tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4047 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch
| Message 3441 of 3737 03 November 2014 at 11:08pm | IP Logged |
When you meet a nice Polish girl and then you start to see her immediately much less fascinating when she starts to
claim very proudly the difficulty of her language, finally realising that you're not even listening to her anymore
because the only things you have in mind are the words of Benny Lewis:
Quote:
It’s my native language, and my ego is weak so I need validation, and speaking the “world’s hardest
language” does the trick! |
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Edited by tristano on 03 November 2014 at 11:08pm
3 persons have voted this message useful
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Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5334 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian
| Message 3442 of 3737 04 November 2014 at 7:58am | IP Logged |
tristano wrote:
When you meet a nice Polish girl and then you start to see her immediately much less
fascinating when she starts to
claim very proudly the difficulty of her language, finally realising that you're not even listening to her anymore
because the only things you have in mind are the words of Benny Lewis:
Quote:
It’s my native language, and my ego is weak so I need validation, and speaking the “world’s hardest
language” does the trick! |
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In all fairness Polish is not the easiest language around :-) Note that you will not find many Scandinavians
making the same claim, not because we have a strong ego, but because it would be ridiculous. However
most of the Spaniards I know claim that Spanish is extremely complicated because a Spanish word can
mean many different things...
I just smile politely ;-)
2 persons have voted this message useful
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Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4253 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian
| Message 3443 of 3737 04 November 2014 at 10:06am | IP Logged |
Oddly enough I've never heard a Finn make that claim. It's hilarious how overrated the difficulty of nominal cases is though. I'd say the fusionality with the weak and strong grades are much trickier in Finnish than the cases.
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tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4047 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch
| Message 3444 of 3737 04 November 2014 at 11:14am | IP Logged |
Solfrid Cristin wrote:
In all fairness Polish is not the easiest language around :-) Note that you will not
find many Scandinavians
making the same claim, not because we have a strong ego, but because it would be
ridiculous. However
most of the Spaniards I know claim that Spanish is extremely complicated because a
Spanish word can
mean many different things...
I just smile politely ;-) |
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Well, I have to say that many Italians think that Italian is one of the hardest
languages in the world to learn. Because of...? The subjunctive I guess? Well.
Polish is certainly difficult but maybe instead of saying things like "it's too
difficult for foreigners" and "there are 7 cases! how can you learn that" you can give
me some precious insight.
And difficulty should be contextualized. I personally think that I would have many
more problems with Danish than with Polish. Also, language learning is not a sprint
but a marathon. I think that learning how to speak English at the highest levels is
more difficult than doing the same with Russian. But those are just my opinions, not
supported by real facts and also I'm terribly off topic :) :) :)
Edited by tristano on 04 November 2014 at 11:15am
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Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish
| Message 3445 of 3737 04 November 2014 at 2:18pm | IP Logged |
Henkkles wrote:
Oddly enough I've never heard a Finn make that claim. It's hilarious how overrated the difficulty of nominal cases is though. I'd say the fusionality with the weak and strong grades are much trickier in Finnish than the cases. |
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I have, though mostly random people online. Nobody has told that to me so far ;)
I remember seeing claims that the dialects/diglossia are the hardest thing. "It's hard even for me", yeah.
I've also heard this claim about Portuguese. Admittedly it was after I wrote gracias, because I had heard my fave Portuguese singer saying this on a live recording and didn't realize the concert was in Spain :-) (this was years before I started learning PT)
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Amerykanka Hexaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5171 days ago 657 posts - 890 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Polish, Latin, Ancient Greek, Russian
| Message 3446 of 3737 08 November 2014 at 7:57pm | IP Logged |
When you get into your friend's car and are unfazed and unsurprised when he addresses you in Latin rather than in English.
When you get to the grocery store and continue speaking Latin inside. Since neither of you are very good at spoken Latin, your conversations include lots of pauses, theatrical expressions, and wild hand motions. Occasionally one of you switches in frustration to Spanish.
When you strongly suspect that most of the other customers doubted your sanity . . . and are proud of it. :)
Edit: Oh, yes, and when you are excited about this being your 600th post.
Edited by Amerykanka on 08 November 2014 at 7:57pm
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psy88 Senior Member United States Joined 5591 days ago 469 posts - 882 votes Studies: Spanish*, Japanese, Latin, French
| Message 3447 of 3737 09 November 2014 at 1:11am | IP Logged |
When you see a posting in the Learning Techniques section "Understand TV in 30 Days" and click on it only to be very disappointed that it is about television, not some language called TV, which of course would be a language you had never heard of before, nor was it about some other learning program like MT.
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Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish
| Message 3448 of 3737 09 November 2014 at 3:31pm | IP Logged |
When your friend earns the "I believe in IPA" badge on a beer site and you're confused.
Edited by Serpent on 09 November 2014 at 3:32pm
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