbs by doubling adjectives and adding the particle –de. Thus, kuài (“fast”) becomes kuàikuàide (“in a fast way, quickly”).
You can also make words by combining opposites. Purchase + sell becomes commerce, mǎimài. Long + short becomes length: chángduǎn.
Oh, I see. Then Chinese is similar to Japanese in the way it builds words:
Hito=person -> Hitobito=persons Baibai= trade, commerce (sell+buy) Majide=seriously (serious + particle de)
(Japanese usually uses the particle ni to turn adjectives into adverbs, though)
It’s interesting to see how similar Japanese and Chinese are in constructing new words, considering the fact that their grammar are completely different. But then of course that is due to the influence of Chinese characters used in Japanese.
By the way, many textbooks on Japanese overlook the fact that tones are used in that language as well. You will get by fine without bothering, but you might end up saying things like “it’s raining candy!” (amé=candy, àme=rain).
There are regional variants though, so you might confuse things if you, for instance, live around Osaka and study standard Japanese.
I took French for a long time, since I’m from Canada, but I still can’t speak it! Sure I can read 80% of it and write some, but speaking or hearing is next to impossible. It’s really strange. I think it’s just because I never really put in the effort to learn it.
One of the languages I would like to learn though is Japanese. I’ve read some of the basics online, and despite what people say I find it very natural and intuitive. I find it very humourous that for pretty much any technical word, it’s all English with butchered pronouciation. In any case, it should only make it that much easier to learn. My biggest problem now is finding someone to practice with, like a pen pal. Pronouciation shouldn’t be an issue, I’m uncannily good at that. I rarely get a foreign name wrong, and often much to the person’s suprise.
I know what you mean. Because of where I live I hear a lot of French, so I can understand a good deal of spoken and written french, but speaking myself it has always been tough.
Here’s an update on the mysterious kanji cup. (a cUpdate )
There’s a headline before those 10 lines, and it looks something like this:
Can someone translate it?
On it’s own it would mean ten but in this context I think you have to read it in it’s kun-reading, so it goes something-something-“too”-something … I don’t recognise the other kanji though…
You can look for it by the number of strokes. If you’re more experienced with Chinese (definately not even near my case ), you can look for it by root and phonetic/semantic particles. The fact is that kanji, far from being isolated drawings as people tend to believe, have a very logical system of creation in which “radical” drawings are appended with particles that change it’s meaning and it’s pronounce in a rather logical way. But yeah. Number and quality of strokes is the easy way of finding stuff out.
Hungarian - as far as I remember (or feel ) has nothing in common with the Slavonic languages.
Slavonic languages are: Czech, Polish, Russian, Slovakian, Croatian, Bulgarian, Ukrainian, Belarussian (and many more…)
I do not know whether Polish (“Polnisch” is a German word) and Russian sound cool - some peeople find it quite strange and difficult. It’s normal, I do understand.
There is one thing that sometimes annoys me - many people who visit Poland think that Polish and Russian is exactly the same language, but they are mistaken. Some weeks ago one foreign tourist asked ma a question (in Russian) and was really shocked when I told him in English that I do not speak Russian and I hadn’t understood anything.
Polish is quite similar to Slovakian, but this similarity can be very dangerous. For example: “Jaki piękny zachód” means in Polish “What a beautiful sunset” and it could be a nice beginning of a conversation between two lovers. But in Slovakian it means moreless like “What a beautiful WC”. So… There are many more examples.
What about Czech language? Well, it is very similar to Slovakian (as the history proved it some years ago…), but I think Czech language has somthing in common with German - indirectly.
Nah, it was quite interesting
I just came back from my eastern europe trip. And yeah, I learned some words and noticed both similiarities and differences between czech and croatian. For exmaple “dobry den” (good day ->hello) seems to be quite widespread, while “thank your” was “dekuji” in czech and “vala” in croatian.
Also, the pronounciation often reminds me of a southern-german dialect like bavarian or my own “schwäbisch” (svabian?). Sometimes even to the point that I find it hard to pronounce it that way, cause it sounds so “schwäbisch” and therefore completely wrong…
For example the word “post” (or posta) got such a soft “s” in it.
The example you gave how the polish and slovakian can differ is great
And yes, I really like polish. Especially when old people speak it, don´t really know why. Although girls speaking polish is also nice
I am from Poland, so I can tell, that Hungarian has nothing in common with Slavonic languages Hungarian belongs to the same group as Finnish and Estonian, I don’t know how is this group called in English. AFAIK Swedish is a Germanic (is this the correct name? I don’t know the English terminology…) language, so it also doesn’t have much in common with Hungarian…
Just a correction. “Thank you” in croatian is “hvala”. "Good day is “dobar dan”.
To me, croatian and czech are totally different. Sure, they’re both slavic languages and there are some similiarities but not enough for a croatian person to understand a czech person, or the other way around.
Oh, and yeah… hungarian has absolutely nothing in common with slavic languages
When I was in Croatia, I could sometimes understand few words, but usually the similarities between Polish and Croatian are not enough to understand each other for Polish and Croatian people.
In a similar way, tiān means day, while tiāntian means “each day.”
)
), you can look for it by root and phonetic/semantic particles. The fact is that kanji, far from being isolated drawings as people tend to believe, have a very logical system of creation in which “radical” drawings are appended with particles that change it’s meaning and it’s pronounce in a rather logical way. But yeah. Number and quality of strokes is the easy way of finding stuff out.
) has nothing in common with the Slavonic languages.
Hungarian belongs to the same group as Finnish and Estonian, I don’t know how is this group called in English. AFAIK Swedish is a Germanic (is this the correct name? I don’t know the English terminology…) language, so it also doesn’t have much in common with Hungarian…
… it’s not too great though …
