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What language did you find easiest? | ||
Tags: Easiness | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5261 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 9 of 66 02 February 2015 at 3:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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Speaking as someone who has learned a few (related) languages on his own, I can sum it up by saying for me my first second language, Spanish, was the hardest. My second foreign language was easier. My third language, Haitian Creole was the easiest. Haitian Creole was so much easier because of lack of conjugations and logical spelling. My experiences with Spanish and Portuguese taught me what to pay attention to while learning and cognates with English (via French and Latin), Spanish and Portuguese helped tremendously.
Like Ari, my knowledge of Spanish helped tremendously with Portuguese. Likewise, studying Ladino is so much easier with both Portuguese and Spanish under my belt. My limitation in Djudeo-espanyol comes from my lack of familiarity with Turkish and Hebrew. If Ladino (Djudeo-espanyol) were listed here as a language, I'd probably move it up to basic fluency at this point, but I will never reach "advanced" fluency in the language because I don't get the chance to speak it or consume much media. It's not just the cognates and related grammar, it's also knowing how to learn and what works best for me in learning. The experience I've gained in learning my first second language to a high level has been a huge advantage for me. It gave me the keys to unlock the others. The experience unlocking the others means I'm much better at opening the locks now. Edited by iguanamon on 02 February 2015 at 3:27pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| jbadg76421 Groupie United States Joined 4387 days ago 51 posts - 92 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, French, Esperanto | Message 10 of 66 02 February 2015 at 5:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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French, even though it was the language I
enjoyed learning the least and still don't particularly like it. It was probably easier because of the years of Spanish I had in school. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6581 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 11 of 66 02 February 2015 at 6:00pm | IP Logged | ||
That's an excellent point. I can learn languages a lot faster now than when I was a diglot. I think part of it is knowing the tricks of the trade, and part of it is just having the confidence to keep plugging away, knowing that my brain will sort it all out, even if I don't see any immediate progress. I just never feel frustrated or useless anymore; I know it's just a matter of putting in the hours. The idea that "I'm never going to learn this language" isn't on the map anymore. If I do quit the language (which I often do, just to return again later), it's because I feel there are better uses for my time, and I don't feel "defeated" by it. I think this confidence is an important factor in the increasing ease of learning new languages. So yeah, so far, the answer to the question have always been "the last one", but then I've been learning increasingly easy languages. I'm starting to tackle German and Czech now, and I don't think eaither of them will be as easy as Portuguese was. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5165 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 12 of 66 02 February 2015 at 7:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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Papiamento. The vocabulary is largely Romance with some English and Dutch words, and the grammar is that of a creole language, so, no conjugations and much less inflections. The language is enunciated clearly, too, though not like Italian. Besides, even though it is a creole language, there is just enough material to learn from when you have the Iberian vocabulary discount.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4706 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 13 of 66 02 February 2015 at 8:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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Romanian and Swedish. Mostly because I had a
tonne of languages under my belt already and they are related to my best ones. Hardest were French and Russian. Mostly because they were firsts. Edited by tarvos on 02 February 2015 at 8:12pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5380 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 14 of 66 02 February 2015 at 8:50pm | IP Logged | ||
Norwegian was the first language I studied after English -- all I had access to back then was a tiny Berlitz dictionary and a few Norwegian newspapers, and in very little time, I was able to correspond with someone from Norway in Norwegian. Quite straight-forward. Otherwise, I'd have to say Italian was easiest (coming from French, at least). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 5058 days ago 361 posts - 921 votes Speaks: Portuguese, English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, French Studies: Mandarin, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Greek, Latin, Nepali, Modern Hebrew | Message 15 of 66 02 February 2015 at 9:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'll rank all of mine in subjective difficulty, easiest to hardest, along with the languages I already had some
knowledge of (not necessarily high level) that were helpful: Esperanto (I had English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Latin, Greek, and Russian) Spanish (I had Portuguese and French) Dutch (I had German, English, and Swedish) Italian (I had French, Portuguese, and Spanish) Norwegian (I had English, German, Swedish, and Danish) Danish (I had English, German, and Swedish) ~~ significant gap here Swedish (I had English) French (I had Portuguese, but it was my first) German (I had English and Swedish) Greek Polish (I had Russian) Nepali Russian Latin (I had Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Italian) ~~ significant gap here Japanese (I had Mandarin) Cantonese (I had Mandarin) Hebrew Korean (I had Mandarin) Mandarin English: n/a (Native) Portuguese: n/a (Raised bilingual) Edited by robarb on 02 February 2015 at 9:28pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6596 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 16 of 66 02 February 2015 at 9:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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Perhaps Spanish, because I had anything I could dream of (and a background in Portuguese and Latin). The biggest difficulties were purely psychological.
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