This could be mechanical things like the order of adjectives, or more complex/personal things on your journey of learning another language.
I want to start learning Norwegian again and I remembered learning a lot about citrus fruits as I went on Wikipedia adjacent trips.
there’s one cool language feature that English doesn’t have and it’s really annoying - a way to answer questions posed in the negative.
if someone asks something like “don’t you want to come with me?”, whether you answer “yes” or “no”, it’s going to confuse them. you normally have to repeat the sentence, “yes, I want to come with you” or “no, I don’t want to come with you”.
in my native language (Assyrian), you can say “dach” which would mean the “yes, I want to come with you”. I think in German they say “doch”, in Norwegian it’s “jo”?
So basically a word to say “I am saying yes to you, the person?” That sounds really convenient. It’s like a reassurance you’re cooperating or in agreement with the person. Like you’re on their side.
I like the distinction between the two “to be” forms in Spanish (ser/estar) and how it modifies the meaning of the verb. Eg. ser listo != estar listo.
It’s also nice seeing languages with a mostly free word order, that rely on grammar instead, like Greek, even though that probably makes them harder to learn.
This happens in Portuguese too. The first thing we learn in English classes is that the verb “to be” carries two meanings and we should consider the context to identify which one of them is being used.
I’m an absolute beginner, but Finnish is interesting for two reasons.
First, noun cases. it is like conjugation of verbs in the Romance languages, but applied to nouns too. So there are no prepositions, you just modify the word endings instead. E.g.
houseistaloandin the houseistalossa.Second, vowel harmony. There are three vowel groups separated by mouth placement. Back vowels are a/o/u, middle vowels are i/e, front vowels are ä/ö/y. I’m not clear on the complete rules but simple words must have harmony, meaning the front and back vowels can’t be mixed together, and middle vowels are neutral and can go either way. From the earlier example, the vowels in
taloare in the back of the mouth, but forsisäänkäynti(entrance) they are all front/middle. I’ve heard Japanese is similar.i dont think japanese is similar, but vowel harmony is widespread in uralic and turkic languages.
That’s kinda like how in Spanish vowels can be either weak or strong, with a/e/o being strong and i/u being weak. When a word contains consecutive strong vowels, they’re pronounced as separate syllables, such as
lealpronouncedLEH-al. This is known as “hiato” which there might be word for in English of which I’m unaware. But consecutive weak vowels, or a combination of a weak vowel and a strong vowel, are pronounced as a single syllable. For example,violínis pronouncedveeuh-LEEN. That combination is known as “diptongo.” There’s an exception though, if a word’s stress is on a weak vowel it becomes a strong vowel, like inríowhich becomesREE-uh.
I like how Chinese has a pronoun for we/us including the person you’re speaking to (咱们 zanmen/zamen) in addition to the plural pronoun 我们 women that could be either.
Spanish conjugation is complex enough that conditionality is baked into the verbs. “We would go if…” = “Nosotros iríamos si…”
I still find it funny that the Swedish word for vegetable is “grönsak”, which literally translates to “green thing”.
Bit idea, update the term to refer to other vegetables like Orange things for carrots
Some things would just be called ____ things. I love that. Like that’s what the category is at the grocery store?
I like that the Spanish grammar is really close to the real uses or the language. The same with English…In Portuguese we have a language we learn from the grammar and almost another we actually use in out daily lives. In Brazil we learn a lot of verb conjugations that we don’t use without sounding too formal or pedantic. We also learn conjugations with pronouns like “tu” and “vós” that are not used in Brazil.
I’ve always dug how Latin has not only verb conjugations but also noun declensions. It makes everything sound super cool and poetic. That’s why people always liked it for so long. It just sounds cool.
