BWL

Welcome, justusforus! Make yourself at home and I am sure you will get along with the other linguaphiles on this forum! have fun!

Yes, "affect" is used as in "The problem affected all of us!". "Affect" can take tense endings and inflections: affected, will affect, affecting, may affect, must affect, should affect, would affect, could affect. "Effect" is a noun and can only appear in two form "effect" and "effects" (singular and plural).

The digital age is ruining the elegance and beauty of written language. Even in French, people often type "parlé" to mean "parler, parlé, parlés, parlée, parlées, parlait, parlaient"! They all have the same pronunciation but different spellings, so why not condense it all to make it faster and more convenient to type on a keyboard or keypad! The worst case I know of was an American guy who would write "n" to mean "and" and "in"so he would send me emails like, "John n I wanted to go n see the boss. But he wasn't n". This carried over to his writing as well!

In my opinion, if everyone knew English.....well, this is a double edged sword. On one had it would facilitate communication and make traveling more convenient and international business more efficient. However, many languages reflect the culture and heritage of a particular country or ethnic group. If they all spoke English, there is a tendency for smaller, less-advanced ethnic minorities to lose their language like the Native Americans, Hawaiians and Canadian First Nations. This process is already happening and will get worse if English were to become the paramount de facto world language.

One of the more difficult aspects of learning French (and related languages like Italian, Spanish and Portuguese) is use of the subjunctive (subjonctif). From what I remember from my French grammar book, the subjunctive is used with verbs that express something uncertain. Sentences about things that have to do with wanting, doubt, strong emotions, necessity etc. It is almost always used with "que" or "qui" Je veux qu'il le fasse NOT je veux qu'il le fait. (I want him to do it) Il faut que je parte NOT il faut que je pars. (I have to leave) I believe any sentence that has to do with emotions always uses the subjonctif. J'apprécie qu'il soit venu chez moi NOT j'apprécie qu'il est venu chez moi. (I appreciate that he came to my place) Il est surprenant qu'il soit malade NOT Il est surprenant qu'il est malade. (It is surprising that he is sick) Feel free to share your experiences regarding learning the French subjunctive/ subjonctif.

To give you an idea what Fujian dialect sounds like. I found this video from Youtube. It's a current affairs program from Zhangzhou 漳州 in Southern Fujian and is entirely in the local Fujianhua dialect. This is the exact same dialect that I speak at home with my family. I challenge any Mandarin speakers here to decipher what she is saying!

My favorites are : Il n'a pas la pêche! (He's feeling down) - literally "He doesn't have the peach". Il a la banane! (He's in a good mood) - literally "He has the banana" (from the shape of his smile)

I was first taught French years ago by a Marseillaise and I the Southern accent was what I was used to hearing for a long time. Nowadays I definitely find Parisien to be the easiest to understand simply because I hear it all the time on the TV and on the news. This has also become my "default"" French accent. The worse accent has to be Quebecois, it's almost like a foreign language to me!

Yes, I noticed this as well when I was in Henan on an assignment two years ago. The locals were very eager to learn English. As I'm of Chinese descent and obviously look Chinese, people were just shocked that I spoke English like a waiguoren! There were many students at the local universities looking to practise their English with us all the time! I think many Chinese realise that in this era of globalisation, knowing a foreign language is a invaluable asset!

There's a very interesting phenomenon in Malay slang especially among the young. Malay, like Japanese and Korean has several words for basic pronouns like I, you, he, she and they. These pronouns change to show politeness. There is a trend to replace the "I" and "you" pronouns with English ones!!! So young people say things like "You pergi mana?", "Where are you going?". Or "I tak suka", meaning "I don't like it", ! Or even "I sayang you" , meaning "I love you"! Some people attribute this to laziness as the speaker does not have to select which pronoun to use and just substitute everything with the uniform "I" and "you".

You're welcome, pojokers! French is a beautiful language! Enjoy your class! You're most welcome to post any questions on the French language subforum and I'll try my best (or get someone else who is more expert) to answer them.

Yes, I completely agree, the wonderful thing is that agglutinative languages have so many parts to a single word that they really have no more energy left to make irregular words like in Polish, French, German, English and other European languages. Once you learn all the complex rules, you can create your own impromptu long words and be perfectly understood.

The most difficult languages for me would be some of the Native languages of North America. Granted, they're not as well-known or as commonly spoken but believe me they are so complex they make German, Russian, Polish and Arabic seem like baby talk! A lot of them are agglutinative to a degree that would shock a German! They frequently combine several morphemes into one single word that would be equivalent to one sentence in a European language! They often use unique idiomatic expressions that only make sense if you know the tribal history and culture. For example, in Chippewa or Ojibwe, a language spoken in the Great Lakes region in the US and Canada, "They are Chinese" is only one word! "Aniibiishaabookewininiwiwag". You can break the word like this: Aniib (elm tree) Aniibiish (elm tree + iish, which is a pejorative suffix = leaf; literally, no good elm or lousy elm - yes, this the word for "leaf"!) Aniibiishaaboo (leaf + liquid = tea) Aniibiishaabooke (tea + make = to make tea or to make leaf water) Aniiibiishaabookewinini (tea + make + man = Chinese; literally, man who makes tea. The Chinese were the ones who first introduced tea to North America so the Ojibwes called them "Tea-Making Men") Aniiibiishaabookewininiwi (The suffix "wi" when added to a noun makes it an equational sentence "to be a Chinese" or "to be a tea-making man") Finally we get the whole word, which is equivalent to one sentence in most other languages: Aniibiishaabookewininiwiwag (this is Aniiibiishaabookewininiwi + wag). Whereby "wag" is the plural third person suffix meaning "they are". Hence "Aniibiishaabookewininiwiwag" meaning "they are tea-making men" or "they are Chinese". Are you impressed by how complex this language is?

This is weird because many older generation native Chinese-speakers in Malaysia often speak English with Chinese intonation and pronunciations. They will try to say things like "I've got eight grandchildren" and it comes out as; "Ai got ek gen chiu ren". I'm serious! :wacky:

无中生有 is fairly commonly used even in casual spoken Chinese. It comes from ancient Taoist philosophy meaning to create something out of nothing or to fantasise about something that is not meant to be. 无 (無 in traditional Chinese) is an old Chinese word for "nothing" and is used to form the negative in compound words like 无线 or "wireless". It is not so commonly used by itself in Mandarin but is still very common in southern dialects like Cantonese and Fujianese where it is used to mean "don't have" or "it doesn't exist". In Cantonese it can be used as a prohibitive as well. If you ever watch a Hong Kong movie in Cantonese and hear the characters say "Mou, mou!", well that is 无 being used to mean "No, no!" or "Don't do it, don't do it!". This link has some very good explanations for common Chinese idioms. http://www.purplepanda.com.au/Idiom/pure-fantasy.aspx 无中 thus means "in the middle of nothingness" while 生有 means "life or birth exists", or in more idiomatic English "something out of nothing".

I find that Americans do use a lot of conversational fillers like "like" and "you know"! I also despise the very common American habit of pronouncing "nuclear" like "nuculer". I hear George W. Bush talk about "nuculer weapons" while being interviewed on CNN !

Yes that is interesting! Actually Tagalog speakers use two sets of words : tatay for father and nanay for mother (this is is equivalent to "dad" and "mom" and is more casual) OR ama for father and ina for mother. Ama and Ina are more formal. In fact the word "Ama" is used in the Filipino Catholic "Our Father" prayer.

It seems that a lot of languages all over the world use a form of "Ma" and "Pa" to mean "mother" and "father" respectively. There can be variations "Ma, mama, na, nana" and "Pa, papa, fa, ba, baba" etc but generally the words for "mother" contains the letters "M" or "N" while the word for "father" contains the letters "P" or "B" or "F". This is a generalization that can be observed in languages all over the world (there are some notable exceptions). What is the word for "mother" and "father" in your native languages? Does the M/N rule for "mother / mommy / mama" and the P/B/F rule for "father /dad / daddy" occur in your language? I'll give some examples from the languages I know: English: Mother / Father Malay: Emak / Bapa Mandarin Chinese : Mama (妈妈) or Muqin (母亲) / Baba (爸爸) or Fuqin (父亲) Hindi: Mata or Maa or Mataji / Pita or Baap or Babuji Tamil: Amma / Appa French: Mère / Père German: Mutter / Vater Spanish: Madre / Padre Italian: Madre / Padre Portuguese: Mãe / Pai Swedish: Mor / Far Turkish: Anne / Baba Greek: Mitera / Pateras Arabic: Umm / Ab Burmese: Ame / Aphe Tagalog: Ina or Nanay / Ama or Tatay Japanese: Haha or Okaasan / Chichi or Otoosan Notice a trend here? Compare this list with your own native languages.

it certainly seems plausible, the Korean alphabet unlike the neighboring Chinese and Japanese writing systems, is extremely scientific and systematic and can be picked up in a matter if hours! Better than the years and years it takes to learn kanji / hanzi!

Yes, you are right about 之. Also modern Mandarin grammar has changed a lot in the past thousand years or so, so the structure of the idioms might be different from what you are used to. http://carlgene.com/blog/2010/07/20-actually-useful-chengyu-%E6%88%90%E8%AF%AD/ Here are some commonly used idioms with their explanations and contextual usage. I hope you find this helpful! I'll look for more sites like this.

This is a fairly comprehensive list of chengyu 成語 but the website is entirely in simplified Chinese. While being comprehensive it does require a high level of Chinese in order to read it. It does however list transcribe the idioms in pinyin. The explanations provided are in fairly advanced Chinese. http://chengyu.itlearner.com/

If you are obviously a foreigner learning the local language. trust me, a few mistakes here and there would be tolerated, even regarded as "charming". if you were learning a language as part of a university course requirement, then correct grammar is an absolute must! If it's just to communicate with locals while on your holiday, then just relax and don't worry!

I have to ask my parents! I have absolutely no idea! I guess it would be something generic like "mama" or "papa". My first Japanese word, which I learned when I was 9 was, ironically "bakayarou!". Yes, I was watching some old Japanese movie with a lot of fight scenes and the villain kept calling the hero "bakayarou!".

There is another exception that I can remember. if the plural is an irregular one, where you don't add an 's' but change the word in some other way, the possessive is always 'apostrophe s'. The main words like this are : men's, women's and children's. For example: "men's clothes", "women's shoes" and "children's toys". We do not write MENS' or WOMENS' or CHILDRENS'.

I definitely notice this more and more. Internet / Twitter / text message language seems to have eroded the fundamentals of good spelling and proper grammar. It seems now that the best spelling is that which could easily get your message across with the minimum number of keystrokes!