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Ranking list of languages by difficulty

  Tags: Difficulty
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion Post Reply
115 messages over 15 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... 5 ... 14 15 Next >>
Karakorum
Bilingual Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6571 days ago
201 posts - 232 votes 
Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written)*
Studies: French, German

 
 Message 33 of 115
03 September 2008 at 1:48pm | IP Logged 
Deecab wrote:


Well, just curious, I wonder if you tried learning Korean before? Since I'm a Korean
native, I try to convince people that it's not hard.

If I were to break it down briefly

Korean pronunciation - Pretty easy.
Grammar - Different but not that difficult
Writing - Very easy with effective writing system
Reading - Pretty easy too
Listening - I'm not a foreigner so I can't speak much about here. It can be hard when
people speak fast. Even I ask for repeat plenty of times.
Politeness is a bit of challenge but it's not that bad once you get the hang of it.

Of course, I may have oversimplified it but I doubt Korean is harder to English
speaker than Arabic is. For most aspects, I say Arabic takes it. If you were to
include Hanja, that's a different story.


All I know about Korean is what's on Wikipedia, what I read on this forum, and what I
learnt from goofing around with my Korean friend and his Hangeul keyboard. So no, I
can't really judge it, but I said from what I've heard. I really doubt Korean grammar
is easier than Arabic grammar, I also don't think that its phonetics are by any
measure pretty easy. But I will give you the writing system, it sure makes more
immediate sense than Arabic's (though the keyword here is immediate). I wish someone
who tried both (who isn't a native speaker) would comment on this.
1 person has voted this message useful



Volte
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Switzerland
Joined 6441 days ago
4474 posts - 6726 votes 
Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian
Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese

 
 Message 34 of 115
03 September 2008 at 2:06pm | IP Logged 
For writing systems, I'd say Korean is much nicer - I don't like unmarked vowels. Phonetically, I'd say Arabic is easier; I'm yet to take a real look at a language that is as phonetically difficult as Korean.

I took a look at Airang's "Let's Learn Korean" once, and tried to repeat something they said. On doing so, I realized that I was atrociously far off, and not even hearing any of the sounds correctly, much less reproducing them. Production of sounds is something I've historically been terrible at (I'm improving), but I'm used to being able to hear them roughly correctly - and having the exceptions be isolated, not the entirety! With Arabic, my pronunciation was far from stellar, but it was comprehensible when I was in Morocco.

I haven't spent enough time with either language to say anything meaningful about the other questions raised.

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Karakorum
Bilingual Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6571 days ago
201 posts - 232 votes 
Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written)*
Studies: French, German

 
 Message 35 of 115
03 September 2008 at 2:40pm | IP Logged 
Autarkis wrote:

I'm a native speaker of German. I've also had some practice sessions with a friend of
mine, a bilingual German / Arabic speaker. She constantly and rightfully so
corrected my pronunciation of Arabic, which in English is "very good" according to a
recent London visitor, and "trés bien" in French. These sounds in the back of the
throat are really difficult for me.


No wait I didn't say that it's easier than either German or French for an English
speaker. All I am saying is you have to admit, however difficult the pharyngeals are
in Arabic they don't even come close to the paradigm shift Mandarin confronts you
with.


Autarkis wrote:

Okay, I can see that. Which one would you suggest?


I try to be as neutral as possible all the time and tell people to choose whatever
they are most interested in. But you know what, screw it, absolutely positively do
Egyptian. If you really hate Egyptian (for some reason), do Syro-Lebanese.


Autarkis wrote:

I don't see what this has to do with 9/11. I'm from Switzerland. We are not involved
in any war, in fact, my and many other peoples sympathies are neither with the
terrorists nor with Mr. Bush.


Well I didn't say you had anything to do with any of the politics. What I was saying
is (and let's not fool ourselves) that almost all of the interest in Arabic you see
online is directly related to Iraq or 9/11. I am not at all suggesting that this is
the case for you or anyone in specific. Now most of these people have exactly zero
interest in the language, people, classical culture, and/or pop culture; they are
looking for an increasingly more vague and less likely high paying government job that
the Washington Post swears exists. And Arabic is not easy (all I am arguing is it's
not THE hardest), so they get frustrated real quick and just give up and post their
frustrations for the world to know. And I don't blame them. But this just creates a
lot of negativity about the "doability" of Arabic that I just think isn't deserved.
Again it has nothing to do with you personally.


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Autarkis
Triglot
Groupie
Switzerland
twitter.com/Autarkis
Joined 5954 days ago
95 posts - 106 votes 
4 sounds
Speaks: German*, English, French
Studies: Italian

 
 Message 36 of 115
03 September 2008 at 2:54pm | IP Logged 
Karakorum wrote:
All I am saying is you have to admit, however difficult the pharyngeals are
in Arabic they don't even come close to the paradigm shift Mandarin confronts you
with.


I took Japanese lessons. It's a paradigm shift too, but manageable. My brother took Mandarin lessons some time, and it was, well, totally easy to pronounce for both of us. I think this has in part to do with us being amateur singers. If you can sing, you have no problems at all with Mandarin intonation, I think, and sentence structure is similar to Japanese, even particle usage has symmetries.


Karakorum wrote:
I try to be as neutral as possible all the time and tell people to choose whatever
they are most interested in. But you know what, screw it, absolutely positively do
Egyptian. If you really hate Egyptian (for some reason), do Syro-Lebanese.


I don't hate it per se. ;) I'll focus on Syro-Lebanese then, that's convenient since my friend is from Syria. But first, it's Italian for me!


Karakorum wrote:
Well I didn't say you had anything to do with any of the politics. What I was saying is (and let's not fool ourselves) that almost all of the interest in Arabic you see online is directly related to Iraq or 9/11. I am not at all suggesting that this is the case for you or anyone in specific.


The interest in part, though it was there before because of the Isreal-Palestine conflict. The frustration is, well, genuine. ;) Thanks for answering my questions.

Sorry for hijacking the original Favourite Icecream thread. :D
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William Camden
Hexaglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 6274 days ago
1936 posts - 2333 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French

 
 Message 37 of 115
03 September 2008 at 4:27pm | IP Logged 
reineke wrote:
William Camden wrote:
reineke wrote:
GBarr wrote:
How would you rate Icelandic within the Germanic Family, harder than German?


Look at the scale. 50% harder than German and about twice as hard as Swedish. BTW, focusing on this too much is not healthy.


Yes. You will only demoralise yourself and perhaps others. Language-learning is intrinsically not "easy", but focusing on this too much will prevent you from trying, or at best cause you to only study the "easy" ones.


Lol, glance at it, so you have an idea. Sigh and then go about your business. Not knowing about it is not good either. You’ll likely hear that language x is so easy (then what’s wrong with me?).

Language difficulty is sometimes used as a measuring stick for other things. Check out the big brain on this guy:

http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/11/07/how-to-learn -but-not-master-any-language-in-1-hour-plus-a-favor/


Approach it that way by all means. But my guess is that people who get hung up on the difficulties will never make it to fluency in any L2. There are people who are told Spanish is the easiest to learn (which it probably is, for English speakers) and then find it isn't all falling into place just like that, even with an Indo-European language without a complex case system and which has a huge vocabulary overlap with English.
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Deecab
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5963 days ago
106 posts - 108 votes 
Speaks: English, Korean*
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 38 of 115
03 September 2008 at 4:54pm | IP Logged 
Karakorum wrote:

All I know about Korean is what's on Wikipedia, what I read on this forum, and what I
learnt from goofing around with my Korean friend and his Hangeul keyboard. So no, I
can't really judge it, but I said from what I've heard. I really doubt Korean grammar
is easier than Arabic grammar, I also don't think that its phonetics are by any
measure pretty easy. But I will give you the writing system, it sure makes more
immediate sense than Arabic's (though the keyword here is immediate). I wish someone
who tried both (who isn't a native speaker) would comment on this.


It's quite ironic how two of us are actually trying to insist that our own native language is easier. You would think it's the opposite.

Korean grammar is quite logical though. But then, DLI, Navy, and US department all list Korean difficult so there has to be something that's obstructing the way. Maybe it's just my biased eye that can't seem to pick it up. You would think a logical and formulated language would be easy. I also would like to hear more Korean and/or Arabic leaners to share thoughts.
1 person has voted this message useful



Erubey
Triglot
Groupie
United States
Joined 6232 days ago
82 posts - 92 votes 
Speaks: Spanish*, English, Japanese
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 39 of 115
03 September 2008 at 8:50pm | IP Logged 
Korean pronunciation - Pretty easy.

I'm going to have to disagree so much. I know its relative but I have not had as much difficulty with any language I've tried(not THAT many) compared to Korean.


==
Uriel
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TKK
Groupie
ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5950 days ago
55 posts - 58 votes 

 
 Message 40 of 115
03 September 2008 at 10:01pm | IP Logged 



Korean 받침(bat chim) is a difficult point, while Japanese has no various bat chim.



Edited by TKK on 03 September 2008 at 10:03pm


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