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The most difficult language is....

Name: Anonymous 2006-12-30 5:46

according to the British Foreign Office is Hungarian which has 35 cases (forms of a nouns according to whether it is subject, object, genitive, etc). Therefore knowing Hungarian means you have skill. Discuss.

Name: Anonymous 2007-05-22 1:52 ID:cvcDrxEM

Being Polish myself i've never noticed until i started learning Japanese how, in fact, levels of politeness are present in Polish. Say, you want to talk about a person called "Piotr Nowak" and here are the different ways you can do it, each time with various implications:

Piotr Nowak - no implications whatsoever;
Pan Nowak - literally "Mr.Nowak", which is the standard polite form;
Pan Piotr Nowak - kind of weird, since people usually drop the first name while using the "Pan ..." pattern;
Nowak - without "Pan" it becomes kind of disdainful;
Nowaczek - dimmunutive of "Nowak": even more disdainful than plain "Nowak";
Pan Piotr - pretty informal and friendly (can be misinterpreted though);
Piotr - just the first name, used casually but still implies some distance;
Piotrek - the most commonly used diminutive: implies some amount of closeness;
Piotrus - diminutive, rather used for kids;
Piotreczek - yet another diminutive, same as above.

Pretty fucked up, isn't it?


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