English is HARD

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One thing that can confuse people learning English is how to respond to questions asked in a negative form.
For example:

Are you not going to the party tonight?

In English, if you are going you say "yes, I'm going"; but if you aren't going you say "no, I'm not going". The "yes/no" part matches the positive/negative form of the verb.

But in a few other languages that I've learned it's the other way around. They'd say "no, I am going" (as in "no, that's not right, I am going") or "yes, I'm not going" (as in "yes that's right"). The "yes/no" response directly answers the question.

I wonder how other languages handle this situation.

I work in shipping and export a lot of Spirits (whisky etc). Our agent in Macedonia asked,in all seriousness,if we
were shipping ghosts as he'd never heard of another meaning for spirits.

I wanted to make a more specific comment, regarding accents----not only the kinds that differ in New York, New Jersey, and the South (and even different areas of the South)----but, because the U.S. is such a melting-pot of a-million-and-one cultures, people will usually pronounce a word using their OWN language's rules. For instance, there's a street in downtown Baltimore, that's spelled P-A-C-A (not in all caps, though----I was just using those, so the word stands-out)----the Baltimoreans pronounce it in a way that the P-A-C rhymes with pack; but, Europeans (and others, like Indians [the Far East kind]) pronounce it like the P-A-C rhymes with "sock".

Oh, also, the WRITING of English is hard----in the sense that what is "proper" changes, so often, and it drives me crazy.

For instance, when I was being taught English, "thankyou" was ONE word (as in the salutation "Thankyou for buying me the purple socks!"), "alot" was ONE word; there was "it's", which was a contraction for "it is", then there was "it's" that showed possession (for instance, a part of an inanimate object [like you would say "Mary's little lamb", you would also say "it's legs", when referring to a table's legs]); and, a myriad of changes in other words----and, we ALL know how much an Aspie LOVES change!! LOL I HATE it!! Plus, social media is KILLING proper English!!

The expression is generally written as "hear, hear", as a shortened form of "hear him, hear him!". The expression was recorded as far back as the late 1600s in the English Parliament.

How interesting. I've actually never seen "thankyou" written as one word. But when I was growing up, I always saw it hyphenated as "thank-you". It was kinda weird seeing it as two separate words ("thank you") for the first time at uni, but now I always spell it like that.

One interesting thing about change is how "improper changes" become accepted norms over time. Take the expression "all right", as in "are you all right?". Traditionally it's written as two words in all cases, but the single word "alright" has become very common in some instances, to the point where it might end up becoming standard in a generation or two. In a similar way, "whom" is gradually being supplanted by "who", and the word "you" supplanted the words "thou", "thee" and "ye" centuries ago. It's all really fascinating how it happens organically over time

It makes me want to find out the best ways of introducing deliberate changes to a language and getting wider acceptance for them. Like a standard, gender-neutral alternative to "he or she", which we don't have in English (I tend to use singular "they" in those situations, purely for want of a better alternative).

Yeah, my language should answer as being bolded to that question. Korean grammar is totally different from English's. Negative form question is one of good examples..Yes, English grammar would confuse me a lot before. I had to make up my own maps for English grammar.

To these kind of questions,
1. come up with the later part first ,that is, the part after yes/no
2. and then matches yes/no in my mind,
3. combine 1 and 2 and then speak out.

For instance,
Are you not going to the party tonight?-->If I'm not going, in my brain,

1. I comp up with later part "I'm not going" first
2. since there is "not" I know I should start with "No".
3. I combine two parts in my brain and say "No, I'm not going."

That's the trick I've been using so far.

I'm a native speaker, and that would probably throw me if someone said "So... you're not going to the party?", or "are you not going to the party".

Today I would say "Correct. I am not going to the party."

But when I was younger I might have said "yes...I mean no...I mean..YES I am not..er...NO I am not...ummm...".

Lol!


I've heard that the easiest foreign language for Koreans to learn is, oddly enough, Latin.

Ancient Latin has a very similar grammar to modern Korean. The both use "cases".

I didn't know that Ancient Latin is the easiest foreign language for Korean to learn.

As far as I know, Korean belongs to Altaic language group, being placed in the same group I've heard that Mongolian and Turkish has similar linguistics to Korean as well.

Besides them, many Koreans find easy to learn Japanese as their particles correlate directly with Korean for many parts.

Actually I got that thing about Latin from one guy on the net.

Yes Korean is supposed to be related to the Turkic, (including Mongolian) languages that spread out from north central asia called "Altaic" (after the Altai mountains).

And on language maps of the World they generally give Korea and Japan the same color (I think that has more to do with map makers running out of colors than with scientific linguistics). Its hypothesized, but has never been scientifically proven that Korean, and Japanese, are related languages.

One day was idly cruising the net researching the topic of the alledged kinship of Korean and Japanese, and I stumbled upon a website of a Korean guy holding court with American yuppie business travelers. They asked him "what language was easiest for you to learn", and he said "oddly enough Latin" for the reasons above.

Among European languages English is one extreme- word order is important. And Latin is the opposite- word order doesnt matter-but the word changes so you know what the word is doing in the sentence. In Latin the noun changes if its the object or if its the subject. Am not a linguist-there are other things.

But the point was that even though Korean has no kinship to Latin they have similiar structures. So a Korean can take to it quite easily.

And what the guy said made sense to me. So its probably true.

But that is interesting that you are aware of at least some similarities between Korean and Japanese with "particles".

I know what an "article" is ( is, and, the, but). But I am not sure what an "particle" is. Lol!

Yeah, I believed what you said in the first place. Latin should be easiest language for Korean to learn.
As for "particles" you can think them as any parts of speech, I'll give some instances, as my keyboard doesn't support Japanese yet, I have to copy from the web.

Japanese "が" (ga) : Korean "가" (ga) -- indicate the subject of a sentence
Japanese "へ" (e) : Korean "에" (e) -- indicate movement towards something

Word order is generally the same.
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As Korean, Japanese are rooted from Chinese, they have a lot in common..

Last edited by Drawyer on 21 Nov 2015, 4:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.

English is easy; French is harder. And I think Asian languages are even more.

I once read about someone who didn't know six and half a dozen are the same number. It was a teenager working at a MacDonald's. The customer decided let them wallow in their own ignorance and asked for a box of six Chicken McNuggets instead of half a dozen.

Ghoti.

That is all.