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Re:Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard (1992) by pantalaimon on Monday April 21, 2014 @03:58PM (#7623327)
Well German is only hard if you want to get all the grammar right, but grammar is not crucial to intelligibility.
Re:Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard (1992) by ama729 on Monday April 21, 2014 @07:15PM (#7624618)
The point is that everyone say that about their own language, I've encountered French, Dutch and Hungarian proclaiming their language is the hardest.
Re:Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard (1992) by anon4 on Tuesday April 22, 2014 @04:56AM (#7626497)
It's not properly hard until the verb system has all the necessities to fluently express every time-travel scenario. Also known as HG-hard. Most languages can only describe time-travel scenarios using related concepts - this is called HG-complete.
Re:Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard (1992) by ithkuil on Tuesday April 22, 2014 @05:27AM (#7626601)
well, I guess some grammar is crucial to intelligibility, not necessarily the prescriptive grammar. When a lot of people make the same mistakes, they share a new code, new intelligibility expectations, a new grammar.

I think many people forget that when talking about how the newest generation mistreat their language, or whether foreigner's mistakes can be understood.

heck, sometimes it's funny when a native speaker tells me that I speak X very well (I don't), just because I use some prescriptive form correctly.