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Most difficult IE Language? | ||
Tags: Indo-European Languages | Difficulty | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Zorrillo Pentaglot Groupie United States Joined 6417 days ago 41 posts - 82 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Sign Language, Spanish, Polish Studies: Greek, Georgian, Indonesian | Message 41 of 69 27 June 2010 at 9:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I agree with Iverson- Albanian is not so bad. I also didn't find Armenian to be much trouble- the alphabet takes some getting used to, but even that isn't so bad after a while. Greek is moderate in my opinion.
The Slavic languages are quite nasty- I've tangled with Polish for five years now and still find myself tripping over grammar when reading books. I've glanced only briefly at Lithuanian and Latvian and they seem similarly complex. Of the Celtic tongues, I've been engaged in an ongoing battle with Welsh for some time, and am always thoroughly confused; and Irish pronunciation is so bewildering that I never even got to the grammar. Persian is simple, but the writing system is a handful. I've never studied Hindi, but I had a go at Bengali and it was a bit frightening. I'd vote for the Slavic and Celtic family as being most difficult, with an edge to the latter. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Merv Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5306 days ago 414 posts - 749 votes Speaks: English*, Serbo-Croatian* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 42 of 69 27 June 2010 at 10:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Bengali is easier than Slavic in my view. I don't know about Celtic, but I've heard the Brythonic branch is especially
hard. Don't know if that's true. Ancient Greek was a brutally difficult language but modern Greek is much simpler. It's main difficulty lies in iotation and knowing how to spell things. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Derian Triglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5341 days ago 227 posts - 464 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, German Studies: Spanish, Russian, Czech, French, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 43 of 69 28 June 2010 at 8:06am | IP Logged | |||||
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| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6175 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 44 of 69 28 June 2010 at 8:13am | IP Logged | |||||
The Ugro-Finnic languages are not Indo-European. They're Ugro-Finnic. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Derian Triglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5341 days ago 227 posts - 464 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, German Studies: Spanish, Russian, Czech, French, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 45 of 69 28 June 2010 at 11:35am | IP Logged | |||||
I was constantly thinking about European Languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6736 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 46 of 69 28 June 2010 at 2:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
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.. but what about the Baltic languages (Latvian, Lithuanian)?
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| Euphorion Hexaglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5373 days ago 106 posts - 147 votes Speaks: Slovak*, Czech, EnglishC2, GermanC1, SpanishC2, French | Message 47 of 69 29 June 2010 at 11:13am | IP Logged | |||||
Well in my opinion, its exactly the other way round - Czech is much more difficult than Polish. It has exactly all the stuff you just mentioned (verbs have endings for each person in the past, not to mention the change in roots which occur in some verbs in the virile and non-virile forms. Numbers change according to whether they refer to nouns which are animate or non animate, virile or non virile and mixed gender.) + present and past principle, a very hard ortography (mně/mě, y/i, z/s/vz, ...), not only singular and plural numbers but also remainders of the dual number, the usage of past perfect and many many other things... As I stated elsewhere, "Czech is the Rolls Royce of the Slavonic languages, and a star player in the Indo-European linguistic league. Czech is so rich, precise and, unfortunately, also complicated that a foreigner trying to learn the language may be driven to suicide. Either because he or she never manages to learn it, or because of the utter depression that follows when the foreigner realizes how primitive his or her own mother tongue is." (Terje B. Englund) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ChristianVlcek Bilingual Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5884 days ago 131 posts - 141 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Slovak*, Ukrainian, Irish, German, Russian | Message 48 of 69 29 June 2010 at 2:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Euphorion, that being said of Czech, how would you compare it to Slovak? (I've grown up outside of Slovakia, so I have no Czech exposure, and have never looked into Czech grammar or anything.)
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