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World’s most difficult language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Raincrowlee Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 6708 days ago 621 posts - 808 votes  Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Indonesian, Japanese | Message 57 of 130 03 November 2007 at 5:19am | IP Logged | |||||
Japanese having some sort of inflections makes its grammar much more difficult than Chinese, which has no inflections. Japanese also has the disadvantage of having a number of forms for verbs and adjectives which simply have to be memorized, with always adds to a language's complexity. There is also the fact that Japanese has long words which tend to sound alike to an outsider. One of the sentences from Pimsleur that always stood out in this regard was "Jikan ga kakarimasu kara," which means "because it takes time." The learner's head is swimming in a sea of kas. And the politeness forms in Japanese are much more present than in Mandarin, especially the way Japanese tends to be taught (polite --> plain). Mandarin's politeness is more similar to English, where it is a matter of vocabulary. While the same could be argued about Japanese, the politeness levels are usually taught immediately at a basic level, which cannot be transferred to normal, casual conversation, and that is another thing that makes learners view ti as much more difficult. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| xtremelingo Trilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6293 days ago 398 posts - 515 votes Speaks: English*, Hindi*, Punjabi* Studies: German, French, Arabic (Written) | Message 58 of 130 04 November 2007 at 2:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Depends on your bias.
From an IE community, I find the sounds and script of Arabic very familiar and recognizable. Personally, I would think one of the "Chinese-type" languages would be difficult for me, because the sound system is completely different to what I am used too. I think the allure with Arabic is that it does have a very different looking script, it is also writiten from right to left (which scares some people), and the language has been popularized lately by media and war. It also has a very distinct sound compared to other popular languages that our European counterparts aren't quite used too, therefore it APPEARS to be difficult. A possibly it's difficulty only appears difficult because it has been popularized by threads such as these ones to be difficult. Personally, I don't think anything is difficult until you've actually tried it yourself and can confidently say you were unsuccessful. Until then, you will never know. Who knows, you might have a knack or special gift for picking up Arabic than you expected! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| LilleOSC Senior Member United States lille.theoffside.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6697 days ago 545 posts - 546 votes 4 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: French, Arabic (Written) | Message 59 of 130 05 November 2007 at 4:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
Aren't there less common characters in Japanese? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Walshy Triglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6948 days ago 335 posts - 365 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German | Message 60 of 130 09 November 2007 at 9:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
I don't know the logic behind it, but the FSI has based this decision, that Japanese is the most difficult on the list, on statistics from their classes and students who are studying a whole range of languages, and so it really is the most reasonable conclusion that we can draw. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ttisha448 Newbie United States Joined 6259 days ago 6 posts - 6 votes Speaks: English | Message 61 of 130 11 November 2007 at 3:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think that the most difficult language I heard of is one from Indonesia.My appologies I cannot renember the name but I know that it is spoken from the back of the throat.
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| jimbo Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6300 days ago 469 posts - 642 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Japanese, Latin | Message 62 of 130 11 November 2007 at 10:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
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There are so many languages in Indonesia that it would not surprise me if they had both the world's easiest and the most difficult spoken language. Heck, they even had hobbits:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/10/1027_041027_ homo_floresiensis.html 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bojan Bilingual Pentaglot Newbie Germany Joined 6230 days ago 35 posts - 35 votes Speaks: Croatian, Serbian, Slovenian*, German*, English | Message 63 of 130 12 November 2007 at 4:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I guess its Icelandic and Hungarian.
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| icing_death Senior Member United States Joined 5867 days ago 296 posts - 302 votes Speaks: English* | Message 64 of 130 21 March 2009 at 9:54am | IP Logged | |||||
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Japanese by a hair over Mandarin. For those who voted for Korean - you've got to be kidding. It takes so long to get fluent reading/writing Japanese or Chinese, they easily blow away any other language. Arabic is probably pretty tough, since one really needs to learn 2 languages to become fluent.
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