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Ranking list of languages by difficulty

  Tags: Difficulty
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion Post Reply
115 messages over 15 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... 7 ... 14 15 Next >>
Deecab
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5960 days ago

106 posts - 108 votes 
Speaks: English, Korean*
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 49 of 115
03 September 2008 at 11:45pm | IP Logged 
Karakorum wrote:
Deecab wrote:
[QUOTE=Karakorum]

It's quite ironic how two of us are actually trying to insist that our own native language is easier. You would think it's the opposite.



Lol, yeah that's true. Why are people always "proud" if their language is perceived as hard, Arabs can get pretty annoying with this.

-TKK, what's bat chim?


I think the people who truly deserve to be proud are those who took the effort to learn languages, not snobby people who think their language is the most difficult. Those people usually haven't even done serious linguistic analysis. Language is just language. Knowing a difficult one doesn't make the person smarter let alone superior.
1 person has voted this message useful



LuckyNomad
Groupie
Korea, South
Joined 6346 days ago

79 posts - 89 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Japanese, Korean

 
 Message 50 of 115
04 September 2008 at 12:03am | IP Logged 
Deecab wrote:
Wow, three more people that think Korean pronunciation is not easy.

In the end, learner's opinion weighs much more than mine. I should have been disqualified from rating Korean in the first place but I put my thought anyway.

What do we mean by pronunciation though? The difficulty of pronunciation itself only or are we also including the assimilation to the next consonant which causes sound change? Because if it's the latter, then I would imagine it can be somewhat challenging.


What I mean is, ㄱ ㅋ ㄲ all sound similar to English speakers. Also, ㅈ ㅉ, ㅃ ㅂ, ㄷ ㄸ, ㅅ ㅆ, all sound similar. It's the same way for Koreans who cannot distinguish
Z and J, R and L, F and P, or B and V.
Also, due to the fact that Koreans rarely ever encounter a foreigner who speaks Korean, if your pronunciation is slightly off, they won't understand you. If a non native English speaker speaks jumbled, poorly pronounced English, they can usually be understood because we are used to hearing poorly spoken English with different accents and prounciation. This is not true with Korean. Sometimes Koreans simply cannot grasp the fact that you are speaking their language to them and will not understand you, even though the korean standing next to them can.
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zerothinking
Senior Member
Australia
Joined 6371 days ago

528 posts - 772 votes 
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 51 of 115
04 September 2008 at 12:07am | IP Logged 
Like I always say. With time all languages are easy.
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TKK
Groupie
ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5947 days ago

55 posts - 58 votes 

 
 Message 52 of 115
04 September 2008 at 12:09am | IP Logged 


Korean 받침 is somewhat like Chinese 入聲 , please go to this website, as below,

English: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entering_tone

Simplified Chinese: http://zh.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%E5%85%A5%E8%81%B2 &variant=zh-hans

Traditional Chinese: http://zh.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%E5%85%A5%E8%81%B2 &variant=zh-hant



Edited by TKK on 04 September 2008 at 12:10am

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Deecab
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5960 days ago

106 posts - 108 votes 
Speaks: English, Korean*
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 53 of 115
04 September 2008 at 12:10am | IP Logged 
I have heard about the aspirated and non-aspirated sounds trouble. Can you give an example?

For instance even if you hear the ㄱ as ㄲ or vice versa, are you able to tell from the context what the speaker meant?
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TKK
Groupie
ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5947 days ago

55 posts - 58 votes 

 
 Message 54 of 115
04 September 2008 at 12:55am | IP Logged 

1, 받침 ㄱ·ㄴ·ㄹ·ㅁ·ㅂ·ㅇ·ㅋ·ㅍ·ㅎ (VERY EASY)


2, 받침   ㄳ·ㄵ·ㄶ·ㄺ·ㄻ·ㄼ·ㄽ· ·ㄿ·ㅀ·ㅁㄱ·.. .... (one ending with consonant and the other beginning with a vowel)?


3, 받침 (ㅈ ,ㄷ ,ㅅ ,ㅌ , ㅊ) I can't distinguish clearly between these pronunciation when they become bottom bat chim, maybe they sound much too similarly?




Edited by TKK on 04 September 2008 at 1:15am

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Deecab
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5960 days ago

106 posts - 108 votes 
Speaks: English, Korean*
Studies: Mandarin

 
 Message 55 of 115
04 September 2008 at 1:24am | IP Logged 
2) It may not be easy.

3) Actually they are pronounced approximately/exactly the same, contrary to the myth. You can't recognize the pronunciation difference until there is an assimilation with the ㅇ next character.
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TKK
Groupie
ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5947 days ago

55 posts - 58 votes 

 
 Message 56 of 115
04 September 2008 at 1:51am | IP Logged 


Actually, when it comes to the topic of Japanese writing system, Kanji, Hiragana, Katakana, each of them has a respective function.

1, KANJIs are used for loan words from ancient China.

2, KATAKANAs are used for load words from modern Occidents, such as USA, UK, Germany, France, & etc.

3, HIRAGANAs are used for Japanese inherent words.


By contraries, when you read a Korean article, you cannot understand immediately where any vocabulary originated from? From Korean itself, or from China, or from Western countries? It's not very easy to judge.




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