When considering which foreign languages to study, some people shy away from those that use a different alphabet
These problems are tractable on their own; you don’t often have to refer to a corner in casual conversation. But when other languages make structural distinctions missing from your native tongue—often in the operation of verbs—the mental effort seems never-ending. English has verbs-of-all-work that seem straightforward enough until you try to translate them. In languages like German, “put” is divided into verbs that signify hanging, laying something flat and placing something tall and thin.
Sometimes verb systems force choices on speakers not only for individual verbs, but for all of them. Many English-speakers are familiar with languages, such as French and Italian, which have two different past tenses, for completed actions and for habitual or continued ones. But verb systems get much more exotic than that.
“Evidential” languages require a verb ending that shows how the speaker knows that the statement made is true. Turkish is one of them; others, such as a cluster in the Amazon, have particularly complex—and obligatory—evidentiality rules. Many languages mark subjects and direct objects of sentences in distinct ways. But in Basque, subjects of intransitive verbs look like direct objects themselves, while subjects of transitive verbs get a special form.
This article appeared in the Books & arts section of the print edition under the headline "Tongue-twisters"
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