When trying to learn other languages, do you bother trying to learn the grammar rules, or do you find it easier to just learn specific phrases/words?

[KostasKouvalis]

I saw a YouTube video about a Chinese girl complaining how complicated English pluralization is. I took 3 years of Spanish, and all that "conjugate the verb" and tense was the most confusing part for me, and I still don't know which one to use when. But I think most languages have weird exceptions to grammar. That's why personally, I find it easier to just not bother with complex grammar rules and just learn specific phrases/words.

But I don't know. What about you guys?

[alice55]

I learn everything you can't learn a language without learning grammar rules also it make it much simpler to understand sentence with unknown words if you know the grammar as it help to know wether the words you don't understand is a verb or something else;

[KostasKouvalis]

Well, you saw how confused I was by French numbers XD

[alice55]

Are you trying to learn a new language? The only one I ever learned are English and German, English grammar is a joke it's the easiest one ever much easier than French one for sure. German is pretty similar to French to what I remember it was also very easy to learn even if I forgot about it sadly

[KostasKouvalis]

Not really. I just saw that video and wanted to ask that. I did try before, but gave up, especially since it was languages I don't need.

This is the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYrMq6RVKK0

I've heard a lot of people say English is difficult, yet so many people speak it. Maybe I'm just used to it. The only thing I find annoying is that certain words don't sound like they're spelled.

[KostasKouvalis]

I'm surprised how many French words are also found in Polish language, because they are from two completely different language families.

[alice55]

Yea I saw it XD
But they're really not that hard, German have similar ways of doing number too XD

English is literally the easiest language to learn there's no feminine or masculine wya to say things everything is neutral, in Franch if you're a woman you say sentence with different words than if you're a man which is freaking annoying.
Like if you're a woman you ll need to use different words than if you're a man it's hell to learn this in another language because you need to remember multiple ways of saying things instead if just one.

English have i find very fews words no grammar at all everything is just so simple and basic that is it very easy to learn the basic fast and once you get the basic then you basically know everything you need to know except some random words from time to time but only the basics is needed to be able to read a full book.
I learned English just to be able to read fanfiction and I truly needed only the basic as all the other words I didn't know I just had to translate them and i could understand everything the ways to make sentence is the easiest of all other languaeg French next to it is complete hell.

[alice55]

Not surprising because some hundred years ago French was the universal language of all royalty, Russian emperor and their family spoke French but not a words of Russian (which is why they were so hated by the population as they considered their emperor as not Russian).

[KostasKouvalis]

No there isn't. You see, I'm so used to speaking it, that I don't even notice details like that XD
In Polish too. The verbs are gendered, but we usually don't change the word too much.

Damn XD

[alice55]

I can tell you I noticed the gendered things as in French we have it and I fuck it up often its so boring I don't get it, In Japanse they have it too and it's even worse than in French (the I is gendered that's crazy).
Gendered things in language is crazy, and in German they have a third one the neutral one, der, die, das etc... they have so many of them and it's all so random make no sense like things that should be gendered are neutral and neutral stuff are gendered like in German a Cat is neutral but a table is gendered as masculine? Like it make no sense it make it so hard to learn, in France we do the same we put "Le, La, Les, etc..." we put so much more words to complicate the sentence English don't do that they're straight to the point.
Like a French sentence would have 10 words and the English version only 3 it make it so much easier to learn XD

In france we change the words quite a lots depending on the sentence like some are changed a lot and other it's the same for both or often there's change but only when writing and none when talking.
We have so many words that are pronouncing exactly the same but written in like 7 different ways who mean seven different things but they have all the same pronunciation.
Un verre = one glass
Un vers = worms
Vert = green
etc...
I pity all people learning French XD

[KostasKouvalis]

Yes it was.
I didn't know that, but I'm not surprised. Also, Poland had a strong alliance with Napoleon. Someone said it's because the words are both derived from Latin, but I think it has more to do with what YOU said. I'm not too familiar with Russian.

Some words are spelled differently but sound similar or vice versa. Sometimes one has extra letters, but you can still see the connection.
Like in Polish jewelry is "biżuteria" and you guys say "bijou" (spelling?).
An for mouth you guy say "bouche" we say "busia". They may not seem the same, but I was able to pick up the connection.
There plenty.

Pineapple is identical, though maybe pronounced differently
The word for "blackmale" and "nightmare" is the same, just different spelling.
The word for "flu" is almost identical. We say "grypa" you guys say "grippe".

There are a lot more

[KostasKouvalis]

That's crazy that it's your language and you still fuck it up. Though there people who fuck up English too, so maybe it's not so strange. I fuck up Polish more, especially the spelling, because we have multiple letters/letter combinations that sound almost identical. Polish people tell me they're different, but to me they sound exactly the same. And my parents swear they say "dwa dziescia" but to me it sounds like "dwajscia" XD In fact, I only recently realized that there were some Polish words I've been saying completely wrong my whole life XD Polish also don't have a word for "the"

And I remember hearing something strange about Finnish language too. I think they don't use words like "he" and "she".

Yeah see. Those are the ones that always confuse me. Portuguese has like three different forms of "of" depending on gender. In Quebec I was confused why some streets were spelled "Saint" and others "Sainte", then someone told me one is masculine and one is feminine.
Damn

See? That's exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about
OMG, that's even more confusing

OMG! No wonder they took it out of our high school XD
YES! That and "des" I think. Those confuse me so much

[alice55]

I doubt it's from Latin that's ways too old
It sound like the French words "Bijoutrie" which is the plural of Bijoux / jewelry There's a silent X in the end of Bijoux (Frech and their love for silent letters XD though English is bad at it too the spelling and writing sentence is easy but the pronounciation in English is the worse tied to the Spanish, it's just impossible for me to understand it as English don't even pronounce half of the letters in the words... for this German is the easiest language as they pronunce all the letters making it very easy to pronounce and write the words / recognize it).

yes they're similar

it's very interesting

It's not crazy ir's totally normal every French person fuck it since it's so hard nothing weird about it I doubt you know all English words nobody know their language at 100 % it's normla

The hardest things to learn is always the sound that don't exist in your native language they're hard to pick out and hard to understand, I mean I'm totally unable to differentiate American from Australian accent to me they all sound the same even the only one I'm able o pick out from the others is the accent of the posh British this one I'm able to recognize it all the others English accent sound the exact same to me.

my English pronunciation is literally me pronouncing English words the French ways my accent is so thick that even my French English teacher had a extremely hard time understanding my spoken English XD

In Spanish they don't use the word "I" it exist but they just decide to not use it for some reasons and make it hard for people to learn...

I hate this whole feminine masculine things it make everything so hard.

I don't even know how to explain the word Des XD
It's plural but there's no real explanation of this words except it's similar to "le, la -, les" but another ways of saying / writing it just to be fancy XD

[alice55]

If you find it confusing don't try German they have much more of those than French have XD
When I was learning German I was just like fuck it if I couldn't remember no big deal as anyway German people would still be able to understand me if I fuck up those tiny little words as they're not even important to the overall sentence they don't bring anything to it like you can forget them or use another and they would still be able to understand your freaking sentence but we still had to bother learning them (why make so many of them while they have nearly no pain ><)

French, German they're super confusing and hard to learn because of small annoying rules no wonder they preferred English as the universal language it's just so much more easier to learn than the others one they just need to get a simpler pronuniciaiton XD

[KostasKouvalis]

I doubt it too, honestly.
Yeah. that's it
A lot of Europeans struggle with "th". Yeah, Spanish has some tricky sounds, but not like French. There are certain sounds only you guys can make. And some Polish and other Slavic words are tricky for me too. For example words like "Piotr", "Mgla", "Jabłko" "Wstążka". 'Cuz in English, we don't have words with missing vowels like that, so my mouth simply cannot make those sounds.

Yeah, German doesn't look too difficult, and most of the words aren't very long. Russian is so difficult for me, because there's too many syllables.

I don't. But it's so funny because Metropolitan speakers always seem so anal about people who don't speak perfect Metropolitan dialect.

Yeah, that's what I was saying. That's so weird, because Australian and American sound completely different. Australian sounds more similar to British. I've gotten better at telling them apart. I struggle the most with British accents and also Scottish and Irish. They sound almost identical to me.

New Zealand and South African I sometimes still mess up too

OMG! Record a voice not on Vocaroo. I'm your best friend. I won't make fun of you. I'm curious how you sound and if I can understand you. It's probably not as bad as you think. :)

In Polish too. We have one, but you don't really need to use it, so some people don't.

The worst are words that sound the same but have different meanings. Polish and Slovak has that, but other Slavic languages too. I used to message a Slovak girl here and we both talked in our languages, because they're mutually intelligible, and we had some funny mistranslations XD

Îles des Saintes

[KostasKouvalis]

I'm not surprised XD
In Spanish too. My Spanish speaking friends would make fun of me, but when I talked to strangers, they didn't care if I didn't use proper tense.

Yeah.

OMG, I almost forgot to tell you, I found a love letter I wrote to you years ago ^^ And I found an old conversation I had saved. My thoughts and feelings haven't changed much. ;)

[itsannalee]

Yeah, i feel bothered when I learned Mandarin, the tone, Pīnyīn are really confused.

[KostasKouvalis]

Oh, are you talking about those words that sound almost identical except for one small pronunciation?
The girl complaining about English pluralization was CHINESE lol

[itsannalee]

Yep, the same words have different meaning with different tones. Like 4,10, and die or mom, numb and angry. etc.

[strateguy632]

Phrases

[Anonymous]

Is Greek hard to learn? Grammar, I mean.

[KostasKouvalis]

I'm not Greek. My username is just Greek. I don't know. Tried learning it once, and these Greek women told me it's not an easy language to learn. But I don't know about the grammar, as I was just trying to learn phrases