LanguageLearning

120 readers

1 users here now

A community to discuss learning languages, and meet people who might speak the language you're trying to learn.

founded 5 months ago

MODERATORS

Fawkes@lemmy.zip

What is the least enjoyed/most frustrating aspect of learning your target language? (lemmy.zip)

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by Fawkes@lemmy.zip to c/LanguageLearning@lemmy.zip

38 comments fedilink hide all child comments

As an English speaker learning German, I face endless confusion and frustration with many of the short question words that are "False Friends"

Such as:

Wer (where) - Actually means who.

Wo (Who) - Actually means where.

Wie (We) - Actually means how.

Was (was) - Actually means what.

Also (also) - Actually means so.

Will (will) - Actually means to want.

And the completely arbitrary gender assignments!

For example.

The year is: Das Jahr, a neuter word.

The month is: Der Monat, a masculine word.

And the week is: Die Woche, a feminine word.

And then there's directly counter-intuitive examples of words that seem like they Should be a gender other than what they are, such as:

The little girl - Das Mädchen (Neuter, not feminine)

Breasts - Der Busen (Masculine! Boobs is masculine!)

Person - Die Person (Feminine! Why isn't this word neuter?!"

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Tuuktuuk@sopuli.xyz 2 points 2 months ago

Duolingo had extremely good grammar lectures for many languages, hidden under a "hints" button underneath each learning node. And then Duolingo went and deleted all of that information, making the "hints" button essentially useless and nullifying hundreds of hours of work volunteers had put into writing the grammar lectures there! Finnish is one of the languages where the volunteer crew had made a seriously big effort writing good quality grammar lectures in the "hints" sections. And then one day: *poof*!