The Official Language Thread II

[Earniel]

Originally Posted by Linaewen

Question to everyone:
In your opinion, what language has the easiest (to learn) numeric system? I know it's my native language, but English numbers seem easier than any other language I've studied, except maybe Indonesian numbers. German is a bit confusing with its 'one and twenty' business. French is annoying with its 'four-twenties-fifteen' (meaning 95!) business. I don't remember anything about Swedish numbers, unfortunately.

English always seemed pretty straight-forward. German was workable too because of its kinship with my mothertongue. French was more confusing with the seemingly illogical way they handled the numerals above sixty. I can get around by using Walonian French since that at least has septant and nonant for soixant-dix and quatre-vingt-dix. But that would only work here, other french-speaking people will likely go 'huh?'.

To be truthful, learning numbers in other languages has apparently given me a slight dislexia with numbers. The way they shift between twenty-one and one-and-twenty, often leads to me switching numbers when reading or writing.

[Coffeehouse]

Originally Posted by Linaewen

Nope, it's my major in my Arts degree at university. Sadly, I think I will be finishing up with my Chinese language studies this year because next year it'll be too advanced for me!

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Question to everyone:
In your opinion, what language has the easiest (to learn) numeric system? I know it's my native language, but English numbers seem easier than any other language I've studied, except maybe Indonesian numbers. German is a bit confusing with its 'one and twenty' business. French is annoying with its 'four-twenties-fifteen' (meaning 95!) business. I don't remember anything about Swedish numbers, unfortunately.

Ah, well it's a tough nut to crack Chinese is. I'm secretely wishing I will learn it. I've decided to take the Arabic course in the Navy, maybe they are offering Chinese too..

As to easiest numeric system to learn and remember, well I think English is in the top 5 (probably nr. 1), bar my poor knowledge of the other 3,000+(?) ways to count in the world
I may be biased, but counting in Norwegian and Swedish is very easy. It's straightforward, no weird ways to say the numbers and roundabouts, and it's easy to recognize relating to both English and German: (Norwegian) en (one), to (two), tre (three), fire (four), fem (five), seks (six), syv (seven), åtte (eight), ni (nine), ti (ten), elleve (elleven), tolv (twelve), tretten (thirteen), fjorten (fourtheen), femten (fifteen), seksten (sixteen), sytten (seventeen), atten (eighteen), nitten (nineteen), tjue (twenty), tjue-en (twenty-one), tjue-to (twenty-two), and so on. Hundre (Hundred), Tusen (thousand), tusen og en (thousand and one), tusen og to (thousand and two), tre tusen (three thousand), Ti tusen (ten thousand), en million (one million)
Danish on the other hand has some seriously weird substitutes for many numbers!

I'm not too familiar with Spanish, though I know it resembles the Portuguese way of counting, but I can say that the Portuguese way is akso decent enough, although it gets slightly more challenging after one hundred;
Um (one), Dois (two), Tres (three), Quatro (four), Cinco (five), Seis (six), Sete (seven), oito (eight), nove (nine), dez (ten), onze (elleven), doze (twelve), treze (thirteen), catorze (fourteen), quinze (fifteen), dezasseis (sixteen), dezassete (seventeen), dezoito (eighteen), dezanove (nineteen), vinte (twenty), vinte e um (literally 20 and 1, twenty-one), vinte e dois (20 and 2, twenty-two), vinte e tres (twenty-three), etc.
Trinta (thirty), Quarenta (forty), Cinquenta (fifty), Sessenta (sixty), Noventa (ninety), etc.
cem (Hundred), mil (thousand), um milhao (one million).

[katya]

Thanks, Lin!

I think English is the easiest so far too. Japanese would be easier because the pronunciation is more straightforward (nothing like five->fifteen or "twelve"), just "two-ten-seven" and things like that, but like Chinese it gets confusing when you get to 10,000. Then you start having to say 1-man, 10-man, etc.

Heute möchte ich Deutsches studieren! Since it's the weekend and all.

[Mari]

Dutch. Definitely Dutch o(>_<)O
But Japanese is pretty easy too. Unless you have to start counting things or days or whatever. But just straightforward counting is easy.
German is easy too.

[The last sane person]

Originally Posted by Coffeehouse

Arabic! Cool! Do you speak it?

That's not Arabic, it's Farsi. But yeah, I speak a little.

[Rían]

Farsi has little dots above the letters kinda like Tolkien's Tengwar

[The last sane person]

Meh, pretty to look at but a bitch to learn. I'm lucky it's my mother tongue. It sounds beautiful though. I wouldn't trade it for french or any other romance language.

[Linaewen]

Originally Posted by katya

Then you start having to say 1-man, 10-man, etc.

Sorry, hate to correct you, but I think you mean wÃ*n (万)? But yeah, I agree. Chinese numbers after 万 comes into the picture are confuuuusing.

Heute möchte ich Deutsches studieren! Since it's the weekend and all.

Ich möchte das auch! Wie ist dein Deutsch? Mein ist sehr schlecht, ich habe alles vergessen.

Originally Posted by The last sane person

Meh, pretty to look at but a bitch to learn. I'm lucky it's my mother tongue. It sounds beautiful though. I wouldn't trade it for french or any other romance language.

Wow, that makes me really want to hear some! I have a bit of a fascination with Farsi since reading a few books based in Afghanistan, but I don't know anything about it. I might dig up this linguistics/world languages book I haven't looked at in ages. Do you possibly have the link to any newspaper websites which would have some audio in Farsi?

[Mari]

Linaewen, what Katya said was right. It's man in Japanese, not wan.

[Linaewen]

Ah, my bad! I misread what you wrote, Katya. Thanks, Mari.

[katya]

Originally Posted by Linaewen

Ich möchte das auch! Wie ist dein Deutsch? Mein ist sehr schlecht, ich habe alles vergessen.

Mein Deutsch ist auch sehr schlecht. >< ...I can't think of anything else I can say. I took German I a couple years ago but I can't remember much so I'm reviewing.

[truthiscool]

I'm taking German 1 this year in school and i love it I'm not sure why its not really graceful but it does flow. i think it is really fun to learn.

[Mari]

Pssst, try Dutch! Much prettier and less difficult grammar! (in some ways)

[Earniel]

But for the love of God, stay AWAY from the spelling rules! Seriously, only few make it out there alive.

[Mari]

They are making me learn the new 2005 rules. If I use the 1997 rules which I learned in secondary school, they won't accept my papers etc. And of course the newspapers are still boycotting the 2005 rules as are a lot of official publishings, so I don't know why I need to learn this. It's ridiculous! [/rant]

[Earniel]

Man, that sucks. I think I'm stuck on a mix of a few variants in between the 1997 and the 2005 one. I tried reading through the current rules for capitalisation. There's, like, an entire page with rules, just to know which words would capitalised. Madness, madness I tell you. You'd think the Language Commité wants us to mess up our own language.

That said, I'm glad they announced they wouldn't change the spelling for the next ten years or so. About bloody time, if only they chose to do that when we had a better spelling than the one we're stuck with now!

[Mari]

So true, so true >_<

[sisterandcousinandaunt]

Who changes the spelling?

[Mari]

Some official committee for spelling of the Dutch language. In it are a few professors, writers, government officials and dictionary people. But that's all I know about it.
They are accredited by the Dutch government and apparently also by the Belgian one? *looks in askance at Earniel*

[Earniel]

At least by the Flemish community of Belgium, I can't say for sure whether it's by our federal government or the Flemish one, but I suspect the Flemish community. It's a joint effort, just like 'Het Groot Dictee der Nederlandse Taal', which is a annual spelling competition that gets broadcasts and has participants of both countries.

Personally I think it's a good thing they try to coordinate it together, after all it's the same language and our countries are so close to one another that different spelling can only create more trouble that it's worth. If only these commitee blokes bloody knew what they were doing. *sigh*