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Ranking list of languages by difficulty | ||
Tags: Difficulty | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| reineke Senior Member United States https://learnalangua Joined 6449 days ago 851 posts - 1008 votes  Studies: German | Message 17 of 115 31 August 2008 at 7:33pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Look at the scale. 50% harder than German and about twice as hard as Swedish. BTW, focusing on this too much is not healthy. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Deecab Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5963 days ago 106 posts - 108 votes Speaks: English, Korean* Studies: Mandarin | Message 18 of 115 31 August 2008 at 9:52pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I speak Korean and English. Take my opinion with little weight except for the Asian one since I don't have a clue about lot of these languages.
From easiest to hardest. Romance - Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian, French Germanic - Afrikaans, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Dutch, German Asian - Korean(my native), Japanese, Turkish, Thai, Vietnamese, Mandarin, Minnanese, Cantonese, Arabic Others - Persian, Hebrew, Greek, Finnish, Russian, Hungarian Of course, if I didn't know Korean, I would probably have listed Japanese much higher. I say it has a good shot at being on the top of the difficulty. I say the hardest one from the list OP listed for an English native speaker is either Arabic, Hungarian, Japanese or Cantonese. Hungarian for numerous noun forms, Japanese with the multiple Kanji reading, Cantonese with the 7-9 tones with traditional characters(in HK's case), Arabic with hard grammar and writing. I'm going to call Russian the dark horse from this list. I might include Mandarin but it uses simplified characters and has fewer tones so I doubt it's harder than Cantonese. Most people who know how to speak Cantonese know some Mandarin whereas I've rarely seen the case for the opposite. Minnanese from my Taiwanese friend actually is more convenient and easier than Cantonese/Mandarin he says. Not sure but just a guess. Edited by Deecab on 31 August 2008 at 9:57pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| TKK Groupie ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5950 days ago 55 posts - 58 votes | Message 19 of 115 31 August 2008 at 10:18pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
From Easiest To Hardest: Mandarin < Cantonese < Minnanese. Minnanese (Bân-Lâm-Gú), is absolutely the beginning of nightmare for all foreign learners, and also, it seems very difficult for Mandarin or Cantonese speakers,mainly because it remains too much elements (grammar, vocabularies, & ancient characters, but those meanings are very different from Modern Chinese) from Classical Chinese. Perhaps it's just like learning Vulgar Latin, or Koine Greek, from the perspective of modern English speakers.Of course, Cantonese also has a lot of difficulty in terms of Cantonese characters. For a native Korean, Japanese is certainly the easiest language, & Mandarin might be a little harder due to grammar difference, but <Hanja/Kanji/汉字> would be of some help for you to make out of the inherent relations between Korean, Japanese, & Mandarin. Edited by TKK on 31 August 2008 at 10:20pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Linglot Bilingual Octoglot Newbie Spain Joined 6054 days ago 23 posts - 26 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan*, French, English, Esperanto, Portuguese, Italian, Galician Studies: Russian, German, Occitan, Greek, Basque, Romanian, Polish, Arabic (Written), Dutch, Swedish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean | Message 20 of 115 01 September 2008 at 4:06am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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From a Catalan speaker point of view:
* relatively easier ** not easy in several aspects *** quite hard in some aspects **** really hard in some or many aspects ***** very hard indeed in too many aspects Left to right: easier to harder within each level -- Other Romance languages: (NOTE: There are very few monolingual Catalan speakers. Most Catalan speakers must speak Spanish, some must speak French, some must speak Italian; theoretically, Italian should be slightly easier for an only-Catalan speaker, closely followed by Spanish and Portuguese, then French) - Italian（意大利语)*, Spanish（西班牙语）*, Portuguese（葡萄牙语）*, French（法语）* - Romanian（罗马尼亚语）** Germanic languages: - Norwegian（挪威语）**, Swedish（瑞典语）**, Danish（丹麦语）**, German（德语)**, Dutch（荷兰语）** Other Indo-European languages: - Greek（希腊语<现代希腊国语>）***, Russian（俄语）*** - Persian（波斯语）**** Other languages: - Finnish（芬兰语）****, Hungarian（匈牙利语）****, Turkish（土耳其语）****, Arabic（阿拉伯语）****, Hebrew（希伯来语<以色列国语>）**** - Vietnamese（越南语）*****, Korean（韩语）*****, Thai（泰语）*****, Japanese（日语）*****, Mandarin（汉语）*****, Cantonese（粤语）*****, Minnanese（闽南语）***** 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6274 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 21 of 115 01 September 2008 at 7:41am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| brozman Bilingual Tetraglot Groupie Spain Joined 6058 days ago 87 posts - 106 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan*, English, Japanese Studies: Russian, Indonesian | Message 22 of 115 01 September 2008 at 8:29am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I totally agree with Linglot. Well, perhaps I would rate Hebrew and Arabic with five *, but the rest are exactly the same for me.
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| reineke Senior Member United States https://learnalangua Joined 6449 days ago 851 posts - 1008 votes Studies: German | Message 23 of 115 01 September 2008 at 8:46am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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/ Edited by reineke on 01 September 2008 at 9:05am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| orion Senior Member United States Joined 7023 days ago 622 posts - 678 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian | Message 24 of 115 01 September 2008 at 11:41am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Linglot, where would you put English in your Germanic scale? Roughly equivalent to the Scandinavian languages? I am surprised you rated Dutch as harder than German.
It is interesting you rate Persian harder than Russian. I have not studied Persian other than fiddling with the writing system, but everyone who has studied it says its pretty easy. I personally find Russian grammar formidable. I agree with you on the East Asian languages, very hard indeed for many reasons. For me, the writing systems are the deal breaker on these. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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