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The Right Order/Easiest or Hardest first? | ||
Tags: Difficulty | Choosing a Language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Astrophel Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5734 days ago 157 posts - 345 votes  Speaks: English*, Latin, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Cantonese, Polish, Sanskrit, Cherokee | Message 17 of 21 09 February 2010 at 1:29am | IP Logged | ||
Exactly what I was going to say. The one you're really motivated to learn will be the easiest, regardless of its difficulty, but if your goal is just to "learn some languages" then obviously you should choose easy ones first, as they will give you more results for your effort, no? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lindsay19 Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5823 days ago 183 posts - 214 votes Speaks: English*, GermanC1 Studies: Swedish, Faroese, Icelandic | Message 18 of 21 09 February 2010 at 2:09am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm actually really glad I started vvith German first. Svvedish is, in comparison, a piece of cake!
German vvas my first language to learn, so the difficulty of the grammar didn't bother me, since I didn't have anything to compare it to. VVhen I started learning it, I had no idea it had a reputation of being difficult. Edited by Lindsay19 on 09 February 2010 at 2:17am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5569 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 19 of 21 09 February 2010 at 4:19am | IP Logged | ||
Well, what languages specifically are you considering? I don't find personally that German is much harder than Spanish. Maybe a little bit because you have the noun cases and the word order takes a little getting used to. But overall I would classify both as relatively "easy" languages, because both languages share a lot of cognate words with English. I would advise a beginning learner to start out with an "easy" language. It will help you understand how you learn, it will give you the confidence to know you can learn a language, plus it will get you used to detaching yourself from English semantics and grammar. I would consider an "easy" language to be any Romance or Germanic language that you can find ample materials for. But I don't like calling languages "easy" because all languages are difficult (in that they take a lot of time and effort to learn) yet also easy (in the sense that our brains are wired to learn them, and even babies can do it, which can't be said for truly difficult subject matters like neurology and quantum mechanics). I don't think I would have the motivation to continue with difficult languages if I didn't already learn French and Esperanto. I am learning Chinese way faster than I initially started learning French (my first foreign language), because I now know what learning a language really entails, I know how to go about it, and I've proven to myself that I can do it. Edited by Levi on 09 February 2010 at 4:44am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| John Smith Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6044 days ago 396 posts - 542 votes Speaks: English*, Czech*, Spanish Studies: German | Message 20 of 21 09 February 2010 at 6:15am | IP Logged | ||
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^^ German is a lot harder than Spanish. German has three genders. Spanish two. The gender of Spanish nouns is easy to predict (I know about the handful of exceptions like el mapa). German nouns aren't predictable. You have to learn the gender of every noun you learn.
Forming the plural in Spanish is very easy. Just ad -s or -es. German is very irregular. You have to learn the plural of every noun. Spanish shares more cognate words with English than German does. I could go on and on. German Plural Formation Plural 1 Add an -e: der Hund - Hunde Plural 2 Add an -en: die Zeit - Zeiten Plural 3 No change: das Mädchen - Mädchen Plural 4 Add an -n: die Kugel - Kugeln Plural 5 Add ¨er or -er: das Haus - Häuser, das Kleid - Kleider Plural 6 Add an -s: das Auto - Autos Plural 7 Stem vowel adds ¨: der Apfel - Äpfel, der Bruder - Brüder Plural 8 Add an -nen: die Lehrerin - Lehrerinnen Plural 9 Add an -se: das Erlebnis - Erlebnisse Plural 10 Add ¨e: der Kran - Kräne Plural 11 Suffix/ending changes: der Organismus - Organismen, das Museum - Museen Plural 12 Foreign word plurals: das Prinzip - Prinzipien Versus Spanish If a noun ends in a vowel, simply add -s. If a noun ends in a consonant, simply add -es. If a noun ends in a -z, change the z to c before adding -es. If a noun ends in ión, drop the written accent before adding -es. Edited by John Smith on 09 February 2010 at 6:16am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Dainty Newbie United States Joined 5487 days ago 38 posts - 53 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 21 of 21 09 February 2010 at 7:47am | IP Logged | ||
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For me personally, I know myself and I know I would do better starting with a relatively "hard" language than an "easy" one.
I've tried to learn Spanish so many times it isn't even funny. I had motivation, I visited Mexico, I had friends from the Dominican Republic, I went to a Spanish-speaking church every week, tried multiple programs--I really worked hard at it. And with each failure I kept hearing "Spanish is such an easy language." The fact that it was known as an easy language made my struggles with it all the more disheartening. Since I found this site and became inspired with the assurance that anyone can learn another language I knew right away that German should be my first one. With its reputation for being a hard language I don't feel quite so discouraged when I encounter difficulty. No one's telling me that the language should be a breeze, so each accomplishment seems magnified and considerably more gratifying than my previous experiences with Spanish. That extra boost in morale is quite helpful. I still plan to master Spanish one of these days, but I'm confident that my decision to work on German first was the right one for me--I can't speak for anyone else. Again, it was because I know myself and I know how I learn best. For example, I'm someone who taught myself to read music and play piano by listening to Moonlight Sonata over and over again, picking out the notes on a piano and comparing them to the sheet music. After quite literally a lifetime of attempting to learn to play piano though private lessons, computer programs, and self-taught from beginner's books it only actually clicked for me when I started with a piece that inspired me and I painstakingly figured out note by note how it all worked. The difficulty of my goal was the very thing that made the struggle seem worthwhile and inspired me to press forward through the frustrations. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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