Challenge in Learning New Languages

When someone say that they are ready to learn a new language, one have to be sure that they are ready to face the complexities one never face when learning the previous languages. This is especially true when the new language you choose is used by society whose culture and conceptualization is very different from the previous.

Different Way of Classification

Language is the way people express what they think. So the way a language being used is going to be affected by how the majority of speakers think. When you have lots enough information to store in your brain, anyone from any culture is going to do the same. They are going to start organizing the information by classifying them. While the motivation that result if classification work is roughly the same, different culture do these classification work differently.

For example, while it is true that most biologists in Japan had adopted modern classification system, the trace of their biology classification system could be found in how their kanji are written. For example in the way the kanji was written, frongs and snakes are considered bugs while in modern system they are part of phylum reptile. Abalone(鮑), alligators(鰐) and whales(鯨) are considered as fishes as they are written with fish-radical.

The Chinese however are among the first cultures to start developing chemistry. If you ever seen a Chinese modern periodic table, you would have no problem telling which element are considered metal, non-metal and gases. Metallic elements like iron(铁), strontium(锶), uranium(铀) and germanium(锗) are written with gold-radicals. Non-metal elements such as sulphur(硫), carbon(碳), silicone(硅), phospate(磷) are written with rock-radicals. Chinese chemist have less problem telling whether an element is a metal or non-metal.

Different Sentence Structure

The way words are arranged into sentences are different for each languages. Indonesian for example put adjective after the noun, while English put adjective before the noun. Sometimes this practice continue among Indonesian who simply didn’t have the chance to learn proper English, but manage to learn the languages from observing what tourists say. We have to give kudos for they who learn this way.

Other language like Japanese have two ways to express passive sentences depending on the feeling exchanged by the action. The passive form for sentence with ill feeling like “I have been mugged” is different from the passive form for sentence with good feeling like “I have been taught something by someone”. For sentence with good feeling, words expressing the gratitude of being the receiver of said action have to be included as well.