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What are the easiest languages to learn? | ||
Tags: Easiness | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5062 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes  Speaks: Russian* | Message 33 of 58 10 October 2012 at 7:15pm | IP Logged | ||
On the opposite, they can't imagine how difficult it is to learn. They think it is the most natural way to express oneself. When I started learning English, I wondered why we had to make special question constructions and not just to put a question mark at the end, like we do in Russian. Much later I understood that it was much easier to learn all those invertions than to learn the Russian general question intonation. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4628 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 34 of 58 11 October 2012 at 12:13am | IP Logged | ||
Yes, I've lost count of the number of Germans who have said "Deutsch ist eine schwierige Sprache" to me. Also, many Russian people are convinced that their language is one of the hardest, ditto Hungarians. Maybe it gives people a boost to believe that they speak the "world's hardest language" 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6603 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 35 of 58 11 October 2012 at 12:41am | IP Logged | ||
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Or maybe we just don't know the few grammar rules that exist, and we think our grammar is crazy as f**k.
I'd say both things are common: saying your language is easy and saying your language is hard. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4674 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 36 of 58 12 October 2012 at 4:00am | IP Logged | ||
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Brazilians always tell me Portuguese is the most difficult language in the world, it is so difficult not even they can't learn it.
For speakers of Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian/Montenegrin, the easiest is Macedonian, except for speakers of Kajkavian Croatian who may find Slovene easier. I've seen a cartoon in Malay, and I didn't like the way it sounds, it sounded very muffled;the vowels were nowhere as clear as Spanish or Japanese ones. There's a fair share of vowel reduction in colloquial/spoken Malay, with a lot of shwa. Edited by Medulin on 12 October 2012 at 4:07am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6603 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 37 of 58 12 October 2012 at 4:07am | IP Logged | ||
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Yeah a common reason is diglossia or even just a wide use of colloquial expressions... Learning the standard language can be difficult if you speak a dialect or just use a lot of colloquialisms, so people automatically assume the standard language is even harder for learners, while in reality it's the dialects/non-standard varieties that are hard.
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| Bohy Newbie Australia Joined 6619 days ago 10 posts - 11 votes Speaks: English | Message 38 of 58 12 October 2012 at 3:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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Interesting about Turkish and Indonesian.
Perhaps you are right about how being born into a language skews ones perception of the difficulty of a language ... But I am still quite sure even by objective standards Persian is rather a basic language. In particular written Persian is quite straight forward. Spoken Persian maybe slightly more difficult in that sentence structure is not as varied, but that is really only a minor issue. Verb endings also change when you are not speaking formally. But it is all so regular. It seems to me to be a very logical language without unnecessary grammatical complications. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6603 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 39 of 58 12 October 2012 at 3:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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But logical doesn't mean easy. Some "easy" languages aren't very logical, and many logical languages are still considered difficult because they're also very different (especially from English).
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| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4713 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 40 of 58 12 October 2012 at 3:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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The easiest language is the one with the system you as a learner need the least time to
adapt to, because it's the closest to your frame of reference. But adaptation isn't solely dependent on linguistics, it's also your attitude and your natural ability to see pattern formation, motivation, and so on and so forth. For me the hardest language to speak correctly is French. I did not find it hard to learn most of the basics of Russian, even though I struggle with the more complex word formation patterns right now (I understand the principles to some degree, but I haven't internalised enough roots to speak fluently). Edited by tarvos on 12 October 2012 at 3:47pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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