deniz2 Groupie TurkeyRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5155 days ago 53 posts - 62 votes
| Message 89 of 130 25 October 2010 at 1:15pm | IP Logged |
leosmith wrote:
Before voting, please consider that this is the language that will take the most time for a native English speaker to reach advanced fluency in all 4 skills: reading, writing, speaking and listening.
This has been discussed many times before. It's one of my favorite discussions, so I thought it would be nice to have a poll on it. I wish there were more selections; sorry if I didn't include your favorite language.
Feel free to state your reasons, or post links to the many threads on this subject. |
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You should do this research among the well-known languages like French, German, Italian, and Spanish. Maybe Arabic and/or Russian can also be included. But instead of voting the people must tell how much of the language they have learned and they should compare the ones they learned, not the ones they just guess. The criteria should be having learned all the grammar (if they can’t speak much). They must be able to understand whatever they read at least by using a dictionary if they don’t know much vocabulary. By the way the vocabulary shouldn’t be criteria while evaluating the difficulty of a language. The grammar is the most important, secondly the writing is important. Maybe for the languages likes Chinese the pronunciation is also important and hard.
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deniz2 Groupie TurkeyRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5155 days ago 53 posts - 62 votes
| Message 90 of 130 25 October 2010 at 2:38pm | IP Logged |
Hashimi wrote:
[quote=Karakorum]I don't wanna pass a judgment on something so subjective, but I think Arabic is the easiest of all 4 languages. |
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So why the fluent non-native speakers of Japanese are more than the fluent non-native speakers of Arabic?
Sorry but how did you know that the non-native speakers of Japanese are more fluent? Do you know any Japanese? How do you know that they don’t make any grammar mistakes while speaking Japanese? Do you express yourself as fluent in English? If yes, then why do you make a grammar mistake? You should have said:
So why are the fluent non-native speakers of Japanese more than the fluent non-native speakers of Arabic?
I had some Arab friends. They always told me that Arabic was very difficult (or the most difficult) but they spoke terrible English and didn’t study any other language. The discussion that Arabic grammar is very difficult is never based on any explanation. In my country some people learn Arabic for only religious reasons and sorry but they are not intellectual. I mean they are not interested in grammar or anything else. I can definitely say that the ones who learn Italian, French or say Spanish are much more intellectual, social people.
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Old Chemist Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5176 days ago 227 posts - 285 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German
| Message 91 of 130 01 November 2010 at 7:44pm | IP Logged |
I think a language with a complicated grammar, such as Basque, Finnish or (reputedly) Inuit would be the most difficult language to learn. Especially as many such languages are minority, isolate ones meaning that there is little or no vocabulary in common with other languages. Even Japanese has a lot of English borrowings and, I believe, Arabic has a lot of scientific borrowings as I could once half understand a conversation between two Arab students on a scientific subject.
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Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5348 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish*
| Message 92 of 130 01 November 2010 at 9:36pm | IP Logged |
The most difficult language to learn is one devoid of proper learning materials and with scant opportunity to read, write, listen and speak it.
Edited by Juаn on 01 November 2010 at 9:46pm
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Didgeridoo Newbie United States Joined 5156 days ago 28 posts - 31 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish
| Message 93 of 130 02 November 2010 at 3:09am | IP Logged |
My friend started learning Japanese a week or two ago and he said that it was damn easy.
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formiko Nonaglot Senior Member United States Joined 6214 days ago 848 posts - 855 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Esperanto, Indonesian, Yoruba, Cherokee, Russian, German, French Studies: Mandarin, Ancient Greek
| Message 94 of 130 02 November 2010 at 8:38am | IP Logged |
Didgeridoo wrote:
My friend started learning Japanese a week or two ago and he said
that it was damn easy. |
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The spoken language itself isn't difficult, but the writing system is secret code!
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Old Chemist Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5176 days ago 227 posts - 285 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German
| Message 95 of 130 02 November 2010 at 9:06am | IP Logged |
But a beautiful one, surely? Japanese is on my hitlist, but I've not yet made a serious
attempt to learn it yet, but the writing system does appeal to me, although I accept it is amongst the most difficult known (perhaps topped by Hittite!) but I think you are right, formiko, the spoken language appears to be like standard Italian or Spanish, clear reasonable easy sounds to make for an English speaker.
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Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5384 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian
| Message 96 of 130 02 November 2010 at 3:36pm | IP Logged |
Didgeridoo wrote:
My friend started learning Japanese a week or two ago and he said that it was damn easy. |
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How much could your friend possibly have learnt in a week or two? No one is in a position to make any comment on the difficulty level of a language after 2 weeks.
Even if one were learning Spanish and claimed it was easy after 2 weeks, they'd still be a loooooong way from fluency.
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