Least favo(u)rite/fluent construction

[leergierig]

Hi everybody.

I'm probably too curious again for my own good, but at least the cat in katafei's avatar will understand... I was wondering what everyone's least favorite/most difficult spoken Japanese grammar construction is. It does not specifically have to be a common spoken construction - if it's difficult to read aloud, please write it here.

At the moment I'm struggling with なければなりません, but only in cases where it follows a verb ending with う. For example 払わなければなりません。 I can write it easily enough, but processing it in real time results in something like this:
払うぅぅ。。。払わぁぁ。。。払わない。。。　。。。　。。。　払わなければなりません。 :@

Which grammar point causes you the most grief?

Edit: changed "difficult to read" to "difficult to read aloud" - there is a difference...

[EvanT]

Well... I still twist my tongue every now and then when I try to say あたたかかった, though not as often as I used to when I started learning Japanese a year ago

[prep_girl_Nessa]

Hm... nothing really comes to mind. I think when I find something difficult, I'll just practice it 1000 times and make it come quicker, so after a while it's not such a big deal anymore.

Although, yeah, う verbs are slightly weird, I know what you mean.

[chikara]

I used to have trouble getting out the past negative for of i-adjectives. For example;

難しくなかった

For some reason I found this construct to be quite a tongue twister and one that, for some reason, always reminded me of the mini series "Roots"

[Harisenbon]

I hate 〜てならない because it's a positive grammatical construction even though it looks like it should be negative.

大学に入ってから、娘は毎日が楽しくてならないらしい。
Ever since my daughter went to college, it seems she's been having so much fun she can't stand it.

[Yudan Taiteki]

とはいえ used to always make me have to stop and think about what's actually being said, but I think I've gotten better at it.

i.e. 彼の言ったことが分かったとはいえ、本当に納得できない。 (Even though I understand what he said, I just can't accept it.)

[NocturnalOcean]

Harisenbon wrote:
I hate 〜てならない because it's a positive grammatical construction even though it looks like it should be negative.

大学に入ってから、娘は毎日が楽しくてならないらしい。
Ever since my daughter went to college, it seems she's been having so much fun she can't stand it.

What coincidence, I just had this in my grammar class, and I found it a bit difficult, and also to use it in the correct sentence, when we also learnt 2 other very similar constructions.

てならない
てたまらない
てしたがない

they pretty much convey the same thing, though they had small subtle nuances, and uses.

[Kuri]

You know, I never really liked かたがた. Why can't you just say を兼ねて

Hmm, I take that back. Everyone I know says を兼ねて.... but if they didn't! ^^;