Thread: Maybe this is why everyone thinks Russian is so difficult...

Just one more joke.
-What is the longest word in English?
-'smiles'
-Not too long! Six letters only.
-Well, but there is a mile bewteen the first 's' and the last one!

Originally Posted by Mihkkal

In fenno-ugric languages, you can describe long actions like

"valastallegoahttebehtet" in Saami (I think that's correct) which would mean "you two start doing sports". I'm not good in Saami, so I don't know how to put this in tenses, and can't think of longer words to combine (but the exist). You can also add "a little" and such.

And contrary to "hottentott" etcetera, words like the above are actually usable. Though of course, when words get ridiculously long because of fancy grammars, you'd use more easy ways of saying the same thing.

As for long grammatical structures, I'll add an example from Japanese (I am currently learning it):
yomu - to read;
yomaseru - to make (or to force) someone read;
yomasaserareru - to be forced to read;
yomasaseraretagaru - (he) wants to be forced to read;
yomasaseraretagaranai - (he) does not want to be forced to read;
yomasaseraretagaranakatta - (he) did not want to be forced to read;
yomasaseraretagaranakattaro: - (he) probably did not want to be forced to read.
The latter looks in Japanese writing as follows:
読まさせられたがらなかったろう

I classify languages for myself for tree type
1. The language does not have the cases. (English)
2. The language has the cases. (Russian)
3. I have not idea what is it. (Japanese)

In contrast with Russian language we have seven cases and affix in nominative case. I saw a movie poster in the morning (P?ters Pens - Peter Pen).

Well, there are twelve case markers in Japanese (2 Nominatives, Genitive, Dative, Locative, Accusative, Directional, Instrumental, etc.). The markers are small particles following a noun. They are standard and unified there.

BTW, I think it's already a topic to be discussed in the "Japanese Lounge" forum. I'll put it there soon.

Infactimpossiblylongwordsinfinnougriclanguagesjust worklikethis. See? The biggest word ever.

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious is the longest english word listed in the Webster's Dictonary. At least when I was in grade school it was. Not sure if it still is the longest word (some of our scientific names can get pretty obscure).

Originally Posted by Jasper May

Infactimpossiblylongwordsinfinnougriclanguagesjust worklikethis. See? The biggest word ever.

True, but not quite that simple. Finnish uses different stems for each word depending on the case (there are many mutations like -tt/-t, -rt/rr, -p/v, etc).

Originally Posted by emka71aln

I have to argue that - Spanish is much easier to learn (at least for a native English-speaker) than Russian. That is why they have tests to determine a person's ability to learn languages, and the higher you score the more complicated language you are taught. Here's how the American Department of Defense categorizes the languages:

- 85 for a Category I language (Dutch, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish)
- 90 for a Category II language (German)
- 95 for a Category III language (Belorussian, Czech, Greek, Hebrew, Persian, Polish, Russian, Serbian/Croatian, Slovak, Tagalog [Filipino], Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese)
- 100 for a Category IV language (Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean)

I understand that these aren't all Indo-European, but they are ranked based on difficulty.

Interesting. It would be nice to have a look at such tests. Are they available on the Net? Can you post them here?

I think Jasper and I had a discussion about this a while ago, but we couldn't really find any tests. Maybe we found a short sample one...