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Most difficult alphabet | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Minlawc Newbie United States Joined 6538 days ago 24 posts - 56 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 25 of 42 05 August 2009 at 7:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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Are we talking about the most difficult Alphabet, or the most difficult Writing System? An Alphabet only refers to a system of writing that has one 'letter' that is supposed to represent one phoneme. Arabic is an Abjad using just consonants, while Chinese is logographic. Japanese uses a Syllabary along with the Chinese characters. I'm not familiar with the rest of the systems so look at Wikipedia.
I would say that the hardest alphabet to use, not necessarily to learn, is the English alphabet. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Z.J.J Senior Member China Joined 5614 days ago 243 posts - 305 votes Speaks: Mandarin* | Message 26 of 42 06 August 2009 at 4:47am | IP Logged | ||
Cordelia, have you heard that, using Chinese characters frequently might prevent the users from suffering from sudden amnesia? Speaking of Thai alphabet, IMHO, it seems like an irregular tadpole or earthworm script that can't be written large (or else it'll become a bit unsightly). No offense to Thai people! Edited by Z.J.J on 06 August 2009 at 5:35am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Fat-tony Nonaglot Senior Member United Kingdom jiahubooks.co.uk Joined 6146 days ago 288 posts - 441 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian, Esperanto, Thai, Laotian, Urdu, Swedish, French Studies: Mandarin, Indonesian, Arabic (Written), Armenian, Pali, Burmese | Message 27 of 42 06 August 2009 at 6:08pm | IP Logged | ||
What makes Thai so hard is that it has some many "aspects" to take into consideration to get the correct pronunciation. Scripts like Devanagari and its "Indian" derivatives just require you to "say what you see". Oriya apart, they are quite clear and distinct although there are some intricacies with consonants clusters and the short "i" coming before the consonant. Arabic script is actually quite easy to get to use, but its frustrating when you come across a new word and can't be 100% sure how it's pronounced-although this is more of a problem when reading Urdu and Farsi because their words don't follow regular vowelling patterns as in the Semitic languages. Hebrew is tricky because most of the "exotic-to-Europeans" sounds have become assimilated and/or dropped, but retained in spelling. Thai is difficult because in addition to learning a letter's sound, you have to know its "class" (high, mid or low), which combined with vowel length, whether the syllable is "dead" (ends in a stop or short vowel) or "live" (ends in a long vowel or nasal) and any tone marks, will tell you the tone of the syllable. cf http://www.thai- language.com/ref/tonerules -as you can see, due to pronunciation shifts, there's no real logic to the system. Also, it has the same problem as Hebrew, Farsi and Urdu in that it maintains the spelling of borrowed words then adapt their pronunciation. For loans from Pali and Sanskrit, there're about 9-10 consonants which are part of the Thai alphabet which represent sounds which are distinct in these languages but not in Thai. For those with a bit of background the consonants 14-19 (dor chadaa to nor nen) represent the "retroflex" consonants found in most Indian languages; but in Thai are pronounced identically to the row below. Also the rules for reading the inherent vowel are complex and it's best just to learn the examples as you come across them. I think that's about it. Lao is very similar to Thai but has done away with the last two issues, leaving just unnecessarily complex tone rules. Khmer is difficult in that the reading of the vowel depends on the "class" of the consonant; this is easier than the tone rules but still feels unnatural when you're getting started. Khmer does have an additional difficulty in that in has a lot of consonant clusters, in marked contrast to Thai and Lao, and to write these each letter has two forms, normal and subscript, which sometimes have little resemblance to one another, but this is quite easily learnt through exposure. Burmese is unusual; like Thai it maintains extra letters to maintain Sanskrit and Pali spelling. It's spelling system is illogical but very regular. If you just learn the pronunciations without asking too many questions (why do I need to write a silent "k" with "a" to make it short tone but a silent "s" with "i"?) then it's very regular. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5844 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 28 of 42 06 August 2009 at 9:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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Fat-tony, thanks for the very interesting summary.
You are amazingly knowledgeable! I really like the sound of Thai and I know it's a very intricate language for speeking. Sounds like it's got the alpabet to match.... For sure, all of the languages in that region exude sophistication I think -- although they are completely inaccessible to me. Perhaps it's the way that people change how they speak depending on who they speak to. This is noticeable even if you don't know what they are saying. Some of the sounds are very beautiful and unique. I have met very few Westerners who have managed to learn an Indochine language, they must be extraordinarily hard. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| will72694 Groupie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5710 days ago 59 posts - 60 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 29 of 42 07 August 2009 at 2:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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As I live near one of the only populations of the Cherokee people, I have heard their language spoken and have
seen it written some. It has a truly immense number of letters or characters and is organized somewhat like Japanese Kana. I'd say for more wide-spread writing systems, though, Thai and related scripts, along with the Mongolian script, look the craziest. Chinese seems to be the hardest to learn because one can never truly master it. I had taught myself Devanagari (during a brief Hindi fascination last year) in about five days, without very intense study. The Arabic alphabet took about two to three weeks. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4674 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 31 of 42 27 April 2014 at 9:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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Urdu, Thai and Malayalam.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Penelope Diglot Senior Member Greece Joined 3875 days ago 110 posts - 155 votes Speaks: English, French Studies: Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew | Message 32 of 42 27 April 2014 at 10:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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So far Hebrew, however I know I'll do just fine. What really intimidates me is chinese. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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