Chinese and Japanese
Hey, guess what? Advanced societies stopped using ideograms three thousand years ago and for a very good reason: It's fucking stupid having to learn one symbol for each word. Get yourselves a fucking alphabet, you savages.
Chinese has the added retardedness that it can be ambiguously written in either direction.
English
The only thing more stupid than a language with ideograms, is a language with incomplete verbs.
Why is there no way to know if the written word "read" is in the present, past, or participle?
Why is there no past, future, or infinitive tenses for "can"?
And I can't forget the lack of distinction between singular and plural second persons.
Actually, the whole concept of having noun classes ("genders") is retarded. learn2japanese&finnish
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Anonymous2009-07-23 16:37
>>2 Inconsistent plurals. Why the hell would you randomly use different plural suffixes depending on the word?
Which reminds me, in English, "-s" denotes a plural for nouns, and a singular for verbs in the present. How fucked up is that?
Y'all?
Yes, that's fine if you have some sort of mental retardation.
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Anonymous2009-07-23 16:48
I just love Japanese kanji. Alot of people in uni hated them too but I always enjoyed learning them.
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Anonymous2009-07-23 21:43
Most faggy indo-european languages: Gender
WHICH FAGGOT THOUGHT GIVING EVERY DAMN THING A GENDER WAS A GOOD IDEA? IS THIS TABLE MALE OR FEMALE OLOLOL, BRILLIANT IDEA.
In fact, not having these is one of the rare things that English has it right. I'm guessing the concept is non-existent in Uralic and Altaic languages.
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Anonymous2009-07-23 22:28
>>7
English doesn't have the genders, but it does have inconsistent plurals. There's a fairly minimal set of them though, and many come from other languages.
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Anonymous2009-07-23 23:33
>>8
English has a lot of irregularities here and there if you get into it
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Anonymous2009-07-24 0:16
>>9
Yes, but I think if you counted you'd find that the majority of words are simply pluralized with -s or -es. I'm not saying there aren't exceptions.
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Anonymous2009-07-24 2:16
my native one, russian, sucks cuz has a pretty complicated word morphing - verb conjugations, noun declinations, a fuckton of suffixes, prefixes, endings etc, also it has an intricate word order in sentences and a random gender of nouns (though you can almost always know it from nouns' ending)
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Anonymous2009-07-24 2:55
My native one is Portuguese, and right now we're going through a gramatical correction of the language to make it more solid (similar to what the germans did)
Bad news is that all of the Portuguese speaking countries (Brazil, Portugal, Madagascar, Angola) are reging right now, but at least we'll be speaking the same language
Portuguese sucks because the verb conjugation is far too complicated, with excessive "exeptions to the rule".
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Anonymous2009-07-24 3:57
My language German, they say it's got really complicated grammar so mastering it to perfection seems like a very hard, if not impossible task for foreigners.
What I hate is how some idiots in the ministry of education never get tired of changing the official spelling rules for dozens of words every few years. It's come to the point where most Germans don't care about spelling and punctuation rules anymore and everybody just writes how they think it's right.
Like Füsik is now a legit way of spelling Physik (physics) I believe. I mean that's just so ridiculous.
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Anonymous2009-07-24 5:39
My language, Finnish, sucks too because it's so complicated. It's way more logical than English, though, but there are a lot of irregular verbs and complicated noun cases and things like consonant gradation.
It's ridiculous actually. We even have a grammatical concept that non-Uralic languages lack called the partitive case. Wikipedia defines it like this: "the partitive case is a grammatical case which denotes 'partialness', 'without result', or 'without specific identity'."
Yeah.
Finnish phonology is also incredibly monotonous. No pitch accent, negligible word stress, and you can forget about any kind of tones (except a rising one when you're asking a question, but even that is optional).
Come to think of it, what do Western European languages need two past tenses for? Other languages do just fine with just one!
I mean, explain the logic behind "I went to London" vs "I've gone to London", when the context is, say, you moved there a year ago or something. (There is supposedly a logic here, but the usage is more inconsistent than some religions!)
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Anonymous2009-07-24 19:04
>>16
Pfft. That's child's play.
Spanish: Fui a Londres - I went to London Iba a Londres - I was going to London He ido a Londres - I have gone to London Había ido a Londres - I was going to London Hube ido a Londres - (I can't even translate this. I don't know what it means. The Spanish Wikipedia says it's an immediate future to a past.)
...que fuera/fuese a Londres... - ...that I had gone to London...
...que haya ido a Londres... - ...that I had gone to London... Hubiera/Hubiese ido a Londres - I would have gone to London
And these are just the pasts. And there are quite a few irregular verbs.
You can thank the Romans for this.
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Anonymous2009-07-24 19:15
>>17
Arg. Some of these are wrong. Había ido a Londres - I had gone to London
...que/si fuera/fuese a Londres... - ...that/if I had gone to London...
...que haya ido a Londres... - ...that I had gone to London...
[If] Hubiera/Hubiese ido a Londres - [If] I would have gone to London
The subjunctive mood in Spanish is too complex. Don't ask me to explain when each of these are used.
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Anonymous2009-07-24 21:41
>>18
Some of your translations are also wrong, dildo muncher.
...que/si fuera/fuese a Londres... - ...that/if I were to go to London...
...que haya ido a Londres... - ...that I have gone to London...
[If] Hubiera/Hubiese ido a Londres - [If] I had gone to London
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Anonymous2009-07-24 22:06
>>19 ...que/si fuera/fuese a Londres... - ...that/if I were to go to London...
Ha! Typical mistake.
"If I were to go..." -> {"Si fuera a ir..." | "Si fuera a ir..."}
I'm not sure about "haya ido". I'd need to see a few examples.
[If] Hubiera/Hubiese ido a Londres - [If] I had gone to London
No. Doesn't work for this case:
"Hubiera ido a Londres de haber sabido que..." -> "I would have gone to to London had I known..."
But it does apply for the conditional:
"Si hubiera ido a Londres, habría..." -> "If I had gone to London, I would have..."
It's not easy to translate subjunctive mood fragments to English without any context. Another reason English is so much fail.
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Anonymous2009-07-24 22:08
>>20
The second translation of "If I were to go..." was meant to be "Si hubiera de ir..."
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Anonymous2009-07-24 22:50
dumnd spanfags
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Anonymous2009-07-25 1:36
I've heard that the afrincan language bamileke-dschang has eleven different kinds of verbal times
(indicative)
Presente - Present
Passado - Past
Preterito perfeito - Past perfect
Pretéito imperfeto - Past imperfect
Pretérito mais que perfeito - Past more than perfect
Futuro do presente - Future of the present
Futuro do pretérito - Future of the past
I'm Uzbek and my language sux: no genders, and it's impossible to know who they are talking about, man or woman. And we have too much auxiliary verbs.
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Anonymous2009-07-29 11:09
Dutch sucks so hard every other word we use is stolen from English and French. Not just uncommon words, but common words/sentences like "please, thank you, goodbye, how are you, I love you" etc, all in English or French.
>>25
Who wants to learn some stupid pseudo–romance-language? .i'e ko tadni la lojban
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Anonymous2009-07-29 18:51
I'm French and I think my language doesn't suck. It is full of exceptions but you learn with the time, also it is very beautiful (comparing to many other languages).
By the way, speak French (or even English with a French accent) in England or US (and maybe in other countries) and girls are at your feet (I'm physically in the average though). I thought it was a legend but I can say it is true. I think those girls wanted to do a French at least once (you know, that Bridget Jones/Sex and the city generation) before their "serious business". I went to US for a student exchange program, once a "student" (you know, one of those "football" players) nicknamed me "faggot" because I'm French (only for that) and i proved him he was wrong, the French way (slept with his virgin gf - virgin in college wtf). When I say catching girls was easy, I mean It was really easy (just speak and then go to bed).
Think what you want (you are a liar or shits...), I don't mind.
French is fucking disgusting. Right on par with Spanish.
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AMIJOH2009-07-30 7:02
ENGLISH IS UGLY LANGUAGE AMIRITE? MY ENGLISH IS NOT GOOD CUZ I DONT LIKE TO LEARN IT EL ESPAÑOL ES MEJOR PORQUE YO LO DIGO YOLOVALGUISMO EN ESTADO PURO ES WENO ESCRIBIR COSAS QUE POCAS PERSONAS PUEDEN ENTENDER PORQUE ES MAS PRIVADO
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AMIJOH2009-07-30 7:05
ANTIGUAMENTE OLD TIMES HABIAN MEMES ABOUT MUHFUGGA BIX NOOD BUT YO NO SE SI AUN SON MEMES O YA NO SE USAN I AM TALKING ACERCA 4 AÑOS ATRAS CON MEXIMOOT SOY DE LA VIEJA ESCUELA DE 4CHAN AHORA PUROS NEWFAGS YOU ARE THE CANCER QUE SERA DE MI QUERIDO MEXICHAN DONDE ESTAN TUS FUNNY OCURRENCIAS!? ALL THAT NO MAKE A LOT OF SENSE 2U CUZ U = NEWFAG
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Anonymous2009-07-30 7:39
Spain is a fucking shithole. Just like South America.
>>46
Unless you are also an ancient and powerful wizard, I fear you're heading for a toading.
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Anonymous2009-08-05 11:30
>>47
What would be the respectful way to address him?
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Anonymous2009-08-05 16:30
(Ho hum)
Second person singular was originally "thou/thee/thy/thine". The "you" was plural, also used for politeness (like in, say, French).
Ppl just started to over-use "you" to the extent that "thou" basically died out.
A lot of people here are complaining about languages being too difficult, like easy is supposed to be better for some reason. You might just be too stupid to learn the language
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Anonymous2009-08-07 2:05
>like easy is supposed to be better for some reason
but it is so
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Anonymous2009-08-07 9:39
I'd say english lacks proper levels of politeness.
In spanish, or japanese, sentences are quite different if you are speaking to a stranger, a friend, or your boss. (Ex.: Usted v/s Tu)
In english, it's almost impossible to tell the difference. You speak in almost the same way to anyone.
I wonder if this is the reason why western culture has lost all about respect and being polite.
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Anonymous2009-08-07 9:44
>>54
Well, I find this causes power rifts and awkwardness when someone doesn't use the polite form.
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Anonymous2009-08-07 12:23
>>54
Please and thank you, words that have died out in the US.
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Anonymous2009-08-07 15:31
>>54
"Polite" language reinforces class distinctions. It forces everyone to be aware of their own status in society and to be constantly judging others to see what their status should be. That English lacks such a distinction leads to more freedom of thought.
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Anonymous2009-08-08 1:49
>>57
What are you 15?
You don't think you should be polite to your elders?
I'm all for free thought but certain people warrant more respect than others.
>>40
Could is a past tense. Idiot. Subjunctives in English take the past tense, if in the present tense themselves.
Past Indicative:
They were over there.
Present Subjunctive:
Were I to go over there (but I won't)
You've been schooled, nigga. If I hadn't been banned for a week, you'd have been bitch-slapped with some grammar knowledge much sooner. You know nothing.
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Anonymous2009-08-09 19:48
btw, i have remembered else one reason why modern russian sucks. it lacks analogues for 'sir' and 'mister'. they are either extinct (сударь) or rare and have an additional air(господин, товарищ). so, practically if they don't know your name you are addressed as something like 'молодой человек' ('young man') 'гражданин' ('citizen', most neutral form) or even 'абонент' ('subscriber', by phone company operators for instance) etc etc. today i was addressed just as 'парень' ('guy') by a bus check-taker. and she was polite...
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Anonymous2009-08-10 17:58
>>57
Not true for all languages.
I understand this is the case for Korean, but not so in, for example, Spanish. In Spanish, it may be considered rude to address a stranger as "tú/vos" (varies from person to person. In general, young people don't mind). This type of linguistic politeness is less to maintain social class barriers and more to maintain distance from whom you're speaking to. The opposite is also true. You may want to close distance to make the other person feel more comfortable.
In Spanish, the polite conjugation is not about classes, but respect. For example, I wouldn't address a professor as "vos" unless we were friends outside of class or something. On the same vein, I wouldn't address a stranger who was considerably older than me with the familiar form.
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Anonymous2009-08-11 3:49
Indonesian.
TOO DAMN EASY.
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Anonymous2009-08-14 11:00
>>65
Yes; respect isn't about being inferior to the person you're talking to. It's about keeping your distance in some situations, for example when people don't know each other.
Also you can expect people who don't use the polite forms when talking to you, to be rude in other aspects of their behavior. It communicates more about that person's state of mind.
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Anonymous2009-08-14 15:35
>>67 Also you can expect people who don't use the polite forms when talking to you, to be rude in other aspects of their behavior.
Thus rendering polite forms completely superfluous?
The plural is implied based on the situation, which is actually a smarter way of doing things.
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Anonymous2009-08-16 4:56
>>69
When addressing a crowd, you almost always say something to denote the plural.
"What is wrong with you people?"
"You slaves should work harder!"
But yeah, like you said, forcing the plural to have an adjective conveys more meaning, so smarter.
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Anonymous2009-08-16 5:40
>>70
That is quite close to Japanese, except they don't use the "you" in "you slaves" and "you people".