Language/Multiple-languages/Culture/Difficulties-of-languages

This article summarises things that language learners find difficult to learn as well as advice for them.

In progress.

Article

Problem: The usage of grammatical articles in different languages are different.

Solution:

• Read webpages and find grammatical articles with the help of “find in page”, find sentences and comprehend the rules.

Inflection

Problem: The conjugation and declension tables look irregular.

Solution:

• Meditation. Keep your focus on the patterns and think nothing else.
• Mnemonic. Like this image.

Han script

Problem: There are two sets of reading system for Han script in Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese: Native and Sinitic. When practising with flashcards, the readings for a character are too many to be memorised effectively.

Solution:

• Ignore native readings at first. When the flashcard deck learning is finished, reset it and learn the native readings in the second round.

Homophone

Problem: A pronunciation has a lot of meanings, corresponding to different words. This is particularly often in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese.

Solution:

• Find the most frequent words/characters and write down their homophones. Practise recalling them as many as possible (except those obsolete ones).
• For Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Learn Han script, understand the etymology behind the pronunciations. Use the input method to see the result in Han script, which is explanatory on the etymology.