# 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:** 13\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![CCitizen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4af34b/32.png) [@CCitizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CCitizen)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2016, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreign-languages-the-wtf-moment-that-made-you-throw-in-the-towel/754312/121 "2016-05-16T05:39:13Z")
I studied English since I was 7 – still in USSR. When I came to USA, I learned many cuss words. I post and tweet in both Russian and English. ---
**Author:** ![KarlGrenze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/dbc845/32.png) [@KarlGrenze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGrenze)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2016, 9:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreign-languages-the-wtf-moment-that-made-you-throw-in-the-towel/754312/122 "2016-05-16T09:14:46Z")
> [@Les\_Espaces\_Du\_Sommeil](#): > > Typo, sorry Yes, but in a sense it shows what I mean by omitting the pronoun. In other languages, the pronoun is not needed for that phrase to be understood, but to make sense in English, the pronoun is required. ---
**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 18, 2016, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreign-languages-the-wtf-moment-that-made-you-throw-in-the-towel/754312/123 "2016-05-18T13:24:55Z")
> [@Max\_Windshoeffel](#): > > When you compare Latin and modern Romance languages, you see that Latin did not need prepositions or articles. The word endings signal their case. The romance languages I know have both prepostions and articles. Latin did not need articles, but they most certainly needed prepositions. Word endings don’t so much signal a case as narrow it down, and although you can use the bare ablative case for a range of meanings, you often do need a preposition, as well. The modern Romance language articles are just weakened verisons of the number “one” (indefinite article) and the demonstrative “that” (definite article). ---
**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 18, 2016, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreign-languages-the-wtf-moment-that-made-you-throw-in-the-towel/754312/124 "2016-05-18T14:48:24Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Yeah, those are not holes and the gender-specific holes aren’t called eyes… (that I know, of course, I can’t promise we won’t get someone saying “in my local dialect they are”). One thing Victoria Abril taught me : a woman’s ladyparts are called “conejo”, rabbit. As in a rabbit’s bushy little tail. I don’t know why, but I find it adorable :). What’s more, the same word in French (“con”, which has evolved from being about lady parts to just being a generic insult) is related, via an older word meaning rabbit (“connet”). ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Angel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d26b3c/32.png) [@Johnny\_Angel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Angel)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2016, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreign-languages-the-wtf-moment-that-made-you-throw-in-the-towel/754312/125 "2016-05-19T13:45:07Z")
> [@Martian Bigfoot](#): > > [Gender in Europe.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_gender#/media/File:Gender_in_European_languages.png) > > But, yeah, English proves that it’s not needed, and every other language would be better off for ditching the stupid idea. IMO. I’m given to understand that Chinese doesn’t have grammatical tense. You pretty much have to figure out when something happened in context. Possibly a native Chinese speaker would say that grammatical tense was not needed, maybe even stupid. The complaint so far about grammatical gender has been that it’s complicated, sometimes arbitrary. Lots of luck finding a language without any complicated and arbitrary grammar. Native speakers navigate it smoothly, even if that includes making mistakes and moving on. The real problem with grammatical gender is that no one manages to use gender without making it normative, which is a problem for the more enlightened age we’re trying real hard to create. Some of us. In English, when we talk about a profession, we often have a default gender in mind for the purpose of pronouns that may come up – soldier, doctor, president. The prestige occupations are all ‘he/him/his’. We just happen not to have given this arrangement the official nod as structurally grammatical. ---
**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 19, 2016, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreign-languages-the-wtf-moment-that-made-you-throw-in-the-towel/754312/126 "2016-05-19T15:59:21Z")
> [@Johnny\_Angel](#): > > I’m given to understand that Chinese doesn’t have grammatical tense. You pretty much have to figure out when something happened in context. Possibly a native Chinese speaker would say that grammatical tense was not needed, maybe even stupid. Chinese has time markers, what it doesn’t have is conjugation. So basically instead of I eat/I ate/I will eat, it’s I eat/I past eat/I future eat. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Angel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d26b3c/32.png) [@Johnny\_Angel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Angel)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2016, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreign-languages-the-wtf-moment-that-made-you-throw-in-the-towel/754312/127 "2016-05-19T17:04:19Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > Chinese has time markers, what it doesn’t have is conjugation. So basically instead of I eat/I ate/I will eat, it’s I eat/I past eat/I future eat. That would give me far less of a headache. Otherwise, I think you can make a fair case for handling, say, future perfect senses through context rather than grammatically. But basic past and future? Oy. I take it these are adverbs? ---
**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 19, 2016, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreign-languages-the-wtf-moment-that-made-you-throw-in-the-towel/754312/128 "2016-05-19T17:51:37Z")
> [@Johnny\_Angel](#): > > That would give me far less of a headache. Otherwise, I think you can make a fair case for handling, say, future perfect senses through context rather than grammatically. But basic past and future? Oy. I take it these are adverbs? English doesn’t have a conjugated future. I _will_ do (probably originally in the sense of “wish, intend”) I _am going to_ do Nothing parallels “I did.” We do just fine. ---
**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 19, 2016, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreign-languages-the-wtf-moment-that-made-you-throw-in-the-towel/754312/129 "2016-05-19T21:20:37Z")
> [@Johnny\_Angel](#): > > That would give me far less of a headache. Otherwise, I think you can make a fair case for handling, say, future perfect senses through context rather than grammatically. But basic past and future? Oy. I take it these are adverbs? There is a character that is used almost identically to “will”, and the word that means “have” does get used as a past-tense marker in a similar way to English. But consider, e.g., “_So, yesterday, I see him get out the lawnmower, but it won’t start._” There is an example of a sentence in English that clearly belongs in the past tense but works fine in present-tense conjugation without any difficulty in comprehension. That is the basic idea with Chinese: you set the context and use the usual words. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Angel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d26b3c/32.png) [@Johnny\_Angel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Angel)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2016, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreign-languages-the-wtf-moment-that-made-you-throw-in-the-towel/754312/130 "2016-05-22T14:56:26Z")
> [@Dr.Drake](#): > > English doesn’t have a conjugated future. > > I _will_ do (probably originally in the sense of “wish, intend”) > I _am going to_ do > > Nothing parallels “I did.” We do just fine. It doesn’t inflect, mostly, but I recall seeing lists of English verbs with their modal or helper counterparts being assembled and called a ‘conjugation’. The helper words are grammaticised, in that they affect tense, mood, etc., but not actually (as of yet) used as affixes. > [@eschereal](#): > > That is the basic idea with Chinese: you set the context and use the usual words. Yeah, I figured it had to work something like that. And it couldn’t be the case that all these Chinese speakers weren’t getting along just fine, thanks. My mind did boggle at the idea, but on the matter of difficulty in language learning, this is an area where the learner is actually catching a break and someone could well come along and compain “Why do all these other languages use these stupid tenses? Chinese is so much more logical about it! You set the context, and then you’re off to the races!” ---
**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 22, 2016, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreign-languages-the-wtf-moment-that-made-you-throw-in-the-towel/754312/131 "2016-05-22T15:05:16Z")
> [@Johnny\_Angel](#): > > It doesn’t inflect, mostly, but I recall seeing lists of English verbs with their modal or helper counterparts being assembled and called a ‘conjugation’. The helper words are grammaticised, in that they affect tense, mood, etc., but not actually (as of yet) used as affixes. Yes, but how is that any different from Chinese grammar? We can say: I will bathe / I’m going to bathe / tomorrow I’m bathing, and Chinese seems to have a very similar range of possibilities. [link to Wikipedia’s one-paragraph summary.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_tense#Mandarin_Chinese) ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2016, 7:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreign-languages-the-wtf-moment-that-made-you-throw-in-the-towel/754312/132 "2016-05-23T07:08:08Z")
OK, all Indo-European languages, at least the western ones, are blessed with a historical plethora of sibilants. The Parisians dropped a bunch of them, but most European languages are a bit hissy. German, however? High German\* s\*, _sch_, sometimes _ch_, and sometimes _g_ (the last two after front vowels) sound a lot like English _sh._ Eventually it got on my nerves. Also the declining adjectives, and the case endings being awfully similar to other endings. Spanish has some funny homonyms, but its endings largely make sense to me. German feels sloppy, and degenerate if not half-baked by comparison. I don’t mind at all that the nouns are gendered, I’m used to Indo-European languages. I’m bemused that they are all strong, sort of. The case declensions being shoved off on the adjectives, however, offends my Romance-language-based sense of propriety. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Angel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d26b3c/32.png) [@Johnny\_Angel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Angel)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2016, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreign-languages-the-wtf-moment-that-made-you-throw-in-the-towel/754312/133 "2016-05-24T03:39:42Z")
> [@Dr.Drake](#): > > Yes, but how is that any different from Chinese grammar? We can say: I will bathe / I’m going to bathe / tomorrow I’m bathing, and Chinese seems to have a very similar range of possibilities. [link to Wikipedia’s one-paragraph summary.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_tense#Mandarin_Chinese) I can only speculate why that’s not considered grammatical tense, but English’s system of auxiliary verbs is. My guess is that it’s because the tense markers in English are other verbs. Or perhaps because they are regarded as having made the transition to being ‘grammaticized’ because, [as Wikipedia explains it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammaticalization), only nouns or verbs are eligible. I had the impression that verb inflections, for example, were generally assumed to be things like adverbs that got smashed into the words they modified, and this was called grammaticization. Perhaps it’s the case that it’s not considered a grammatical tense if it’s not sufficiently systematic. From the [Wikipedia article on Tense](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_tense), it seems one explanation is that it’s all in how it’s analyzed. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/foreign-languages-the-wtf-moment-that-made-you-throw-in-the-towel/754312.md?page=6)