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World’s most difficult language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Frisco Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6859 days ago 380 posts - 398 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Italian, Turkish, Mandarin | Message 41 of 130 14 October 2007 at 1:04am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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The title should probably read "most difficult language of 100 million speakers or more" because there are many more languages out there that have extremely exotic grammatical features and sounds. Navajo scares me every time I look at it.
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| skeeterses Senior Member United States angelfire.com/games5Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6621 days ago 302 posts - 356 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Korean, Spanish | Message 42 of 130 14 October 2007 at 4:02am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Some people on this bulletin board have pointed out the old saying, "The most difficult language is the one you've never tried to learn." With that anecdote in mind, I'll probably go for the CJK(Chinese, Japanese, Korean) challenge after I finish learning Korean. If I ever accomplish that kind of challenge, I can say that I'll have a good answer for most-difficult language 15 years from now.
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| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6275 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 43 of 130 14 October 2007 at 7:10am | IP Logged | ||||||||
That may be true. I have learned a little Arabic and would say that it is a difficult language but I feel there are more difficult ones out there. I have read about the features of Japanese, Chinese and Korean and they seem to me more difficult, but it is also true that I have made no attempt to study them, whereas Arabic has lost a little of its mystique through a little familiarity. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| owshawng Senior Member United States Joined 6889 days ago 202 posts - 217 votes Speaks: English* | Message 44 of 130 14 October 2007 at 10:18am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I did all 90 lessons for mandarin and no, you don't speak at an intermediate level. It covered 400 to 500 words, but several of them were useless like "microphone", "admiring flowers" and such. It was good for improving my pronounciation. If native speakers spoke slowly I could understand some of the words and a few phrases, but was no where near conversational. Native speakers could understand me, but they tended to think i knew a lot more since my pronounciation was pretty good. I think all 3 mandarin levels are equal to about the first 30 or so lessons of Assimil's Chinese with ease (106 lessons over 2 volumes). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6897 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 45 of 130 14 October 2007 at 11:21am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Same here and I agree. Imho I was not even at a high beginner lever after the 90 lessons, maybe mid-beginner or something. But it does give you a good base to build on.
I have the Assimil series but I haven't used it consistently, just fooled around with it a little. Still I personally estimate Pimsleur higher than you do. Comparing total vocabulary does not necessarily give you the right picture either. Each vocabulary item that comes up in Pimsleur is banged in time and again over two to four consecutive lessons (EDIT: and in varying contexts too), and then it will pop up again a few times, some five to ten lessons later for reinforcement. You can't really compare that to a word like kuzi = trousers, fleetingly being mentioned once in one of the early Assimil lessons, never to be heard of again in the rest of the program. Edited by Hencke on 14 October 2007 at 11:53am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| jimbo Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6297 days ago 469 posts - 642 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Japanese, Latin | Message 46 of 130 14 October 2007 at 12:29pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I've never studied Arabic so I can't comment on that. I have spent a lot of time on Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.
Way back I tried a bit of Cantonese. (Really hope to get back to that someday...) The hardest by far for me is Taiwanese (i.e. Minnan with a twist). Tone sandhi. Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch. The pain never ends. I just can't get anywhere with this language. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_sandhi 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| solidsnake Diglot Senior Member China Joined 7044 days ago 469 posts - 488 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin | Message 47 of 130 14 October 2007 at 3:45pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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jimbo- I'd actually like to hear your opinion on which of the three you think is the most difficult: Japanese, korean, or CANTONESE?
Also, have you attempted vietnamese at all? Thoughts? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| jimbo Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6297 days ago 469 posts - 642 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Japanese, Latin | Message 48 of 130 14 October 2007 at 8:44pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Sorry, I haven't really looked at Cantonese for like fifteen years so my comments on that are probably not of
much value. For me, it just seemed to be fun and seemed to stick in my head better than Taiwanese. (Taiwanese is fun too, I just can't get anywhere with the language.) I think that since you speak Mandarin, Cantonese would be a lot easier than either Korean or Japanese. I haven't tried Vietnamese (yet?) but I've started gathering materials. Last year I had a connecting flight that went through Hanoi. Kind of a neat place with decent bookstores. I even scored some books of Tang poetry in Chinese but with the Vietnamese pronunciation of characters listed followed by a translation into modern Vietnamese. Looks like there is lots of fun that could be had with that. On the other hand, I ran into a ton of Koreans and a fair number of Japanese people in Hanoi during my brief stay so it isn't like they are useless. Also, there was a suprising number of books in Vietnamese teaching KOREAN. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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