the usage of the verb 'judge'?

[sweetpumpkin]

That’s a difficult problem to judge by yourself.

This sentence was written by me. I showed it to a native speaker and he's like, "How could you ''judge'' a problem? That doesn't make sense." However, when it is translated into my mother tongue(Korean), it does make sense. Anyway, he changed ''judge'' to ''consider''. Would you PLEASE make me understand why judge cannot take ''a problem'' as its direct object?

Thank you in advance for your replies!

[Alan]

Hi and welcome sweetpumpkin,

A noun object for the verb 'judge' has usually got to have some content that is capable of different interpretations. Take for example 'competition' 'situation' 'poem' and so on. The word 'problem' doesn't fit easily into that category. I would suggest that you qualify the noun and say: You can't really judge the difficulty of the problem by yourself. Or you say use 'evaluate' rather than 'judge'.

Alan
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[Tom]

Many thanks, Alan

...but how about this one?

[sweetpumpkin]

[Alan]

Hi Tom,

In your sentence 'judge' is used to mean 'hold the view' and the 'object' is the noun clause beginning - 'that the problem ...'

Alan
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English as a Foreign Language
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