How hard would it be for you to learn your own language?

[SamanthaSamantha's icon]

Oh wow, that must have been embarrassing!

Maybe it was, but I'm way past the time when a little embarrassment would bother me or prevent me from trying to do something.

Besides, humor is a great bridge between people.

That reminds me of a story my French teacher told us of going to a Parisian store and asking where to find preservatives not realizing "preservatif" is French for condoms.

Haha xD

 

[Need4Power]

Maybe it was, but I'm way past the time when a little embarrassment would bother me or prevent me from trying to do something.

Besides, humor is a great bridge between people.


Haha xD

True! Also sometimes that's simply how you learn

 

[SamanthaSamantha's icon]

True! Also sometimes that's simply how you learn

I like you, dude.

You have the right attitude.

 

[Mileena]

People saying English is easy….it depends on where you’re coming from. A lot of people struggle to learn English as some words mean something different in their language, some things do not have a word for it in their language, alphabets are different, some letters do not exist, some letters are never said side by side, English has words spelled the same but pronounced different and with different meanings (read, read, live, live for examples), silent letters, etc…..so yeah English can be very difficult for people coming from certain countries.

 

[Ikagura]

That reminds me of a story my French teacher told us of going to a Parisian store and asking where to find preservatives not realizing "preservatif" is French for condoms.

Ouch...

Wait until they learn that the hood of a car is also a slang for that.

 

[Julian_L]

That reminds me of a story my French teacher told us of going to a Parisian store and asking where to find preservatives not realizing "preservatif" is French for condoms.

And stuff like that happen even between native speakers from different dialects. I remember some YouTube videos about anecdotes from Venezuelan people coming to Argentina, and at some point, asking for a "forro", which in Venezuela it seems to be anything you can use to cover something else (a case, for example), but in Argentina it means "cruel" or "condom", and the salesman humouristically responding that such a thing should be asked for in a pharmacy.

 

[Jdan-S]

Filipino's not too hard to get started with.

If you know the Latin alphabet, such as with modern English, then you can already read Filipino words. Also, what you see is exactly how you would pronounce it. For example, e is almost always eh, not ee, ey, or silent. For that matter, silent letters or other rules are uncommon. The only special character is ñ.

Bonus points if you know Spanish, since Filipino has a good amount of loan words (days of the week, numbers, furniture, animals, etc.).

 

[ArchienineZXAdventArchienineZXAdvent's icon]

That reminds me of a story my French teacher told us of going to a Parisian store and asking where to find preservatives not realizing "preservatif" is French for condoms.

Ok, that was pretty hilarous.
Poor guy lol

 

[What's His Face]

Depends on the teacher/teaching method.

 

[Sonic Boomer]

If I'm coming from an English background, it won't be that hard because Macedonian is one of the two Slavic languages that actually has definite articles.
Tho Macedonian is a gendered language, if I understand the basic rules of how gender works it should be easy. Every word that ends in "a" is feminine with the exception of the words "крв - krv" = blood and "смрт - smrt" = Death, both of which are feminine but don't end in an "a".
If a word ends with an "o" or an "e" it's neutral gendered. And everything else is masculine with the exception of the word "слуга - sluga" meaning male servant.

I might have trouble with the tenses a little, but if I understand the concept behind them, I should be fine.

Surprisingly enough the thought process behind English and Macedonian is very similar even though they don't even remotely sound similar.
Other languages from what I understand have drastic differences in the very thought process of the language, where as ours are fairly similar.

 

[random0nonsense]

Ok, that was pretty hilarous.
Poor guy lol

It's slightly worse than you thought; my teacher was a single woman in her 20s. Imagine working at a bakery and a young foreign woman asks you where to find the condoms.

 

[ArchienineZXAdventArchienineZXAdvent's icon]

It's slightly worse than you thought; my teacher was a single woman in her 20s. Imagine working at a bakery and a young foreign woman asks you where to find the condoms.

Was a woman?
I found somewhat difficult to say who is a guy and who is a girl in english since there aren't a clear way to distinguish gender aside her and him.

 

[random0nonsense]

Was a woman?
I found somewhat difficult to say who is a guy and who is a girl in english since there aren't a clear way to distinguish gender aside her and him.

Presumably she still is. I've been out of high school 25 years, so who can say.

 

[SamanthaSamantha's icon]

It's slightly worse than you thought; my teacher was a single woman in her 20s. Imagine working at a bakery and a young foreign woman asks you where to find the condoms.

I'd personally commend her efforts (and the lengths she was willing to travel) for safe sex

 

[ZEGA ZONICZEGA ZONIC's icon]

I only speak English.

 

[ArchienineZXAdventArchienineZXAdvent's icon]

I only speak English.

The point of the thread is how much you will struggle with your native language if you born with a different native language

 

[SamanthaSamantha's icon]

Come to think about it... I'm pretty universal — I'd suck at every language xD

 

[Tsukishima]

If my ability to speak English was completely reset and had to start over, I'd just pick up Latin instead and pick up English as secondary later.

Latin feels like the 'primordial tongue' to me, and that gives it so much value and beauty in it to admire.

Since English I feel is conventionally pretty easy, going from Latin to it would make things interesting.

 

[ArchienineZXAdventArchienineZXAdvent's icon]

If my ability to speak English was completely reset and had to start over, I'd just pick up Latin instead and pick up English as secondary later.

Latin feels like the 'primordial tongue' to me, and that gives it so much value and beauty in it to admire.

Since English I feel is conventionally pretty easy, going from Latin to it would make things interesting.

The only downside is that nobody talks in Latin aside from a few niche people.