Stress
In the kitchen. My darling wife is doing the washing up. This is her favorite thing to do, it would appear. If I am in the kitchen doing something, whatever, opening a beer, when I walk into the living room she will look at me with the ‘did you bring me a present?’ face and ask, “any washing up for me to do?” If the answer is ‘no,’ I can count on a pout.
In the kitchen. My darling Polish wife is doing the washing up. I am cooking. She looks up from the sink and says, “líjak?” Slovene for sink. Also crater, funnel, and various similar-shaped objects.
“Right. Actually, it may be liják. I can never remember.”
“The stress thing in Slovene is so difficult. Why?”
“It’s not just difficult, it’s chaotic.”
“If you want a beautiful language for stress, it’s Polish. The rules are very reliable. The stress always falls on the, let me use this beautiful word, penultimate [makes the sexiest face in the world and wiggles hootchie] syllable.”
“Very much like English. All of our rules about stress are entirely reliable.”
“Bastard.” [hits me in face with wet tea-towel]
May the Devil take their pronunciation rules.
Even worse are words that change meaning depending on the pronunciation, like zadovóljen (satisfied) and zadovoljén (sexually satisfied).
Comment by Michael M. — Tuesday 7 June 05 @ 17.31 MDT+2.00
How nice to have a word for the state of being sexually satisfied.
Actually I always thought Japanese was worse because they have sets of homophones with NO stress (Japanese having no stress) that they think, to the vexation of all nonnative speakers, are ever-so-slightly differentiated by some kind of accent or tone. It would be so much easier if they were differentiated by stress, rather than this “only Japanese can hear it” ephemera.
And, you know, were they just plain old homophones that they didn’t claim were differentiated in any way, I could live with that. We English speakers don’t go around saying to nonnative speakers that if only they had some secret listening skill they could hear the difference between “son” and “sun”, say.
Ooh, don’t get me started.
Comment by jdog — Wednesday 8 June 05 @ 04.19 MDT+2.00
Actually, though I risk being labeled a pedant, the second of Michael’s words is correctly pronounced zadovoljèn
rather than zadovoljén.
Comment by ill-advised — Wednesday 8 June 05 @ 12.55 MDT+2.00
ill-advised: Pedantry is encouraged, especially on any post where any American is discussing any language. Thanks for the correction.
jdog: I am sure you can regale us with countless tales of weeping-inducing Japanese traps, not least a certain attitude thing. We’re lucky that Slovenes generally react encouragingly and respectfully if you at least attempt to use their language. You might be interested to know that the Michael above has mentioned a friend who’s learned both Japanese and Slovenian and claims the latter is more difficult. Not when it comes to reading and writing, though, I imagine.
Michael: I have been caught by exactly the subtle difference you cite; ironically at a time when it was entirely untrue. Now we know which diacritical mark to use when we say it, should it ever come to pass.
Comment by sgazzetti — Wednesday 8 June 05 @ 13.32 MDT+2.00
Actually, besides those homophones (which, granted, can nearly always be distinguished by context), Japanese is not particularly difficult to speak. There is no stress, as noted, and the phonological system is fairly simple. Verbs have only one tense and do not inflect for person. There are no articles, no gender, no plurals. There are no relativizers.
Verbs do, however, change form for a whole slew of moods and so forth. And there is the nastiness of keigo, the polite forms. But otherwise it’s not really that hard, contrary to what Japanese people would seem to like to believe. I think French was a little harder, at least for me.
And then, yes, there is the reading and writing, and to my mind Japanese is the hardest language to learn to read and write in the world. If anyone wants to argue about that, I can explain why.
Comment by jdog — Friday 10 June 05 @ 19.42 MDT+2.00