BWL

Absolutely true! If you have no interest. motivation and perseverance, it will be difficult to accomplish anything in the first place, much less learn a new language!

I have to say that one in particular stands out for me; Arabic! Classical Arabic uses so many sounds that do not exist in English or other languages. It has six sounds that are articulated from the deep throat region alone (German has only one: 'ch'. Or maybe two if you count the Northern German 'r' sound). Like Hebrew, consonants represent the word roots and you slot in vowels into the word to produce new words - derived words, conjugations, declensions, singular/plural for nouns etc. Plus the fact that Standard Arabic as you learn in school books is not really spoken on a colloquial and most Arabs use regional dialects among themselves - an Iraqi would not be able to understand what a Moroccan was saying!

Whoever invented hangul (the historians say that it was King Sejong back in 1443) was a genius! The writing system is more systematic and logical than English and French, but does not require the hours and hours and hours of memorizing like Chinese hanzi. I believed the original blueprints for the design of the alphabet which were written way back in the 15th century were discovered in the 1940s. They explained how the very shapes of the letters represent the tongue, lip and teeth positions when pronouncing the letters, so they served as a mnemonic aid as well. All this makes learning hangul much easier than other writing systems, so I understand why you can claim to learn to read Korean in 15 minutes! It's due to the logical and efficient structure of hangul rather than any special course!

The Untouchables is definitely my favorite French film so far. I liked it (OK, I'll try not to give the plot away) because the acting was marvelous and although serious, the movie was filmed and acted out in a light-hearted way without losing it's character.

I totally agree! These people clearly think they are getting cool-looking tattoos, but the tattoos could be saying something embarrasing instead! Luckily all the Europeans with kanji or kana tattooes knew what they meant before getting them. I once struck up a conversation with an Italian guy named Marco in Milan when I read his name correctly written in katakana on his arm.

There are other languages like this a well, they build longer words from simpler ones. My favorite long German word is "Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaften" or "legal protection insurance companies".

Some older words and phrases are retained in some dialects while becoming obsolete in others. For example, "pitcher" is still commonly used in the United States while most British English speakers (there might be some areas in the UK where the word is still maintained), would say "jug". To most British people, using "pitcher" to refer to a container for pouring water sounds almost mediaeval!

In British English, "cancelled" is the more common spelling while "canceled" is more common in the United states. It's similar to the "-ise" versus "-ize" difference. British English uses "-ise" as in "hospitalise"and American English uses "ize" as in "hospitalize".

I didn't realize that there were so many local accents and variations in such a small area like Switzerland. Then again the many mountains and valleys would probably keep various towns and cities separated and fairly unreachable especially long ago when there were no cars, trains and aeroplanes!

In Japanese, the word for "shrimp" or "prawn" is pronounced "ebi" 海老 (this kanji should only be read in Japanese, it makes no sense when read in Chinese). The word for "snake" is "hebi" 蛇. Notice how similar the pronunciations are? One of my friends, a Chinese gentleman on a trip to Japan, wanted to order some shrimp tempura donburi (a delicious dish of rice in a bowl topped with crispy tempura shrimp and a fantastic sweet-salty sauce). Instead of saying "ebi", he said "hebi" instead, prompting the waiter to exclaim, "We don't serve snakes here!".

Bonjour! Je viens de Malaisie, mais en fait ma famille est d'origine chinoise. Je travaillais pour l'Alliance Française en Malaisie comme prof de malais. Là j'ai appris aussi le français, une très belle langue, riche en histoire et d'une culture singulière.

I believe this is an example of language change and evolution in progress. The original difference between "who" and "whom" is like the difference between "wer" and "wem" in German. "Who" is the performer or the giver while "whom" is the receiver. "Who said that?" but "To whom did you say that?" In the first example, the one doing the saying is being asked about, while in the second example, the one being spoken to is the one that's being asked about. In modern English, who and whom are now being merged and the differences are slowly collapsing especially in spoken English. Within a generation or two, even formal written English will likely no longer use "whom".

I normally use "lighted" as in "that's a lighted candle". It is used more like an adjective although I also do say, "I lighted the candles". I tend to use "lit" for things like"his face lit up". Also use "lit" for electric lamps and other artificial light sources as opposed to "light" which I use for actually lighting a candle or bonfire.

Accents evolve and change all the time. The BBC English that most people are familiar with only really became identified with the upper classes between the early nineteenth century and the 1960's. English is not the only language to change accents. In French, most Parisians pronounce "brun" (brown) and "brin" (twig) in the exact same way but we know that they were pronounced differently in the South and even in many parts of the North of France right up to a couple of generations ago. My friend's father, an elderly English officer in the British army who was stationed in India (actually what is now the Northwest Frontier in Pakistan - this was in the 1930's before the Partition) was taught Urdu in order to communicate with his staff. He was trained to pronounce Urdu in a very old-fashioned way (this was during the 1930's). He often said things like: Aapka naam kyaa hai? (What is your name?) with the "hai" pronounced like "high" in English!

I just made a new post on this New Yorker who had managed to learn more than 20 languages at the age of 17! Yes, I think he may well be the youngest hyperpolyglot on record! http://linguaholic.com/general-discussion/new-york-teenage-prodigy-speaks-20-languages!/

If you think learning a foreign language is hard, wait till you watch this clip. Tim Doner, a 17-year-old New York teenager has managed to teach himself 20 languages! Yes, 20!!! He speaks many languages which are totally unrelated and very different from each other typologically like: Mandarin, Russian, Hindi, Farsi, Kiswahili etc. It's absolutely amazing watching him going to various ethnic areas in New York and speaking to the people there in their native tongues!

I totally agree, my best friend is Tamil and he says that he can't understand a word of Hindi! It's very commonly spoken in Malaysia to the extent that any Malaysian who says that he or she is of Indian origin would be expected to able to speak Tamil! Spoken Tamil is very rapid and uses a lot of shortened sounds that make whole phrases sound different from how they are written.

My native language is essentially a southern dialect of Chinese. It is usually not written, standard Mandarin being used instead, although you could write it down in Chinese characters if you wanted to as Chinese characters do not represent pronunciation. Being a Chinese dialect, it has no articles, no gender even in pronouns, no singular and plural distinction, no cases, no verb inflections of any kind and therefore no irregular verbs since all words have only one form anyway! It does have between 6-7 tones per syllable and this makes it extremely hard for foreigners to learn. My dialect also has a unique property that exists to a very limited extent in Mandarin: tone sandhi. What this means is that the tone of a word is not fixed and changes when it is part of a phrase: imagine if "fire" was pronounced with a different tone when it is spoken aloud alone and a different tone when it is part of a phrase like "fire hydrant". This means that anyone who learns it has to not only memorise citation tones for every word, but also the sandhi or transformed tone when it is used in a phrase! Not many Chinese from other parts of China can learn to speak it properly too!

I found this link recently about the interesting concept of performing Shakespeare's works in his original accent! Apparently a couple of Shakespeare's plays were staged in a replica of the grand old Glove Theatre, with actors trained by linguists to say their lines in Shakespearean / Elizabethan English, complete with a 400-year-old accent! It is just amazing!

Speaking is generally easier for me than reading and writing. I find that the more I interact with people on a daily basis the more I get a feel of the pronunciations, word order and general sentence structures used in a particular language. This depends on different people. Some are visual learners and need to visualise how a word is spelled in order to learn a new word or phrase. These people often prefer reading and writing to speaking.

I live in a country where various Indian languages are spoken by the descendants of immigrants who came in the 19th Century. They mainly speak southern languages like Tamil but there is a small minority from Punjab and what is now Pakistan. The languages to the north of Goa are all Indo-Aryan, meaning that they are very distantly related to the languages of Europe! These include Hindi, Urdu (the official language of Pakistan), Pujabi, Bengali and even Nepali. The Southern languages like Tamil and Malayali are not related to the Northern ones at all. The differences between the North and the South are similar to the differences between the Swedes and Finns or the Austrians and Hungarians, meaning that they share a long history together and have some similar customs and even borrowed words from each others' languages but ultimately their languages are of completely different origins.

Do all Swiss German dialects pronounce nasal endings like in "Hund" as "Hung"? Or is this specific to certain cities and cantons? In Malaysia there are also some Malay dialects that change all "n" sounds at the end of a syllable into a "ng" sound.

Some German dialects can sound harsher than others. I think Swiss German and some of the Southern accents can sound a little rough. The harshest languages I've ever heard would be some dialects of Arabic like Yemeni and Moroccan, everyone sounds like their ready to pick a fight!

There is also a similar confusion between "lighted" and "lit". I usually "he lighted the candle". But I also say "her smile lit up the room". Would the difference be one of semantics - "lighted" being used with physically burning things like candles and bonfires while "lit" being used for others?

I would be happy to help as well! French is one of my main working languages and yes, the idea of having a forum for interactions entirely in the target language would be superb!