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What ’easy’ language do you find hard? | ||
Tags: Difficulty | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5128 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes  Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 97 of 134 26 May 2014 at 7:15am | IP Logged | |||||
And yet I notice you don't have Mandarin listed in your spoken languages, but you have listed French. There must be a reason for that, right? From my perspective, I studied Turkish - another language many deem to be easy - solidly for three years before I decided to take the B2 level exams. It still took me another year to move it from "Studying" to "Speaks" here on HTLAL, even after having passed the exams. It's taken me that long to really consider that I can speak it with relative ease. I can't speak for Mandarin, but I can certainly say that once you get at or above a high intermediate level in Turkish, it's far from easy. I think that the level of ease in learning any language is relative. I think if you are consistent in studying and getting exposure, an A2 or B1 level (even B2) is quite doable in any language, regardless of how difficult it's perceived to be. R. == 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4288 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 98 of 134 26 May 2014 at 7:43am | IP Logged | |||||
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I do not list Mandarin not because it is so difficult, but because I lost interest to
study it further beyond classes. The last time that I actively studied it was 2007, so there really is no way that I can list it since I do not do anything with the language anymore, whilst continuing French on and off thereafter. But had I continued, I am sure that I would have made the same progress and I could have surpassed French with Mandarin. I also studied German in school, but I cannot list it because the last time that I had a lesson or studied it was in 2004. Still Mandarin seemed easier than German as well. Also a different topic, but I am unsure if this is taste or not, but to me, cases seem to make the language more logical and freer in terms of syntax in sentences. Edited by 1e4e6 on 26 May 2014 at 7:54am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4666 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 99 of 134 26 May 2014 at 12:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Can you find the name of a song you hear for the first time on a Chinese radio just by writing its lyrics down and googling them?
I think not! This is what makes Chinese extremely difficult. I managed to find a Tamil song just by Googling its lyrics as I listened to it on a Tamil radio. Chinese TV even requires compulsory subtitling of all Mandarin TV programs, this is never done in Vietnam, Laos or Germany, this means: Mandarin is difficult even for the native speakers, let alone for non-native speakers. I've never heard foreigners speak Mandarin in the allegro-style, all of them who (claim to) speak it, speak it extremely slowly and chopped. There are things like connected speech in Mandarin too. Foreigners speak Mandarin as if they were robots whose battery is dying. And don't get me started on the writing system. There are people studying Mandarin for more than 10 years, and they still cannot read a contemporary Chinese novel in Mandarin, [unless it is in a digital form, when they rely heavily on Perapera, MDBG, Nciku, Pleco and Google Translate] I find Tamil much easier than Mandarin since its structure is close to my native language (Croatian): it's a heavily inflected null-subject language. I like Mandarin, but easy it is not! Edited by Medulin on 26 May 2014 at 12:30pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5128 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 100 of 134 26 May 2014 at 4:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
The point I was trying to make with my response was that unless we actually reach "speaking" level in a language, it's pretty pointless to consider whether it's easier or more difficult than any other language. There's a lot of consideration given to how difficult (or not) a language's grammar is here on HTLAL when, in reality, it's such a small part of what makes a language a language. R. == Edited by hrhenry on 26 May 2014 at 4:24pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7154 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 101 of 134 26 May 2014 at 4:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
It's hard for me to say since my experience with "easy languages" pales in comparison to that with "hard languages" :-P 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4705 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 102 of 134 26 May 2014 at 5:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
I find my attraction to the culture a much bigger part of the picture. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Stolan Senior Member United States Joined 4030 days ago 274 posts - 368 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Thai, Lowland Scots Studies: Arabic (classical), Cantonese | Message 103 of 134 26 May 2014 at 6:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
And do you know how Chinese people sound when they speak English? Tones are a dimension like nasalization, palatalization, and vowel length. People are stupid enough to treat it differently, Mandarin is the least conservative dialect of Chinese aside from some foreign influenced varieties. It has a simple syllable structure, small vowel inventory, and very few phonological processes in word derivation, even on a derivational level aside from a few tone changes over time in compound words. A word like "exist" changes the syllables a bit when suffixed with "-ing" from "e-xist" to "e-xi-sting", barely if no processes occur such as mutations, vowel reduction, or voicing alternations occur at all in Mandarin (and most isolating languages except for some relatives of Cambodian where derivational morphology hasn't turned to dirt) actually, derivational morphology may be practically nonexistent. It's all compound words with no changes. The writing system is an artificial overlay over a language, I would rather discuss actual features such as grammar and phonology. The primary reason for the terrible state of linguistics, namely to area of complexity as a variable feature, is absolutely the fault of people who are stuck learning within a 18th century mindset of only IE languages like so many. (You know who you are) Too many people are talking about the subjunctive ONLY and absence of gender in English making it the best lingua franca because all languages except English have gender and adjective agreement and it is a well know fact that conjugation is the only way tense and aspect can be expressed at all, and how French is far more deep and complex than English in every way allowing a better expression of philosophy etc etc, AND I'm here comparing Chickasaw and Alabama while looking into Caucasian mountain languages, and noticing the decline of derivational methods in modern Cambodian while some other relatives still have productive methods of forming causatives etc etc and knowing that the exoticness of features in languages are relative and it is all a continuous ocean of mutations with so many permutations occurring in different combinations and not letting perceived difficulty getting the better of me. It's all in the head like those people who claim to not drink wine because it gives them headaches and alcohol is bad yet they don't flinch when they down gallons of Sangria without knowing how much wine is in it! I actually love looking through a whole language and finding out how things are expressed with or without inflection. Edited by Stolan on 26 May 2014 at 6:38pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4666 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 104 of 134 26 May 2014 at 6:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
They occur in Beijing Mandarin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing_dialect In Beijing, people don't normally talk with some contrived CCTV accent, but more often than not in Mandarin spoken with a Beijing accent. Just like people in Florence speak Italian with a colorful Florence accent, and do not have the illusory ''neutral'' standard accent which exists only on RAI news and in dubbed movies. Standard Mandarin accent in Beijing is just as rare as RP is in London. I'd say Estuary English is the new British standard accent in the making, while diluted Beijinghua is the new CPR Mandarin standard accent in the making. Edited by Medulin on 26 May 2014 at 6:36pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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