[diamondgeezer]

True

[kode]

after learning german for three years, I found out that I could make out quite a portion of dutch just by guessing.

hmm... lesse:

doing:
I do
you do
he does
you do
we do
they do

göra:
jag gör
du gör
han gör
du gör
vi gör
de gör

swedish is simple, isn't it...

[Terorist]

Originally posted by TheCelestialOne
Nah, I knew how to speak English since I was 8 years old. Somehow it was very easy for me to learn.

Hey, same here. We were taught from third grade onwards, and I just... knew. I don't remember ever having to put any effort in learning it. It was great.

[Stunaep]

Originally posted by Setekh
Well, the only other language I know is Cantonese, which is as straight-laced as it comes - if you can hear the accents (best learnt at a young age, even people who devote years to it in future life can't get all the nuances), you won't mistake anything for anything. English, though, that's a terror to learn... things which don't sound the same, things which sound the same but shouldn't, things which mean different depending on... well, are you willing to put up a challenger?

Estonian. No question.

doing:

I do
you do
he does
we do
you do
they do

Note that the word do remains the same in every form except he.

now...

tegema

ma teen
sa teed
ta teeb
me teeme
te teete
nad teevad

[kasperl]

Originally posted by Venom


w/o counting the fact the in french verbs are way more complicated to... her to do that:

doing:
I do
you do
he does
you do
we do
they do

faire:
je fais,
tu fais
il fait
nous faisons
vous faites
ils font

and that's just for present tense, you'd choke yourself if I were to show you the "plusqueparfait au subjectif" tense of faire

ok, venom, try to imagine a foreigner having to study all the following tenses in french:

present, future, past simple, past perfect, and some other ****.

i need to get 80% right on the test monday to get a ****ing 6, so i am pretty much freaking out here.

dutch is my motherlanguage, probably the only reason i can speak it, it is terrible to spell, and it looks like hell for foreigners.

german is reasanably doable, the only hard part is the way that words change when there function in the sentence changes, and the gender of the word affecting that.

french is terrible, an awfull lot of exceptions and stuff, and the way you guys count, beyond 60, it gets wierd. and gender, just more hard stuff.

Ancient Latin has to be the worst of the things i am thought right now, the order of words in a sentence means nothing, and making long sentences appears to be the national sport.  same joke as in German with the proper nouns, it keeps changing, also, the verbs have a way of shifting around a lot.
also:

doing:
I do
you do
he does
you do
we do
they do

facio
facis
facit
facimus
facitis
facent

(IIRC)



Ancient Greek has the same **** as latin, plus a different alfabet to learn. i only had one year of it, and nothing more.

[Carl]

if you think Eglish is complicated, look in the fs2 techroom in the vasudan database and scroll down until you come to the language part.

[Petrarch of the VBB]

Originally posted by kasperl

and the way you guys count, beyond 60, it gets wierd. and gender, just more hard stuff.

I used to get disturbed by that, back in the day.

99 = Quatre-vign-dix-neuf (excuse the spelling, I've not done French for years)
Translates as Four-twenty-ten-nine. I mean wtf?

[Black Wolf]

Because it only really works if you do them one at a time.

Black Wolf - able to rerail theads with a single post (Until another of these weird euro language pimps comes along anyway)

[Petrarch of the VBB]

Originally posted by Black Wolf
Because it only really works if you do them one at a time.

Or perhaps it was invented by a man with only the one tooth, and by god, he wasn't going to lose it.

[TheCelestialOne]

Originally posted by Petrarch of the VBB

99 = Quatre-vign-dix-neuf (excuse the spelling, I've not done French for years)
Translates as Four-twenty-ten-nine. I mean wtf?

4*20+10+9 = 99

[Setekh]

Originally posted by Petrarch of the VBB
99 = Quatre-vign-dix-neuf (excuse the spelling, I've not done French for years)
Translates as Four-twenty-ten-nine. I mean wtf?

Sounds a bit like Latin.

[Petrarch of the VBB]

Originally posted by TheCelestialOne

4*20+10+9 = 99

Yes, but why?
Why not just have a term for ninety, and another for nine?

That's why I always preferred German, it makes sense.

[Setekh]

Originally posted by Petrarch of the VBB
Yes, but why?
Why not just have a term for ninety, and another for nine?

That is both simpler and more complex. Simpler, because it requires less terms to define a value; but more complex, because it requires more unique terms in the first place. Terms such as 'ninety'.

[diamondgeezer]

Originally posted by Petrarch of the VBB
That's why I always preferred German, it makes sense.

German's great for shouting in. 'ACHTUNG!' or 'DAS IST VERBOTEN!' and stuff like that

[Petrarch of the VBB]

Indeed. Much as I've tried, I've never been able to shout in French. German and Russian, on the other hand, are made for it.

[kasperl]

well, how would you shout in french?

sil vous plait monsieur, c'est interdit?

and what about russian? i know nothing of it. aside from Tovaritsj =comrade.
and Mir = Peace

[Petrarch of the VBB]

I know very little Russian, but simply repeating something phoenetically sounds threatening enough.

I was told the Russian for "**** your mother" a few months ago, but I've forgotten it since.

There's stuff like, Da, tovarisch Kapitan, which is simple enough.

[Stunaep]

yob tvoyu matj - **** your mother

The only thing I can do fluently in russian - curse

[Petrarch of the VBB]

Originally posted by Stunaep
yob tvoyu matj - **** your mother

The only thing I can do fluently in russian - curse

That's the one, thanks.

It's all you need in any language really, "Do you speak (insert your native tongue here)?", and an insult.

[Nico]

Originally posted by Petrarch of the VBB


I used to get disturbed by that, back in the day.

99 = Quatre-vign-dix-neuf (excuse the spelling, I've not done French for years)
Translates as Four-twenty-ten-nine. I mean wtf?

yeah, I know.
it starts all over again, so to speak: consider sixty to be like zero, therfore when you reach seventy ( soixante-dix ) you go on like if it was ten, so it goes "soixante et onze " -seventy one, or word for word, sixty and eleven - ( ok, and there's an article -et- in the mix, so it gets really confusing ) .

Anyway, that only further proves my point that french is probably the worst langauge in the world. well, it's rich, so it comes at a ( very heavy ) cost.
oh, and words that have multiple meanings, there's countless of those in french, of course