My language is harder than yours

I was talking about languages with a guy at work yesterday. He knows that I’ve been slowly trying to learn Chinese. He revealed to me that he was self-learning Irish Gaelige.

I got a chance to review the Irish Gaelige grammar book he is reading and all I can say is “Wow!”. After reading the first chapter and skimming the rest of the book I told him to burn it and run for the hills. It is awful.

The alphabet is a subset of the alphabet that we use for English, but the sheer number of rules used to make up and combine words is overwhelming. Masculine and feminine words. Okay, got it. Sounds like the words in Spanish, except these words may be masculine or feminine depending on their ending characters, except for when the word has at least two syllables or some other situation.

Pluralizing? No real rhyme or reason. Verb tenses? Many rules depending on how the word is written and used.

Learning what sounds to make when reading a word is a challenge too. Each character or set of characters equates to a sounds. Add an ‘h’ to one of the characters and the sounds just changed completely. Add an accent mark and now the work is emphasized differently.

Some letters are short and others are long. Some vowels are short and others are long. They can be combined in certain ways, except for other instances where something else is in place.

It’s insane if you ask me. I can’t understand how a language ended up so complicated. I know English is no prize, but I don’t think the number of rules in English can compare to those in Irish Gaelige. Not to mention there is something called Scottish Gaelige, which is a little different from it’s Irish friend.

This all makes me appreciate learning Chinese. For the most part it is a very structured, very well thought out language. There are fewer rules and fewer changes depending on how you combine words. The most noticeable are the tone changes when saying certain words together and they make sense once you start speaking. Say to two third-tone words together and you sound like an idiot. Say the first third-tone as a second-tone and the last as a third-tone and you got it. It’s easier to say and sounds better.


2 Responses to “My language is harder than yours”

  1. aunt jeanne Says:
    February 4th, 2007 at 2:39 pm

    I TOOK AN IRISH GAELIG CLASS AND LIKED IT! IT IS DEFINITELY LIKE YOU DESCRIBE IT. DIFFICULT BUT INTERESTING. I WOULD LIKE TO GO AT IT AGAIN SOME TIME SOON.
    JEANNE

  2. Shaun Says:
    February 8th, 2007 at 12:27 pm

    I think you really have to have an interest in the language and culture before attempting to learn the language. The guy I spoke about is really into Irish folk songs and many of them are sun Gaelig, so he wants to understand them. I think it’s pretty clear why I want to learn Chinese. :)