Conversation unit 07- Is MediaGlyphic difficult?

Texts

01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08

• 07.1
  
  I am Spanish, coming from Madrid

    日本     Россия  
  I can speak Spanish. I also can speak Japanese and Russian

    日本     Россия   []
  Japanese is not very difficult. Russian is comparatively difficult

• 07.2
  == ==
  These are Mrs and Mr Green

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  They are both Chinese

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  Now they study in Italy

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  They live in Verona

  [] []
  They cannot speak Italian well. They are studying Italian now

  []
  They consider Italian very difficult

• 07.3
  {}
  I am studying MediaGlyphs now

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  Do you think that MediaGlyphs are difficult?

  {} []
  I feel that reading MediaGlyphs is not difficult, it's relatively easy

  [{}]
  Which other foreign languages can you speak?

  
  I can also speak Finnish

  
  Is Finnish difficult?

  
  Not too difficult

• 07.4
  
  Mary, you speak French very well!

  
  Oh no, just a little

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  Where did you study your French?

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  I studied it in Rome

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  Your teachers are French, I guess?

  
  No. Some are French, some are Italian

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  Where are the French teachers from?

  
  Some came from Paris, some came from Bordeaux

• NOTES
  
  The conjunction meaning "and". Note that it can only be used to join two noun phrases, it cannot be used to join two sentences.

  
  This adverb means "most, to the largest degree" and can be used with adjectives to form superlatives. The second example it means "is not too difficult". The third example means "I can speak, but not extremely well", with the adverb this time modifying a verb ("to can"), not an adjective.

  []
  This construction with the verb "to be" and the adjective/participle form of a verb is often used (in Chinese and in MediaGlyphic) to emphasize what happened when or where. Literally, the first sentence: "Your french is at where studied?"; the second: "You are from France came".

  
  They both mean "also", but the first one is used to mean "the same as the previous statement". Hence the relationship between the statement introduced by it and the previous one is a parallel relationship. The second adverb, on the other hand, introduces an additional element to the previous statement. Therefore we can translate the first one with "too, either" and the second one with "additionally, as well".

  []
  "from-France-came teacher", "the teacher who came from France". This construction is similar to English relative clause. In English relative clauses are attached after (to the right of) a noun, in MediaGlyphic they appear before: they have the form of an adjective and they appear in an adjective position with respect to the noun they clarify.

• DIFFERENCES WITH CHINESE
  
  The verb "to be" appears also when only adjectives are present. In Chinese it is not marked in those cases.
   
   
  
  First appearance: Tue Aug 20 20:06:04 CEST 2002 - | - Last modified: Fri Dec 11 17:17:38 CET 2009