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Most difficult Indo-European language? | ||
Tags: Indo-European Languages | Difficulty | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| COF Senior Member United States Joined 5831 days ago 262 posts - 354 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 21 26 June 2012 at 9:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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I would say it is Polish. 7 Cases, difficult pronunciation and full of irregularities.
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| sipes23 Diglot Senior Member United States pluteopleno.com/wprs Joined 4870 days ago 134 posts - 235 votes Speaks: English*, Latin Studies: Spanish, Ancient Greek, Persian | Message 2 of 21 26 June 2012 at 10:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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Sanskrit. They won't use IPA to describe sounds (not that Latin or Greek do either), but all sorts of funky diacritics
that aren't strictly consistent in Romanization. Wait. They think Romanization of the alphabet is acceptable in scholarly materials (Clay Sanskrit Library). The materials (I've seen so far) are terrible. Oh, and 8 cases and sandhi. Polish doesn't seem completely opaque. At least it's phonetic when written. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5453 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 3 of 21 26 June 2012 at 10:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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Most difficult for whom?
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 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6909 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 21 27 June 2012 at 1:02am | IP Logged | ||
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In case anyone really wants to read about this...
http://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/more-on-the-ha rdest-languages-to-learn/ http://www.antimoon.com/forum/t6211.htm Edited by jeff_lindqvist on 27 June 2012 at 1:03am 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tanya b Senior Member United States Joined 4778 days ago 159 posts - 518 votes Speaks: Russian | Message 5 of 21 27 June 2012 at 1:50am | IP Logged | ||
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The OP's question probably should have included "from the point of view of a native English speaker".
I once read the US Defense Language Institute's website and it states that it takes 1700 hours for a native English speaker to become fluent in Russian, which is about 3 times longer than French or Spanish. This also takes into account having to study a new alphabet which wouldn't be necessary in the study of Polish. My friends are often more amazed that I can read a newspaper article in Russian, because it's inconceivable to them that someone could teach themselves a new alphabet, even though it is relatively easy and almost entirely phonetic. However, I doubt that Russian would be as difficult as Pashto, which has some of the same harsh sounds as Russian as well as a script which would be bewildering to most Westerners. Pashto is closely related to Farsi, and you are more likely to meet a Siamese twin than an American who has mastered Farsi. I don't understand why Farsi is so difficult to learn for English speakers, maybe the reason is psychological more than anything else. The most difficult IE language for me is Welsh--painfully difficult to pronounce, impossible to determine the gender of nouns, and all those silly mutations. Had to give it up, I don't make a good masochist. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4665 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 6 of 21 27 June 2012 at 2:54am | IP Logged | ||
I have been interested in Farsi for some time and read a blog post arguing that it was not nearly as difficult as commonly believed, and in fact easier in some respects than other IE languages. Edited by tastyonions on 27 June 2012 at 2:55am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| fiziwig Senior Member United States Joined 4865 days ago 297 posts - 618 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 7 of 21 27 June 2012 at 5:07am | IP Logged | ||
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The one that made me tear my hair out was Sanskrit. I never got very far with it, but it
was frighteningly difficult compared to the IE languages I had studied previously. (English, Latin, German) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5298 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 8 of 21 27 June 2012 at 6:20am | IP Logged | ||
The forum software should automatically detect and delete this phrase, imh rest-of-the-world-pov ... 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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