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What ’easy’ language do you find hard? | ||
Tags: Difficulty | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Stolan Senior Member United States Joined 4029 days ago 274 posts - 368 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Thai, Lowland Scots Studies: Arabic (classical), Cantonese | Message 121 of 134 28 May 2014 at 6:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Okay....I still also feel annoyed my Europeanstrawnmenhalfwits choose to learn Japanese instead of Chinese. Edited by Stolan on 28 May 2014 at 6:50pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4044 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 122 of 134 28 May 2014 at 6:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
Hi understand your opinion, but still there is a thing that doesn't convince me. You say - idiots consider English the easiest language of them all because of the simple grammar - but mandarin's grammar is even easier - so that makes mandarin the easiest language in the world that grammar-wise can even be true, I guess it is the least difficult major language on a grammar perspective. But the writing system is crazy (beautiful, fascinating, but still a problem even for natives), the pronunciation really difficult for who doesn't come from a tonal language. Both this aspects are overcomeable with thousands of hours of study and effort and sincere motivations, but still makes me think that it's not that easy. I want to learn Mandarin, but the motivation is definitely not because of the presumable easy grammar. On a side note, I think Japanese is more popular because of the easier pronunciation. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Stolan Senior Member United States Joined 4029 days ago 274 posts - 368 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Thai, Lowland Scots Studies: Arabic (classical), Cantonese | Message 123 of 134 28 May 2014 at 6:58pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I never said Mandarin is the easiest languages in the world, but I made a point that it is ironic how English is viewed
yet Mandarin is unscathed. I also pointed out how ridiculous it is that Mandarin is often listed as "one of the hardest languages in the world" when it has undergone great simplification compared to numerous other dialects which retain conservative grammatical and phonological features such as larger consonant inventories, tonal sandhi, numerous negative adverbs, measure words, and modal particles. Mandarin is at the same level as English and Spanish like I said, not Russian. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6594 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 124 of 134 28 May 2014 at 8:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Grammatically yes, but most Europeans can learn to understand, pronounce and write Russian faster than Mandarin. I'm not speaking of perfection, learning any language to perfection is hard. Even English ;)
As for Japanese, I think the popularity is more due to the (modern) culture. Things like anime and music. Edited by Serpent on 28 May 2014 at 8:58pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4287 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 125 of 134 28 May 2014 at 8:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I had a conversation with an old friend with whom I went to primary and secondary
school, and we learnt Spanish together. Now he learns Russian and Arabic, but added French to his list this week, saying that French is the hardest language of all four to pronounce and understand, despite the ease in reading it from Spanish and English due to the ridiculous amount of Romance vocabulary and cognates of the latter. We discussed for literally over one hour about the pronunciation of œuf and œufs, the former being completely unpredictable, and the latter being not only completely unpredictable, but almost as if it went beyond the limit towards trying to confuse anyone who reads that word. We tried to find some sort of logic, but failed. I remember in school I told him, half-jokingly, that if we ever learnt French that we should just save frustration by pronouncing French phonetically, i.e. with the Spanish or Italian alphabet. At times, it seems like that could have been serious. I am someone who, due to being a native Anglophone, come from no background with a tonal language, and honestly Mandarin and its tones are not as difficult as one purports. I wonder if those who consider Mandarin and its tones to be difficult to try to learn Fukien, which has eight tones. Not only spoken in the PRC, but this is what one would most often hear from Chinese who live in Singapore, Malaya, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Taiwan. Edited by 1e4e6 on 28 May 2014 at 9:01pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Stolan Senior Member United States Joined 4029 days ago 274 posts - 368 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Thai, Lowland Scots Studies: Arabic (classical), Cantonese | Message 126 of 134 28 May 2014 at 9:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
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To serpent
Why the heck do you think tones are more difficult than other phonological difficulties to begin with? A writing system is a man made feature, leave it out of linguistics. Mandarin is Indonesian with 4 tones really, both suffered as a lingua Franca with constant disruption combined with the fact that east Asia favors dangerously low complexity in derivation and grammar. ( the process is reversing in chinese dialects) That whole area has something weird going on anyway (the languages, the people are fantastic) The Mandarin language has only 1700 permitted syllables (including tones) English has potentially 42,000 based on what is permitted for one syllable, this also means more processes occur on a overall such as restrictions between open and closed syllables and the usual stuff.
It's just a sad sight that Japanese is more popular than Chinese even in the US. Mandarin will never become popular simply because too many people has misconceptions about it and not the inherent properties it has. You can South Americans to Europeans, they tend to have misconceptions as well. Americans, I don't care, their ignorance is like a chihuahua barking at me, I am indifferent because they are just that way, and it isn't out of smugness or mockery but naivety. Edited by Stolan on 29 May 2014 at 2:32am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Stolan Senior Member United States Joined 4029 days ago 274 posts - 368 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Thai, Lowland Scots Studies: Arabic (classical), Cantonese | Message 127 of 134 28 May 2014 at 9:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Edit double post Edited by Stolan on 28 May 2014 at 9:51pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5127 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 128 of 134 29 May 2014 at 3:19am | IP Logged | |||||
I wonder if you're capable of making your point without offending the western hemisphere. Also, you have English listed as your native language. Is that indeed the case? I have my doubts. R. == 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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