Sinologists who have studied Japanese: what’s it like after learning Chinese?
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My impression is that it’s hard in different ways - namely, grammar
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Replying to @isaiahmschrader
After Chinese, Japanese grammar feels like being machine-gunned at first, just a terrifying hail of syllables. But then it clicks, and it's Lego-like and just beautifully modular and explicit.
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Replying to @samuel_wade @isaiahmschrader
e.g. “I don’t want to be tied down” is shibararetakunai, which at first …


But!
shibaru: to tie down
shibarareru: to be tied down
shibararetai: to want to be tied down
shibararetakunai: to not want to be tied down!!!
I find this just absurdly satisfying.3 replies 0 retweets 13 likes -
Replying to @samuel_wade @isaiahmschrader
You can get the same fun effects in Russian: весить - to hang довесить - hang to completion недовесить - fail to hang to completion недовеситься - fail to hang self to completion недовесившийся - (verbal adjective) tried to hang self but failed But the morphology is less clean
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It's from my old Russian lit professor, I love it too
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