English:
Even after all these years, sometimes I still have problems using at, in and on (as prepositions of place). Things like at the corner, in the corner or on the corner still confuse the heck out of me.
It's one of those things I know I will probably never get right, but I'm ok with that, after all I'm not a native English speaker and mistakes are inevitable.
I don't care if you have a C1 or C2 level in your foreign languages, at some point or another your native language will interfere. But that's ok.
German:
Not really a mistake, but still. As much as I love Funktionsverbgefüge, sometimes I find it hard to use them spontaneously, basically because they are not that common in Spanish.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funktionsverbgef%C3%BCge
https://www.italki.com/article/721/unlocking-the-mystery-of-german-noun-verb-combinations
I mean, I still use them, but instead of saying something like In der Sitzung haben wir den vorgelegten Plan gründlich in Erwägung gezogen (in Erwägung ziehen), I am much more likely to say In der Sitzung haben wir den vorgelegten Plan gründlich erwogen (etwas (Akk) erwägen).
I know that more often than not Funktionsverbgefüge are very formal, but then again, I speak German at work and we have conference calls with our headquarters in Germany, so formal German is a must.
Czech:
Well, I've only been learning Czech for about a year, so I still make lots of mistakes, but the perfective and imperfective verbs is something I stil struggle with, a lot.
We don't have them in Spanish and I'm not used to thinking about whether I'm talking about the verb as a process or as a completed action.
For instance, I have a book called Čeština extra. Průvodce českou gramatikou, where I came across this sentence in an exercise
Skoro každý večer se dívame na seriály v televizi (I get why they use the imperfective form there. It's a repeated action, something that happens on a regular basis, but...), ale dnes se asi budeme dívat na film (I am not quite sure why they also use imperfective form in the second clause of the sentence, especially because of the budeme).
If it were ale dnes se dívame na film, meaning but today we're watching a movie, I'd understand it, because they'd be talking about what they are doing at the moment, kind of like the -ing in English.
But the budeme confuses me, because it's the future. Why can't it be ale dnes se podívame na film (the perfective form: we are going to watch the whole film) or does it mean but today we are going to be watching a movie, as in we are in the process of watching a movie, without specifying whether we are going to watch the whole thing or not?
LOL... Jesus... this is giving me a headache... in a good way though.
Italian
I don't necessarily believe that it is intrinsically easier to learn a language that is closely related to your native language or to a foreign language you already speak. Granted, you can pick it up faster, but interference can be a huge problem.
I still make mistakes in Italian, not always though, when using the future in quando sentences to talk about the future, because in Spanish we use the subjunctive and using the future just sounds so weird.
As in
Quando sarò tornato a casa ti telefonerò (I´ll call you when I get home).
When speaking, my Spanish instinct kicks in and I tend to say stuff like say Quando sia arrivato (subjunctive) a casa, ti telefonerò, because we would say Te llamaré cuando haya llegado or cuando llegue a casa and not Te llamaré cuando llegaré a casa.
The weird thing is in Czech they also use the future Zavolám ti až budu doma, but in that case it doesn't sound weird to me. That's why I think it's my Spanish interfering with my Italian.
What about you?
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from B’a’ntulena | Languagelearning http://bit.ly/2HKzise
via Learn Online English Speaking
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