Re: Most challenging features of languages?

From: "Joseph B." <darkmoonman@GMAIL.COM <mailto:darkmoonman@...>>
Sent: Tuesday, June 21, 2005 7:13 PM
Subject: Most challenging features of languages?


 > I'm curious to know which feature of a language (nat-, con-, or aux-)
that
 > individuals here found the most difficult to understand and/or master.
 > Thanks.

I am still having problems with English's use of the perfect aspect. German
has no perfect in that way, or rather, it has no perfect *aspect* anymore.
Today, you use the perfect *tense*, which has nothing perfective anymore to
it, to express past tense in spoken language. Also, I often forget which
gender goes with which French word (no, I know about the stuff with nouns
in -tion always being female and so on) and I also far too often forget to
make the adjectives agree in gender and number with their nouns. Due to
that, my French class tests are usually more read than blue when I get them
back. I also needed to get used to "dont" = de que, "du" = de le and
"des" =
de les.

Yours,
Carsten

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