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Ranking list of languages by difficulty | ||
Tags: Difficulty | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| LuckyNomad Groupie Korea, South Joined 6352 days ago 79 posts - 89 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 41 of 115 03 September 2008 at 10:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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{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.} Korean pronunciation is easy?! I have never heard this said by anyone, least of all Koreans. I've been here for two years and I still find it difficult to catch the difference between ㅅ ㅆ, ㄱ ㅋ, ㅉ ㅈ, to name a few. Pronunciation is the hardest part of the language. In my opinion, with the exception of writing, Korean beats Japanese in terms of difficulty. I know nothing of arabic so I can't say anything about that or the rest of the languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TKK Groupie ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5953 days ago 55 posts - 58 votes | Message 42 of 115 03 September 2008 at 11:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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For Chinese speaker, Japanese is easier than Korean, at least on 2 aspects, in my opinion.
One is pronunciation issue, especially, various 받침(bat chim) always make us confused, because they sound almost no distinct difference between those 받침(bat chim).And Korean has some rules of sound changes, while Japanese pronunciation rules seem very regular. The other is, for Chinese people, writting system, I do prefer Japanese style, it makes me feel more favorably. Though, many western people don't like Chinese characters or KANJIs. But, as a whole, Japanese & Korean share the most similar grammar, which is very different from Chinese. Edited by TKK on 03 September 2008 at 11:09pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Karakorum Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6574 days ago 201 posts - 232 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written)* Studies: French, German | Message 43 of 115 03 September 2008 at 11:09pm | IP Logged | ||
Lol, yeah that's true. Why are people always "proud" if their language is perceived as hard, Arabs can get pretty annoying with this. -TKK, what's bat chim? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ' Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5945 days ago 120 posts - 120 votes Speaks: English*, Hungarian* | Message 44 of 115 03 September 2008 at 11:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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'Cos it makes us seem smarter for having mastered it.
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| TKK Groupie ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5953 days ago 55 posts - 58 votes | Message 45 of 115 03 September 2008 at 11:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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[/QUOTE]
what's bat chim?[/QUOTE] 받침: it is simply a consonant at the bottom, there are a lot of 받침. For example, in the word 받침, either ㄷ(받) or ㅁ(침) is bat chim, which must be at the bottom. Edited by TKK on 03 September 2008 at 11:21pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Deecab Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5966 days ago 106 posts - 108 votes Speaks: English, Korean* Studies: Mandarin | Message 46 of 115 03 September 2008 at 11:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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Wow, three more people that think Korean pronunciation is not easy.
In the end, learner's opinion weighs much more than mine. I should have been disqualified from rating Korean in the first place but I put my thought anyway. What do we mean by pronunciation though? The difficulty of pronunciation itself only or are we also including the assimilation to the next consonant which causes sound change? Because if it's the latter, then I would imagine it can be somewhat challenging. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Karakorum Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6574 days ago 201 posts - 232 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written)* Studies: French, German | Message 47 of 115 03 September 2008 at 11:28pm | IP Logged | ||
Back to the original topic, for a native Arabic speaker I think this would make sense, from easiest to hardest: These two are significantly easier than European languages: -Hebrew: Good number of high frequency cognates, grammar is a cakewalk, concept of abjad makes immediate sense, sounds are not foreign (especially Mizrahi Hebrew). -Persian: Writing system immediately accessible, lots of common vocab, grammar is challenging but not as hard as European languages. The difference between European languages is quite small (they are all very different from Arabic), but just by observing people who learn these languages: -French -Italian -Spanish -Portuguese -German -English -The remaining Germanic languages and Romanian -Russian -Finnish Asian languages are all equally hard and are all leaps and bounds harder than European languages for an Arabic speaker. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TKK Groupie ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5953 days ago 55 posts - 58 votes | Message 48 of 115 03 September 2008 at 11:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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1, Hebrew alphabet has something difficult to master, because printed letters are very different from hand script.And after all, Hebrew still remains a lot of Semitic elements, just like Arabic does. 2, Scandinavian languages are easier than German, or than Dutch as well, but they're still a little harder than English, to a certian extent, I guess so. Edited by TKK on 03 September 2008 at 11:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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