Comment by tomsmeding | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tomsmeding | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

It's even better. The "X-te" (Xて) is technically not X in present tense, it is specifically X in the te-form (て is read "te").

The te-form has a bunch of different uses, but in the case of "verb-te verb", if the second verb is not one of a list of special verbs (of which miru (見る, to see) is one), X-te Y normally means "X and Y". For example, yorugohan o tsukutte taberu (夜ご飯を作って食べる) means "(to/I/we/you/...) make dinner and eat it": yorugohan is dinner, the "o" is a particle marking the direct object, tsukuru means to make (becomes tsukutte in the te-form) and taberu means to eat. (The first word in English is ambiguous because grammatical subjects are usually optional in Japanese, plus its verbs are not inflected for person or number.)

For a number of verbs, however, if they are in the second position, the phrase gets a special meaning. If it's miru, e.g. tsukutte miru, it means "to try to make" — or perhaps more aptly, "to try and make". If it's iku (行く, to go), it means "to go X-ing": tabete iku (where taberu (to eat) -> tabete in the te-form) is "to go to eat [something]", or perhaps: "to go and eat [something]".

Not all such special verbs correspond to English pseudocoordination though; a common one is shimau (the dictionary says "to finish / to stop", but it's uncommon in bare form), where e.g. tabete shimau means "to finish eating" or "to end up eating" / "to eat accidentally" depending on context.

The analogy between English and Japanese here is likely coincidental, but it's amusing nevertheless.

This is a nice explanation; I wish that duolingo hadn't removed their user comment/explanation section, which used to contain similar (though not always correct, which is probably part of why they removed them.)

Pro tip: Duolingo is a game and basically a dead end for properly learning a language. If you want to really learn, you need to build intuition, and that only comes from huge amounts of level-appropriate input. Find yourself some good native language podcasts that are targeted at language learners and native reading material. Search for "Refold" for a better strategy (no affiliation, it's just awesome), and make sure that whatever you do, you enjoy it. Language learning is a marathon, the fun is in the journey, not just the destination.

Plenty of people enjoy Duolingo. And I wouldn’t say it’s a dead end any more than simple picture books or a total beginners class. Will it turn you into a fluent speaker? No, so what.

> No, so what.

Because it promotes itself as a platform to learn fluency. That’s why it’s important to recognize its limitations.

I guess I just don’t know anyone who doesn’t recognize the limitations, perhaps that’s a function of an environment where we all know multiple languages already.

If literally everyone recognizes the limitations, then Duolingo won't be harmed by changing their advertising to be accurate.

My impression of duolingo was strongly influenced by a former PM who said basically what OP said without any hint of ill will in their voice. Duolingo discovered that it was easier to reward-hack short term signals of language learning instead of scaffolding those signals into longterm language learning. Today it’s essentially Candy Crush for people who think they’re too smart for Candy Crush.

That’s not even a diss, it’s just The Way Of The World when you are directly rewarded for growth and retention and very indirectly for language learning.

> Today it’s essentially Candy Crush for people who think they’re too smart for Candy Crush.

That's overly harsh. I use Duolingo for Japanese because

- I thought it would be fun to learn a little about Japanese. And I do learn some, and it is fun.

- I wanted to "understand" a bit of what was being said during subtitled anime I watch. This was _partially_ successful. I understand some words, and I notice some things like "oh, that was a question", and sometimes notice when what was said doesn't match the text. I get enough out of it that it adds to my enjoyment

So, clearly there's a group of people out there that are there to gain some knowledge out of it, and _not_ to rack up some kind of score (and feel superior).

Sorry, that came out as unnecessarily harsh on users when it was intended for Duolingo’s product department. I don’t mean to suggest that the amount of language learning is literally zero, just that whenever language learning is in tension with legible metrics, the latter tends to win out internally.

I always say, that if you want to learn a language, then surround yourself with it.

I learned all languages I know this way. When it comes to Polish, I mainly saw people writing in that language without knowing much. Translator came to the rescue. I picked up common words and phrases that way, and it helped with grammar, too, but it was not a fast process as it is a difficult language. I do not speak it well, although I speak it understandably enough, because I did not listen nor speak to people in the language much, as opposed to English, and this includes movies, TV series, etc.

Spanish was easy, all it took was a translator and long conversations with 2 people and some music. :D Pronunciation is not an issue, my native language helped.

French would have been a bit more difficult to learn, as I have tried, then lost interest and reasons to do so.

I am trying to learn Arabic, but for me, that is a whole different one.

It's an interesting coincidence, but I think there is a reason that the te-form in Japanese is much more fruitful than "and" in English in producing these constructs. Japanese verbs have too conjunctive forms: te-form and ren'youkei[1] (continuative form). Ren'youkei、 is more formal and has a different but overlapping range of conditions in which it can be used. The "te-form" itself was originally[2] just the ren'youkei conjugation of a special auxiliary verb "tsu", that is used to mark a completed action.

Neither of these forms is nearly as flexible as the conjunction "and" in English. For one, they can only connect verbs and one class of adjectives, but another important point is that the actions described by the verbs need to occur sequentially in time, with the action marked by '-te' occuring earlier. You cannot use either of these forms to say something like "The dog kept jumping and wagging its tail" or "It's important to both eat and drink".

If we compare this to how linguists define "pseudocoordination" in English and other Germanic languages, then every instance of the te-form or ren'youkei in Japanese is pseudocoordination and not real coordination: you cannot reorder the verbs freely, you cannot add "both", and you can use an interrogative pronoun. Since these limitations apply to every use of the te-form and ren'youkei, not just the "special case" ones, it makes these form more amenable for building special construct. Add the fact that Japanese does not have an infinitive form, and you end up with either of these forms as the most natural way to attach auxiliary verbs in Japanese.

Now you end up with a plethora of constructions (demonstrated with the verb 作る tsukuru "to make"):

  作ってみる   tsukutte miru    (make and see) try to make
  作ってみせる  tsukutte miseru  (make and show) prove that [I] can make it
  作っていく   tsukutte iku     (make and go) gradually make (or make more and more)
  作ってしまう  tsukutte shimau  (make and complete) finish making or "oh shit he really ended up making that" (the MORE common meaning in this case)
  作ってください tsukutte kudasai (make and give (imperative)) Please make

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_conjugation#Conjuncti...

[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/v08pbp/brief...

> (make and complete) finish making or "oh shit he really ended up making that" (the MORE common meaning in this case)

I would note that we have that one in [vernacular] English, too, but only in the past tense: "done [X]ed", i.e. "he really done made that."

> (make and go) gradually make (or make more and more)

And we have a construction equivalent to this, but that means more like "set out to [X]" — that being "go and [X]." I.e. "now why'd you go and make that?"

Funnily enough, this has resulted in people saying things like "見てみましょう" and "見てみてください", which confused me at first. But I suppose this is like non-native English speakers being confused by the extra "do" in phrases like "I already did do my work."

Hungarian works the same, well I guess the few agglutinative languages do share this element

> Hungarian works the same, well I guess the few agglutinative languages do share this element

Not sure what you mean. In Hungarian, the verb meaning "to try" is (meg)próbálni, which does not mean "to see." Its argument is typically given as an infinitive verb, which would never be translated using the pseudocoordination described above, and there is no related form that would be translated as "and".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com