Declensions. The word will bring many of the poor sods who thought that it would be a good idea to study the German language to the verge of tears as nightmares rush back to the front of conciousness. That adjectives have declensions is seemingly a moot point because it is a moot point. There are two languages, however, that bring this to a new level — Japanese and Korean. Both languages are fascinating, both languages are incredibly rewarding. In both languages adjectives not only have declensions, but are conjugated as well. Yes, the Koreans and Japanese both conjugate adjectives. This detail would shock a classmate of mine, a Swiss man who thought that my reference to studying the conjugation of these adjectives was quite risible and might prove that I was slightly defective intellectually. Despite having his ego spared a few seconds of bruising by my having initially referenced a list of verb conjugations, I would quickly crush his chocolate-munching, clock-making pride by quickly finding a list of ways to conjugate Japanese adjectives. This is one of the many unique, at times frustrating, aspects of studying the Japanese language. It is really not clear why it is not, it is only known that it is done. As with many things Japanese, and by extension Korean, it is best to leave it as unknown and not question it too much as it will cause one to lose any remaining shred of sanity. It is what it is, the language requires what it requires.
Boadicea's Chariot 
I still maintain that the best way of absorbing the grammatical structure of any language is first to have studied Latin and Greek in your formative years. Trouble is, I’ve forgotten most of it now. 😦
OZ
You’re right, OZ. Anyone who has at least started to learn Latin usually finds German not difficult. I remember beginners asking me if it was true that there were “hundreds” of words for “the” in German. When I reminded them of the different cases they already knew in Latin, then “der/die/das” and so on became quite easy. I didn’t mention the declensions of adjectives with and without the definite article until later!
Quite so, Sheona. My Latin and Greek education was dominated early on by ‘the grid’, which had three columns ‘masculine’, ‘feminine’ and ‘neuter’ across the top and six rows, ‘nominative’, ‘vocative’, ‘accusative’, ‘genitive’, ‘dative and ‘ablative’ down one side. Double that again for the plurals and that makes thirty-six separate forms for ‘the’ or ‘this’ and much else just for starters. Once you had that conundrum cracked, grammar in any language would never hold fears again, particularly when it was linked to formal, old-fashioned English grammar lessons where you had to stand up in front of the class and deconstruct a sentence into its component parts underlining each with a different coloured chalk.
As a result I have in my time been able to speak French pretty well, and German, Tok Pisin (the Lingua Franca of Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands) and Bislama (Vanuatu) passably well, but none of them in more than a decade so time has unfortunately dulled the memory considerably. These days, Portuguese grammar is equally straightforward – a bit like riding a bike, really. Now it’s just persuading my rapidly ageing noggin to absorb the vocabulary. 😦
OZ
Sheona and OZ; I think that the teaching of Latin should be restored in all schools. I see it as a sort of map of the grammatical framework of European languages, and also as a discipline which nurtures understanding and application of formulae – which, in turn, is integral to Science, Maths Literature and Philosophy.
Chris, I’m struggling to imagine what a conjugated adjective might do/look like!! As others have noted the classical languages are full of what we now regard as complications (optative verbs?) but I was under the impression that only verbs can be conjugated! He-e-e-elp!
Janus; yes. Adjectives agree, but are not conjugated. Verbs are conjugated.
OZ: yes, Latin is a fantastic language. Perhaps Homer ruined Greek for me, but I simply can’t stomach it. I’ve discussed traditional English lessons with a friend who is now in her mid 70s. Though not overly well educated, she is able to speak English coherently and structure complete thoughts and ideas. This is something which has become somewhat less frequent through the years as “bold and innovative” teaching methods have taken hold.
Janus and Claire: in most languages, especially in the West, that is the case. I was surprised at first by the fact that the Japanese conjugate adjectives as well. I will show you how it is done in the two main forms plus the most common exception. Since the written Japanese language is perhaps the most beautiful in the world, I will start with that and put a translation in the rather bland alphabet afterwords.
ーい/-i adjectives
暑い — Stem. Atsui, hot.
暑いです Atsui desu. It is hot.
暑つくないです。 Atsukunaidesu. It is not hot.
暑かったです Atsukattadesu. It was hot.
暑くなかったです。 Atsukunakattadesu It was not hot.
This is the most common way of conjugating adjectives as most adjectives end in -i.
The other common form is the ーな/na adjective which follows a different pattern.
静かな. Stem, shizukana. Quiet
しずかです. Shizukadesu.It is quiet
静かではありません. Shizukadewa’arimasen. It is not quiet
静かでした. Shizukadeshita. It was quiet.
静かではありませんでした. shizukadewa’arimasendeshita. It was not quiet.
The vast majority of adjectives of both forms are, mercifully, regular. The most common exception is this one:
好い Stem, Ii. Good
好いです. Iidesu. It is good.
好くないです. Yokunaidesu. It is not good.
好かったです Yokattadesu. It was good.
好くなかったです. Yokunakatta desu. It was not good.
I thought that nouns, pronouns and adjectives were ‘declined’ and verbs ‘conjugated’. But that’s only in the grammar of the languages that I have some understanding of. So maybe Christopher you mean something else?
I agree that Latin (I didn’t do Greek) is a useful discipline in logic – especially for those who struggle with maths and that both Latin and Greek are extremely useful for working out strange words. However, the only use, grammatically, that I can see for either language is showing children that not every language is formed the way English is. Trying to push English into a ‘Latin’ format has led to the sort of nonsense that says it is wrong to split infinitives.
It would be far better to teach some good old fashioned English grammar!
Boadicea: http://www.japaneselearning.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=15&Itemid=27
There are only two languages I know of where conjugation of adjectives takes place — Japanese and Korean. Japanese likely inherited from Korean as Japanese grammar was strongly influences by it. The way that Japanese sentences are constructed makes the conjugation of adjectives necessary.
”は” and “です”, ha(in its particle form pronounced “wa”) and desu are often used in lieu of a verb and imply a state of being. Thus, because adjectives often take the place of verbs, they take on the features of verbs in these languages.
Hell’s bells, Christopher. I can see the patterns after a fashion, but please spare us the irregular ones. 🙂
I rather enjoyed the Iliad myself and always thought that Vergil was the plagiarist.
OZ
OZ: there are very, very, very few irregular ones. I find it easier to conjugate adjectives than decline them, especially in the German sense. Japanese verbs are also not too horrible as they are only conjugated one way per tense. The difficult comes in the honorifics — Japanese has 4 levels of speaking, Korean has six. Compare this to the two found in Western languages and then consider the fact that they are agglomerating languages in which prefixes and suffixes are used.
I’ve always been partial to Petronius and the Romans. The Greeks took themselves too seriously, the Romans had more fun.
Christopher: I had no idea that you could do that in other languages. That must create a huge range of grammatical possibilities, and perhaps have an impact on lexis as well.
Boa: that is another bugbear of mine! Pupils don’t do grammar any more in state schools, and have no idea what pronouns, infinitives and past participles are in their native language, let alone any other. I think that is something of a handicap for them when they come to learn foreign languages.
Christopher
I saw that you had answered my question just after I posted, thanks.
Like OZ, I can see the patterns after a fashion!
Your comment ‘Thus, because adjectives often take the place of verbs, they take on the features of verbs in these languages.’ was the most helpful bit – and highlights why understanding the functions of different parts of speech is so important. Try that very simple sentence on someone who hasn’t a clue what adjectives and verbs are and you might just as well be talking – well Japanese!
Christopher
Sorry – I also meant to comment on the Greek / Roman thing. I far prefer the Greeks, they may have taken themselves seriously (here we need Janus!) – but I find the Romans to be little better than thugs!
Claire
That has to be the understatement of the year! Sure they can learn ‘phrases’ but they can’t take new words and understand how to string them together properly. This goes back to my comment on Peter Barnet’s post – learning a string of facts (in this case words) is not enough. Learning how to manipulate the facts is far more important – because one can transfer that knowledge from one discipline to another (in this case one language to another).
I’m not terribly sure that I’ve explained that very well – so I hope you get my meaning!
Boa: absolutely. Unfortunately, grammar, traditional teaching and exams are out – and have been for some time, while interactive ‘fun’ activities, are in. That is the reality, and the end result is that no one knows what on earth a pronoun is.
Quite so Boadicea and Claire, and quite seriously how on earth can one learn a foreign language if you don’t understand the skeleton (grammar) on which it hangs?
OZ
OZ: yes, it is unbelievable. Grammar is a dirty word in state secondary schools.
The theory is that as children we learn our language without understanding the structure. And that is true, to a point. To get beyond the child-stage of stringing words together any-which-way and to progress to communicating properly I tend to think that one needs a grounding in the grammar of one’s native tongue.
My daughter was taught German in the ‘modern mode’ – like a child i.e. ‘listen and say’. She was excellent at speaking the language, but hadn’t much of a clue about reading or writing it – and would not have been able to take it much further without, as you say OZ, learning the skeleton of the language.
Boa: yes, that is the thinking behind the modern teaching methods; learning through instinct rather than logic. That works for the acquisition of foreign vocabulary, but leaves us high and dry when it comes to being able to manipulate foreign grammar.
Boadicea – Well understood, but learning a mother tongue without subsequenty understanding how it works is like learning maths using only a calculator. When I was learning German, the teacher (who was of a ceertain age and education) was tearing her hair out at the youngsters who could only learn the language ‘parrot-fashion’. Whereas I could come back from a three-week absence abroad and pick up exactly what she was talking about, the kids were still trying to learn the wording for every conceivable situation they could possibly encounter because they could not understand (through lack of earlier grammatical training) how to manipulate the language.
‘Does the train leave from platform five?’
‘Which platform does the train leave from?’
‘Which platform do I need for the train to Berlin?’
Subject….verb….object….basic stuff plus other bits and pieces and some lateral thinking.
OZ
Claire
I take issue with recent theories in education – no one seems to promote the idea of giving children the tools to work things out for themselves. Reading is a prime example. “Look and Say” – how about some phonetics to decode a word when there’s no one around to “Say” it… Reading readiness is another stupid idea – teach them to read so they can find out for themselves. Multiplication tables – learn ’em, far faster than keep doing ‘continuous addition’… Grrrr! 🙂
Oops, sorry Claire! I didn’t see your comment when I was writing mine.
OZ
Boa: yes, there are far too many initiatives and theories, masquerading as improvements, in state education which do very little good and can actually prove detrimental, in my view. The problem is that everyone feels obliged, out of fear, to pay lip service to it all.
OZ: no problem 🙂
Boadicea: sex-crazed perverts they, the Romans, were as well. Still, I have a soft spot in my heart for the Romans because my first experiences in life involved wondering around Roman ruins and sitting on fallen Roman columns. Trier is, after all, the site of a Roman provincial capital — known as the Second Rome.
Boa, it’s nice to be needed: “I far prefer the Greeks, they may have taken themselves seriously (here we need Janus!) – but I find the Romans to be little better than thugs!”
I agree that the Greeks seem to have had a focus which was not exclusively military – the Spartans being the exception. (That’s like saying Liverpool isn’t typically English!) The Greek language though was as complex as their individual societies. Latin by contrast was more accessible – though no more logically structured. I find it amazing that two such different disciplines could develop and thrive during the same millennium only a stone’s-throw apart. Is that also true of Chinese and Japanese, I wonder?
Janus: Chinese and Japanese are further apart than Greek and Latin, even. Greek and Latin are both Indo-European languages, Japanese and Korean are both linguistic isolates. That said…
The largest share of Japanese words are Chinese in origin, just short of half. The written language is based off of Chinese. Japan’s classical culture is taken almost entirely from T’ang China and given Japanese aspects, much like Rome, in fact. It was not until the 19th century that Japanese society matched China’s in advancement and refinement and it would not be until the 20th that it truly passed it. (The tragedies and horrors of WWII should not, cannot be forgotten). In short, it is not necessarily true that China and Japan advanced the same way as Greek and Roman Culture. Japan was in China’s shadow for much, much longer than Rome was in Greece’s.