What are the easiest languages to learn? (Specific Languages) Language Learning Forum

What are the easiest languages to learn?
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Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages

58 messages over 8 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Next >>

Serpent
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Message 17 of 58

05 October 2012 at 8:12pm | IP Logged

Levi wrote:

Cavesa wrote:

4.your personal afinity to the language.

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.

Exactly. How many English native speakers have enough motivation and resources to learn Afrikaans even to basic fluency?
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mick33
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Message 18 of 58

05 October 2012 at 9:33pm | IP Logged

It's actually easier to find resources for Afrikaans than for Tok Pisin, though it's true that there aren't a huge amount of resources for Afrikaans. I would also add that for those English speakers who are motivated, Afrikaans is very easy to learn and it would be even easier for speakers of Dutch and German.

Edited by mick33 on 05 October 2012 at 9:37pm
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clumsy
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Message 19 of 58

05 October 2012 at 10:40pm | IP Logged

Tetum is quite easy.
No conjugation and a lot of Portuguese vocabulary (so recognizable to English speakers - not all, but some).

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patrickwilken
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Message 20 of 58

06 October 2012 at 1:21am | IP Logged

Марк wrote:

Japanese is the most difficult language for native English speakers according to FSI.

I thought they list Arabic, Japanese and Chinese as the three hardest.
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patrickwilken
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Message 21 of 58

06 October 2012 at 1:26am | IP Logged

Марк wrote:

IronFist wrote:

FSI only says Japanese is the hardest because of kanji.

Where do they explain their rank of difficulty?

The article I read by them, seem to take a very pragmatic approach. The hardest languages were simply those that took the longest to teach to the same functional level (say 4000 hours for Japanese/Chinese/Arabic vs. 1000 for German/Spanish).

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Chung
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Message 22 of 58

06 October 2012 at 2:15am | IP Logged

Let's put the original post another way as Hencke succintly noted eons ago.

Hencke wrote:

Chung wrote:

The toughest language to learn is the one that you are currently studying.

That phrase actually deserves to be printed up and hung prominently on the wall of your study to be looked at and pondered on every day !

It is also the easiest though.

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Lee10
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Message 23 of 58

06 October 2012 at 6:15am | IP Logged

Hampie wrote:

Марк wrote:

Arekkusu wrote:

Марк wrote:

Japanese is the most difficult
language for
native English speakers according to FSI.

Out of their limited list of languages, yes.

Why?

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.

"The more people that speak a language, the simpler is it's grammar."

Oh, the irony of that sentence. Anyway, please excuse the quoting. I've been reading this forum for a while,
and finally decided to make an account. I'm so glad I am able to join the discussion :)

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mick33
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Message 24 of 58

08 October 2012 at 10:56pm | IP Logged

Isn't Indonesian supposed to be one of the easiest languages to learn? I thought I read that somewhere, although I'd have thought that the unfamiliar vocabulary could be a challenge in the beginning.

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