The fact that there are only three articles, and no need to figure out if a word is feminine or masculine or neuter makes the grammar that much simpler.
There's a reason Japanese is second place to English, as the most difficult language to learn, despite the fact that Japanese kids have to learn spoken Japanese, two different Japanese writing forms and the Chinese writing form.
Many, many languages have been called "the hardest language to learn". English is one of them, but I've heard both Basque and Navajo reported to be impossible to learn on a native level if you haven't heard it extensively before the age of six months. In the end, which language is the hardest for a person to learn depends a lot on their native language, including its sounds, grammar, tonality, etc; claiming that there's only one is just silly.
I think it really depends what language you already speak. For example if you speed German, English comes relative natural. This is because they are both Germanic languages. Same is with Latin languages such as French, Spanish, Italian or Portuguese. The tricky thing is when you cross over into a different speech realms.
I find Chinese terribly hard to learn, because it's all in the pronunciation. Things you just don't have in western languages…
Sooo… silent then? trn and turn have the same pronunciation, thus the u is silent. Unless, of course, you mean to say it has the same pronunciation as the “ur” in turn.
i bet it's easier to pronounce Ölfs name when you're scandinavian and know german. the germans actually have letter like ö and ü. (and so does the swedes(people from sweden))
As one verbally gifted personage was quoted to say about various languages comparing them to patrons at a restaurant… (my quote might be a bit off)
French is like that guy sitting at the front table and ignoring everyone else while making a racket.
German is that group of geeks in the corner picking and choosing from the menu.
English is that guy in the back alley hitting other languages over the head and going through their pockets for loose change.
Question: Have I ever told you about the stran ge convention that comic characters are supposed to hear each other rather than read each others' speech bubbles like we do? (We reading theirs,I mean.) So Lex shouldn't have any problems with the pronounciation – he can hear it.
In college I wrote a inclass paper on the spelling and grammar difficulties inherent in the English language. The English teacher was not amused and the paper came back with more red on it than a war casualty. Barely got a C in that class (all my other classes were A's) and strangely the only other male in the class (a Frenchman all the girls mooned over) got an A. The problem I have with English (even though it is my native language) is that as Spock would say it's "Highly illogical".
I don't think you have every told us, no.
I'm hoping that might be part of the joke, I just needed to point it out if not!!
Ölf didn’t understand your comment at first. But then, after thinking about what you’d said, it hit him like a tun of brix!
The fact that there are only three articles, and no need to figure out if a word is feminine or masculine or neuter makes the grammar that much simpler.
There is that.
There's a reason Japanese is second place to English, as the most difficult language to learn, despite the fact that Japanese kids have to learn spoken Japanese, two different Japanese writing forms and the Chinese writing form.
Many, many languages have been called "the hardest language to learn". English is one of them, but I've heard both Basque and Navajo reported to be impossible to learn on a native level if you haven't heard it extensively before the age of six months. In the end, which language is the hardest for a person to learn depends a lot on their native language, including its sounds, grammar, tonality, etc; claiming that there's only one is just silly.
I think it really depends what language you already speak. For example if you speed German, English comes relative natural. This is because they are both Germanic languages. Same is with Latin languages such as French, Spanish, Italian or Portuguese. The tricky thing is when you cross over into a different speech realms.
I find Chinese terribly hard to learn, because it's all in the pronunciation. Things you just don't have in western languages…
According to whom?
Actually, an ö is pronounced like the u in "turn"
At least in German.
Yup, or the u in fur. Ö is pronouced like that in Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Icelandish, Hungarian, German etc etc…
Sooo… silent then? trn and turn have the same pronunciation, thus the u is silent. Unless, of course, you mean to say it has the same pronunciation as the “ur” in turn.
i bet it's easier to pronounce Ölfs name when you're scandinavian and know german. the germans actually have letter like ö and ü. (and so does the swedes(people from sweden))
I agree with Ölf, as a French!
Well, I can't say that french is logical either, but english pronounciation seems sometimes really strange :p
And French pronunciation is, for the most part, très beau!
Well, to be fair, English inherited quite a few of its worst bits from French (the rest it got from German).
As one verbally gifted personage was quoted to say about various languages comparing them to patrons at a restaurant… (my quote might be a bit off)
French is like that guy sitting at the front table and ignoring everyone else while making a racket.
German is that group of geeks in the corner picking and choosing from the menu.
English is that guy in the back alley hitting other languages over the head and going through their pockets for loose change.
Well I guess the name Ölf has something to do with the o on his shirt
You’re the very first person to comment on that. But it won’t be explained for quite a while yet.
I always thought it was a zero
Question: Have I ever told you about the stran ge convention that comic characters are supposed to hear each other rather than read each others' speech bubbles like we do? (We reading theirs,I mean.) So Lex shouldn't have any problems with the pronounciation – he can hear it.
That just makes Lex even meaner!
In college I wrote a inclass paper on the spelling and grammar difficulties inherent in the English language. The English teacher was not amused and the paper came back with more red on it than a war casualty. Barely got a C in that class (all my other classes were A's) and strangely the only other male in the class (a Frenchman all the girls mooned over) got an A. The problem I have with English (even though it is my native language) is that as Spock would say it's "Highly illogical".
alt code for Ö is 0214 (hold down Alt and type 0214 on the keypad)
Hmm… put Ölf in google translate, set to Swedish-Swedish, then German-German, then Norwegian-Norwegian
Ölf sounds like aelf, oelf, or alf
So, shouldn't the "O" in his shirt have an umlaut above it?
And of course, "Paella" is Spanish
I’m going out for fried ghoti tonight.
(‘gh’ as in “enough”, ‘o’ as in “women”, ‘ti’ as in “tradition”).
English is illogical–but then you can say most things in any syntax and people will figure it out.
In German you have to wait patiently until the end of the sentence for the verb so you know what’s happening…
Logical not English is, but flexible in usage quite.
In that sense English and Japanese are similar. In pretty much every other sense they’re different.