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Ranking list of languages by difficulty | ||
Tags: Difficulty | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| dutos Newbie Argentina Joined 5912 days ago 35 posts - 35 votes Speaks: English* | Message 81 of 115 21 September 2008 at 10:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
Wow.. that's a big generalization. I can't possibly say this enough: ANY language can be hard if you are trying to achieve TOTAL fluency. It's really like trying to compare apples and oranges. In the end, they are both fruit, but one is easier to peel and eat faster. The variable should really be TIME instead of DIFFICULTY... Reason: If language X has more elements (like declension) versus language Y, which doesn't have declension, then naturally, it will take more time to read over and study that material, but that doesn't mean that it's necessarily harder... I hear people ALL the time say that English is hard compared to Spanish, Portuguese, French, etc.. yet the grammar is certainly less complex than any of these languages. I'm curious as to how many people on this site think that knowing a few hundred words and constructing basic sentences is "fluent" ??? For me, fluency is being able to read, understand, and speak to the level of an educated native speaker, and that takes a lot of time and study, regardless of who deems to the language to be "hard" or "easy." 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 82 of 115 21 September 2008 at 11:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
How similar a language is to your mother tongue has a pretty big impact on the amount of time and effort it will take you to learn that language. Edited by maya_star17 on 21 September 2008 at 11:14pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Deecab Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5960 days ago 106 posts - 108 votes Speaks: English, Korean* Studies: Mandarin | Message 83 of 115 21 September 2008 at 11:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
But grammar isn't everything. There is the vocabulary size, pronunciation, exposure to the world and likes that determine difficulty. English imo is more complex syntactically than any of those languages although inflection-wise, it isn't as complex. English is a hard language to master but an easy language to grasp basic fluency. So you go ahead and decide. There are certain languages that are easier in the beginning but harder to master in the long run. Then there is a language like Chinese which is just an impossible hurdle for most people at first but is said that it gets easier once you get the hang of it. Why do you think there are so many people who think English is dead easy? Because you can automatically start speaking once you learn basic materials. The problem is that most people don't ever have time to get to native fluency. So they end up being too quick to make judgment. The difference of difficulty between Spanish, French, Portuguese and English are slim anyway. Edited by Deecab on 21 September 2008 at 11:59pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lemanensis Bilingual Pentaglot Groupie Switzerland hebrew.ecott.ch Joined 5923 days ago 73 posts - 77 votes Speaks: French*, English*, German, Spanish, Swedish Studies: Modern Hebrew | Message 84 of 115 22 September 2008 at 3:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
That is simply not true. English grammar is very complex - and the further you study it the more complex it gets. The verb system is highly developed - certainly one of the most difficult of European verb systems. And it is full of exceptions that only native speakers (or near native speakers) can comprehend - and many native speakers still don't! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| 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 85 of 115 22 September 2008 at 4:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
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When I was teaching English to Spanish speakers, they thought the swallowed, unstressed English "L" was the silliest sound they had ever been asked to make.
They wanted to pronounce "people" simply as "pipo". (Chinese learners make this pronunciation as well, I have observed.) They also thought the English "soft TH" sound (as in this, that) was ludicrous. "¡Hay que sacar la lengua un poco, entre las dientes!" I would tell them. Whereupon, of course, they would extrude their tongues to its fullest length. Haha. (-; Edited by rasputin on 22 September 2008 at 4:06pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Deecab Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5960 days ago 106 posts - 108 votes Speaks: English, Korean* Studies: Mandarin | Message 86 of 115 22 September 2008 at 10:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
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You will know English isn't easy when you read the works of James Joyce. What a dreadful thing to read. Sure, you can read it but understand it? Even native English speakers find it tough to understand complex literary works.
I wonder if the same can be said about other languages. None of the Asian languages I know have the sentence structure and syntactical complexity as English with the exception European languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| pitwo Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6158 days ago 103 posts - 121 votes Speaks: French*, English | Message 87 of 115 22 September 2008 at 11:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I really don't see why other languages could not be just as complex (both grammatically and syntactically).
A lot of french authors write in a higly convoluted style too... Kant often wrote phrases that could have been mistaken for whole paragraphs. Now try to make sense of THAT. In fact, a work in English might be hard to read but it all depends on just how much of a masochist the author decided to be. As far as asian languages go, I'm sure Arabic is chock full of grammatical quirks and irregularities :) Korean doesn't look like a walk in the park either with those 600-some verb endings.. heh Edited by pitwo on 22 September 2008 at 11:06pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Deecab Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5960 days ago 106 posts - 108 votes Speaks: English, Korean* Studies: Mandarin | Message 88 of 115 23 September 2008 at 12:31am | IP Logged | |||||
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I don't think French preposition is as hard as that of English, which would make it obvious to me that French is easier in sentence structure although they have gender and more inflection to make up for it. Edited by Deecab on 23 September 2008 at 12:32am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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