5 ms·
I must admit to being confused by this comment. What do you mean exactly by ‘all words having a declension’, and why would it complicate learning a language mor
by bradrn 6y ago
I must admit to being confused by this comment. What do you mean exactly by ‘all words having a declension’, and why would it complicate learning a language moreso than anything else? My confusion arises from the fact that the concept of a ‘declension’ is typically only applied to noun-y things, rather than to all words (the verbal equivalent is ‘conjugation’), and by this definition a ‘declension’ doesn’t even have to be very complicated — the English plural is an example.
(Unless you’re talking about declension classes, as in Latin or Russian… but from what I can tell, those are actually surprisingly rare outside IE.)
- inglor_cz 6y agoI am a native Czech speaker. We have lots of declension classes that mostly feel natural for us (about twenty or so), but for learners whose native language is Germanic or Romanic, they are a nightmare. This is one of the things that makes Czech genuinely hard for Westerners. It is not as hard for other Slavic speakers, because they are at least used to such a thing, even though their classes are not necessarily the same.
- bradrn 6y agoOf course, such a situation is difficult for anyone to learn! That’s what I was trying to get at with that Isiwara example above, which shows a language with even less regularity than Czech. The point I was trying to make was that mere ‘declension’ isn’t enough to make a language difficult to learn… you need to actually have some kind of irregularity to ensure that.