I love particles

[tanuki]

Hello, people!

Today, while I was taking a shower, I came to this realization: I love particles.

They are just so learner-friendlier than prepositions (of the languages I've learned).

English prepositions are a pain in the behind. There's just so many of them, and their usage sometimes seems random. In December, on the 24th, at 3 o' clock (did I get those right?)...

I'm guessing Spanish prepositions are no better. But at least we have the multi-purpose "en", unlike German.

Oh, German! This is the worst of all. Not only are the prepositions insane (auf dem Klo, an der Uni, zu Hause, in meinem Raum), but they demand different cases!

Of course, Japanese particles do have their difficulties (は and が come instantly to mind), but I haven't found them as confusing as other languages' "markers".

This is my opinion. What do you think?

[Mike Cash]

Don't forget the nicest aspect of particles, that very often when you're not really sure which one to use you can get away with just dropping the particle.

[keatonatron]

Today I thought of another example of why English is difficult for non-native (and some native) speakers:

put out
put in
put up
put down
come out
come in
come up
come down
put up with
come up with
come out with

[chi]

Quite true!
A lot of verbs in french and other romance have such meanings included, especially verbs that often take for. For example, the verb 'payer' means to pay for, which does away with the problem of verbs that take prepositions as standard. I guess English has messed up grammar in general.
I guess that English must be a really difficult language for non-native speakers. I can think of some other problems too, like the fact that past verb forms are often completely irregular!
e.g.
I take
I took
I have taken
:@ GRRR

[LordOfTheFlies]

I would say perfecting english isn't very simple... However getting your english to a usable level for common situations is piece of cake compared to many other languages IMO...

But I guess it really all comes down to what your native language is. My native language is pretty close to english both grammatically and in terms of vocabulary. Maybe that can partially explain why learning english was so easy for me.

However I've been studying spanish for 5 years... I still can't speak it at an even nearly usable level and I've forgotten most of it since I started learning japanese.

And Chi if you really think irregular verbs in english is a hassle, then you should take a look at spanish and other latin based languages. In spanish you conjugate verbs depending on which one(s) is/are the target(s), this makes the number of different conjugations very numerous... If I remember correct the number of different conjugations are close to 100! And the truth is that spanish has alot of irregular verbs as well, good luck learning those

So I really do think english isn't as hard to learn as everyone thinks it is... However I do believe that the difficulty differs for those whose native languages are very different to english when it comes to structuring and vocabulary. It wouldn't surprise me if the japanese have a hard time learning english, since the languages are so vastly different.

I forgot to mention that if you live in a western country you'll get exposed to the type of "common situation" english on a daily basis, and by that I mean the usable kind of english that you would use in everyday situations... Not the kind of crap they teach us in schools. This further adds to why english isn't as difficult as people say.

</rant>

[tanuki]

In spanish you conjugate verbs depending on which one(s) is/are the target(s)

????
Example?

[LordOfTheFlies]

tanuki wrote:

In spanish you conjugate verbs depending on which one(s) is/are the target(s)

????
Example?

You live in Bolivia don't you? You should know what I'm talking about
What I'm talking about is this:
yo soy
tú eres
él es
nosotros somos
vosotros sois
ellos son
This is the present form of ser(to be).
The left ones are pronouns and the right ones are conjugations of the verb. Basically they all mean the same thing, it's just that you have to adjust the conjugation depending on who you're talking to ... Which IMO is a pretty stupid thing.

And by targets I meant depending on the pronoun, sorry for using a misleading word.
My last spanish teacher was chilean and she praised this system because you can remove the pronoun and just say the verb since the conjugation tells you who you're talking about... But I think it just made the language harder to learn...

Well since you have a better knowledge of spanish than me why don't you share your views?

[richvh]

You would have been better served by saying "you conjugate verbs depending on the person and number of the subject." "Target" sounds like you meant "object", and I'm not aware of a language which changes verb conjugation depending on the characteristics of its object.

[LordOfTheFlies]

richvh wrote:
You would have been better served by saying "you conjugate verbs depending on the person and number of the subject." "Target" sounds like you meant "object", and I'm not aware of a language which changes verb conjugation depending on the characteristics of its object.

Exactly... Again sorry, I don't have the necessary english vocabulary to hold this kind of conversation.

If anyone's interested, here's the complete list of the conjugations for the spanish verb ser:
http://www.verbix.com/cache/webverbix/1/ser.shtml

Edit: Forgot to use URL tags...

[randomperson]

particles are easy to tell apart in a sentence, yet they are evil things. im gald japanese doesnt have that personal(pronoun) verb conjugations. i took 2 years of french and i hated the verbs most of all, the gender thing annoyed me too but not as much.

english does have alot of expection to the grammar rules, but english is weird like :/ i like japanese for its somewhat simple-ness compared to english.

[BetterSense]

I think it's cool how particles enable near-arbitrary sentence order.

[richvh]

Highly inflected languages like Latin also enable near-arbitrary sentence order, especially in poetry.

[Kagemaru]

Although I am yet to master particles myself, I do find them easier to manipulate than English preposition and certainly easier than Greek.

I have been speaking English for many years now. Thinking back, it took me a long time to master all the applications of get/got.

Did you get it?
I got it
get in/on/under/into/on top of
get lost
get paid
get it for me

The list goes on...

[tanuki]

LordOfTheFlies, I understood "target" as "object", as rich-san pointed out. That's why I was confused.

I seriously can't imagine how hard it must be for non-natives to learn how to conjugate Spanish verbs properly (and, for that matter, French, Italian...). I got surprised when one day I was shown a Spanish grammar book and saw that there were dozens of conjugation schemes.

English verbs are unbelievably easy! You just have to know three words, and that's it (swim, swam, swum). I can't understand when some learners complain about English verbs, really.

As for Japanese verbs...should I start another thread, "I love Japanese verbs"?

[Tegyrius]

Hey why not just "I love Japanese" and get it over with