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Ranking list of languages by difficulty | ||
Tags: Difficulty | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Autarkis Triglot Groupie Switzerland twitter.com/Autarkis Joined 5951 days ago 95 posts - 106 votes  4 sounds Speaks: German*, English, French Studies: Italian | Message 97 of 115 24 September 2008 at 5:03am | IP Logged | |||||
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I guess many people including me, though I don't claim too much knowledge about sociolinguistics, think that any language gets used as finely tuned as social circumstances and society member intellects allow.
Based on that theory, learning any language to "full proficiency" or "mastery" - let's not debate these terms too much, we know what I mean ;) - is equally hard. If you think of a rudimentary street language, for example German-Turkish slang, learning all the finesses of when to use "Aldä" instead of "Pennah" is equally difficult as Arabic or German grammar including the genitive ;). Now, in this example I don't mean hard grammatical rules, but a culturally significant use of words. Imagining a language that has fewer and simpler grammatical features is very easy, and I'm sure it could be proven by determined linguists as well. But language complexity isn't only in grammar, as you all will agree. I guess I'm saying "I'm not so sure." to both sides here. :) 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 98 of 115 24 September 2008 at 7:31am | IP Logged | |||||
I do think it is possible to consider oneself fluent in a language.... and nevertheless have occasional unknown words and phrases or grammatical conundra pop up. God knows native speakers do. Half of Americans who speak English can hardly spell, and often butcher the language; one sees it everywhere. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| pitwo Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6158 days ago 103 posts - 121 votes Speaks: French*, English | Message 99 of 115 24 September 2008 at 10:07am | IP Logged | |||||
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Mastering the Chinese idoms looks like quite a task.
Idiomatic language exists in English, sure, but I don't think it's as ingrained as in the chinese languages. For those interested, take a look at this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-character_idiom "melon field, under the plums" is a bit cryptic IMO. Edited by pitwo on 24 September 2008 at 10:10am 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 100 of 115 24 September 2008 at 12:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
I could be wrong, of course (my knowledge of language is hugely limited), but I can't think of any human language that is easy in every single possible way. Some languages might have less "difficult features" than others, but all of them (to my knowledge) have something. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Garaidh Decaglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6062 days ago 43 posts - 57 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Croatian, Serbian, French Studies: Scottish Gaelic Studies: Faroese | Message 101 of 115 24 September 2008 at 5:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
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A couple of months ago I started the thread 'FCO Classification of Languages'
In the meantime, I have found the document which details how the British Foreign Office Diplomatic Service Language Centre classified languages according to the length of time needed to reach a given level. Class 1 is the most difficult, Class V the easiest. Hope this helps! Class 1 Cantonese Japanese Mandarin Korean Class II Amharic Arabic Azeri Burmese Cambodian Finnish Hebrew Georgian Hungarian Kazakh Kirghiz Lao Mongolian Thai Turkmen Turkish Uzbek Vietnamese Class III Albanian Armenian Byelorussian Bulgarian Croatian Czech Dari Estonian Greek Hausa Icelandic Kurdish Latvian Lithuanian Macedonian Maltese Persian Polish Russian Serbian Slovak Slovene Ukrainian Class IV Bengali Chichewa Chinyanji German Gujurati Hindi Indonesian Irish Malay Nepali Pashtu Punjabi Romanian Sesotho Shona Siswati Swahili Tagalog Urdu Wolof Yoruba Zulu Class V Afrikaans Bislama Catalan Danish Dutch French Italian Norwegian Portugese Spanish Swedish 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Deecab Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5960 days ago 106 posts - 108 votes Speaks: English, Korean* Studies: Mandarin | Message 102 of 115 24 September 2008 at 7:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
First of all, be careful. I said "similar" not "equal" complexity. I regard some languages to be more difficult than others but the difference is much slimmer than people give credit for. While one can give 1 star(easiest) to 5 stars(hardest), for subjective point of view, which would otherwise have ranged from 2.5 to 3.5 approximately. There is no such thing as bewilderingly difficult or easy language. Second, the question is not whether language with only easier features is possible but whether it exists and I doubt you'll find a language that only has easier features even if it's Indonesian. No, you just need to analyze it more deeply. Korean doesn't have gender, noun declension, while still having their writing system AND reading on the easy side yet it's still difficult according to DLI and Navy. Instead they have difficult honorific/politeness speech to master, even if memorizing all of them isn't so important. Listening is on the tough side(according to learners). And their vocabulary along with slang, idioms, since it was influenced by Chinese language, is large. Most people assume English grammar is easy but the vocabulary is very underrated in difficulty. One vocab can be put in about 10-20 different ways for verb like 'set'. And to master the nuance is extremely difficult since not only do you have to memorize them but also be able to use them at proper situation. But this is COMPLETELY nullified by global exposure, like I mentioned. Slavic languages have multiple declension and gender but they're consistent once you know the rules barring some exceptions. There is always complexity that can't be measured by mere number of inflections. Language isn't a biology exam, which can be studied by raw memorization. The only reason people say certain languages are WAY more difficult is from the first impression. Gender and declension are learned from the textbook in the first few chapters. No textbook, however, is going to tell you 10-20 different ways in which a verb can be used. You learn them one by one. That doesn't necessarily make it easier than a language that seems so difficult at first. Edited by Deecab on 24 September 2008 at 8:37pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| will72694 Groupie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5703 days ago 59 posts - 60 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 104 of 115 18 April 2009 at 2:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
I would definitely agree with you there. I have not learned Arabic, but it is next on my hit list and I have started learning the alphabet. The fact that no Arabs pronounce the alphabet the way that it is taught -- and they all pronounce it differently -- is enough to make the foreign learner cry. Coupled with the odd sounds that don't exist in virtually any non-Semitic language (at least in large quantities) and the fact that vowels aren't typically written, it looks as if Arabic should have a class of language difficulty all its own. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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