Most difficult Indo-European language? (General discussion) Language Learning Forum

Most difficult Indo-European language?
Tags: Indo-European Languages \| Difficulty
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21 messages over 3 pages: 1 2 3

Medulin
Tetraglot
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Croatia
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Message 17 of 21

27 June 2012 at 8:25pm | IP Logged

I would say Bengali
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BartoG
Diglot
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United States
confession
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Message 18 of 21

09 July 2012 at 3:09am | IP Logged

To read Hittite as it was first written down, you need to know neo-Assyrian script and enough Sumerian and Babylonian to recognize when it has substituted an ideogram from one of these for actual Hittite sounds. Once you're done with that, you can start in on the actual language, including a nice, complicated case system and a phonology that underlies the belief of some Indoeuropeanists that PIE had so-called laryngeals when no documented IE language has them. I wouldn't have mentioned it since it's so long dead, but since Greek and Sanskrit have come up, I thought it worth a mention.
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Hampie
Diglot
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Sweden
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Message 19 of 21

09 July 2012 at 11:02am | IP Logged

BartoG wrote:

To read Hittite as it was first written down, you need to know neo-Assyrian script and enough
Sumerian and Babylonian to recognize when it has substituted an ideogram from one of these for actual Hittite
sounds. Once you're done with that, you can start in on the actual language, including a nice, complicated case
system and a phonology that underlies the belief of some Indoeuropeanists that PIE had so-called laryngeals when
no documented IE language has them. I wouldn't have mentioned it since it's so long dead, but since Greek and
Sanskrit have come up, I thought it worth a mention.

Though most comparative linguists usually get the Hittite in already-made transcription, them lazy asses ;).
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languagenerd09
Triglot
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United Kingdom
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Message 20 of 21

09 July 2012 at 4:09pm | IP Logged

I would say Hungarian?
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Lucky Charms
Diglot
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Japan
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Message 21 of 21

09 July 2012 at 5:43pm | IP Logged

languagenerd09 wrote:

I would say Hungarian?

Hungarian is an Uralic language (along with Finnish and Estonian), not Indo-European.

Edited by Lucky Charms on 09 July 2012 at 5:44pm

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