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What are the easiest languages to learn? | ||
Tags: Easiness | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5015 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes  Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 9 of 58 05 October 2012 at 3:03pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
There is no neutral beginning point. There are four main factors, in my opinion: 1.passion and motivation 2.how close is the language to your mothertongue 3.how accessible are ressources, both for learning and for further using 4.your personal afinity to the language. I've met many people around, with very similar background but some learn English most easily, some find German easier, some find French or Spanish easier, some can't choose anything other than a Slavic language as the easiest. Everything has pro's and con's and the personality and talents of the learner are very important. Some learn logical, grammar rules heavy languages easier than others, other people prefer languages with less grammar rules and more memorisation needed, some learn faster "rough" sounding language or the opposite. They can agree that Japanese or Chinese are more difficult than anything of these, but other than that, the answers vary. 10 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5387 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 10 of 58 05 October 2012 at 3:07pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Out of their limited list of languages, yes. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5062 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 11 of 58 05 October 2012 at 3:17pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Why? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Hampie Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6665 days ago 625 posts - 1009 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Latin, German, Mandarin | Message 12 of 58 05 October 2012 at 4:24pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
There are several languages that are harder. The grammar of a language tends to be more complex within isolated groups of people, thus is the grammar of small native groups studied by field linguists often way more complicated than that of the bigger major languages of the world. However, those are not on the list of FSI because there's no reason for anyone except linguists to study them. When colonists and missionaries came to the new world they easily taught the inhabitants English/French/Portuguese but could not themselves learn the languages of the natives, as far as I've understood it. The more people that speak a language, the simpler is it's grammar. Among some Assyriologists the rather intricate and complex system of the Sumerian verbs contributed to its death because all immigrants who came to the Mesopotamian civilisation chose to learn and talk Akkadian instead because it's much less complex grammar. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4778 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 13 of 58 05 October 2012 at 5:14pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Speaking of which, Bohy, I think you are greatly underestimating the importance of vocabulary and culture in your assessment of the difficulty of Persian. Sure, it's an Indo-European language with lots of cognates in its basic vocabulary, but the fact that it was never under the influence of Latin and Greek as its classical languages means that the vocabulary barrier is much higher than it is with most European languages. The Islamic influence on the culture also means that Persian has many idioms in common with Arabic, and fewer with the languages of Europe. As for the sounds, they are indeed quite tricky. I have studied Kazakh, a language with a similar consonant set that was heavily influenced by Persian, but the voiced uvular stop still caught me off guard. Practice does help though. And if you are worried about the spelling of the vowels, you might want to consider learning Dari Persian, which has preserved all eight Early New Persian vowel sounds. Edited by vonPeterhof on 05 October 2012 at 6:35pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| IronFist Senior Member United States Joined 6443 days ago 663 posts - 941 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 14 of 58 05 October 2012 at 5:41pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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HTLAL discussions have revealed the FSI is wrong and Korean is more difficult than Japanese for native English speakers.
Weren't they going to bump Korean up into class 5 or something? FSI only says Japanese is the hardest because of kanji. I mean that's fair cuz kanji are difficult, but you can learn Japanese to the point where you can understand the spoken language and be understood in Japan much more easily than you can get to that point in Korean. Edited by IronFist on 05 October 2012 at 5:41pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5573 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 15 of 58 05 October 2012 at 6:27pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I quote this because it's a point that needs to be reiterated. The easiest language is always the one that you are most motivated to learn, provided you are able to acquire adequate study materials and get adequate exposure to the language. If we're talking about the easiest languages for an English-speaker to learn from a purely linguistic point of view, that would be the close relatives of English: Frisian, Scots, Tok Pisin, Afrikaans... But of course, in practice, your relationship to your target language is everything. Without motivation and exposure, even those "easy" languages will be outside your reach, and you may find a very "difficult" language like Korean or Arabic easier to learn if you have the passion to sustain your studies over the long term and the opportunity to use what you know. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5062 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 16 of 58 05 October 2012 at 6:33pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Where do they explain their rank of difficulty? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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