# Foreign languages: the WTF moment that made you throw in the towel **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 8, 2016, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreign-languages-the-wtf-moment-that-made-you-throw-in-the-towel/754312 "2016-05-08T17:58:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Ice\_Machine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Ice\_Machine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ice_Machine)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2016, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreign-languages-the-wtf-moment-that-made-you-throw-in-the-towel/754312/81 "2016-05-10T21:16:19Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > Technically Mandarin Chinese doesn’t, either ; although “dui” (“[that is a] correct/true [statement]”) can substitute adequately for a simple “yes” in most contexts, as can “shi” ([it] is [so]). “Bu dui” and “Bu shi” for no, “bu” being the main negative particle. > > But the \*proper \*way of answering yes or no to a question like “have you eaten yet ?” is to say either “eat” or “not eat”, i.e. you repeat the verb used by the original speaker, plus a negation for no which can vary from verb to verb. This part I took to pretty quick as well as asking a question by using verb-negative-verb instead of using ma. > [@Kobal2](#): > > For me (so far, I’ve only been learning it for two years now), the really bonkers part of Mandarin Chinese are the classifiers though. See, every single object or concept in Chinese belongs to one of 80+ groups/categories ; and when you count or designate items (e.g. “this coat”) you have to add the proper group noun in there. So you don’t say “two rivers”, you have to say “two [long, sinuous object] rivers”. How do you know which classifier corresponds to which noun/object and vice versa ? Rote, motherfucker ! I just resort to ge since I can never remember all the different ones. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2016, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreign-languages-the-wtf-moment-that-made-you-throw-in-the-towel/754312/82 "2016-05-10T21:28:57Z")
> [@Esox\_Lucius](#): > > I took four years of French in high school, and while I never gave it up, there were WTF moments, like genders for objects. The real WTF came long after high school when I learned that “vagina” has the male gender–_le vagin_. That probably has to do with etymology. The Latin root _vagina_ means the thing you put your sword or dagger into (“sheath”), so masculine gender makes sense, as it was a manly, martial kind of object. Curiously, using google-translate on “vagina”, English-to-Latin, I get something like “_naturale eius debent_”, which deconstructs to a literal “natural his should”. ---
**Author:** ![Don\_t\_Panic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/don_t_panic/32/398_2.png) [@Don\_t\_Panic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_t_Panic)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2016, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreign-languages-the-wtf-moment-that-made-you-throw-in-the-towel/754312/83 "2016-05-10T21:53:27Z")
> [@Esox\_Lucius](#): > > I took four years of French in high school, and while I never gave it up, there were WTF moments, like genders for objects. The real WTF came long after high school when I learned that “vagina” has the male gender–_le vagin_. > [@eschereal](#): > > That probably has to do with etymology. The Latin root _vagina_ means the thing you put your sword or dagger into (“sheath”), so masculine gender makes sense, as it was a manly, martial kind of object. This is complaining about the “lack of logic”, as it was put upthread, and then attempting to explain it with logic. This is a mistake. There is no logic. If you expect a correspondence between the genders of nouns and the intrinsic masculinity or femininity of the objects referred to, in any gendered language, you’re doomed to a lifetime of smacking your head against keyboards, walls and whatever is handy. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2016, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreign-languages-the-wtf-moment-that-made-you-throw-in-the-towel/754312/84 "2016-05-10T22:50:48Z")
> [@spamforbrains](#): > > The fact that all nouns have gender in German drove me out of mind. The gender of the nouns doesn’t even make sense. > [@ekedolphin](#): > > Chalk up another point for gendered nouns in German! GOD, those drove me insane. > [@silenus](#): > > Thirding **spamforbrains**. German is a stupid language, and 2 years of it in high school did nothing to change that opinion. I took two years of German in high school, and a third year in college, and I completely agree. It’s not just the gender of the nouns that drove me nuts; it’s the fact that the [definite articles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_articles#Definite_article) all change depending on the grammatical case of the noun in question. So you first learn the nominative (subject) case: _der_ (masculine), _die_ (feminine), _das_ (neuter), _die_ (plural). You do a million drills, and get it drilled into your head that _der_ is masculine, _die_ is feminine, and _das_ is neuter. And you learn that a man is masculine (_der Mann_), a woman is feminine (_die Frau_), a boy is masculine (_der Junge_), but a girl is neuter, for some reason (_das Mädchen_). WTF? Then you learn the accusative (object) case: _den_ (masculine), _die_ (feminine), _das_ (neuter), _die_ (plural). OK, only one change from the nominative case. Good so far. But then you learn the dative case, whatever the hell that is, and learn that the articles are now _dem_ (masculine), _der_ (feminine), _dem_ (neuter), _den_ (plural). What, _der_ is feminine now? WTF?! And just to top it off, they throw the genitive case at you, and it’s _des_ (masculine), _der_ (feminine), _des_ (neuter), _der_ (plural). Again, WTF? The larger question, of course, is why on Earth does any language need **sixteen** different ways to say “the”?! Then you have to learn all sixteen of the [indefinite article endings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_articles#Indefinite_article), and the sixteen definite article-like endings, and I was just about ready to pull my hair out. In practice, when I traveled to Germany and attempted to speak German, I just picked a definite article and/or article ending at random and hoped for the best. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2016, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreign-languages-the-wtf-moment-that-made-you-throw-in-the-towel/754312/85 "2016-05-10T23:14:19Z")
> [@robby](#): > > The larger question, of course, is why on Earth does any language need **sixteen** different ways to say “the”?! > > Then you have to learn all sixteen of the [indefinite article endings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_articles#Indefinite_article), and the sixteen definite article-like endings, and I was just about ready to pull my hair out. In practice, when I traveled to Germany and attempted to speak German, I just picked a definite article and/or article ending at random and hoped for the best. :rolleyes: There are only six different forms spread out over the sixteen slots, though. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2016, 11:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreign-languages-the-wtf-moment-that-made-you-throw-in-the-towel/754312/86 "2016-05-11T11:40:31Z")
> [@Esox\_Lucius](#): > > I took four years of French in high school, and while I never gave it up, there were WTF moments, like genders for objects. The real WTF came long after high school when I learned that “vagina” has the male gender–_le vagin_. FWIW, nouns having either the “wrong” or an unexpected gender is endless cheap fodder for French comedians. Like, “torture is feminine because of course it is, you ever been married ? _rimshot_” And yes, “le vagin” is masculine but most of the vernacular epithets for it, like “une chatte” ou “une moule”, are feminine. On the other hand, while “penis” is masculine, many vernacular words for it are feminine - une bite, une queue, une verge… same for bollocks : “un testicule” is the medical term but these days most everybody calls them “une couille”. Which just goes to show, we don’t really care - we’ll fuck it (or with it) either way :D. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2016, 12:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreign-languages-the-wtf-moment-that-made-you-throw-in-the-towel/754312/87 "2016-05-11T12:07:21Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > FWIW, nouns having either the “wrong” or an unexpected gender is endless cheap fodder for French comedians. Like, “torture is feminine because of course it is, you ever been married ? _rimshot_” Spanish has both _ordenador_ (m) and _computadora_ (f) for computer. The routines on which would be the right gender write themselves. ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2016, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreign-languages-the-wtf-moment-that-made-you-throw-in-the-towel/754312/88 "2016-05-11T19:38:47Z")
> [@Dr.Drake](#): > > There are only six different forms spread out over the sixteen slots, though. Great, that means that there are only 5,765,760 permutations to choose from, instead of over 20 trillion ways to screw them up. :rolleyes: (The first number is the number of different permutations that the six different forms can be distributed among the 16 slots, and the second number is the the number of different permutations that a hypothetical 16 different forms could be distributed among the 16 slots.) Now in practice, it’s not quite as bad as that, especially if you mainly stick with the nominative and the accusative cases. But you still have to know the gender of the noun in question to have any hope of getting it right. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2016, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreign-languages-the-wtf-moment-that-made-you-throw-in-the-towel/754312/89 "2016-05-11T20:11:01Z")
> [@Sangahyando](#): > > I.e. 70 / 80 / 90 = “septante / octante / nonante”. I seem to remember reading or hearing (can give no cite – sorry) that this was true of France as well, up to the Revolution of 1789. While I cannot say for sure if this is true or false, Quebecois French uses “soixante-dix, quatre-vingt, quatre-vingt-dix,” though that dialect predates the Revolution (and in fact was politically severed from the mother country before the Revolution." ---
**Author:** ![Poysyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f4b2a3/32.png) [@Poysyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Poysyn)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2016, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreign-languages-the-wtf-moment-that-made-you-throw-in-the-towel/754312/90 "2016-05-11T21:15:03Z")
ten years of French Immersion and Subjonctif still bugs the hell out of me. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2016, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreign-languages-the-wtf-moment-that-made-you-throw-in-the-towel/754312/91 "2016-05-11T21:57:09Z")
Italian at least looks like it was written by people who wanted you to understand the words. Of course, only a few people in Italy actually speak “Italian”. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2016, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreign-languages-the-wtf-moment-that-made-you-throw-in-the-towel/754312/92 "2016-05-11T23:47:56Z")
> [@bump](#): > > Actually, I used to work for American Eurocopter, and it was kind of funny in that us Americans could easily tell the Parisians from the people from the rest of France, as the Parisians were kind of arrogant and snooty, while say… the guys from Marseille were quite cool and fun to be around. > > But yeah, my one trip to Paris was rendered relatively unpleasant by crabby Parisians who were not at all pleased for me to try and speak French, atrocious as it may have been. I am convinced that the key to enjoying Paris as an American is to not be able to speak French at all like me. I have been there many times and just told any of them that wanted to speak to me straight up that I am an American that can’t speak French (in English). They immediately switched into English because almost every younger person and those that work in the hospitality industries can speak fairly good English as far as I can tell. Problem solved. Of course, they could have been insulting me behind my back in French with their friends and coworkers for all I know but that is an added bonus because I would never know. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2016, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreign-languages-the-wtf-moment-that-made-you-throw-in-the-towel/754312/93 "2016-05-11T23:53:25Z")
I visited France 35 years ago. English was important back then, too, but not quite as universal as it is today. ---
**Author:** ![Esox\_Lucius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/848f3c/32.png) [@Esox\_Lucius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Esox_Lucius)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2016, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreign-languages-the-wtf-moment-that-made-you-throw-in-the-towel/754312/94 "2016-05-12T05:33:17Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > That probably has to do with etymology. The Latin root _vagina_ means the thing you put your sword or dagger into (“sheath”), so masculine gender makes sense, as it was a manly, martial kind of object. Curiously, using google-translate on “vagina”, English-to-Latin, I get something like “_naturale eius debent_”, which deconstructs to a literal “natural his should”. Thanks for fighting that bit of ignorance for me, but it doesn’t explain why they didn’t make a feminine form of it, like _la vagine_. (I know I’m looking for logic where none exists, so I’m not going to bang my head over it like Martian Bigfoot warned against. But still…) Makes you wonder how assigning gender to inanimate objects came to be in the first place. Monty Python could have a heyday with that. ---
**Author:** ![Esox\_Lucius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/848f3c/32.png) [@Esox\_Lucius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Esox_Lucius)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2016, 5:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreign-languages-the-wtf-moment-that-made-you-throw-in-the-towel/754312/95 "2016-05-12T05:36:21Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > And yes, “le vagin” is masculine but most of the vernacular epithets for it, like “une chatte” ou “une moule”, are feminine. On the other hand, while “penis” is masculine, many vernacular words for it are feminine - une bite, une queue, une verge… same for bollocks : “un testicule” is the medical term but these days most everybody calls them “une couille”. > Which just goes to show, we don’t really care - we’ll fuck it (or with it) either way :D. The French reputation for romance has to be a myth. You must be the most sexually confused people on Earth.😛 ---
**Author:** ![Esox\_Lucius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/848f3c/32.png) [@Esox\_Lucius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Esox_Lucius)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2016, 5:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreign-languages-the-wtf-moment-that-made-you-throw-in-the-towel/754312/96 "2016-05-12T05:37:35Z")
> [@Martian Bigfoot](#): > > This is complaining about the “lack of logic”, as it was put upthread, and then attempting to explain it with logic. > > This is a mistake. There is no logic. If you expect a correspondence between the genders of nouns and the intrinsic masculinity or femininity of the objects referred to, in any gendered language, you’re doomed to a lifetime of smacking your head against keyboards, walls and whatever is handy. Imagine those dear, sweet souls who are valiantly protecting us from the horrors of transgenders in the wrong bathrooms. They’d have a nervous breakdown dealing with masculine-gendered vaginas. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2016, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreign-languages-the-wtf-moment-that-made-you-throw-in-the-towel/754312/97 "2016-05-12T05:38:12Z")
> [@Esox\_Lucius](#): > > Makes you wonder how assigning gender to inanimate objects came to be in the first place. Monty Python could have a heyday with that. If it’s inanimate, you’ve got the wrong vagina. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2016, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreign-languages-the-wtf-moment-that-made-you-throw-in-the-towel/754312/98 "2016-05-12T05:58:57Z")
Not quite on topic, but I was deeply perplexed that there was a town in NM called “Ojo Caliente”. As I was informed later (perhaps incorrectly), “ojo” is also used to mean “spring”. And I can kind of get that, because it would be a place where the earth is weeping bitter tears. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2016, 6:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreign-languages-the-wtf-moment-that-made-you-throw-in-the-towel/754312/99 "2016-05-12T06:52:39Z")
It would even be a specific type of spring, one which comes out of a hole (as opposed to seeping out), that being another meaning of _ojo_. The butthole is _el ojo del culo_, which means that any talk of third eyes is going to produce guffaws. ---
**Author:** ![Kaio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/c68b51/32.png) [@Kaio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kaio)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2016, 8:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreign-languages-the-wtf-moment-that-made-you-throw-in-the-towel/754312/100 "2016-05-12T08:09:49Z")
> [@Chicken\_Fingers](#): > > Years ago, I tried to learn Vietnamese because my partner is Vietnamese. Aside from the fact that absolutely nothing is pronounced as written, the infernal vagueness of the language made me crazy. Something as simple as the word “blue,” for example, is something to the effect of “the color green, but like, you know, more the color of the sky.” argh. Interestingly, in many (most?) languages, words for specific colors enter the language in a particular order: black & white (or dark & light), then red, then green, then blue. There are even some languages right now that haven’t gotten to blue yet. So describing blue as “green, but different” totally makes sense in this context. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreign-languages-the-wtf-moment-that-made-you-throw-in-the-towel/754312.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreign-languages-the-wtf-moment-that-made-you-throw-in-the-towel/754312.md?page=6)