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Which is more difficult? | ||
Tags: Easiness | Difficulty | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Paco Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 4278 days ago 145 posts - 251 votes  Speaks: Cantonese* | Message 1 of 4 17 May 2013 at 5:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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Just curious about what others have in mind.
1) Which of the following language(s) is/are more difficult? Please try to ignore any common etymology and cultural roots, and the problem of a dearth of learning materials. I guess it means judgement should be made upon the level of complexity (inflection and agglutination) and degree of irregularity? Classical Latin Homeric Greek Attic Greek Russian (Modern) Classical Sanskrit Pali Tamil (Modern high register) Modern Standard Arabic Persian (Modern) 2) If Chinese were written in phonograms, would you consider it as one of the easiest languages? While this kind of threads has been many, and the majority are almost impossible to be answered without subjectivity, but if you have a minute or two and know 1 or 2 of them, do leave a footprint. Edited by Paco on 17 May 2013 at 8:07pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lykeio Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4245 days ago 120 posts - 357 votes | Message 2 of 4 17 May 2013 at 6:32pm | IP Logged | ||
The problem is none of these things you list can be ignored and all have impact. Moreover you're mixing Classical and modern spoken languages and that is problematic I find in that a lot of people outside academia claim ridiculous facility in classical languages that always turn out to be heavily over optimistic. So how do we quantify knowing and understanding? Also that's a pretty broad spread there, I only know five of them and I certainly can't judge. Basically our collective mental processes prevent us from being anywhere near to make any serious judgement here. Unless you know of a magic pill or something. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5346 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 3 of 4 17 May 2013 at 7:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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Sanskrit. No contest.
Its degree of inflection far surpasses anything present in Greek, Latin or Russian, and Pali is a streamlined relative of it. If you then take into account sandhi (the set of rules that governs how the sounds of individual words and even letters within words are affected by those preceding and following them, all of which is explicitly written out modifying the base form of words as they would appear in isolation), compounds, the intricate syntax, and an extraordinarily rich and suggestive vocabulary with many shades of meaning, you are faced with a level of complexity far removed from anything else present in other major languages. Sanskrit is a truly refined language molded by a people touched by genius. Fortunately, there are good resources for learning it, and anyone willing and eager is certainly capable of doing so. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4669 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 4 of 4 17 May 2013 at 10:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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(Formal) Tamil is the most difficult language from your list.
It is so difficult, many children and teenagers in Tamil Nadu prefer English and don't even bother with Tamil at all (in fact, English is more prestigious there than even the highest/classical version of Tamil). Learning Tamil is not compulsory in Tamil Nadu, because students can choose between Tamil and English, and for many people learning how to write and read in English is easier than learning how to write and read in formal Tamil (a language whose grammar hasn't changed since the 13th century, so formal written Tamil and colloquial Tamil are like Latin and Italian). Edited by Medulin on 17 May 2013 at 10:32pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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