what is the weirdest and hardest thing to adjust to in a language

In Russian, not the Cyrillic alphabet itself but trying to figure out where the stress goes

Getting a native speaker to actually talk to you instead of switching to English. Czech is really fucking hard to pronounce (we just don't read the letters the same way, we combine them and they pronounce each one individually, plus where are the fucking vowels), and the grammar is a nightmare for English speakers.

The idea that Chinese might be dying / set to die

>>3369110
Chinese is dying?
I thought all of the predictions were about its glorious future.

>>3369089
German, the fucking grammar.

>tfw you can't roll your r's

>>3369143
inability to roll Rs has a special word in russian "кapтaвocть" which is considered a speech defect with special therapists whose job is to cure it

Lenin for example had it.

>>3369159
Do they flap it or do the American approximant R?

>>3369159
Same in my country, and kids would bully you a lot in school in you couldn't do it.

>>3369095
same with learning French for me
I remember learning English by reading lots of books, can't do that with French

>>3369192
As a native English speaker I actually still have a hard time spelling a lot of English words, but my spelling in French improves dramatically

>>3369181
My mother bullied me for not being able to do it ;_;

>>3369213
Anon gets BTFO

>>3369123
It depends on the geopolitical future of the US/US empire, IMO. I'm basically a Spenglerite who thinks that they (the US empire) are going to btfo everyone and take over the whole world, with English becoming more of a lingua franca than it already is and Chinese gradually being btfo'd with it. Hold out more hope for Russian, desu.
Still learning it as a hedge.

>>3369244
spengler was a turboretard

>>3369250
No u.
He's the historian most capable of making accurate predictions that I've found. Do you know one better? Is there anyone who has been so consistently and specifically right in their predictions?

>>3369089
japanese politeness levels
seriously they have this maze of different conjugations and words to say the exact same thing depending on what sort of feudal style "rank" the listener is compared to you

>>3369260
No historians make good predictions. Those that do, like spengler, just make ones that are so vague as to be worthless
(wow, there's gonna be a decline, so insightful)

>>3369143
I know your pain. I can kind of fake it, but while that's helped me a little with some Slavic languages, I still have no hope of speaking Spanish without native speakers laughing at my speech impediment. And I have a very Hispanic name.

I also have a comically oversized tongue. Even whistling is very difficult for me. Fucking genetic defects, at least I have a very good French accent, although I know very little of the language. Fortunately the French are all lisping, muttering retards so the accent is not too hard, it's the fucking idioms and shit you never know (because again, the French won't speak French to non-natives. Fucking pricks.)

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I've been studying Spanish for two months now, and, the use of the verb 'Ser' (to be) always fucking gets me.

In brief explanation, a sentence can be structured like this:

>Son sus manzanas.
They are his apples.

It's not particularly hard to remember in its regularity, but I mess up Son (they are) and (sus) their) and also su (singular of 'sus', he/she/you - formal). It's kind of stupid, because I'm a reasonable student and this is quite basic stuff, but the way I translate things in my head is really fucking weird.

>El clima es soleado hoy. Esta noche, mi amiga y yo vamos al cine.

I translate this totally random sentence by looking at the keywords in this order.
>soleado = sunny
>hoy = today
>el clima = weather
>Esta noche = This night
>vamos = we go
>al cine = the movies

I would definitely make an obvious mistake like not reading that it was an amigA (female friend) just because of the way I translate things.

>>3369416
I just remember ser is for essential characteristics, estar is for nonessential ones

>>3369425
don't even get me started on
>pero (but)
>para (for)
>por (by)

In trying to construct sentences from memory alone. I sound like I have a stuttering problem trying to p-p-p-p-properly say the right word.

and whenever 'de el' or 'a el' is contracted to 'del' or 'al' i have a fucking aneurysm. I can never work out where to use. Saying that de means from isn't quite right. a means 'to', and 'al' means 'to the', but 'al' isn't used all the time for reasons I don't understand.

>>3369089
English people eat half of their already short words when they talk.

Like They pronounce :"a lot" " a lo", didn't "din"

(Modern) Greek is a pretty simple language to learn, but there are some unusual consonant combinations, like phth which are hard to say.
>>3369143
Yeah, this.

>>3369107
>put years of effort into learning their language
>they try to talk to you in english
yeah they're just trying to be nice and most tourists probably feel so grateful but it feels so bad

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>>3369612
>put in all the effort to learn some phrases and words
>feel like I just haven't spoken their language well enough and they don't give a shit

>>3369580
No such thing as 'English' pronunciation. There is more variety in accent and dialect in England than the rest of the Anglosphere combined.

For example, police can track criminals to actual neighbourhoods by listening to voice recordings.

>>3369606
Reminder that Greek consonant combinations like this 'phth' were simply pronounced without the 'h's; it's just 'pt'.

>>3369167
People who can't roll r sound like a typical anglo trying to roll it

>>3370358
No they aren't, everything is pronounced in Greek

>>3369244
>I'm basically a Spenglerite who thinks that they (the US empire) are going to btfo everyone and take over the whole world,
Have you even read Spengler?

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Ancient Greek is hard.

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>>3369143
>all the words in different cases and context.
>finding the subject and object of the sentence
>what this anon said>>3369095

>>3369143
Is it an Anglophone thing or speech impediment?

>>3369089
Japanese
Grammar and word order. It's all bloody backwards. It's not too bad when writing, but stringing together more than a couple of sentence while speaking is beyond me

>>3369143
try palatalising one

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>>3369143
REEEEEEEEE HOW THE HELL AM I MEANT TO ROLL MY R'S

HELP ME EAST EUROS.

>>3370514
Make a motorboat with your tongue.

>>3369159
thats a really good fact

>>3369159
So rhotacism basically.

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>>3370518
>Make a motorboat with my tongue
>Spit all over my computer

>>3369580
That's not really exclusive to English, you probably just don't notice it in your own language

>>3370358
In Modern Greek it's "fth"
>wishing I could type IPA right now

>>3369580
>Like They pronounce :"a lot" " a lo", didn't "din"
Those are "unreleased /t/". It's pronounced, but only barely. It's produced by having your tongue touch the roof of your mouth where it normally does for /t/, but not releasing any sound. /d/ also does this. Generally, those two sounds have a set of relatively complex phonological rules.

>>3369612
Just answer back in the other language. Usually that's enough. If they still talk in English, try again in the other language. If they try AGAIN, then maybe they can't understand that particular sentence. Usually answering back in the other language twice has worked for me. Except in France.

>>3369541
That's not super difficult for me, but I already know French so my Spanish is basically just translating French word for word, which is probably quite awkward to a native speaker

>>3369089
In German, the word order is fucking weird, and many times there is no variation allowed. Also inflecting adjectives for masc/fem/neut/plural, nom/acc/dat/gen, and weak/strong is really annoying.

>>3369089

The stupid way of organizing adjectives in the english language really stresses me.
You can read a hundred fucking adjectives and still not know what the hell they are talking about. Specially unnerving when I have to translate something.
i.e. the red ugly big dirty old hairy disgusting happy blablabla........................................................................................................dog....

>>3370456
> Ancient Greek is hard
Haha. Try Sanskrit.

>>3370428
Who isn't pronouncing anything? You realise 'th' and 'ph' are single letters, right?

The 'th' and 'ph' were aspirated dental and labial, ('hot-house', 'hop-house') not the fricatives like they are not in Modern Greek/English.

>>3369580

Americans sound like they have an entire potato on their mouths while speaking.

>>3371645
Irish jealousy

>>3369089
>Been studying Irish since I was 5
>I couldn't tell you a single sentence in Irish beyond 'hello my name is anon'
WHY DIDN'T THEY TEACH IT BETTER?