As much as I like learning languages, I also like teaching them. Moreover, it is a way to make a little extra money. I used to teach Basque language when I was a student. Lots of kids here have problems with this language because their parents can't speak it or even if they do, they just prefer to address their children only in Spanish. I am sooo glad to have both languages as mother tongues! Plus, I think Basque is a hard language to learn (well, at least harder than Spanish or other latin-based languages).
For example, it's verb system is quite tricky. Let's take the sentence "Zuek niri harriak bota dizkidazue", which means "You(plural) have thrown stones at me".
- Zuek: You (subject, plural, it can be omitted, you will see why later)
- niri: at me (indirect object, it can be also omitted)
- harriak: stones (direct object):
- harri: stone
- ak: indicates that it is countable, plural and direct object - bota: to throw (Main verb in infinitive form. Usually verbs in Basque have a main verb and an auxiliary verb)
- dizkidazue: auxiliary verb. It contains a lot of information which can be broken down as follows:
- di: the verb is in present tense and needs a direct and an indirect object
- zki: the direct object is plural (stoneS)
- da: (at me). The indirect object is first person singular (me)
- zue: the subject of the sentence is second person plural (you)
As you can see, the auxiliary verb contains inside it all the information about the subject and the indirect object of the sentence (and much more), so "Zuek" and "niri" can be omitted. Cool, right? I would love to learn another language with has a verb system as least as trickier as this one. However this is not a piece of cake to teenage students who a)have no interest in languages, b)get bad marks at school and c)attend lessons just because their parents want to. So imagine their faces when they have to learn Basque verbs.
Well, and finally, here’s another free site to learn languages. Hope you enjoy it. I’ve already signed up for German and Mandarin courses :D
