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What language did you find easiest? | ||
Tags: Easiness | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| 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 41 of 66 07 February 2015 at 2:20pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Sure, but that's not what most people are talking about when they're talking about "learning" or "speaking" a language. If someone says "do you speak Spanish?" they don't usually mean "Are you able to speak and write Spanish in a way indistinguishable from a native?" They mean "Can you communicate what you want to say and understand the answers?". And that's not so hard. Reaching C2 is not the goal for most and it's certainly not the norm. We don't usually say that learning to ride a bike is really difficult, because it takes years and years of strenuous practice to be able to compete in the Tour de France. 11 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5429 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 42 of 66 08 February 2015 at 2:23am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
I claim to speak only three languages and my plate is full. In fact, I find that the more I become proficient at a language the more I see there is to learn. Instead of getting easier, I see that Spanish is becoming more difficult. It's the law of diminishing returns. I thought it was going to be the other way around. The subtleties and nuances are driving me up a wall. This morning I learned the difference between tengo que and tendré que - I know one is the present and the other one the future. And this afternoon someone corrected my pronunciation of reanudar. I never thought I'd ever speak Spanish like a native, much less compete in the Tour de France. On the other hand, I believe that if speaking a language is being able to "communicate what you want to say" then I want to communicate what I want to say well. This is the crux of the matter. In my book if I can't speak a language well, I shouldn't bother speaking it at all. But this is just me. What is speaking a language well? Basically, it's being able use the resources of the language comfortably: feeling at ease in any situation and being able to engage native speakers. I'm not asking for perfection; I just want to feel that I'm doing justice to the language and that I can get my ideas and nuances across. For a concrete example, I want to be able to attend a conference in Madrid later this year and feel comfortable asking a question in front of 300 people. I write regularly in French, English and Spanish for professional purposes. I always have my Spanish writing checked by my tutor because I'm not totally comfortable with my knowledge of written Spanish. For me it's a question of pride and professional image. I don't like mistakes, other people's and certainly not my own. When I see mistakes in my blog entries here, I rush to correct them. My e-mails may not be examples of scintillating prose but at least they are free of egregious errors. When I read the post above, I twigged that not everybody agrees that speaking well is important. I can fully now understand and accept that shaky grammar, spelling mistakes, fuzzy pronunciation and dodgy vocabulary are not important as long as the other person get's the message. I see this every day. Why bother with the grammatical gender in French? What difference does it make if you say le beau voiture instead of la belle voiture? What's wrong with j'ai parti à la maison if everybody understands me? Who really cares about all that complicated subjunctive fluff in Spanish since people understand me anyways? I do Edited by s_allard on 08 February 2015 at 6:27am 3 persons have 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 43 of 66 08 February 2015 at 2:36am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Nonsense. That's elitism and holding yourself to a standard you can't expect native speakers of your own native tongue to adapt to. Do you know how many people cannot spell or write French for shit? Even native speakers. I've seen things like "j'ai penser" so many times it hurts. If you make a few mistakes it's not the end of the world. If you misplace a preposition - tough luck. There's a difference, by the way, between Tarzanesque "Je aller ici" and "Je vais à la restaurant"> The first person is a beginner, the second has forgotten the gender of the word restaurant but uses the proper construction. It happens to everyone. As long as it doesn't happen too often (and is in keeping with how often it happens to French people) it doesn't matter at all. Mistakes are a part of human being and without making them you quite simply can't learn. My tutoring sessions should have as many new mistakes as possible - that's how I get better. And you may live in Quebec where it doesn't matter, but I live in Beijing right now and I speak terrible Mandarin. Enough to get by, but not enough really. Although I can get cab rides or order a beer my Chinese is not very good. Should I shut up and not get in the cab? No, I should do it with my Tarzan Chinese (or not even that Tarzan - I often don't get half of the response). I'm a traveller in this sense. I know what the worth is of knowing a language even poorly. 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5429 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 44 of 66 08 February 2015 at 5:14am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
I'm trying to make sense of this. Here we have a spirited defence of making mistakes, all in error-free English. As quoted, I said that I believe that if I can't speak a language well, I won't bother speaking it. And I explicitly added "But this is just me." Well, maybe I wasn't perfectly clear. I didn't mean that I never open my mouth until I can speak perfectly. When I started learning Spanish I sounded terrible. But I wasn't talking about learning as a beginner. If I were learning Mandarin in Beijing, I would be making tons of mistakes. Mistakes are part of the learning process. I even gave an example of being corrected in Spanish - and in front of a class of 15 people. A bit embarrassing. But isn't the goal to make fewer and fewer mistakes? And even no mistakes at all, if possible. But I thought my message was clear: I take great pride in writing and speaking Spanish well because I have to use it professionally more and more often. As I have to in French and English. Just as the post above was written in impeccable English, when I write in any of my languages I try to make as few mistakes as possible. It is certainly true that native speakers make mistakes in their own language. Native speakers of French make certain kinds of mistakes that usually stem from homophones and grammatical inconsistencies. So, one will find things like maison à loué or je suis aller or even j'ai tombé. But no native speaker of French will ever say une beau femme, j'ai allé au travail or je vais à la restaurant. It is also important to note that in French especially, but I think this applies to most languages, mastery of the standard form is closely associated with education, culture and social status. But of course I fully recognize that many people do not use their other languages professionally and really don't care how poorly they speak or write. Understandably, for them je vais a la restaurant is no big deal as long as they are understood. I laugh when I read all this talk of how mistakes are not that important. When it comes to making a CV, writing a cover letter and going for an interview for an important job, as I have seen many times, the most diehard defender of sloppy language will quickly see religion and scramble to make sure that the language of all the documents is impeccable. And often hire a tutor to prepare for that interview in the target language. But I think all of this is petty squabbling. The real issue is the answer to the OP's question. In my mind, the question isn't really what language is the easiest, it's really what language is the least difficult to learn. But even then, we have to make a huge distinction between learning situations. Learning Mandarin in Beijing for a few months is a very different proposition from reading Chinese for Dummies on your own. I don't think anybody is really surprised to learn that most people who speak other languages really well have had massive exposure to the language in any number of ways. At the same time, most of us are not so lucky and do not have ready access to natural environments of massive exposure. The other point is that while there is certainly a big difference in the initial phase between learning a related language and and learning an unrelated language, especially if there is an exotic writing system in the latter case, the amount of effort to achieve a very high level of proficiency in the related and unrelated languages becomes exponential and may even converge. I say this because my Chinese friends tell me that for them French is the hardest language they've ever seen. I don't really believe this but all I can say is that even though French is supposedly one of the easiest languages around, I have met very few people who have truly mastered it without having spent long periods in French-speaking countries Edited by s_allard on 08 February 2015 at 5:19am 3 persons have 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 45 of 66 08 February 2015 at 8:54am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
You can't learn to speak well without speaking terribly first. You can't learn to run without learning to walk first. So yes, that is exactly what you said, and no, you were not clear at all.
No, the goal is to make each mistake only once, if possible. There will always be things we don't know even in our native languages, else people wouldn't take language class in their native tongue. Yes, by a certain time the amount of mistakes you make will be ;ess and that will make you more confident, but you will always make mistakes with everything. It's not about eliminating the fact you make mistakes - you can't. Don't bother. It's about learning from them and not making them twice. And in the beginning you should make as many as possible precisely so you can get them out of your system. Mistakes are entirely human. You make them too. Do not presume to believe that you can avoid them at all - learn to live with your sins like the human being you are.
Professional in what sense? I can give you loads of examples where it doesn't matter a dingo's kidney how many mistakes I made in my foreign language. If you're writing business contracts, then yeah I'd hold it to a different standard. But professional simply means "good enough to do the job" and that can require anything from being able to handle store transactions to be able to translate Molière into Japanese. What job are you talking about? Because that determines the level you need. An example: I was doing volunteer work at an orphanage in Romania and I had to take care of children, whom I had to get to listen to me. Now I speak good Romanian so I used my Romanian in order to help those little children play, or make music, or whatever. We did many things together. But did I have any obligation to speak Romanian? No, I absolutely did not, and many people didn't. But even the decent (but by far not perfect, as the children consistently reminded me of when I mispronounced things or said them strangely) meant that I did my job very well. But I didn't need to know any details per se. I just needed to be able to communicate with them and I could do that. Professional? Most certainly.
And can all of them discuss the intricacies of Proust's work? Or explain the exact events of the French Revolution in great detail? Or write an instruction manual for how to mount solar panel rigs? Because I bet you they can't. So don't hold me to that standard.
Yes some people are snobs. Others aren't. Welcome to the real world, where not everyone is a snob. Or has the same priorities. Or is the same person. I opened your eyes there, now didn't I?
Tell me a few things, Mr Allard: 1) How many people, out of all of those that study French, actually get to the level of, say where these job interviews are required? Because I can bet you that's a small percentage of all learners 2) How many of those that get to a level where this situation (job application and CV writing in the target language) is actually relevant? Because I could certainly deal with the French, but I don't have to write my CV in French because guess what I don't bloody care or need to because that's not a domain that I work in. 3) How many employers that require a knowledge of French are any good at testing it? Or even English for that matter? Because in the Netherlands pretty much anyone who wants to get a good job has to put English on their CV, but they all speak it and they can all do it because it's pretty much a given in their domains. Yes, if you're going to go through the very particular hoop of the job mill in Spanish then it makes sense to get someone to teach you business Spanish and help you out. But that accounts for...how many of us, exactly? Let me tell you: not very many. There's a market for those people out there, but it's not that big. Most people need it for their social lives, and then they are judged by a very different standard. Not your standards, I might add. I know because I've had to go through learning languages for exactly those reasons and I know what standards people aspire to.
I have spent a similar amount of time in China and Sweden, and my Swedish is way better. Waaaaaaaaaay better. Like you don't even believe how much better it is. Yes reading Chinese for Dummies on your own isn't the same as learning Mandarin in Beijing and being here in China has a few advantages, but most of it is all your own work. And any grammar work and such you can do at home from your armchair - I didn't have to buy a plane ticket at all to get good at Swedish. And I've never bought one (only a train ticket).
Bullshit. You have the Internet - make your own exposure. Anyone who doesn't have any exposure isn't putting in the hours to search for it and build it and that isn't anyone else's problem. Like I said, I've spent a total of 10 days in Sweden and I could probably handle a job interview in Swedish, I could handle complex novels, textbooks and so on. Anything else is excuses.
Yes it's hard to get really good, but you don't have to be really good at everything, because you're not really good at everything in English either! By your standards I am not fluent in Dutch or English.
If I had a dime for everyone who told me "language X is the hardest language ever" I would be a millionaire. Neither have I, but that's because very few people ever need to be that good. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5429 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 46 of 66 08 February 2015 at 10:00am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Well, methinks we have one angry camper here. I won't bother answering all that was said here because
I think we have wasted enough space away from the thread. But there is just one point that I would like to address. What is professional use of a language?
From what I gather and suspected, our professional language needs are not the same. As a professor of French, I correspond regularly with university students, professors and administrators, academic publishers, authors, journalists. I supervise graduate students and I have been on doctoral examination committees. From time to time I give interviews in the media. I write every working day. Do I carefully check my grammar and spelling. You bet? Would I submit an article to an prestigious journal without having some colleagues or a professional editor look at it? Heavens no. When I give presentations at academic conferences, do I check my powerpoint slides at least three times for mistakes? Of course, I do. My professional standard is basically academic written and spoken French, English and some Spanish. I like to think that my professional writing is impeccable, but I have to work at it. Frankly, I would be ashamed to write je vais à la restaurant even in an informal e-mail to a correspondent in France. As we say in French Le ridicule ne tue pas. To say that it doesn't matter a dingo's kidney (sic) how many mistakes one makes in a foreign language says it all. Not for me, thank God. 2 persons have 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 47 of 66 08 February 2015 at 10:09am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
This isn't restricted to language learning - I would have someone look over my Dutch or English work. Furthermore, how many of us are professors of French? Does it really matter to me, a strapping young lad teaching English to children in China and learning Chinese. Or to my best friend, an owner of a website design company that is pretty innovative and known in their domain? Or to the immigrant who has to flip burgers at McDonalds? Or to... you get my point.
I made hundreds of mistakes in my Romanian at the orphanage. They liked me more than everyone else. That says it all ;) If I was writing to an academic standard, I would get my stuff checked (actually I have a university degree in sciences and I've written my theses and been to academic conferences so I'm well aware what the requirements are). Actually I did get it checked. Because you know, I know what it is like. But for children at an orphanage who simply need attention and help and basic education, do you think it really matters whether I said șașe or șase? No. Academics doesn't count for all of us and that is as should be. You can be snobby in your ivory tower, I'm going to live a good life now here in China. Making loads of mistakes, getting wicked drunk, and having the best time of my life. Edited by tarvos on 08 February 2015 at 10:10am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4664 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 48 of 66 08 February 2015 at 11:17am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
But they will say "un espèce" on occasion. I have no professional or practical obligations tied to my languages but I still strive for perfection or at least some close approximation to it. But I do have this debate with myself sometimes. Maybe it would actually be more amusing to study a dozen languages to "reasonably fluent but still error-ridden conversation" level rather than trying to get a few to a really high, close to error-free level. And I guess nothing would prevent me from having excellent abilities in a few languages and "just enough to fumble through" ones in a dozen others. Anyway, I think I have more fun when I'm reasonably confident that I'm getting it all right or pretty darn close. It seems like a few months into starting a language this drive for perfectionism always kicks in for me. 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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