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Ranking list of languages by difficulty | ||
Tags: Difficulty | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| TKK Groupie ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5947 days ago 55 posts - 58 votes  | Message 1 of 115 31 August 2008 at 12:00am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Ranking list of languages by learning difficulty for native speakers of various languages ?
Would you please rank the following languages (listed in a random order), from hardest to easiest & from the viewpoint of your own native language. & detailed information would be much appreciated. French（法语） Italian（意大利语） Spanish（西班牙语） Portuguese（葡萄牙语） Romanian（罗马尼亚语） German（德语） Dutch（荷兰语） Swedish（瑞典语） Norwegian（挪威语） Danish（丹麦语） Afrikaans（南非荷兰语） Russian（俄语） Greek（希腊语<现代希腊国语>） Hebrew（希伯来语<以色列国语>） Persian（波斯语） Turkish（土耳其语） Hungarian（匈牙利语） Finnish（芬兰语） Thai（泰语） Vietnamese（越南语） Arabic（阿拉伯语） Mandarin（汉语） Japanese（日语） Korean（韩语） Cantonese（粤语） Minnanese（闽南语） NO SPAMS, Please! Thank you very much! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 6033 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes 5 sounds | Message 2 of 115 31 August 2008 at 5:05am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I have omitted a few since my knowledge about them is virtually non-existent.
Difficult -> Easy Cantonese Eight tones & tons of complicated characters. To make things worse, there are huge discrepancies between the written and spoken language. Mandarin Five tones & tons of complicated characters. Japanese No tones but the grammar is more elaborate. Mastering the witting system still requires a lot of effort. Finnish Uses the Roman script but the grammar is quite complex (11 cases? Is this just a legend...) and the vocabulary originates in outer space. Thai This Language is supposed to be easy in terms of grammar but still it is quite different form Indo-European languages. Greek Has its own script, four cases, three genders and other grammatical wonders. Luckily so many borrowings form Greek had occurred during the centuries that the vocabulary is not very alien. Swedish / Norwegian / Danish Complicated grammar, strange phonetics, multiple literary norms and dialects in the case of Norwegian. German Complicated grammar, long words, verbs clutter at the end of sentences ;p. Dutch / Afrikaans Still not easy but has much in common with English. French Complicated spelling, nasty phonetics and somewhat elaborate verb conjugations. Russian Six cases and other nasty stuff but shares vocabulary with other Slavic language. Italian I don't have much experience with Italian but as far as my superficial observations go it appears to be more phonetic than French. The grammar is similar, with strong influence from Latin. Romanian Somewhat like Italian save for the vocabulary shared with Slavic languages. Spanish / Portuguese Spanish has the reputation of being the most logical out of the romance languages; Portuguese should be similar in that respect. Please forgive me or correct me if I've got it wrong somewhere :). Edited by Sennin on 31 August 2008 at 10:11am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| ' Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5939 days ago 120 posts - 120 votes Speaks: English*, Hungarian* | Message 3 of 115 31 August 2008 at 5:14am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Finnish does have some 15 cases (I think magyar still beat them)
Grammatical nominatiivi genetiivi akkusatiivi partitiivi Locative (internal) inessiivi elatiivi illatiivi Locative (external) adessiivi ablatiivi allatiivi Marginal essiivi translatiivi instruktiivi abessiivi komitatiivi Anyway, Mandarin has 4 tones, not 6 and I've heard that Japanese isn't actually that hard once you've mastered the spelling. I'd also put French as harder than German, though I've done very little French. Even so, German shares a lot with English. The scandinavian languages also don't conjugate for person/number so they'd be easier than German (but again I've done very little. I've heard form my parents who were forced to do it, that Russian is in fact a very simple language once you master the pronounciations. Mandarin is also very analytic which makes it easier to master So, from my VERY limited knowledge, and NOT accoutning for writing systems, from the perspective of an English speaker: Hungarian（匈牙利语）/Finnish（芬兰语） Cantonese（粤语） Mandarin（汉语） Arabic（阿拉伯语）/Hebrew（希伯来语<以色列 语>） Turkish（土耳其语） Persian（波斯语） Greek（希腊语<现代希腊国语>） Japanese（日语） [I can't compare Romance languages] French（法语） Italian（意大利语） Spanish（西班牙语） Portuguese（葡萄牙语） Romanian（罗马尼亚语） Russian（俄语） German（德语） Swedish（瑞典语）/Norwegian（挪威语）/Danish（丹 麦语） Dutch（荷兰语） Afrikaans（南非荷兰语） I have no idea about these: Thai（泰语） Vietnamese（越南语） Korean（韩语） Minnanese（闽南语） Edited by ' on 31 August 2008 at 5:28am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Autarkis Triglot Groupie Switzerland twitter.com/Autarkis Joined 5951 days ago 95 posts - 106 votes 4 sounds Speaks: German*, English, French Studies: Italian | Message 4 of 115 31 August 2008 at 6:24am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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It heavily depends where your coming from, figuratively.
If you grew up in Hongkong, you might have been exposed to more English than the average central Chinese person. Thus, German will be easier to you than for them, because English and German share some similarities. If you grew up a conservative catholic and have had some close encounters with Latin, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian might be simpler to you. I suggest you take a look at this List, where a lot of smart people on these forum have made their insights public. My vote for the most difficult language goes out to Arabic. Deadly pronounciation (Mandarin is a cakewalk compared to it, no offense), Grammar similar to but more complex than French AND Japanese (in my view at least, I've really just looked into it briefly), hundreds of accents, no widespread everyday use of the formal version, a lot of slang, I've got no access to international Arabic TV stations (if they even exist), plus an unusual writing system. Though I will admit that achieving a high competence in Mandarin, Cantonese or Japanese might be more difficult since a lot of character have to be mastered and I believe that a certain degree of competence can only be achieved through reading and writing, in terms of everyday fluency, Arabic tops my list. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 6033 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes 5 sounds | Message 5 of 115 31 August 2008 at 6:39am | IP Logged | ||||||||
4 + 1 neutral tone, actually. I was already reproached for this inaccuracy by jonilinga. Sorry for witting it at random. Japanese also appears to have a tone-like feature (pitch accent.)
French also shares a lot with English, the amount of common vocabulary is astonishingly large for two languages that are in different language families.
Romanian might actually be harder than Italian for native speakers of English, due to Slavic influences and loanwords. (Just an educated guess) Edited by Sennin on 31 August 2008 at 6:42am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| ' Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5939 days ago 120 posts - 120 votes Speaks: English*, Hungarian* | Message 6 of 115 31 August 2008 at 7:08am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I forgot about the vocab. Indeed, I can get the gist of basic French just fromt he similarity to English, better than I could fare with German even though I've had far more exposure.
I didn't attempt to order them, that was just the order they were in in the OP. TBH, I'd probably go somethign like: Romanian（罗马尼亚语） Portuguese（葡萄牙语） French（法语） Italian（意大利语） Spanish（西班牙语） Though, I do belive Italian has an inordinate number of irregular verbs...but then, don't we all? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| TKK Groupie ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5947 days ago 55 posts - 58 votes | Message 7 of 115 31 August 2008 at 7:22am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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In My Opinion, From Hardest To Easiest
Romance languages: Romanian（罗马尼亚语）>Portuguese（葡萄牙语) > Italian（意大利语）>French（法语）>Spanish （西班牙语） Germanic languages: German（德语）>Dutch（荷兰语）, I haven't learned "Scandinavian languages". Russian（俄语）---Too hard, much harder than German. Arabic（阿拉伯语）---The most difficult one among all the languages.A nightmare! Mandarin（汉语）---Very easy for me, because it's my native language. hahahaha. Japanese（日语）---Not very difficult, but it's an effort to learn it very well. Korean（韩语）---The same with Japanese, or quite similar to the status of Japanese. Cantonese（粤语）---Not very difficult, but it seems & sounds just like Classical Chinese, when I heard it, I just felt, I was still living in ancient China (about 2 or 3 thousands of years ago). Minnanese（闽南语）---More difficult than Cantonese, and it seems & sounds more similar to Classical Chinese than other dialects. Edited by TKK on 31 August 2008 at 7:25am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| ' Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5939 days ago 120 posts - 120 votes Speaks: English*, Hungarian* | Message 8 of 115 31 August 2008 at 7:26am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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"have not learnt"
Hey, do we have to keep typing the mandarin characters? 'Cos it's really annoying. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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