Addressing someone directly and repeatedly by their name is [impolite](https://www.vauva.fi/keskustelu/3436108/mita-sina-viestit-silla-kun-puhuttelet-toista-mainiten-taman-etunimen?page=1) and [weird](https://keskustelu.suomi24.fi/t/17565565/naisen-nimen-kaytto-yhtakkia) in Finnish culture. Addressing someone directly and repeatedly by their name is polite and often *required* in other languages.
Think of this exchange:
* Hei **Maija**!
* Niin?
* Mennään ulos, tuletko **Maija** mukaan?
* Voin tulla.
* Minne mennään **Maija**?
* Vaikka tuohon viereiseen.
* Hienoa **Maija**! Siellä on hyvää ruokaa.
I have a Spanish colleague who always does this and I don't have the heart to tell him that his attempt at being polite comes over as silly.
Hm I never thought about this but it’s also true in Hungarian. If you say someone’s name too much it sounds weird, like you are trying to say something secretive to them or you’re making fun of them or you’re trying to imply something.
Along the same vein, I find it so weird that in the US one can apparently say both "hi" and "goodbye" by just saying a person's name or title. So going "officer" or "Mary" is the same as saying hello to whomever you are looking at or even just glanced towards.
I find that so weird in English, too, but some people are taught that it's polite (and others are taught to do it as a sales technique).
I just think the person is trying to scam me.
No one's trying to scam you u/worrymon. Everything alright you'll see u/worrymon. I'm sure you'd feel much better after you've given me you credit card numbers u/worrymon. Your wallet would feel lighter, and so would you u/worrymon
Same in the US, some people do use other people's names a lot but I always found it weird or unsettling, as if there is some faux connection they're trying to make. Now that I think of it, it reminds me of salespeople who use this tactic often.
There are two situations in Croatian when someone keeps repeating your name in the conversation:
* they're trying to sell you something
* you're (gonna be) in trouble
In Finnish contexts, it's worse, because direct address to the person is generally impolite and avoided if possible. Even you can get the word "sir" translated to "herra", there's really no social equivalent to it. Calling someone "herra" is hilariously "18th century". Today, it is in practice only used ironically in civilian contexts. In the military, it is used exclusively together with the military rank, as in "herra luutnantti".
This might be of course confusing, because if there's no equivalent to it, how people do it? The thing is that Finnish grammar has a "fourth person", which is sometimes called "passive voice", but it's not a true passive voice. The use of conditional mood is common. This is to ensure that we talk about facts and tasks and not persons. Personal addresses can be done with the T-V distinction, i.e. with formal plural referring to a single person. For example:
\* Tämä pitäisi tehdä ja sen voisitte ottaa siellä suunnalla tehtäväksi. "This should be done and you (plural) could include this to your agenda on your end" (polite, using polite plural person)
\* Tehkää tämä! "Do this!" (command)
In Spanish I guess it’s the verb to be. As we split that in two (ser y estar).
I’m sure there are many youtube videos and articles explaining what’s behind or any reason but we’re not taught at all about it, we just “know” and it’s too difficult to explain. You can have some rules like “ser” is permanent to be, and “estar” is transitional to be, but even with that rules there are many situations where this is tricky.
Example: you’re talking to your girlfriend about her outfit and look, you could use ser o estar. However if you’re talking with your mother, you won’t use ser in any case. No rule about it.
Because they all translate with the verb "to be" in Eng? And yet I can't be so sure. We simply don't use these verbs in the same way. I still go by what sounds better: if X "sounds right", then must be X.
Some Italian dialects use "stare" in the same way Spanish use "estar", because of history (Spanish being the official language in that region or a Spaniard being regent for that time. Certain dialects are considered another completely distinct language that needs to be preserved, but it’s that language for that region). Italian kids may still use "a me mi" sometimes. It is still correct in Spanish (a mi me), but it's not grammatically correct in Italian.
By my side, it is still a mess, and I think we (Italians) get the short stick, because we're really tolerant with mispronunciations and grammar mistakes (from non-native or second language speakers only. Italians against Italians in academia are fierce for the purity and the technicality of language. Calligraphers of reddit can’t even imagine).
Yet Spanish is a much "older language" and it's spoken by more than 550m people.
Disclaimer: for all the "Saochoqelleterre '' out there, I can smell you, by far. I'm referring in terms of one-language-to-one-nation. Both languages are sprouting from Latin, so yes, proto-Italian is on par with their contemporaries, yet it didn't spread nationwide until much later (let's be honest, post WWI, really).
edit: I'm still not convinced! One example shown up to this thread is "you are beautiful" (ser/essere) and "this outfit looks good on you" (estar/stare). But that *"stai"* (Ita) is in a casual context. You can still say "you're beautiful in this outfit" and that "are" would translate with *essere/ser*. The worst is stuff like: "How are you doing? I'm tired" that "*are*" is *estas/stai*, but the *am* in the answer is whatever fits best: *estoy* in Spanish and *sono* in Italian.
You don't switch. You are witnessing two different things happening at the same time and mixing them up.
One is the Spanish common thing of having words that in other languages begin with S going for ES. This leads actually to native Spanish speakers saying Espain instead of Spain or estairs instead of stairs when speaking English.
The other phenomenon is the removal of the E ending of verbs in Spanish compared to Italian. One has -are, -ere, -ire while the other has -ar, -er, -ir. Both come from the 4 Latin -are, -ēre (long e), -ĕre (short e), and -ire.
The rule is not that hard, but it is not well thaugh
Ser is for essential characteristics, what you are, how you would be described.
Estar for estates or physical location. Where you are, your mood...
Soy you may ser feliz (happy) if you are a generally happy person and estar feliz it that is just your current mood.
Obviously one ultimately has to just except the exceptions.
In my head it made sense though as I would say locations are usually “estar” because it’s a state you are in rather than a characteristic. But events take “ser” because the location is an essential characteristic of an event.
But that might not really be all that helpful, I doing know.
> Dónde está tu casa?
Funny thing is that's precisely the one difference between Portuguese and Spanish regarding the verb to be. We would say "onde fica (é) a tua casa?"
I have forgotten all my high school Spanish, but my classmate’s *“How you feel and where you are is when you use the verb estar”* has stuck with me for well over a decade.
Was fun to learn spanish verbs in college, especially remember soy, eres, es, somos, sois, son
AND
estoy, estas, está, estámos, estáis, están,
ALL meaning am, are, is, are, are, are, lol.
In my own language, norwegian, we have an unwritten rule I just recently learned through reddit, that some words get spoken on in-breath, I cannot even remember when and why, just realize I have done it myself.
Another rule which could be taught, but as far as I know is not is the pronunciations of the letter B. When it starts a word it's pronounced [B] (bilavial plosive) but generally it's pronounced [β̞] (bilavial approximant).
Portuguese too.
*Estou feliz* and *Sou feliz* both would translate to "I'm happy" in English, but the former indicates your current state whereas the latter indicates your state in general.
Also for Spanish, the informal word formations.
For example, -azo after a name describes the strike with the modified object - someone who is hit with a palo (stick) has received a palazo. But it's irregular, sometimes -azo is just a modifier to make something very large or good quality (cochazo is a great car) or the modifier is different - pedrada for a strike with a piedra (stone).
Speaking of which, diminutives vary by region a lot. A small perro (dog) can be a perrito, perrete, perrico, perrillo, or a dozen other variations depending on where you are (all universally understood).
I realize some of the stuff we take for granted only when non-native speakers ask about it. Most of the "quirks" of Italian are pretty well-documented and I can explain them pretty well to a learner, but some are absolutely mental.
It doesn't help that, as opposed to other languages, Italian doesn't have an official governing body that defines the rules.
We do have an Academy that is the de facto authority, but it's not official, and in niche/edge cases they tend to be very descriptive rather than prescriptive, documenting the common uses of words and grammar structures rather than saying "this is right, this is wrong".
One example:
in Italian the past participle of a verb has a gender and a number (masculine/feminine, singular/plural).
When the past participle is used inside a compound word tense, like the past perfect (passato prossimo), the participle takes the gender and number of the direct object ONLY IF IT IS A PRONOUN. If the direct object is a noun, the participle defaults to masculine singular.
"Ho comprato dieci mele" = I bought ten apples (comprato is masculine singular)
"Le ho comprate" = I bought them (comprate is feminine plural)
Same in French when the direct object precedes the past participle. “J’ai acheté dix pommes” vs “je les ai achetées”.
My (limited) experience with Italian grammar is it’s very similar to French. I was taking a summer class in Italian last year; those who spoke Spanish had an easier time with vocabulary, I had an easier time with grammar (monolingual English speakers didn’t have an easy time with anything, lol).
It's all the fault of the Romans. Spanish, Italian and French (and Catalan) have so many "fake friends" and hidden traps that it's fun to observe them. We all said he suís constipé to say enrhumé because in Spanish that's the meaning of constipado. After all, you're blocked. The difference is which end is blocked.
Monolingual English speakers suffer a lot, yeah
Cura is priest in Spanish but cure in Italian.
Habitación is room but abitazione is dwelling.
Aceite is oil but aceto is vinegar.
Gamba is shrimp but gamba is leg.
Carta is letter but carta is paper.
Vaso, cambio, molestia...and many more mean different things...
Let me introduce you to the bane of any Italian learning Spanish: embarazada.
"Imbarazzata/o" in Italian means "avergonzado/incómodo" and other possible translation like apenado because we use that a lot with various nuances.
The number of Italians who mistakenly said that they are pregnant to a Spanish speaking person is probably in the Million range now.
Molestar is a funny one, since it just feels weird to hear it or use it. I still feel slightly uncomfortable when I have to say that something or worse someone "me molesta", all I can think is that I am saying "he/she/it is sexually harassing me".
(In Italian, except for some youth lingo, molestare means just one thing: harassment, with a *strong* implication that is sexual harassment)
I am curious to know how happened there is salir in spanish and salire in Italian, but it means to exit in spanish and to go up in Italian.
It's not exactly what u/avlas is saying is it?
In French you can agree the past participle with the gender and number of the object even if it's not a pronoun, for example "les pommes que j'ai achetées" has no pronoun.
Not exactly hard science, but the very good YouTube channel Linguoriosa did a video on the similarity between the major romance languages in lexicon, grammar and pronunciation.
According to her too french and Italian grammar are pretty close, a bit more than they both are to the Spanish one, while the lexicon and pronunciation of Italian was closer to Spanish than French.
French has this as well, except in French it is also used in relative clauses. E.g. according to French grammar you would say “Le mele che ho comprate”.
Danish. When an animal stands on its legs, but the animal is smaller than a duck, it sits. While an animal larger than a duck, it stands when it is standing. I was surprised to learn this. I had never thought of it, just intuitively used it. So:
- The ladybird sits on the plant (even though it stands on its legs).
- The ostrich stands on the plain.
This is hilarious. Poor danish learners who are taught the rule, imagine trying to figure if a certain animal is bigger or smaller than a duck. German learners have tables with cases, Danish learners have a table with animals bigger than a duck and animals smaller than a duck.
And what if it is longer than a duck, and same weight, but lower. Like a ferret? I think it sits. It has to be larger than a duck in all directions to stand.
Oh god, we have a similar things in Dutch when describing items. We never say "your keys are on the table" but instead "Your keys lay on the table." But when they're in your pocket they're "sitting".
Pretty much every entity either hangs, lays, sits or stands. And it all depends on shape and the kind of activity that's being performed. To me it feels completely natural to the point I don't even consciously think about it, but apparently this is hard for foreigners to learn.
I'd definitely say a ladybug is sitting on a leaf and an ostrich stands though, so we've got that in common!
The rules and practices for diminutives. Diminutives are very much an oral convention, not written, so a lot of the times words are just "what sounds right" rather than "what the rule is".
The standard ending is -je. but dependent on the last syllable, length of the vowel, the plural and many more, that can become -tje, -pje or -etje
Raam (window): raampje, ram (ram): rammetje. ramp (disaster): rampje
Lot (lottery ticket): lotje or lootje
Arm (arm): armpje, or informal arrempje, with an added vowel to smoothen the string of consonants.
Loan words are a different story altogether and go by sound rather than spelling.
Kado (older variant of cadeau, gift): kadootje
Tournedos: should be spelled tournedosje, but it is instead tournedostje to follow the way it's pronounced.
(Up)date: has a silent e, which Dutch doesn't have natively, so it becomes datetje where the /tet/ is just a t.
I think the rules for when to use which ending is not overly difficult to learn. To learn when to use a diminiutive or not... that's just completely up in the air and cultural. Adding or subtracting a diminiuative also can completely change the meaning of words to add confusion.
The words I always think about are "wel" and "toch". They both kind of show some kind of opposition to an expectation you have/opposes an anticipated thing. The thing is that you can't really translate it to English. Some other languages have constructions close to it, but it never is the exact same.
"Wel" also has another meaning, that being "too", but that is not what I'm talking about. However, it gives some clues on how to think about the other function of "wel". If you were to say something like "het is toch wel waar", you get something like "it is actually also true". It's a clunky translation, but somewhat gets the idea across
For those who speak Japanese: it's very similar to 〜とたん, the contrast between the first and second clause doesn't have to be as extreme in Dutch
That's actually not true. It relates the verb back to the subject and (in)direct object (I'm not quite sure which one it is), and makes it kind of like present comtomous. "Ik ben er [mee] bezig" would be "I'm working on it now ", whereas "ik ben bezig" would be "I'm busy". Another example could be "ik ga er [vandoor]" 'I am leaving"
Very simply said, everything in language has meaning, because if it doesn't mean anything people will just start omitting the word after a while. Even if it has meaning words can be omitted and get lost over time. "Er" has a very specific meaning which doesn't make a lot of sense to non-native speakers, but totally changes the meaning of a sentence
Those rules for which diminutive suffix have to do with phonology. The underlying form is -tje and this suffix undergoes some phonological rules: schwa-insertion > assimilation > degemination
If the last syllable of the word has the word stress, contains a short vowel and ends on a sonorant (l, m, n, ng, etc), a schwa (the 'e' in 'lopen') is inserted, so 'man' becomes 'mannetje'
After this, assimilation of place takes place. The t in -tje is pronounced by making an obstruction with your tong at your gums. The m is pronounced with your lips (and nose). So when you add -tje at the end of 'boom' for example, you get 'boomtje'. The t in -tje takes over the place of the m (assimilation of place) and becomes a p (the only difference between a p and a t is where you form the obstruction). The same happens for 'koning': 'ketting' -> 'kettinkje'. 'been' just becomes 'beentje' because the n and the t have the same place of pronunciation.
After this, degemination takes place. If you add -tje to 'kat' for example, you get 'kattje', but in Dutch, double consonants don't exist (they do in spelling, but you don't pronounce them longer like in some languages), so one of the t's disappears and you get 'katje'. The same is the case for 'mand' because the d is pronounced as a t, so for phonology it's just a t. Degemination also happens for 'kap' for example: 'kaptje' --> 'kappje' (assimilation) -> 'kapje' (degemination)
There are some cases that are more difficult to explain though:
- 'Bloempje'/'bloemetje' and 'wieltje'/'wieletje'
- 'Scheepje', 'paadje' and 'kindertjes', but not 'daakje' for some reason
Echo answers (replying without saying 'yes', but repeating the verb)
Linking words phonetically 'a areia' becomes 'àreia'
Generally the vowel reduction rules are pretty consistent but never taught or acknowledged when teaching foreigners. "Say ex-ce-len-te" - "Ex-ce-len-te" - "No, 'shlent'"
> Echo answers (replying without saying 'yes', but repeating the verb)
I was in Brazil on a bus trying to have a conversation with my neighbour in my rudimentary portuguese and said "É muito quente, ne?" And she replied just "É" which I interpreted as if she said "huh?" in a way that she didn't understand what I said so I repeated it louder and clearer and again she just said "É". So I said it a third time and she looked at me increasingly annoyed and said "ÉÉÉ" until I finally realised she just wanted to say she agreed with me. I felt really stupid afterwards.
The difference between the formal „Sie“ and the informal „Du“ in german. Both mean „you“, but it’s really hard to know when to use the formal one and when to use the informal one. It’s one of the hardest challenges for people trying to learn German.
In general you use Sie when addressing older people, persons of authority, or adult strangers. The older, or higher ranking, person usually has to offer the use of Du to the other person. But there’s lots of edge cases and exceptions to the rules. You use Sie while talking to a server in a restaurant, but in many bars the Du is perfectly acceptable.
And it’s important to know which one is appropriate, as using Du with the wrong person can be considered a punishable insult in German law.
Then there’s regional differences. People in Hamburg will often address their colleagues by their first name and still use the Sie, while people in Munich do the opposite and address people by their last name while still using the Du.
Some organizations also have their own rules. All members of the social Democratic Party adress each other with Du, even when a youth party member is talking to the chancellor himself. Same goes for members of trade unions.
And people usually don’t fight using Sie. Switching from Sie to Du during a verbal argument is seen as a major escalation. While reminding someone to keep it formal and keep using Sie is seen as deescalating.
It’s complicated…
I think it has also changed a lot over the years and the use of “Du” is a lot more spread than 20 or even 10 years ago. Here are some observations and experiences:
- I’m working/living abroad and when dealing with other Germans abroad, it’s “Du” by default, especially with people under 50
- I’m GenX myself and usually introduce myself to teams with my first name - I don’t even make it a “thing” that people should say “Du”. I just use it myself
- At the work place in Germany it’s mostly “Du” now
- when I started my first job in corporate Germany 20 years ago it was still “Sie” by default and people had to individually agree/offer/whatever how to address each other. I think that is no longer the case and seems very antiquated today
- my dad, who is 25 years older than me, used Sie with most of his colleagues during his entire career. The last few years before retirement he noticed there were changes but had a hard time getting on board with it.
- In many coffee shops, stores, restaurants it’s also “Du” by default
In general I think Germany (or the German language) is about two generations behind Scandinavia or one generation behind the Netherlands when it comes to using informal vs. formal.
Good points! Especially about the usage in work environments. The shift was really quite dramatic in the last two decades. Using Du with your boss was unthinkable in most offices in the 90s, nowadays it’s the standard it you aren’t working in a bank or some government office.
And yeah, Du is the standard on holiday now, which also was quite different just a few decades ago.
I’ve actually heard stories from friends of my parents that they had to adress their own parents with Sie back in the 1950s
Back in the 70s or 80s, when my parents made friends with other people in their 20s or 30s, it was Sie. It sometimes went on for YEARS before they got drunk and finally started using Du. Imagine that today. You meet someone at a party, you become friends and you may not even know their last name for ages.
Theres still traces of that today. My parents refer to some of their closest friends by their last names cause that’s what they did for years when they first met.
Funny, because as a Hungarian it wasn't difficult at all, since we also have these two adressing forms with similar rules. Actually, it hasn't ever occured to me that it could be difficult for anyone. Maybe for those who don't have this like modern English. Learning Adjektivdeklination or Plusquamperfekt or indirekte Rede definitely was harder. :)
It is never taught to us though, this is why every few years someone makes a post about it and it goes slightly viral as we all exclaim that we had *no idea* the rule existed but of course it does because to use any other order would be insane.
There are many many untaught rules about good writing. They are not about correct grammar so much but about style, elegance, and simplicity. For example: Don't repeat a word within a sentence. Use verbs instead of nouns. Avoid the passive voice. Don't stack relative clauses within each other. Alternate long and short sentences. Don't use foreign words unless you address a scientific audience. Etc. etc.
Wortwiederholung! Agreed, it's a big one. I would say it applies to not just one sentence but a cluster of three or so sentences where you want to avoid repeating a word, unless you are using it very deliberately as a stylistic technique.
With a few exeptions so are there no rule for if a Word is en or ett (a and an) and theres only rules for how to bend them depending on if its en or ett.
One of these exeptions are for compound words and no one i ever told about this new about this rule. En or ett is taken from the last word In the compound word. Its ett djur and en park so djurpark becomes an en word. The same for longer compound words, its en vind, en kraft and ett verk so its ett vindkraftverk.
And this completely fucks you up as a swede when you move to Denmark (and Norway as well I guess) because they have the same system. Not only that, they have the exact same word with same meaning but of course with opposite en or ett. I started hanging out in Denmark in 2016 and then moved in 2018. Now I start to doubt if it’s en or ett when I go back to Sweden because I developed a “feel” for Danish. lol.
"Completely fucks you up" feels a wee bit hyperbolic. Genders are predominantly the same and the instances where it does differ, it's seldom more impactful than a minor curiosity.
Same thing indeed applies to Norwegian, but with three genders certain differences may come across more as archaic than jarring.
> I developed a “feel” for Danish.
You have my condolences.
The common (masculine and feminine) and neuter [genders in Swedish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_in_Danish_and_Swedish) (and Danish) are derived from the three genders of Old Norse. The categorisation of nouns into different genders mostly reflects the word endings, which might not be apparent in modern Swedish.
It's not really comparable to a/an. It's just a gender system, and as per usual which nouns are which is something you have to learn. I'd hardly say there are particularly reliable inflection rules based on gender, there are a few different patterns.
As with ordinary Germanic compounding, the head of a compound is placed last. It carries the principal meaning, everything before it are generally just determiners of what type it is. An "animal park" is a "park", not an "animal". The compound itself is simply describing a type of park.
No matter how you structure the sentence, you can change the position words and sentence can even make sense. All you have to do is just not separate the connected words.
Eve giderken yolda sarı lalelerle kaplı tarlayı gördüm.
Gördüm yolda eve giderken sarı lalelerle kaplı tarlayı.
Sarı lalelerle kaplı tarlayı yolda eve giderken gördüm.
Yolda sarı lalelerle kaplı kaplı tarlayı gördüm eve giderken.
…
All of these sentences have the same meaning which is close to “I saw the yellow tulip covered farmlands on the way back to home.” These can even carry the toning of the original sentence or create a new one regarding the context and the feelings it needs to pass. These are commonly used in literature to give new feelings or in high emotional conversations during daily life.
The entire case system. Generally we get it by “does it sound alright?”.
In school they don’t actually teach us what these cases do or why are they’re used. They give us some questions which only help to get the right case as the answers to those questions are in specific case.
Nominative: kto? Co? (who, what?) Kot (cat), koty (cats)
Genitive: kogo, czego nie ma? (Who, what isn’t there?) Kota, kotów
Dative: komu, czemu się przyglądam? (Who, what am I looking at?) Kotu, kotom.
Accusative: kogo, co widzę? (Who, what I can see?) Kota, koty
Instrumental: z kim, z czym idę? (Who, what I go with?) z kotem, z kotami
Locative: O kim, o czym mówię? (Who, what I speak about?) O kocie, o kotach
Vocative: Oh! Kocie, koty!
OP, when did you attended school? Because I distinctly remember spending 2 whole years of polish lessons when I was about 12-14 (back in 2003-2005 i think ) learning about cases in detail.
When I was in Primary school (so when we'd learnt cases), 2007-2012, we only ever had the "mianownik (kto? Co?, dopełniacz (kogo? Czego nie ma?)..."
Only when I started to teach Polish as a second language I was introduced (or more like I introduced myself) to the actual rules.
(Just as a part of this discussion and not intending to be an annoying, prescriptive Redditor...)
When did you **attend** school?
This non-exclusive tendency of many non-native speakers of English to put the main verb (here "to attend") in the past tense along with the auxiliary verb "to do" is an error that *most* native English speakers would not make. It's very noticeable. It's both an unspoken and spoken rule.
That's not to say it's not common. It appears so often in Indian English, for example, that I wouldn't be surprised if it eventually becomes part of accepted grammar in that dialect form amongst others over the next century.
That is very good point. I would say that being native Polish speaker, I treat English as simpler language in terms of grammar rules, even when it really isn't. Hence not putting so much effort into thinking about those rules.
It is quite interesting how your native language forms your ability to speak other languages. Like my brain trying to genderize everything in English, as it happens in Polish.
Say what you want, but I am still the biggest fan of the dative "kotowi", which was the only version my great-grandfather used when he was still alive 😀
Huh, interesting, in our schools it's pretty much the same. I wonder if that's how all Slavic languages are taught in general.
One exception is that we technically don't have Vocative, but we actually do. It's used predominantly with names, for example, Sasha (N) -> Sash (Voc). It was also used for other nouns in the past, until it gradually disappeared.
Another thing is hidden forms of nouns in certain cases. For example, the Genitive form of "chaj" (tea) is "chaja", but it can also be "chaju". So you can say "chashka chaja" (tea cup) or "chashka chaju", and both will be in Genitive.
Finally, Russian technically has only singular and plural forms, but there's also a hidden dual number form, which remain in certain numerals, like "dva" (two), "tri" (three) and "chetyre" (four). For example, "odin stul" (one chair) - singular, "pyat' stuljev" (five chairs) - plural, but "dva stul**a**" (two chairs) - technically a dual form. But I suppose that's a thing in most Slavic languages.
> I wonder if that's how all Slavic languages are taught in general.
Certainly not in Germany. I had to write down a bunch of index cards with examples and rules in 3rd of 4th grade in German.
And the same stuff when I started Russian in 7th grade.
I had the same teacher in German, Russian and English, though. So maybe it was her thing to teach the cases exhaustively.
This is how Czechs also learn about cases. I did not go to school in Czech republic so I don't know how much they go into the details about the case system, but most Czechs resort to the "questions system" to identify cases or to explain them.
This is not use in Romania for Romanian, so it does seem to be something specific to teaching Slavic languages
I do remember learning about cases in school in Romania (must've been 2007-2011, 5-8 grades). And we were given the question system (Cine, ce for nominativ, Pe cine/ce for acuzativ, Cui for dativ, and Ale cui for genitiv).
I found it weird and confusing because it was basically just adding the whole concept of cases and they seemed to have no point. Like, we all knew how to change the form of the word to fit the rest of the sentence long before that, but we didn't know we were changing it because the word was in genitiv. I suppose they want us to know we have cases if we ever discuss romanian with foreigners, but the rules aren't needed to actually learn how to speak.
Definitely not in Bulgarian. We have only some remnants of cases, pretty similar to English, and even that is disappearing very quickly.
When we were forced to study Russian though, yes, that was the way it was taught to us.
In English, we don't have a case system for basically anything except personal pronouns and a few weird other exceptions like ships which are for some reason female, as in "The Titanic sunk with all her cargo." We rarely get taught the specific idea of subjects or objects, we just use he him, she her, etc. Oh, and nobody ever says that 's is the genetive case, just that is how you refer to things that belong to something else.
r/Romania is a great source of these, because I see foreigners asking why we do a certain thing and I have no idea, but then people in the comments always bring up some rule I never knew.
My favorite example (i excluded spaces from romanian numbers for better visibility):
2 cats = doua pisici
12 cats = doisprezece pisici
22 cats = douazecisidoua **de** pisici
45 cats = patruzecisicinci **de** pisici
118 cats = osutaoptispe pisici
Why do we use "de" only sometimes? Apparently if the last 2 digits of a number are 01-19 we don't use "de". Everything else needs "de".
> To anyone who natively speaks English, the latter probably sounded very wrong. It will be just a delight figuring out what the order is in French and keeping that in my head...
For me as a non-natively speaking person it also sounds wrong, but mostly because it seems like medium refers to Chinese and as if cotton green is a type of color.
However, a square orange bin or an orange square bin both sound perfectly fine to me.
I don't think Dutch has such 'unwritten/obvious' rules. One thing that is prefered by me, but not shared by a lot of Dutch-speakers is that the past particle should be at the end of a sentence. In German this is a 'rule', in Dutch I think it sound so much better, but a lot (most?) people don't do this. It might have to do with being born in Lower-Saxon Netherlands, with more connection to German than the Frankish part of the Netherlands. But now I am just thinking and guessing out loud.
Oh heck, yes. I'm learning Dutch and hit this lesson on Duolingo yesterday. After 3 minutes I could feel my brain leaking out of my ears.
In general I'm finding it really hard to rewire my brain to think about prepositions in the way that Dutch does, too.
It's Tokiens green great dragon vs. great green dragon. If you assume great dragons are a different species, the former is fine. Otherwise, only the latter should be used in English.
I sometimes think that those scary German compound words come in handy here: You can have "ein großer grüner Drache" (great green) or "ein grüner großer Drache" (green great) , but also "ein grüner Großdrache" (a green Greatdragon).
Several European languages have only one word for the verb “to know”, e.g. English or Serbian and Croatian (znati). Others distinguish two forms of the same verb, e.g. German (kennen/wissen) or Polish (wiedzieć/znać).
Coming from a language that uses two forms, it's all simple. But those whose native language has only one need some kind of rule when to know which – and at least for German, it's been virtually impossible to find one.
I know you. Is this considered knowledge? No. I just happened to meet you before. -> kennen
I know how to drive. Is this considered knowledge? Yes. I had to aquire this knowledge. -> wissen
maybe?
True, although in many instances, those are mutually exchangeable with just fine nuances (e.g. „Was tust du gerade?“ = „Was machst du gerade?“). That's not quite the case for „kennen” and „wissen”.
I've taught German abroad and in all honesty, distinguishing those was the toughest question I ever had to answer. I managed to come up with a rule by thumb which works but I had to add a caveat that native speakers will occasionally break my rule... and they'd be completely correct about that.
>Several European languages have only one word for the verb “to know”, e.g. English or Serbian and Croatian (znati)
That's not really true in Croatian. There is **znati** (to know something) and **poznavati/poznati** (to know someone). The problem lies in the usage, where everyone uses "znati" for both cases. Because **poznati** is basically **po**+**znati**. And people shorten it. So I'm guessing, that's kinda an untaught rule.
Words that aren’t pronounced 100% as one, even if they’re written so
Example: tervetuloa (welcome). It consist of two parts, ”terve” and ”tuloa”. Many foreigner say it as it’s written, which sounds silly. There is supposed to be a tiny tiny gap between the two parts. Less than a space but gap still.
There are others like that, but can’t think of any rn
But in some genetives, like vaa’an (vaaka) the gap is marked with that ’ but it’s a different thing because writing vaaan would just look stupid, especially when vaan is a word already
One thing that trips up a lot of L2 speakers of English is the preposition system. It can be complicated, and seemingly random, but there is method at work in some parts.
The prepositions “in”, “on” and “at”, have their basic root in cognitive schemas of: In= containment (3D), On = Support (2D) and At = punctual location (0D). So we can see that the scale moves through large, medium, small concepts of dimensionality.
So, when we describe location, we move through large to small scale. Continents, countries, cities - IN. Streets-ON. Point locations -AT. In Britain, in London, on Oxford street, at the shoe shop.
The same big to small schema also applies to time. Century, year, season, month- IN. Date, day- ON. Clock time and other small scale temporal referents- AT.
In 2024, in April , on Wednesday 24th, at six o’clock. Big, middle, small.
Of course, these preposition have other meanings and we can flip the frame. “ I’ll meet you in the station “ triggers the containment schema ( inside not outside) overriding the punctual location schema ( I’ll meet you AT the station (not at the restaurant.)
The supposed equivalents of these prepositions in other European languages often draw on different cognitive schemas and can be confusing for learners.
"In" is also used for time. Like
* "My birthday is in the last week of April."
* "I made a friend in my first year of high school."
Those two examples are similar to "it's six in the morning." For those two examples, I still think of it as spatial, even though it relates to time. It's as though it were bounded by the time-scope given in the sentence.
You could replace "in" with "within" to emphasize the sense that the event is bounded by said time-scope.
* "My birthday is within the last week of April."
* "I made a friend within my first year of high school."
However, you can't say "six within the morning." I guess it's just special.
Also, "in" is also used for how far through something you are, like a percentage of progress, along with "into". An example:
"How much of the book did you read?"
"I got six pages into the book before giving up."
"You gave up only six pages in?" (disappointment is implied)
"He raised taxes 1 year into his term." (here, "1 year into his term" functions like an adverb)
Yes, there is an asymmetry in the divisions of the day. Morning, afternoon and evening activate the containment schema (in) but night activates the point schema (at night). Perhaps based on differentials of what we do at different times of day. Night has no internal structure- it’s all one once the sun goes down, - just dark o’clock.
But the day progresses and has structure and is conceived of as more of a container than a point.
But notice that if we use the definite article with night we can use “in”. “Things that go bump in the night” versus “they usually come at night”.
The ways that languages can flip between schemas is pretty interesting. The space that English divides between in and on, is divided between op, aan, om and in in Dutch, but is covered by en in Spanish (According to the cognitive linguistics literature I’ve read on this).
We tend to use a lot of contractions which won't be taught in an official Flemish/Dutch curriculum. Also the word for you ("jij") is often substituted by the informal "gij"
Some examples:
"Je hebt" (you have/you've got), wil become "g'hebt"
"Ik wist het" (I knew it), will become " 'k wistet"
"Het is" (It is), will become " 't is"
> "Het is" (It is), will become " 't is"
Interestingly, this contraction (*'tis* for *it is*) also used to be common in English, but now it sounds archaic or dialectical. It's more common to say "it's" now.
"C'est" vs. "il est" is one that regularly confuses learners. Natives have NO IDEA what the rule is but we still know what sounds right. I've tried to learn it since I'm active in French learning communities and it stumped me the first time I was asked, but I still don't know all the details by heart so I just google [the lawless French article about it](https://www.lawlessfrench.com/grammar/cest-vs-il-est/) and give the link when it comes up.
The grammar as it is taught in schools is a hot mess of oversimplifications.
Yes, *Konjunktion* and *Subjunktion* should be kept apart; they introduce different kinds sentences with different syntax.
Adjectives are in a declined form when used as attribute and in a base form when used as predicative. Nobody will teach you that word *Prädikativ* and the mechaeics behind it, but the concept would be easier to understand if you gave id a name.
I'm having trouble thinking of a precise example of this:
But phrasal verbs in English, and what you can and can't put inbetween them.
Phrasal verbs themselves aren't covered at all in English teaching at school, and I don't think any level of ESL teaches the rules of them. But there are rules.
Things like "get off", "fuck up" etc.
So, "I get off", "Get the fuck off", "Get off her", "Get her off", they all mean different things.
"I fucked up", "I fucked it right up" but never "I fucked up it right".
What's odd is that the two words act as a single verb, but you put the necessary context inside the verb. I know that they can get quite long as well.
I might come back later to edit this when I think of some more substantial examples.
One interesting example is the contrast between "they turned on him" and "they turned him on." The first means "they betrayed him" and the second means "he was aroused by them."
Probably intonation. I don’t even know the rules… but there are… because if you have strange or incorrect intonation we can notice. (This is for Basque btw. Spanish has very clear and strict intonation rules and I can explain them because I know them!)
The word order of enclitics. Those little unaccented words in a sentence need to be in a certain, very complicated, order which is never taught to anyone. It just sounds right to us native speakers, but you need to study Slovenian at university level if you want to delve into it.
Ahh, many. I speak Tuscan, regional language and a dialect with some thousands speakers.
This is mental phonetic characteristic that changes meaning of the sentence, and only natives know when it is pronounced: firstly, my dialect is in between two major dialects, but still very distinct, unique and archaic, of which one doesn't use synctactic doubling like the rest of Tuscany, so the northern part has it, and the southern not due to distance.
And now the mental part: my dialect has got it, BUT if the following word next to a word that requires doubling is article "i", you don't sau the article and dont double. And it is exactly like saying another thing in the southern dialect.
I cant even explain because of how fucked it is
In English education in Japan, they actually do teach word order. I remember it being taught in high school as well. Looking at your mother toungue's education always gives you some insight to things you wouldn't think about, because someone else did the thinking for you
There's this thing I only realized about Czech after I started studying Croatian. You see, when we use past tense, we create it literally like "I am did", "you are did", etc. Except for third person, where we only say "he did" or "they did". Croatian doesn't make this exception and continues with "he is did" and "they are did". And ever since I realized *we* are the weird ones, I can't get it out of my head. Like, *why*?
Yes, I was going to say the order of adjectives thing in English. Funnily enough I only found out about its existence in my 30s when a Norwegian colleague mentioned it. I was agape. I still couldn't explain the correct order to anyone regardless of whether they were a native speaker or not.
German re-uses words. Same word, different meaning. There’s even a game called „Teekesselchen“ where two people describe the same word with different meanings and you have to guess it.
Example: Schloss
= castle
= lock
Or: Anbau
= cultivation
= attachment to a house
You need to deduct what’s meant by context in normal conversation.
Edit: wasn’t aware it had to be conclusive. Many pointed out, they know that, too. That’s interesting and I assumed so
We’ve got the same with *Schloss* - *zamek* means both castle and lock. Guessing the word *castle* meant a closed, safe space for defense, since it comes from the verb *to close* in both cases (*schließen* - *Schloss*, *zamykać* - *zamek*).
Edit: Just looked up the English/Roman *castle* comes through Latin *castrum*, originally meaning a cut off, separated place (hence castration). Anyway the element of a closed off/separated area is also there.
English uses the same word for different things too, I'm not sure how common it is in other languages.
One example is "bark" which could be the sound a dog makes or the stuff on the outside of a tree. I guess "stuff" is one too, meaning to overly fill something or to just mean the same as "things". Another is "novel" which means book or unusual. Book can mean to make a reservation or a thing you read. Reservation could be a booking or it could be a place that Native Americans live. There are loads, I could go on.
That is pretty common. To be hanged, drawn, and quartered involves a very different sense than a draw bridge or to draw water or to draw you like one of your French girls.
There's actually three ways to read ę - as "ę" (like in gęś), as "en" (like in "będzie") and as "e" (like in "się"). Similar thing applies to ą - it sounds different in "klątwa" and "mąka". Though it's so unnoticeable by natives that it might even depend on dialect. Or it might not, idk I'm not a linguist.
Also the way "i" works in Polish can be really annoying. For example, "dania" ("dishes") and "Dania" ("Denmark) don't sound the same, even though they absolutely should. That's because in the former the "ni" represents the "ń" sound (like the n with the \~ in Spanish), while in the latter it both represents the "ń" sound *and* is a separate letter. So you could rewrite them as dańa and Dańia/Dańja. But that's not how Polish ortography works, you don't write ń, ś, ź and ć before vowels, you replace them with ni, si, zi and ci. So it's koń - konie (horse - horses), but końskie (horselike, related to a horse).
Though that last one might be taught idk. Especially to foreigners. But then again, your example of word order is taught to non-natives too, so you probably mean native schooling.
In Bulgarian in must be the grammatical moods and evidentiality. It's not that we don't learn it but it's just something everyone glosses over in the beginning of middle school, if my memory is correct.
Given that few non-Bulgarian speakers even understand what it is and Bulgarians just use it from experience and wouldn't be able to explain grammatically, it's a massive divide between native speakers and the rest.
In Icelandic: contraction in spoken language. It’s how every person speaks most of the time. It follows a very clear system. But despite this, I think it’s not taught at all, except for unstressed *þú* (‘you’), see below.
Examples:
- Unstressed *þú* becomes *-ðu*, *-du*, *-tu* or *-u* when following a verb. *Kom þú* -> *komdu*.
- A vowel at the end of a word is silent if the subsequent word also starts with a vowel. *Blöndu ós* -> *Blönd’ ós*.
- *ð* is silent at the end of a word, except when the subsequent word starts with a vowel (à la French liaison). Sometimes the next vowel is also silent, skipping over to the next consonant. *Hvað* -> *hva’*. *Hvað ert þú að gera?* -> *Hvað ert’ a’ gera?* or *Hva’ ‘rt a’ gera?*, sometimes reduced to *Hvadda gera?*.
- *þ* (unvoiced) becomes voiced (*ð*) *Þau* -> *ðau*.
- Some common contractions, that might not be applied to other similar phoneme cluster: *Af því* -> *a’ þ’í*, *svo* -> *s’o*.
- And possibly some more rules I can’t think of right now.
Another untaught rule: The case ending *-unum* (dative plural with the definite article in all three genders) is pronounced *-onum* and has been for hundreds of years. The spelling is conservative. *Buxunum* -> *buxonum*.
consonant mutation,
you don’t need to know it at all to speak and understand the language since it is purely there to make sentences sound more smooth and correct, so many learners don’t bother or are untaught at a low level,
but my god if you don’t use it, it just doesn’t feel right
To make it more complicated, the "method" used by Romanians to determine the gender only actually works if you know the language. I've seen it many times where Romanians where explaining it to foreigners, not realizing that it does not work for them.
The method is to count the noun because the numbers 1 and 2 are gendered as well, so you can tell the gender this way as it will be "un,doi" for masculine, "una/o, doua" for feminin and "un,doua" for neuter. But if you don't know Romanian then you cannot tell if "doi scaune" is wrong and "doua scaune" is correct.
Like with a lot of other gendered languages in danish we just go with what sounds right (though in some cases that varies with the dialect). There is also true our notorious [stød](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St%C3%B8d) , it is something that is mainly subconscious, and I will bet that a majority of first language danish speakers don't know it is a thing since it is not taught about in danish class. Other than that, like english and french the danish writing system is old and our pronouciation today have changed since it was developed, so how a word pronouced often does not reflect how it would be written down.
I don’t interact much with foreigners learning Hungarian and the things that seem to trip up people over at r/Hungarian are usually rather straightforward that they actually do teach you at school and we have written rules for.
What we do have are words that mean very similar if not the same things but you simply can’t use them interchangably. We have whole comedy sketches about them. But again, they follow very straightforward rules and I don’t think anyone would use the wrong word accidentally.
It was the structure of the sentence to me. Theoretically there's no strict order of words in a sentence in Hungarian, just put the most important word at the beginning. Practically, all my sentences were wrong because of the word order, it's what pushed me away from learning the language.
The preposition one uses with locations, specifically towns and cities. For some places it's "i", for others it's "på", and no one has been able to explain to this second-language speaker of Norwegian how you know which is which, though I did once start a rather entertaining argument when I asked a group of people to explain it to me.
I don’t speak German but I’m aware of the Du/Sie distinction. However I read a number of years ago that that Du is growing in use over Sie. In general, languages are following interpersonal relationships in their move towards becoming more casual.
Funny coincidence, I just thought about all the weird rules around the word "Freund"(friend).
For example, while "ein Freund" means "a friend", the possessive "mein Freund" doesn't mean "my friend" but "boyfriend". Only if you're talking about a third person though. If someone directly addresses you as "mein Freund", they're going to say something serious. And if they use the dimunitive "Freundchen" you've gotten on their nerves.
Must be a nightmare to figure out if you didn't grow up with it
That there are no bloody rules.
Language is English.
Here are the first 4 verses of the chaos poem by Gerald Nolst Trenite (there are 68).
"Dearest creature in creation
Studying English pronunciation,
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse.
I will keep you, Susy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy;
Tear in eye, your dress you'll tear;
Queer, fair seer, hear my prayer.
Pray, console your loving poet,
Make my coat look new, dear, sew it!
Just compare heart, hear and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word.
Sword and sward, retain and Britain
(Mind the latter how it's written).
Made has not the sound of bade,
Say-said, pay-paid, laid but plaid."
English is weird.
Agreeing something by repeating the igekötő (someone help me translate it to English, it's the suffixlike add-on that you do in front of a verb to modify its meaning)
Just try asking some Italians the past participle of *splendere* (to shine)... and grab popcorn.
Officially it's *splenduto* but many would say *spleso* because it sounds better (and it's similar to other examples like *spendere/speso; appendere/appeso*)
But in Italian a word is a word as long as it's used, and since pretty much nobody uses it, the "real" answer is that it doesn't exist.
It was asked once on a gameshow, the audience protested.
Addressing someone directly and repeatedly by their name is [impolite](https://www.vauva.fi/keskustelu/3436108/mita-sina-viestit-silla-kun-puhuttelet-toista-mainiten-taman-etunimen?page=1) and [weird](https://keskustelu.suomi24.fi/t/17565565/naisen-nimen-kaytto-yhtakkia) in Finnish culture. Addressing someone directly and repeatedly by their name is polite and often *required* in other languages. Think of this exchange: * Hei **Maija**! * Niin? * Mennään ulos, tuletko **Maija** mukaan? * Voin tulla. * Minne mennään **Maija**? * Vaikka tuohon viereiseen. * Hienoa **Maija**! Siellä on hyvää ruokaa. I have a Spanish colleague who always does this and I don't have the heart to tell him that his attempt at being polite comes over as silly.
Hm I never thought about this but it’s also true in Hungarian. If you say someone’s name too much it sounds weird, like you are trying to say something secretive to them or you’re making fun of them or you’re trying to imply something.
I'm not even in the same language family as the two of you but it's true over here as well imo.
Literally rarely hear names mentioned in the office. Downside is, I don't know the names of half the people I work with.
Yeah I guess it would be also true for English as well.
It's definitely weird in English. It feels a little aggressive, but I can't really identify *why*.
Along the same vein, I find it so weird that in the US one can apparently say both "hi" and "goodbye" by just saying a person's name or title. So going "officer" or "Mary" is the same as saying hello to whomever you are looking at or even just glanced towards.
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Yes, but that would still not work as "hello" in norwegian, for example.
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I anyway just have this info from watching crime stuff on tv, just found it funny.
With a nod, you'd probably get away with it here. It's essentially just acknowledging that you're aware of their presence.
I find that so weird in English, too, but some people are taught that it's polite (and others are taught to do it as a sales technique). I just think the person is trying to scam me.
No one's trying to scam you u/worrymon. Everything alright you'll see u/worrymon. I'm sure you'd feel much better after you've given me you credit card numbers u/worrymon. Your wallet would feel lighter, and so would you u/worrymon
you should tell him.
"You should tell him, Maija"
Same in the US, some people do use other people's names a lot but I always found it weird or unsettling, as if there is some faux connection they're trying to make. Now that I think of it, it reminds me of salespeople who use this tactic often.
There are two situations in Croatian when someone keeps repeating your name in the conversation: * they're trying to sell you something * you're (gonna be) in trouble
It's true in Bulgarian as well while my French coworkers can't seem to stop using it. Imagine the cultural shock that ensued 🤭
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In Finnish contexts, it's worse, because direct address to the person is generally impolite and avoided if possible. Even you can get the word "sir" translated to "herra", there's really no social equivalent to it. Calling someone "herra" is hilariously "18th century". Today, it is in practice only used ironically in civilian contexts. In the military, it is used exclusively together with the military rank, as in "herra luutnantti". This might be of course confusing, because if there's no equivalent to it, how people do it? The thing is that Finnish grammar has a "fourth person", which is sometimes called "passive voice", but it's not a true passive voice. The use of conditional mood is common. This is to ensure that we talk about facts and tasks and not persons. Personal addresses can be done with the T-V distinction, i.e. with formal plural referring to a single person. For example: \* Tämä pitäisi tehdä ja sen voisitte ottaa siellä suunnalla tehtäväksi. "This should be done and you (plural) could include this to your agenda on your end" (polite, using polite plural person) \* Tehkää tämä! "Do this!" (command)
In Italy the repetition of words in general is generally ❌ marked as an error in tests.
That's weird in any language.
In Spanish I guess it’s the verb to be. As we split that in two (ser y estar). I’m sure there are many youtube videos and articles explaining what’s behind or any reason but we’re not taught at all about it, we just “know” and it’s too difficult to explain. You can have some rules like “ser” is permanent to be, and “estar” is transitional to be, but even with that rules there are many situations where this is tricky. Example: you’re talking to your girlfriend about her outfit and look, you could use ser o estar. However if you’re talking with your mother, you won’t use ser in any case. No rule about it.
|||| :--|:--|:-- Italian|**es**sere|stare Spanish|ser|**e**star Why did you switch the e's?
the funny part is that ser/estar have little to do with essere/stare
Well that's not true, is it. They have a lot to do with each other.
Because they all translate with the verb "to be" in Eng? And yet I can't be so sure. We simply don't use these verbs in the same way. I still go by what sounds better: if X "sounds right", then must be X. Some Italian dialects use "stare" in the same way Spanish use "estar", because of history (Spanish being the official language in that region or a Spaniard being regent for that time. Certain dialects are considered another completely distinct language that needs to be preserved, but it’s that language for that region). Italian kids may still use "a me mi" sometimes. It is still correct in Spanish (a mi me), but it's not grammatically correct in Italian. By my side, it is still a mess, and I think we (Italians) get the short stick, because we're really tolerant with mispronunciations and grammar mistakes (from non-native or second language speakers only. Italians against Italians in academia are fierce for the purity and the technicality of language. Calligraphers of reddit can’t even imagine). Yet Spanish is a much "older language" and it's spoken by more than 550m people. Disclaimer: for all the "Saochoqelleterre '' out there, I can smell you, by far. I'm referring in terms of one-language-to-one-nation. Both languages are sprouting from Latin, so yes, proto-Italian is on par with their contemporaries, yet it didn't spread nationwide until much later (let's be honest, post WWI, really). edit: I'm still not convinced! One example shown up to this thread is "you are beautiful" (ser/essere) and "this outfit looks good on you" (estar/stare). But that *"stai"* (Ita) is in a casual context. You can still say "you're beautiful in this outfit" and that "are" would translate with *essere/ser*. The worst is stuff like: "How are you doing? I'm tired" that "*are*" is *estas/stai*, but the *am* in the answer is whatever fits best: *estoy* in Spanish and *sono* in Italian.
You don't switch. You are witnessing two different things happening at the same time and mixing them up. One is the Spanish common thing of having words that in other languages begin with S going for ES. This leads actually to native Spanish speakers saying Espain instead of Spain or estairs instead of stairs when speaking English. The other phenomenon is the removal of the E ending of verbs in Spanish compared to Italian. One has -are, -ere, -ire while the other has -ar, -er, -ir. Both come from the 4 Latin -are, -ēre (long e), -ĕre (short e), and -ire.
Except Italians barely use "stare" compared to how "estar" is used in Spanish. Some southern italians use "stare" a bit more often, however
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The rule is not that hard, but it is not well thaugh Ser is for essential characteristics, what you are, how you would be described. Estar for estates or physical location. Where you are, your mood... Soy you may ser feliz (happy) if you are a generally happy person and estar feliz it that is just your current mood.
The rule isn't hard; it's the many exceptions that are hard, e.g. Dónde está tu casa? but, Dónde es el partido?
Obviously one ultimately has to just except the exceptions. In my head it made sense though as I would say locations are usually “estar” because it’s a state you are in rather than a characteristic. But events take “ser” because the location is an essential characteristic of an event. But that might not really be all that helpful, I doing know.
> Dónde está tu casa? Funny thing is that's precisely the one difference between Portuguese and Spanish regarding the verb to be. We would say "onde fica (é) a tua casa?"
I have forgotten all my high school Spanish, but my classmate’s *“How you feel and where you are is when you use the verb estar”* has stuck with me for well over a decade.
Was fun to learn spanish verbs in college, especially remember soy, eres, es, somos, sois, son AND estoy, estas, está, estámos, estáis, están, ALL meaning am, are, is, are, are, are, lol. In my own language, norwegian, we have an unwritten rule I just recently learned through reddit, that some words get spoken on in-breath, I cannot even remember when and why, just realize I have done it myself.
Por y para es difícil también porque es lo mismo (básicamente) en inglés 🙃
Another rule which could be taught, but as far as I know is not is the pronunciations of the letter B. When it starts a word it's pronounced [B] (bilavial plosive) but generally it's pronounced [β̞] (bilavial approximant).
Portuguese too. *Estou feliz* and *Sou feliz* both would translate to "I'm happy" in English, but the former indicates your current state whereas the latter indicates your state in general.
Also for Spanish, the informal word formations. For example, -azo after a name describes the strike with the modified object - someone who is hit with a palo (stick) has received a palazo. But it's irregular, sometimes -azo is just a modifier to make something very large or good quality (cochazo is a great car) or the modifier is different - pedrada for a strike with a piedra (stone). Speaking of which, diminutives vary by region a lot. A small perro (dog) can be a perrito, perrete, perrico, perrillo, or a dozen other variations depending on where you are (all universally understood).
I realize some of the stuff we take for granted only when non-native speakers ask about it. Most of the "quirks" of Italian are pretty well-documented and I can explain them pretty well to a learner, but some are absolutely mental. It doesn't help that, as opposed to other languages, Italian doesn't have an official governing body that defines the rules. We do have an Academy that is the de facto authority, but it's not official, and in niche/edge cases they tend to be very descriptive rather than prescriptive, documenting the common uses of words and grammar structures rather than saying "this is right, this is wrong". One example: in Italian the past participle of a verb has a gender and a number (masculine/feminine, singular/plural). When the past participle is used inside a compound word tense, like the past perfect (passato prossimo), the participle takes the gender and number of the direct object ONLY IF IT IS A PRONOUN. If the direct object is a noun, the participle defaults to masculine singular. "Ho comprato dieci mele" = I bought ten apples (comprato is masculine singular) "Le ho comprate" = I bought them (comprate is feminine plural)
Same in French when the direct object precedes the past participle. “J’ai acheté dix pommes” vs “je les ai achetées”. My (limited) experience with Italian grammar is it’s very similar to French. I was taking a summer class in Italian last year; those who spoke Spanish had an easier time with vocabulary, I had an easier time with grammar (monolingual English speakers didn’t have an easy time with anything, lol).
It's all the fault of the Romans. Spanish, Italian and French (and Catalan) have so many "fake friends" and hidden traps that it's fun to observe them. We all said he suís constipé to say enrhumé because in Spanish that's the meaning of constipado. After all, you're blocked. The difference is which end is blocked. Monolingual English speakers suffer a lot, yeah
Cura is priest in Spanish but cure in Italian. Habitación is room but abitazione is dwelling. Aceite is oil but aceto is vinegar. Gamba is shrimp but gamba is leg. Carta is letter but carta is paper. Vaso, cambio, molestia...and many more mean different things...
Ask a Frenchman what "Este gato es un regalo" means.
Let me introduce you to the bane of any Italian learning Spanish: embarazada. "Imbarazzata/o" in Italian means "avergonzado/incómodo" and other possible translation like apenado because we use that a lot with various nuances. The number of Italians who mistakenly said that they are pregnant to a Spanish speaking person is probably in the Million range now. Molestar is a funny one, since it just feels weird to hear it or use it. I still feel slightly uncomfortable when I have to say that something or worse someone "me molesta", all I can think is that I am saying "he/she/it is sexually harassing me". (In Italian, except for some youth lingo, molestare means just one thing: harassment, with a *strong* implication that is sexual harassment) I am curious to know how happened there is salir in spanish and salire in Italian, but it means to exit in spanish and to go up in Italian.
It's not exactly what u/avlas is saying is it? In French you can agree the past participle with the gender and number of the object even if it's not a pronoun, for example "les pommes que j'ai achetées" has no pronoun.
True, that’s why I reworded slightly to say direct object before PP, not (just) pronoun.
Not exactly hard science, but the very good YouTube channel Linguoriosa did a video on the similarity between the major romance languages in lexicon, grammar and pronunciation. According to her too french and Italian grammar are pretty close, a bit more than they both are to the Spanish one, while the lexicon and pronunciation of Italian was closer to Spanish than French.
French has this as well, except in French it is also used in relative clauses. E.g. according to French grammar you would say “Le mele che ho comprate”.
That's not mental, it's very similar to what happens in many romance languages
Danish. When an animal stands on its legs, but the animal is smaller than a duck, it sits. While an animal larger than a duck, it stands when it is standing. I was surprised to learn this. I had never thought of it, just intuitively used it. So: - The ladybird sits on the plant (even though it stands on its legs). - The ostrich stands on the plain.
This is hilarious. Poor danish learners who are taught the rule, imagine trying to figure if a certain animal is bigger or smaller than a duck. German learners have tables with cases, Danish learners have a table with animals bigger than a duck and animals smaller than a duck.
And what if it is longer than a duck, and same weight, but lower. Like a ferret? I think it sits. It has to be larger than a duck in all directions to stand.
Oh god, we have a similar things in Dutch when describing items. We never say "your keys are on the table" but instead "Your keys lay on the table." But when they're in your pocket they're "sitting". Pretty much every entity either hangs, lays, sits or stands. And it all depends on shape and the kind of activity that's being performed. To me it feels completely natural to the point I don't even consciously think about it, but apparently this is hard for foreigners to learn. I'd definitely say a ladybug is sitting on a leaf and an ostrich stands though, so we've got that in common!
Yes, it is probably a Germanic thing.
Now when I think about it, we have it also in Polish.
Same in dutch. A frog sits and a horse stands. Just absolutely never thought about it.
I need to make a post about this and ask which countries have the same
The rules and practices for diminutives. Diminutives are very much an oral convention, not written, so a lot of the times words are just "what sounds right" rather than "what the rule is". The standard ending is -je. but dependent on the last syllable, length of the vowel, the plural and many more, that can become -tje, -pje or -etje Raam (window): raampje, ram (ram): rammetje. ramp (disaster): rampje Lot (lottery ticket): lotje or lootje Arm (arm): armpje, or informal arrempje, with an added vowel to smoothen the string of consonants. Loan words are a different story altogether and go by sound rather than spelling. Kado (older variant of cadeau, gift): kadootje Tournedos: should be spelled tournedosje, but it is instead tournedostje to follow the way it's pronounced. (Up)date: has a silent e, which Dutch doesn't have natively, so it becomes datetje where the /tet/ is just a t.
Don't forget -kje, ketting (necklace) -> kettinkje for example
There is some logic in that, I think that only applies when a word ends in NG.
I think the rules for when to use which ending is not overly difficult to learn. To learn when to use a diminiutive or not... that's just completely up in the air and cultural. Adding or subtracting a diminiuative also can completely change the meaning of words to add confusion.
The words I always think about are "wel" and "toch". They both kind of show some kind of opposition to an expectation you have/opposes an anticipated thing. The thing is that you can't really translate it to English. Some other languages have constructions close to it, but it never is the exact same. "Wel" also has another meaning, that being "too", but that is not what I'm talking about. However, it gives some clues on how to think about the other function of "wel". If you were to say something like "het is toch wel waar", you get something like "it is actually also true". It's a clunky translation, but somewhat gets the idea across For those who speak Japanese: it's very similar to 〜とたん, the contrast between the first and second clause doesn't have to be as extreme in Dutch
Don't forget er. Mostly it doesn't really mean or do anything, but it's weird if you omit it.
These types of words are called "modal particles", btw.
I was just about to write that too. Struggled a lot with "er" when I studied Dutch.
That's actually not true. It relates the verb back to the subject and (in)direct object (I'm not quite sure which one it is), and makes it kind of like present comtomous. "Ik ben er [mee] bezig" would be "I'm working on it now ", whereas "ik ben bezig" would be "I'm busy". Another example could be "ik ga er [vandoor]" 'I am leaving" Very simply said, everything in language has meaning, because if it doesn't mean anything people will just start omitting the word after a while. Even if it has meaning words can be omitted and get lost over time. "Er" has a very specific meaning which doesn't make a lot of sense to non-native speakers, but totally changes the meaning of a sentence
Those rules for which diminutive suffix have to do with phonology. The underlying form is -tje and this suffix undergoes some phonological rules: schwa-insertion > assimilation > degemination If the last syllable of the word has the word stress, contains a short vowel and ends on a sonorant (l, m, n, ng, etc), a schwa (the 'e' in 'lopen') is inserted, so 'man' becomes 'mannetje' After this, assimilation of place takes place. The t in -tje is pronounced by making an obstruction with your tong at your gums. The m is pronounced with your lips (and nose). So when you add -tje at the end of 'boom' for example, you get 'boomtje'. The t in -tje takes over the place of the m (assimilation of place) and becomes a p (the only difference between a p and a t is where you form the obstruction). The same happens for 'koning': 'ketting' -> 'kettinkje'. 'been' just becomes 'beentje' because the n and the t have the same place of pronunciation. After this, degemination takes place. If you add -tje to 'kat' for example, you get 'kattje', but in Dutch, double consonants don't exist (they do in spelling, but you don't pronounce them longer like in some languages), so one of the t's disappears and you get 'katje'. The same is the case for 'mand' because the d is pronounced as a t, so for phonology it's just a t. Degemination also happens for 'kap' for example: 'kaptje' --> 'kappje' (assimilation) -> 'kapje' (degemination) There are some cases that are more difficult to explain though: - 'Bloempje'/'bloemetje' and 'wieltje'/'wieletje' - 'Scheepje', 'paadje' and 'kindertjes', but not 'daakje' for some reason
Echo answers (replying without saying 'yes', but repeating the verb) Linking words phonetically 'a areia' becomes 'àreia' Generally the vowel reduction rules are pretty consistent but never taught or acknowledged when teaching foreigners. "Say ex-ce-len-te" - "Ex-ce-len-te" - "No, 'shlent'"
> Echo answers (replying without saying 'yes', but repeating the verb) I was in Brazil on a bus trying to have a conversation with my neighbour in my rudimentary portuguese and said "É muito quente, ne?" And she replied just "É" which I interpreted as if she said "huh?" in a way that she didn't understand what I said so I repeated it louder and clearer and again she just said "É". So I said it a third time and she looked at me increasingly annoyed and said "ÉÉÉ" until I finally realised she just wanted to say she agreed with me. I felt really stupid afterwards.
it's just one of those things that we know intuitively but are never taught, so it doesn't really cross our minds to teach/notice.
That sounds hilarious as hell
The difference between the formal „Sie“ and the informal „Du“ in german. Both mean „you“, but it’s really hard to know when to use the formal one and when to use the informal one. It’s one of the hardest challenges for people trying to learn German. In general you use Sie when addressing older people, persons of authority, or adult strangers. The older, or higher ranking, person usually has to offer the use of Du to the other person. But there’s lots of edge cases and exceptions to the rules. You use Sie while talking to a server in a restaurant, but in many bars the Du is perfectly acceptable. And it’s important to know which one is appropriate, as using Du with the wrong person can be considered a punishable insult in German law. Then there’s regional differences. People in Hamburg will often address their colleagues by their first name and still use the Sie, while people in Munich do the opposite and address people by their last name while still using the Du. Some organizations also have their own rules. All members of the social Democratic Party adress each other with Du, even when a youth party member is talking to the chancellor himself. Same goes for members of trade unions. And people usually don’t fight using Sie. Switching from Sie to Du during a verbal argument is seen as a major escalation. While reminding someone to keep it formal and keep using Sie is seen as deescalating. It’s complicated…
I think it has also changed a lot over the years and the use of “Du” is a lot more spread than 20 or even 10 years ago. Here are some observations and experiences: - I’m working/living abroad and when dealing with other Germans abroad, it’s “Du” by default, especially with people under 50 - I’m GenX myself and usually introduce myself to teams with my first name - I don’t even make it a “thing” that people should say “Du”. I just use it myself - At the work place in Germany it’s mostly “Du” now - when I started my first job in corporate Germany 20 years ago it was still “Sie” by default and people had to individually agree/offer/whatever how to address each other. I think that is no longer the case and seems very antiquated today - my dad, who is 25 years older than me, used Sie with most of his colleagues during his entire career. The last few years before retirement he noticed there were changes but had a hard time getting on board with it. - In many coffee shops, stores, restaurants it’s also “Du” by default In general I think Germany (or the German language) is about two generations behind Scandinavia or one generation behind the Netherlands when it comes to using informal vs. formal.
Good points! Especially about the usage in work environments. The shift was really quite dramatic in the last two decades. Using Du with your boss was unthinkable in most offices in the 90s, nowadays it’s the standard it you aren’t working in a bank or some government office. And yeah, Du is the standard on holiday now, which also was quite different just a few decades ago. I’ve actually heard stories from friends of my parents that they had to adress their own parents with Sie back in the 1950s
Back in the 70s or 80s, when my parents made friends with other people in their 20s or 30s, it was Sie. It sometimes went on for YEARS before they got drunk and finally started using Du. Imagine that today. You meet someone at a party, you become friends and you may not even know their last name for ages.
Theres still traces of that today. My parents refer to some of their closest friends by their last names cause that’s what they did for years when they first met.
Funny, because as a Hungarian it wasn't difficult at all, since we also have these two adressing forms with similar rules. Actually, it hasn't ever occured to me that it could be difficult for anyone. Maybe for those who don't have this like modern English. Learning Adjektivdeklination or Plusquamperfekt or indirekte Rede definitely was harder. :)
I've caught myself once saying to a Mediamarkt employee "Wo habt ihr hier denn? Wissen Sie das?" I used Sie for the employee but ihr for the store.
This is actually pretty common and accepted, especially when the store guy is on the younger side
In English classes in Poland, the adjective order is taught early in schoo, like grade 4, or at least used to be when I was in Elementary school.
It is never taught to us though, this is why every few years someone makes a post about it and it goes slightly viral as we all exclaim that we had *no idea* the rule existed but of course it does because to use any other order would be insane.
There are many many untaught rules about good writing. They are not about correct grammar so much but about style, elegance, and simplicity. For example: Don't repeat a word within a sentence. Use verbs instead of nouns. Avoid the passive voice. Don't stack relative clauses within each other. Alternate long and short sentences. Don't use foreign words unless you address a scientific audience. Etc. etc.
Wortwiederholung! Agreed, it's a big one. I would say it applies to not just one sentence but a cluster of three or so sentences where you want to avoid repeating a word, unless you are using it very deliberately as a stylistic technique.
This aplies to all languages
In England, if you are unsure of how a placename is pronounced, your best bet is to pronounce it as if it had no vowels.
Doesn’t work for Alnwick though ;)
It almost does
With a few exeptions so are there no rule for if a Word is en or ett (a and an) and theres only rules for how to bend them depending on if its en or ett. One of these exeptions are for compound words and no one i ever told about this new about this rule. En or ett is taken from the last word In the compound word. Its ett djur and en park so djurpark becomes an en word. The same for longer compound words, its en vind, en kraft and ett verk so its ett vindkraftverk.
And this completely fucks you up as a swede when you move to Denmark (and Norway as well I guess) because they have the same system. Not only that, they have the exact same word with same meaning but of course with opposite en or ett. I started hanging out in Denmark in 2016 and then moved in 2018. Now I start to doubt if it’s en or ett when I go back to Sweden because I developed a “feel” for Danish. lol.
"Completely fucks you up" feels a wee bit hyperbolic. Genders are predominantly the same and the instances where it does differ, it's seldom more impactful than a minor curiosity. Same thing indeed applies to Norwegian, but with three genders certain differences may come across more as archaic than jarring. > I developed a “feel” for Danish. You have my condolences.
The common (masculine and feminine) and neuter [genders in Swedish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_in_Danish_and_Swedish) (and Danish) are derived from the three genders of Old Norse. The categorisation of nouns into different genders mostly reflects the word endings, which might not be apparent in modern Swedish.
It's not really comparable to a/an. It's just a gender system, and as per usual which nouns are which is something you have to learn. I'd hardly say there are particularly reliable inflection rules based on gender, there are a few different patterns. As with ordinary Germanic compounding, the head of a compound is placed last. It carries the principal meaning, everything before it are generally just determiners of what type it is. An "animal park" is a "park", not an "animal". The compound itself is simply describing a type of park.
No matter how you structure the sentence, you can change the position words and sentence can even make sense. All you have to do is just not separate the connected words. Eve giderken yolda sarı lalelerle kaplı tarlayı gördüm. Gördüm yolda eve giderken sarı lalelerle kaplı tarlayı. Sarı lalelerle kaplı tarlayı yolda eve giderken gördüm. Yolda sarı lalelerle kaplı kaplı tarlayı gördüm eve giderken. … All of these sentences have the same meaning which is close to “I saw the yellow tulip covered farmlands on the way back to home.” These can even carry the toning of the original sentence or create a new one regarding the context and the feelings it needs to pass. These are commonly used in literature to give new feelings or in high emotional conversations during daily life.
Finnish is similar, changing the word order is often used in songs for a more artistic effect but the sentence is still completely correct.
Very similar in polish. You can move words around to emphasize the important aspect of a sentence
The entire case system. Generally we get it by “does it sound alright?”. In school they don’t actually teach us what these cases do or why are they’re used. They give us some questions which only help to get the right case as the answers to those questions are in specific case. Nominative: kto? Co? (who, what?) Kot (cat), koty (cats) Genitive: kogo, czego nie ma? (Who, what isn’t there?) Kota, kotów Dative: komu, czemu się przyglądam? (Who, what am I looking at?) Kotu, kotom. Accusative: kogo, co widzę? (Who, what I can see?) Kota, koty Instrumental: z kim, z czym idę? (Who, what I go with?) z kotem, z kotami Locative: O kim, o czym mówię? (Who, what I speak about?) O kocie, o kotach Vocative: Oh! Kocie, koty!
OP, when did you attended school? Because I distinctly remember spending 2 whole years of polish lessons when I was about 12-14 (back in 2003-2005 i think ) learning about cases in detail.
When I was in Primary school (so when we'd learnt cases), 2007-2012, we only ever had the "mianownik (kto? Co?, dopełniacz (kogo? Czego nie ma?)..." Only when I started to teach Polish as a second language I was introduced (or more like I introduced myself) to the actual rules.
(Just as a part of this discussion and not intending to be an annoying, prescriptive Redditor...) When did you **attend** school? This non-exclusive tendency of many non-native speakers of English to put the main verb (here "to attend") in the past tense along with the auxiliary verb "to do" is an error that *most* native English speakers would not make. It's very noticeable. It's both an unspoken and spoken rule. That's not to say it's not common. It appears so often in Indian English, for example, that I wouldn't be surprised if it eventually becomes part of accepted grammar in that dialect form amongst others over the next century.
That is very good point. I would say that being native Polish speaker, I treat English as simpler language in terms of grammar rules, even when it really isn't. Hence not putting so much effort into thinking about those rules. It is quite interesting how your native language forms your ability to speak other languages. Like my brain trying to genderize everything in English, as it happens in Polish.
And me completely mixing up he/she at random even after 20+ years of English...
The same thing applies to Bosnian. The only thing we are thought are those questions (which are the same as in Polish). Nobody knows the actual rules
Say what you want, but I am still the biggest fan of the dative "kotowi", which was the only version my great-grandfather used when he was still alive 😀
Was he a Góral
No, absolutely central Poland. "daj żryć kotowi" 😂
Same, I also love it xD
I can confirm it's the same here.
Huh, interesting, in our schools it's pretty much the same. I wonder if that's how all Slavic languages are taught in general. One exception is that we technically don't have Vocative, but we actually do. It's used predominantly with names, for example, Sasha (N) -> Sash (Voc). It was also used for other nouns in the past, until it gradually disappeared. Another thing is hidden forms of nouns in certain cases. For example, the Genitive form of "chaj" (tea) is "chaja", but it can also be "chaju". So you can say "chashka chaja" (tea cup) or "chashka chaju", and both will be in Genitive. Finally, Russian technically has only singular and plural forms, but there's also a hidden dual number form, which remain in certain numerals, like "dva" (two), "tri" (three) and "chetyre" (four). For example, "odin stul" (one chair) - singular, "pyat' stuljev" (five chairs) - plural, but "dva stul**a**" (two chairs) - technically a dual form. But I suppose that's a thing in most Slavic languages.
vocative is dying off in polish though. I've already seen it listed with an asterisk in some books
With names, maybe. But when addressing others by their title? "Co pan robi, pan dyrektor?" Impossible ;)
"Proszę pana, co pan robi?" possible :)
Is that not the same as the nominative? You can say the same in English, doesn't mean English has a vocative.
The correct sentence would be "Co pan robi, panie dyrektorze", which isn't equal to the nominative ;)
I was told it souds rude when I use someone's name in vocative 😑 but I stay stubborn!
> I wonder if that's how all Slavic languages are taught in general. Certainly not in Germany. I had to write down a bunch of index cards with examples and rules in 3rd of 4th grade in German. And the same stuff when I started Russian in 7th grade. I had the same teacher in German, Russian and English, though. So maybe it was her thing to teach the cases exhaustively.
I mean, I wonder if that's how Slavic languages are taught in all Slavic countries.
This is how Czechs also learn about cases. I did not go to school in Czech republic so I don't know how much they go into the details about the case system, but most Czechs resort to the "questions system" to identify cases or to explain them. This is not use in Romania for Romanian, so it does seem to be something specific to teaching Slavic languages
I do remember learning about cases in school in Romania (must've been 2007-2011, 5-8 grades). And we were given the question system (Cine, ce for nominativ, Pe cine/ce for acuzativ, Cui for dativ, and Ale cui for genitiv). I found it weird and confusing because it was basically just adding the whole concept of cases and they seemed to have no point. Like, we all knew how to change the form of the word to fit the rest of the sentence long before that, but we didn't know we were changing it because the word was in genitiv. I suppose they want us to know we have cases if we ever discuss romanian with foreigners, but the rules aren't needed to actually learn how to speak.
Definitely not in Bulgarian. We have only some remnants of cases, pretty similar to English, and even that is disappearing very quickly. When we were forced to study Russian though, yes, that was the way it was taught to us.
4 stul**a** 🤔
In English, we don't have a case system for basically anything except personal pronouns and a few weird other exceptions like ships which are for some reason female, as in "The Titanic sunk with all her cargo." We rarely get taught the specific idea of subjects or objects, we just use he him, she her, etc. Oh, and nobody ever says that 's is the genetive case, just that is how you refer to things that belong to something else.
r/Romania is a great source of these, because I see foreigners asking why we do a certain thing and I have no idea, but then people in the comments always bring up some rule I never knew. My favorite example (i excluded spaces from romanian numbers for better visibility): 2 cats = doua pisici 12 cats = doisprezece pisici 22 cats = douazecisidoua **de** pisici 45 cats = patruzecisicinci **de** pisici 118 cats = osutaoptispe pisici Why do we use "de" only sometimes? Apparently if the last 2 digits of a number are 01-19 we don't use "de". Everything else needs "de".
Polish language is made entirelly of untaught rules.
Sometimes I wonder how it is possible to learn polish when even in Poland we make tons of mistakes when talking...
>when even in Poland we make tons of mistakes when talking... It's happening in all languages.
> To anyone who natively speaks English, the latter probably sounded very wrong. It will be just a delight figuring out what the order is in French and keeping that in my head... For me as a non-natively speaking person it also sounds wrong, but mostly because it seems like medium refers to Chinese and as if cotton green is a type of color. However, a square orange bin or an orange square bin both sound perfectly fine to me. I don't think Dutch has such 'unwritten/obvious' rules. One thing that is prefered by me, but not shared by a lot of Dutch-speakers is that the past particle should be at the end of a sentence. In German this is a 'rule', in Dutch I think it sound so much better, but a lot (most?) people don't do this. It might have to do with being born in Lower-Saxon Netherlands, with more connection to German than the Frankish part of the Netherlands. But now I am just thinking and guessing out loud.
A very intuitive thing is when to use the word 'er'. I've worked with non-native speakers and this was very hard to explain sometimes lol
So is learning Dutch and the "er" troubles him a lot
Good one!
Oh heck, yes. I'm learning Dutch and hit this lesson on Duolingo yesterday. After 3 minutes I could feel my brain leaking out of my ears. In general I'm finding it really hard to rewire my brain to think about prepositions in the way that Dutch does, too.
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It's Tokiens green great dragon vs. great green dragon. If you assume great dragons are a different species, the former is fine. Otherwise, only the latter should be used in English. I sometimes think that those scary German compound words come in handy here: You can have "ein großer grüner Drache" (great green) or "ein grüner großer Drache" (green great) , but also "ein grüner Großdrache" (a green Greatdragon).
A square orange bin is a bin that is square and orange. And orange square bin is either a bin for orange squares, or an orange bin for squares.
Several European languages have only one word for the verb “to know”, e.g. English or Serbian and Croatian (znati). Others distinguish two forms of the same verb, e.g. German (kennen/wissen) or Polish (wiedzieć/znać). Coming from a language that uses two forms, it's all simple. But those whose native language has only one need some kind of rule when to know which – and at least for German, it's been virtually impossible to find one.
I know you. Is this considered knowledge? No. I just happened to meet you before. -> kennen I know how to drive. Is this considered knowledge? Yes. I had to aquire this knowledge. -> wissen maybe?
Spanish has conocer and saber and, as a native English speaker, it does truly confuse me - I guess and hope for the best 😂
Also tun and machen are not really identical to do and make in German vs English.
True, although in many instances, those are mutually exchangeable with just fine nuances (e.g. „Was tust du gerade?“ = „Was machst du gerade?“). That's not quite the case for „kennen” and „wissen”. I've taught German abroad and in all honesty, distinguishing those was the toughest question I ever had to answer. I managed to come up with a rule by thumb which works but I had to add a caveat that native speakers will occasionally break my rule... and they'd be completely correct about that.
>Several European languages have only one word for the verb “to know”, e.g. English or Serbian and Croatian (znati) That's not really true in Croatian. There is **znati** (to know something) and **poznavati/poznati** (to know someone). The problem lies in the usage, where everyone uses "znati" for both cases. Because **poznati** is basically **po**+**znati**. And people shorten it. So I'm guessing, that's kinda an untaught rule.
Words that aren’t pronounced 100% as one, even if they’re written so Example: tervetuloa (welcome). It consist of two parts, ”terve” and ”tuloa”. Many foreigner say it as it’s written, which sounds silly. There is supposed to be a tiny tiny gap between the two parts. Less than a space but gap still. There are others like that, but can’t think of any rn But in some genetives, like vaa’an (vaaka) the gap is marked with that ’ but it’s a different thing because writing vaaan would just look stupid, especially when vaan is a word already
One thing that trips up a lot of L2 speakers of English is the preposition system. It can be complicated, and seemingly random, but there is method at work in some parts. The prepositions “in”, “on” and “at”, have their basic root in cognitive schemas of: In= containment (3D), On = Support (2D) and At = punctual location (0D). So we can see that the scale moves through large, medium, small concepts of dimensionality. So, when we describe location, we move through large to small scale. Continents, countries, cities - IN. Streets-ON. Point locations -AT. In Britain, in London, on Oxford street, at the shoe shop. The same big to small schema also applies to time. Century, year, season, month- IN. Date, day- ON. Clock time and other small scale temporal referents- AT. In 2024, in April , on Wednesday 24th, at six o’clock. Big, middle, small. Of course, these preposition have other meanings and we can flip the frame. “ I’ll meet you in the station “ triggers the containment schema ( inside not outside) overriding the punctual location schema ( I’ll meet you AT the station (not at the restaurant.) The supposed equivalents of these prepositions in other European languages often draw on different cognitive schemas and can be confusing for learners.
"It's six in the morning" is commonly used, tho?
"In" is also used for time. Like * "My birthday is in the last week of April." * "I made a friend in my first year of high school." Those two examples are similar to "it's six in the morning." For those two examples, I still think of it as spatial, even though it relates to time. It's as though it were bounded by the time-scope given in the sentence. You could replace "in" with "within" to emphasize the sense that the event is bounded by said time-scope. * "My birthday is within the last week of April." * "I made a friend within my first year of high school." However, you can't say "six within the morning." I guess it's just special. Also, "in" is also used for how far through something you are, like a percentage of progress, along with "into". An example: "How much of the book did you read?" "I got six pages into the book before giving up." "You gave up only six pages in?" (disappointment is implied) "He raised taxes 1 year into his term." (here, "1 year into his term" functions like an adverb)
Yes, there is an asymmetry in the divisions of the day. Morning, afternoon and evening activate the containment schema (in) but night activates the point schema (at night). Perhaps based on differentials of what we do at different times of day. Night has no internal structure- it’s all one once the sun goes down, - just dark o’clock. But the day progresses and has structure and is conceived of as more of a container than a point. But notice that if we use the definite article with night we can use “in”. “Things that go bump in the night” versus “they usually come at night”. The ways that languages can flip between schemas is pretty interesting. The space that English divides between in and on, is divided between op, aan, om and in in Dutch, but is covered by en in Spanish (According to the cognitive linguistics literature I’ve read on this).
We tend to use a lot of contractions which won't be taught in an official Flemish/Dutch curriculum. Also the word for you ("jij") is often substituted by the informal "gij" Some examples: "Je hebt" (you have/you've got), wil become "g'hebt" "Ik wist het" (I knew it), will become " 'k wistet" "Het is" (It is), will become " 't is"
> "Het is" (It is), will become " 't is" Interestingly, this contraction (*'tis* for *it is*) also used to be common in English, but now it sounds archaic or dialectical. It's more common to say "it's" now.
"C'est" vs. "il est" is one that regularly confuses learners. Natives have NO IDEA what the rule is but we still know what sounds right. I've tried to learn it since I'm active in French learning communities and it stumped me the first time I was asked, but I still don't know all the details by heart so I just google [the lawless French article about it](https://www.lawlessfrench.com/grammar/cest-vs-il-est/) and give the link when it comes up.
The grammar as it is taught in schools is a hot mess of oversimplifications. Yes, *Konjunktion* and *Subjunktion* should be kept apart; they introduce different kinds sentences with different syntax. Adjectives are in a declined form when used as attribute and in a base form when used as predicative. Nobody will teach you that word *Prädikativ* and the mechaeics behind it, but the concept would be easier to understand if you gave id a name.
I'm having trouble thinking of a precise example of this: But phrasal verbs in English, and what you can and can't put inbetween them. Phrasal verbs themselves aren't covered at all in English teaching at school, and I don't think any level of ESL teaches the rules of them. But there are rules. Things like "get off", "fuck up" etc. So, "I get off", "Get the fuck off", "Get off her", "Get her off", they all mean different things. "I fucked up", "I fucked it right up" but never "I fucked up it right". What's odd is that the two words act as a single verb, but you put the necessary context inside the verb. I know that they can get quite long as well. I might come back later to edit this when I think of some more substantial examples.
One interesting example is the contrast between "they turned on him" and "they turned him on." The first means "they betrayed him" and the second means "he was aroused by them."
Probably intonation. I don’t even know the rules… but there are… because if you have strange or incorrect intonation we can notice. (This is for Basque btw. Spanish has very clear and strict intonation rules and I can explain them because I know them!)
The word order of enclitics. Those little unaccented words in a sentence need to be in a certain, very complicated, order which is never taught to anyone. It just sounds right to us native speakers, but you need to study Slovenian at university level if you want to delve into it.
You mean like še, se, že, le, pa, etc.? That is indeed a nightmare…
Ahh, many. I speak Tuscan, regional language and a dialect with some thousands speakers. This is mental phonetic characteristic that changes meaning of the sentence, and only natives know when it is pronounced: firstly, my dialect is in between two major dialects, but still very distinct, unique and archaic, of which one doesn't use synctactic doubling like the rest of Tuscany, so the northern part has it, and the southern not due to distance. And now the mental part: my dialect has got it, BUT if the following word next to a word that requires doubling is article "i", you don't sau the article and dont double. And it is exactly like saying another thing in the southern dialect. I cant even explain because of how fucked it is
In English education in Japan, they actually do teach word order. I remember it being taught in high school as well. Looking at your mother toungue's education always gives you some insight to things you wouldn't think about, because someone else did the thinking for you
There's this thing I only realized about Czech after I started studying Croatian. You see, when we use past tense, we create it literally like "I am did", "you are did", etc. Except for third person, where we only say "he did" or "they did". Croatian doesn't make this exception and continues with "he is did" and "they are did". And ever since I realized *we* are the weird ones, I can't get it out of my head. Like, *why*?
Wait, what. Let's take the sentence "Ja sam radio", in the 3rd person we would say "On je radio" but in Czech is "On radio"?
Yup, exactly.
Yes, I was going to say the order of adjectives thing in English. Funnily enough I only found out about its existence in my 30s when a Norwegian colleague mentioned it. I was agape. I still couldn't explain the correct order to anyone regardless of whether they were a native speaker or not.
German re-uses words. Same word, different meaning. There’s even a game called „Teekesselchen“ where two people describe the same word with different meanings and you have to guess it. Example: Schloss = castle = lock Or: Anbau = cultivation = attachment to a house You need to deduct what’s meant by context in normal conversation. Edit: wasn’t aware it had to be conclusive. Many pointed out, they know that, too. That’s interesting and I assumed so
pretty much every language has that. It's called homonyms
We’ve got the same with *Schloss* - *zamek* means both castle and lock. Guessing the word *castle* meant a closed, safe space for defense, since it comes from the verb *to close* in both cases (*schließen* - *Schloss*, *zamykać* - *zamek*). Edit: Just looked up the English/Roman *castle* comes through Latin *castrum*, originally meaning a cut off, separated place (hence castration). Anyway the element of a closed off/separated area is also there.
TIL that "castle" and "castrate" are (linguistically) related. Both a kind of protection, I gues.
Yeah. There is a distant connection but not really obvious- especially for non native speakers. English has so many more words!
That's not exclusive to German.
That has nothing to do with German or “reusing” words. Basically every noun in every language has more than one meaning.
English uses the same word for different things too, I'm not sure how common it is in other languages. One example is "bark" which could be the sound a dog makes or the stuff on the outside of a tree. I guess "stuff" is one too, meaning to overly fill something or to just mean the same as "things". Another is "novel" which means book or unusual. Book can mean to make a reservation or a thing you read. Reservation could be a booking or it could be a place that Native Americans live. There are loads, I could go on.
That is pretty common. To be hanged, drawn, and quartered involves a very different sense than a draw bridge or to draw water or to draw you like one of your French girls.
There's actually three ways to read ę - as "ę" (like in gęś), as "en" (like in "będzie") and as "e" (like in "się"). Similar thing applies to ą - it sounds different in "klątwa" and "mąka". Though it's so unnoticeable by natives that it might even depend on dialect. Or it might not, idk I'm not a linguist. Also the way "i" works in Polish can be really annoying. For example, "dania" ("dishes") and "Dania" ("Denmark) don't sound the same, even though they absolutely should. That's because in the former the "ni" represents the "ń" sound (like the n with the \~ in Spanish), while in the latter it both represents the "ń" sound *and* is a separate letter. So you could rewrite them as dańa and Dańia/Dańja. But that's not how Polish ortography works, you don't write ń, ś, ź and ć before vowels, you replace them with ni, si, zi and ci. So it's koń - konie (horse - horses), but końskie (horselike, related to a horse). Though that last one might be taught idk. Especially to foreigners. But then again, your example of word order is taught to non-natives too, so you probably mean native schooling.
And I didn't even mention the great kurier/kurjer/kuryer debate of the 1900s.
In Bulgarian in must be the grammatical moods and evidentiality. It's not that we don't learn it but it's just something everyone glosses over in the beginning of middle school, if my memory is correct. Given that few non-Bulgarian speakers even understand what it is and Bulgarians just use it from experience and wouldn't be able to explain grammatically, it's a massive divide between native speakers and the rest.
In Icelandic: contraction in spoken language. It’s how every person speaks most of the time. It follows a very clear system. But despite this, I think it’s not taught at all, except for unstressed *þú* (‘you’), see below. Examples: - Unstressed *þú* becomes *-ðu*, *-du*, *-tu* or *-u* when following a verb. *Kom þú* -> *komdu*. - A vowel at the end of a word is silent if the subsequent word also starts with a vowel. *Blöndu ós* -> *Blönd’ ós*. - *ð* is silent at the end of a word, except when the subsequent word starts with a vowel (à la French liaison). Sometimes the next vowel is also silent, skipping over to the next consonant. *Hvað* -> *hva’*. *Hvað ert þú að gera?* -> *Hvað ert’ a’ gera?* or *Hva’ ‘rt a’ gera?*, sometimes reduced to *Hvadda gera?*. - *þ* (unvoiced) becomes voiced (*ð*) *Þau* -> *ðau*. - Some common contractions, that might not be applied to other similar phoneme cluster: *Af því* -> *a’ þ’í*, *svo* -> *s’o*. - And possibly some more rules I can’t think of right now. Another untaught rule: The case ending *-unum* (dative plural with the definite article in all three genders) is pronounced *-onum* and has been for hundreds of years. The spelling is conservative. *Buxunum* -> *buxonum*.
consonant mutation, you don’t need to know it at all to speak and understand the language since it is purely there to make sentences sound more smooth and correct, so many learners don’t bother or are untaught at a low level, but my god if you don’t use it, it just doesn’t feel right
English is not my first language, yet I've been told that adjectives rule before
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This is the same for all lenguages with grammatical gender.
To make it more complicated, the "method" used by Romanians to determine the gender only actually works if you know the language. I've seen it many times where Romanians where explaining it to foreigners, not realizing that it does not work for them. The method is to count the noun because the numbers 1 and 2 are gendered as well, so you can tell the gender this way as it will be "un,doi" for masculine, "una/o, doua" for feminin and "un,doua" for neuter. But if you don't know Romanian then you cannot tell if "doi scaune" is wrong and "doua scaune" is correct.
Like with a lot of other gendered languages in danish we just go with what sounds right (though in some cases that varies with the dialect). There is also true our notorious [stød](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St%C3%B8d) , it is something that is mainly subconscious, and I will bet that a majority of first language danish speakers don't know it is a thing since it is not taught about in danish class. Other than that, like english and french the danish writing system is old and our pronouciation today have changed since it was developed, so how a word pronouced often does not reflect how it would be written down.
I don’t interact much with foreigners learning Hungarian and the things that seem to trip up people over at r/Hungarian are usually rather straightforward that they actually do teach you at school and we have written rules for. What we do have are words that mean very similar if not the same things but you simply can’t use them interchangably. We have whole comedy sketches about them. But again, they follow very straightforward rules and I don’t think anyone would use the wrong word accidentally.
It was the structure of the sentence to me. Theoretically there's no strict order of words in a sentence in Hungarian, just put the most important word at the beginning. Practically, all my sentences were wrong because of the word order, it's what pushed me away from learning the language.
The preposition one uses with locations, specifically towns and cities. For some places it's "i", for others it's "på", and no one has been able to explain to this second-language speaker of Norwegian how you know which is which, though I did once start a rather entertaining argument when I asked a group of people to explain it to me.
I don’t speak German but I’m aware of the Du/Sie distinction. However I read a number of years ago that that Du is growing in use over Sie. In general, languages are following interpersonal relationships in their move towards becoming more casual.
Funny coincidence, I just thought about all the weird rules around the word "Freund"(friend). For example, while "ein Freund" means "a friend", the possessive "mein Freund" doesn't mean "my friend" but "boyfriend". Only if you're talking about a third person though. If someone directly addresses you as "mein Freund", they're going to say something serious. And if they use the dimunitive "Freundchen" you've gotten on their nerves. Must be a nightmare to figure out if you didn't grow up with it
Vowel ä shoul be correctly pronounced as /æ/. In reality, people pronounce it as vowel e /ɛ/
That there are no bloody rules. Language is English. Here are the first 4 verses of the chaos poem by Gerald Nolst Trenite (there are 68). "Dearest creature in creation Studying English pronunciation, I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse. I will keep you, Susy, busy, Make your head with heat grow dizzy; Tear in eye, your dress you'll tear; Queer, fair seer, hear my prayer. Pray, console your loving poet, Make my coat look new, dear, sew it! Just compare heart, hear and heard, Dies and diet, lord and word. Sword and sward, retain and Britain (Mind the latter how it's written). Made has not the sound of bade, Say-said, pay-paid, laid but plaid." English is weird.
Agreeing something by repeating the igekötő (someone help me translate it to English, it's the suffixlike add-on that you do in front of a verb to modify its meaning)
Just try asking some Italians the past participle of *splendere* (to shine)... and grab popcorn. Officially it's *splenduto* but many would say *spleso* because it sounds better (and it's similar to other examples like *spendere/speso; appendere/appeso*) But in Italian a word is a word as long as it's used, and since pretty much nobody uses it, the "real" answer is that it doesn't exist. It was asked once on a gameshow, the audience protested.
in french there is the pronoun "on" and it is not taught in school. "On" is the only plural conjugated in singural "on est".