Although Polish has this:
Ways to say the number "Two".....
Learning the freaking language is my superpower. It is THE most difficult I’ve ever seen. It was at least as difficult as passing the bar exam or any of the financial engineering classes I had in business school.
Its not just the totally different vocab since its not an Indo-European language. Its that it has really strange rules of grammar that I’ve never heard of in any other language. If you’ll indulge me for a minute.
If you have a number that’s more than one, you still use the singular noun. For example szek = chair. szekek = chairs. But in a sentence you would say 6 szek. You would NOT say 6 szekek.
Weird. But some Asian languages do the same. So that’s not the weirdest. But wait! There’s MORE! Now the real fun is about to begin!
Every language has 6 pronouns. 1st person, 2nd person, 3rd person. Singular and plural.
I We
You You (plural) also You (Formal) if the
language has formal and informal
He, She it They, Them, Theirs
In every language you conjugate the verbs based on the pronouns.
Hungarian has 12, not 6. 12??????????? you say. Yes. 12. You see, Hungarian also has definite and indefinite. WTF do you mean? you say.
Vasarolok egy autot. I buy a car. This is indefinite. Its A car. It could be any car. Thus the verb “Vasarolni” (to buy) conjugated in first person “-ok” = I. I buy.
Now watch this
Vasarolom az autot What just happened???? I buy THE car. Its definite. You know WHICH car it is exactly. So the conjugation of Vasarolni changes from “-ok” to “-om”.
12 conjugations for each verb. 12 conjugations in past tense, 12 in present tense, and 12 in future tense. Each one.
Oh, and you know how with just a few exceptions (child-children, man-men, woman-women, deer-deer, goose-geese) plurals in English can be made just by hanging an -s or -es on the end of the word? Its not that simple in Hungarian. The vowels in the ending have to agree with the vowels in the word.
Szek = szekek
Asztal = Asztalok See what just happened? This was “shallow” rather than “deep” so it got a different ending.
if the word ends in a vowel you just lucked out. You get to just hang a “k” on the end. Auto = Autok.
I can usually guess the correct ending but I definitely screw this up sometimes.
There’s more but this gives you a taste. Really really funky language. You can be good with languages and know a lot of them and be completely and utterly lost....as in not understanding one damn word....when you go to Hungary. Magyarul is a totally different language.
I just learned more from you than the Berlitz book that I bought years ago.
Ahhh...Budapest. One of the most beautiful treasures in all of Europe.The castle district is still in my memories-