I disagree with difficulty ratings (General discussion) Language Learning Forum

I disagree with difficulty ratings
Tags: Placement Test \| Difficulty \| English \| German
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Language Learning Forum : General discussion

54 messages over 7 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

unlocked87
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Message 49 of 54

12 October 2006 at 1:46am | IP Logged

frenkeld wrote:

kronos77 wrote:

The only thing harder about German is the unfamiliarity of the case system. Once you clear that hurdle ...

If one is to believe the FSI data, that little hurdle seems to require 150+ hours.

Here is the table:

http://www.nvtc.gov/lotw/months/november/learningExpectation s.html

So, it is harder, although probably not enough to stop someone who wants to learn German instead of French.

Why is German completely separated from all other languages on that chart?
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Alijsh
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Message 50 of 54

12 October 2006 at 3:16am | IP Logged

unlocked87 wrote:

Why is German completely separated from all other languages on that chart?

Because the number of full-time weeks to achieve Professional Speaking and Reading ability of German, is between Category I and II languages. It can't be classified in either of them.

Edited by Alijsh on 12 October 2006 at 3:17am
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Alijsh
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Message 51 of 54

19 October 2006 at 11:56pm | IP Logged

patuco wrote:

Why not use 1 to 10 rather than 1 to 5 with half values?

It's obvious. Using half values doubles accuracy, whereas with 1-10, the accuracy doesn't change. For example, this way, I can give 2.5 to Spanish.

Edited by Alijsh on 19 October 2006 at 11:58pm
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lady_skywalker
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Message 52 of 54

20 October 2006 at 2:59am | IP Logged

Alijsh wrote:

patuco wrote:

Why not use 1 to 10 rather than 1 to 5 with half values?

It's obvious. Using half values doubles accuracy, whereas with 1-10, the accuracy doesn't change. For example, this way, I can give 2.5 to Spanish.

Surely 2.5 out of 5 means the same as 5 out of 10? This just reminds me of certain Maths lessons when I was in school... :)
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patuco
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Message 53 of 54

20 October 2006 at 6:28am | IP Logged

lady_skywalker wrote:

Surely 2.5 out of 5 means the same as 5 out of 10?

I thought so too!
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deniz2
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Message 54 of 54

22 October 2010 at 2:07pm | IP Logged

Alijsh wrote:

Comments on page "Choosing the language you want to learn"

The difficulty ranking given to languages at [http://www.micheloud.com/FXM/LA/LA/index.htm] is absolutely incorrect. It's quite obvious that the rankings have been given thru a personal standing (a certain language might be easy for certain people but not for all and when giving ranking we must think globally). And ranking must be given for both writing system and grammar.

(My native language is Persian but I have acquaintance with more than 20 languages.)

=-= English -=-
How do you give it 2 signs? It isn't easy at all. Just consider the pronunciation. You must learn the pronunciation for almost every new word. In Spanish, German, French, and Italian it's quite easy to guess the correct pronunciation. English spelling is very complex.

=-= Spanish =-=
Spanish is a full-featured language. Yet it isn't so easy to have just 1 sign.

In fact 1 sign only goes for Esperanto and other constructed languages. No natural language is as easy as Esperanto so that to be given 1 star. Portuguese, Spanish, etc. deserve 3 signs at least however Portuguese must be relatively harder than Spanish.

=-= Persian =-=
First, please stop calling it Farsi. Only say Farsi when you do say Deutsch instead of German, français instead of French etc. in English.

I can't believe my eyes. 6 signs for Persian. What a joke! Persian is harder than Arabic, Japanese, Russian and Finnish.

Persian has the easiest grammar among world languages. It's gender-free, no declension, regular verb system. You'll have no particular difficulty in learning Persian grammar. The hard thing is writing system (that's why I say we must consider two rankings. one for grammar and one for writing system) but it's not as hard as it seems.

Persian abjad has just 32 letters whereas to master Japanese you must know more than 3000 characters (kanji) which most of them have 4 different readings (called onyumi, kunyumi). But Japanese grammar is not so hard.

I know Arabic grammar as well as a native. It must be given 4 signs to Arabic, at least.

Arabic and Persian use the same writing system but they are two different language. There's no grammatical relationship between the languages. Arabic is a Semitic language just like Hebrew whereas Persian is an Indo-European language just like Greek, Latin, English, French, and Russian.

=-= German =-=

German has noun and adjective declension because of having 4 cases, has 3 genders. So it's harder than other 3-sign languages like French.I think it must be given 4 signs.

Sorry but I don’t agree with you. The spelling (or reading whatever it is) may be more difficult in English than French, German or Russian but it still has ZERO difficulty. Most of the readings can easily be guessed because most of them are already similar. You just have to memorize the ones different. Even memorizing the genders of every word in French or German is even much much more difficult than memorizing the spelling of all the words in English. Out of 10 I would give 7 points to the grammar of French and 2 points to its writing totally making 9 points. Again I would give 8 points to German grammar but 0 point to writing. That would totally make 8 points. You say your native language is Arabic so it should be hard for you to guess its difficulty. You give same points to German and Arabic grammar. Well, I don’t know but I was told that as only grammar (excluding writing) German was more difficult.

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