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Ranking list of languages by difficulty | ||
Tags: Difficulty | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| ongaby Tetraglot Newbie Czech Republic Joined 5912 days ago 14 posts - 15 votes Speaks: Romanian*, EnglishC2, French, Spanish Studies: German, Czech | Message 73 of 115 16 September 2008 at 11:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I am learning 3 languages now: German, French and Czech. Czech is the most difficult for me. It has 7 cases of declination, always there is an exception for the rule. French is quite easy, but it's close to my native language. German is not easy, but it's closer to English.
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| John Smith Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6041 days ago 396 posts - 542 votes  Speaks: English*, Czech*, Spanish Studies: German | Message 74 of 115 21 September 2008 at 12:35am | IP Logged | |||||
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Spanish is the world's easiest language. No doubt about it.
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| rasputin Triglot Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5966 days ago 21 posts - 24 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: German, Italian, Zulu | Message 75 of 115 21 September 2008 at 1:51am | IP Logged | |||||
So many people in the world have studied Spanish-- at least at the primary level-- that all a standup comedian has to do to occasion a riot of laughter is to stroll out onstage and ask: "¿Donde está la biblioteca, Susana?" Edited by rasputin on 21 September 2008 at 1:54am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Fat-tony Nonaglot Senior Member United Kingdom jiahubooks.co.uk Joined 6139 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 76 of 115 21 September 2008 at 5:37am | IP Logged | |||||
For English and Romance speakers I agree, but I think an Azeri would find Turkish (or at least a Turkic language) to be the easiest, while a Thai would choose Lao etc. Ignoring one's mother tongue(s) as much as possible (an absurd scenario, I know) I think Bahasa Malay/Indonesia is the easiest in the world. Obviously in practice the vocab is unfamiliar to speakers of unrelated languages but words are constructed on a root system which is quite regular, no tenses, gender, or declensions, it's written phonetically and, because it's a often used as a second language, it's very forgiving in terms of idiom/collocations. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| guilon Pentaglot Senior Member Spain Joined 6191 days ago 226 posts - 229 votes Speaks: Spanish*, PortugueseC2, FrenchC2, Italian, English | Message 77 of 115 21 September 2008 at 12:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
That is a general belief, and maybe the major reason so few learners achieve flawless Spanish, or an advanced command of the language for that matter. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Kadphises Diglot Newbie Taiwan Joined 6148 days ago 15 posts - 17 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 78 of 115 21 September 2008 at 1:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
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From my personal point of view (as a German native speaker), from hardest to easiest (only those languages listed I think I can judge from my first impression):
1. Minnanese/Taiwanese 2. Cantonese (for these two assuming that you have to learn Chinese characters as well as the spoken language) 3. Mandarin 4. Thai (the writing system is much easier than Japanese, but the tones make it more difficult to speak, so that I think it will be slightly harder to reach fluency) 5. Japanese 6. Finnish 7. Russian 8. Greek 9. Danish (looks easy for Germans, but very weird pronunciation, so listening comprehension appears difficult) 10. French 11. Italian, Spanish 12. Swedish, Norwegian 13. Afrikaans, Dutch 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| maya_star17 Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5914 days ago 269 posts - 291 votes Speaks: English*, Russian*, French, Spanish Studies: Japanese | Message 79 of 115 21 September 2008 at 6:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
I agree with Fat-tony; you have to keep in mind the "mother tongue" factor. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| John Smith Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6041 days ago 396 posts - 542 votes Speaks: English*, Czech*, Spanish Studies: German | Message 80 of 115 21 September 2008 at 8:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
I don't know. After years of looking at various European languages I have yet to find one that is easier than Spanish. If you think that Spanish is not the easiest European language than could you please let me know which one is. It can't be German (three genders, declension, irregular plurals), it can't be any of the Slavic languages or Greek (three genders, declension). That leaves other Romance languages. Romanian is hard so too is French and Portuguese. Italian is almost as easy as Spanish but the writing system is not so phonetic so Spanish wins hands down. The only reason why people don't speak Spanish perfectly is because even though it is the easiest language it is still hard. It is just not as hard as the others. Edited by John Smith on 21 September 2008 at 8:35pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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