"I think that English way of saying things is pretty simple, too. We have 7 cases and English has none; our words can change their forms many times and in English they are almost always the same. "
English does have cases. For possession, we have to change the noun by adding apostrophe S or just an apostrophe.
Cat - Cat's - Cats'
But we have 7 cases of nouns, for instance:
Ovo je moja MAJKA. (This is my MOTHER.)
To sam dobila od svoje MAJKE. (I got this from my MOTHER.)
Ovo je posveceno mojoj MAJCI. (This is dedicated to my MOTHER.)
Volim svoju MAJKU. (I love my MOTHER.)
Dodji ovamo, MAJKO! (Come here, MOTHER!)
Bila sam tamo sa svojom MAJKOM. (I've been there with my MOTHER.)
(Seventh case would have the same form as the third one in this example.)
As you can see, our words are different every time and English ones are always the same. And not only the nouns, same goes for the adjectives, verbs, adverbs etc. - they are all changable.
Prepositions and articles in English... Not so easy...
at THE restaurant
at A hotel
at — school
I didn't recognize your voice OVER the phone
I've been ON the phone for an hour
he reached IN his pocket
he reached INTO a plastic bag
the window high UP IN the wall looks OUT ON TO the street
etc.
Well, we have at least as many prepositions if not more, but fortunately we don't have articles.
In addition to what Sanja pointed out, I can agree on that English grammar is simpler than other languages (especially comparing it with my native language, Bosnian and my second language, Danish).
At the other hand, it all depends on how deply familiar people are to English grammar......... At the moment I´m studying syntax and morphology and to be honest with you I find it suprisingly complicated.
However, everyone should make en effort to learn English and the grammar, because it is one of the most beautiful languages ever!!!!!!
........I´m loving it:)
Just to butt in a little...to me, a native English-speaker, learning languages that have no or little amounts of declensions are easier to learn because of the use of preopsitions. Would anyone whose native language is heavily laden with declensions say that it is easier to learn a grammatically similar language, or a language that has no or little amounts of declensions?
Well, my language (Hungarian) is a highly synthetic and agglutinating language that uses all sorts of suffixes instead of declensions (examples: "ház" = "house", "házBAN" = "IN a house", "ember" = man, "emberNEK" = "TO a man"), similarly to Finnish and Turkish. Interestingly, sometimes it is a little difficult for me to get used to more analytic languages (the ones which rely more on prepositions), but this depends. I have really had no problem with English at all, but I did have some with French. My favourite example: "to glance at" is "rápillantani" in Hungarian, and "donner un coup d'oeil" in French. Similarly: "I go home" - Hungarian: "hazamegyek", French: "Je vais a la maison". See the difference? I have always looked at French as "too verbose", although I like the language indeed. Generally speaking, it usually takes more time for me to master the correct use of prepositions in such languages.
To Sanita:
I agree. Easy as it may seem, English morphology and syntax can be tricky sometimes, especially at the level of clauses (like co-ordinate and subordinate clauses). English has subtle ways to compress the meaning with the help of these.
Example: Which is more elegant?
Nr. 1: I thanked him because he had been such a good friend.
Nr. 2: I thanked him for having been such a good friend.
I vote for Nr. 2...
Just one more remark: it is also true that grammarians tend to over-complicate things sometimes. It is their job after all... Personally I think it is better to rely on your intuition and right-brain functions in general when mastering a language than on memorising grammatical rules. For example, read or listen a lot, and grammatical structures will creep into your head through examples of usage. Of course this should go parallel with awareness of grammatical structures through study (a left-brain function), but try not to get lost too much in the rules.
Formal grammar always gets more complicated over time, and is often best ignored. Learn enough to become fluent, and don't worry about the rest. Much of grammar exists only to justify the existence of grammarians, as Easterner observes.
Many grammarians reinvent grammar for every language, also, classifying things in entirely different ways with entirely different names, and thus hiding the common traits across languages. This might give them something to do, but it conflicts with the goal of learning English as a foreign language, and this is another reason why many conventional grammars should be taken with a huge grain of salt.
Wow, another Bosnian :) Gdje si, Sanita, legendo? Sta ima u Danskoj?
I think that every language can get really hard if you want to learn its grammar extensively. But if you want to learn enough to be able to communicate, English is a very easy language to learn.
Sanja Wednesday, September 29, 2004, 16:04 GMT
But we have 7 cases of nouns, for instance:
Ovo je moja MAJKA. (This is my MOTHER.)
To sam dobila od svoje MAJKE. (I got this from my MOTHER.)
Ovo je posveceno mojoj MAJCI. (This is dedicated to my MOTHER.)
Volim svoju MAJKU. (I love my MOTHER.)
Dodji ovamo, MAJKO! (Come here, MOTHER!)
Bila sam tamo sa svojom MAJKOM. (I've been there with my MOTHER.)
(Seventh case would have the same form as the third one in this example.)
As you can see, our words are different every time and English ones are always the same. And not only the nouns, same goes for the adjectives, verbs, adverbs etc. - they are all changable.
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What language is that?
To Adam: That is Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian. Until about 13 years ago it was known as Serbo-Croat. It belongs to Slavic languages, which I think are grammatically much harder than Germanic or Romance languages.
No matter what politics say. Can we still speak for Serbo-Croat from a strictly linguistic point of view? If it was the same language 13 years ago does that mean you know speak 3 different languages? It's great to be able to speak two brand new languages without having to learn them. :-)