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Cacti from non-native speakers of English

 Language Learning Forum : General discussion Post Reply
42 messages over 6 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6  Next >>
Chung
Diglot
Senior Member
Joined 7157 days ago
4228 posts - 8259 votes 
20 sounds
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 1 of 42
05 February 2010 at 9:01pm | IP Logged 
After seeing hombre gordo's recent thread about relative difficulty of foreign languages for native speakers of Japanese, I feel strongly enough about the subject to start a thread about the rankings (subjective as they may be) assigned by learners here who are native speakers of languages other than English. This would be also personally interesting since every time I've posted a language-profile in the Collaborative Writing section, I've always had to discuss the relative difficulty of the target language and by necessity recalled what *I* considered to be difficult. At the same time I've sometimes wondered how difficult a native speaker of anything but English would consider Polish, for example.

I'm thus starting this topic to see what native speakers of Mandarin, Arabic, Swahili, Russian, Korean, etc. have to say about the relative difficulty of other languages based on their learning experiences.

I realize that it may be difficult to get a very diverse sample since the second-most numerous native language of forum members is Spanish with 393 native speakers. Russian comes in third place with 264 native speakers. Others such as Bengali and Thai count only a handful of members here (11 native speakers of Bengali, 9 native speakers of Thai). Nonetheless I think that whatever answers do come up will make for an interesting thread.

To keep the format relatively consistent and to allow for a very rough comparison between the statements of each poster, I think that the following format would be useful when answering. (I'll use myself as an imperfect example)

Example wrote:
Chung: native speaker of English

1 cactus: [insert language(s) of "very low difficulty" here]
2 cacti: [insert language(s) of "low difficulty" here]
3 cacti: [insert language(s) of "moderate difficulty" here]
4 cacti: [insert language(s) of "high difficulty" here]
5 cacti: [insert language(s) of "very high difficulty" here]

Comments (optional):
[bla-bla-bla]

6 persons have voted this message useful



Sennin
Senior Member
Bulgaria
Joined 6035 days ago
1457 posts - 1759 votes 
5 sounds

 
 Message 2 of 42
05 February 2010 at 9:44pm | IP Logged 
Native speaker of Bulgarian

1 cactus: Serbian, Russian
2 cacti: Czech, Slovak, Polish; Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian
3 cacti: French, German, English, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish;
4 cacti: Turkish, Greek, Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian
5 cacti: Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic

Comments (optional):
1-cactus languages don't require much effort;
2-cactus languages would require some serious study; no tough challenges anticipated;
3-cactus languages exhibit a certain level of nastiness without being too scary;
4-cactus languages are tough and bizarre;
5-cactus languages take a lot of masochism to master.

I have omitted many Asian and African languages because I really don't have much info about them and can't form any realistic judgement.


Edited by Sennin on 05 February 2010 at 9:50pm
7 persons have voted this message useful



tractor
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Norway
Joined 5454 days ago
1349 posts - 2292 votes 
Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan
Studies: French, German, Latin

 
 Message 3 of 42
05 February 2010 at 9:50pm | IP Logged 
Chung wrote:
I realize that it may be difficult to get a very diverse sample since the second-most numerous
native language of forum members is Spanish with 393 native speakers. Russian comes in third place with 264
native speakers. Others such as Bengali and Thai count only a handful of members here (11 native speakers of
Bengali, 9 native speakers of Thai). Nonetheless I think that whatever answers do come up will make for an
interesting thread.

There are more factors that make this difficult: How are we to rate languages we haven't tried learning? What if I
have only studied a handful of languages and I think one of them is extremley difficult, and therefore give it a
five cactus rating, but it's actually a relatively easy language compared to other more difficult ones that I haven't
tried studying?

The order in which you are learning the languages plays a role as well. German, which is my sixth foreign
language, to me seems way easier to learn than Spanish was. Yet, everyone will tell you German is relatvily
difficult, but then I guess, that after having more or less mastered the Spanish verbal system and having been
acquainted with cases through Latin, German grammar seems rather simplistic.


Edited by tractor on 05 February 2010 at 9:55pm
1 person has voted this message useful



Sennin
Senior Member
Bulgaria
Joined 6035 days ago
1457 posts - 1759 votes 
5 sounds

 
 Message 4 of 42
05 February 2010 at 10:10pm | IP Logged 
tractor wrote:
Chung wrote:
I realize that it may be difficult to get a very diverse sample since the second-most numerous
native language of forum members is Spanish with 393 native speakers. Russian comes in third place with 264
native speakers. Others such as Bengali and Thai count only a handful of members here (11 native speakers of
Bengali, 9 native speakers of Thai). Nonetheless I think that whatever answers do come up will make for an
interesting thread.

There are more factors that make this difficult: How are we to rate languages we haven't tried learning? What if I
have only studied a handful of languages and I think one of them is extremley difficult, and therefore give it a five cactus rating, but it's actually a relatively easy language compared to other more difficult ones that I haven't tried studying?


guesstimate, dude ;-p. As more and more people give their opinion, the averaged answer will have some truth to it. In any case it's just a forum, you can't expect scientific accuracy.


1 person has voted this message useful



tractor
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Norway
Joined 5454 days ago
1349 posts - 2292 votes 
Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan
Studies: French, German, Latin

 
 Message 5 of 42
05 February 2010 at 10:46pm | IP Logged 
Sennin wrote:
tractor wrote:
There are more factors that make this difficult: How are we to rate languages
we haven't tried learning? What if I
have only studied a handful of languages and I think one of them is extremley difficult, and therefore give it a
five cactus rating, but it's actually a relatively easy language compared to other more difficult ones that I haven't
tried studying?


guesstimate, dude ;-p. As more and more people give their opinion, the averaged answer will have some truth to
it. In any case it's just a forum, you can't expect scientific accuracy.


No, no, no; don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting we should have scientific accuracy, nor that this is not fun or
interesting. I'm only suggesting that we can't take this too seriously and that we can't take the cactuses given in
the language profiles to seriously either.
1 person has voted this message useful



Chung
Diglot
Senior Member
Joined 7157 days ago
4228 posts - 8259 votes 
20 sounds
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 6 of 42
05 February 2010 at 10:46pm | IP Logged 
tractor wrote:
Chung wrote:
I realize that it may be difficult to get a very diverse sample since the second-most numerous
native language of forum members is Spanish with 393 native speakers. Russian comes in third place with 264
native speakers. Others such as Bengali and Thai count only a handful of members here (11 native speakers of
Bengali, 9 native speakers of Thai). Nonetheless I think that whatever answers do come up will make for an
interesting thread.

There are more factors that make this difficult: How are we to rate languages we haven't tried learning? What if I
have only studied a handful of languages and I think one of them is extremley difficult, and therefore give it a
five cactus rating, but it's actually a relatively easy language compared to other more difficult ones that I haven't
tried studying?

The order in which you are learning the languages plays a role as well. German, which is my sixth foreign
language, to me seems way easier to learn than Spanish was. Yet, everyone will tell you German is relatvily
difficult, but then I guess, that after having more or less mastered the Spanish verbal system and having been
acquainted with cases through Latin, German grammar seems rather simplistic.


In an ideal world there should only be answers from monoglot learners who are fluent in a language other than English but are no more than dabblers in several other languages. Therefore, the "interference"/"discounts" would be kept to a reasonable minimum (IMHO). However setting the post in this way could make it overly restrictive as I get the impression that most monoglots here are just native-speakers of English. Most people here who are native speakers of anything but English do have at least basic fluency in at least English, if not more languages. I am aware of the thread's problematic assumption that these non-natives understand enough English in order to answer the question.

If people haven't tried learning a language or had negligible exposure to it, it wouldn't make too much sense for them determine how difficult it would be for them since they have few or no points of reference. At best they would use the observations made by fellow monoglots who HAVE had some exposure to those foreign language, and they superimpose these observations on themselves as proxies for how difficult those languages would be.

I suppose that a better way for me to have done this is to have created a translation of my thread into various languages, thus increasing the chance that it'll reach genuine monoglots of languages other than English. If forum posters want to create a translation of this thread for use in the various multilingual lounges, I'm cool with that since it should improve the integrity of the question.

As I said earlier, this is in reaction to hombre gordo's post about a Japanocentric assignment of cacti, my observations when creating language-profiles, and also to questioning of the Administrator's rather Anglocentric cacti ranking (subjective as it is even for me as a native speaker of English since I do disagree with some of his rankings). It's not meant to be too serious, but at the same time, I want to see what non-Anglophone monoglots have experienced and put the Anglocentric ranking in perspective.
2 persons have voted this message useful



tractor
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Norway
Joined 5454 days ago
1349 posts - 2292 votes 
Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan
Studies: French, German, Latin

 
 Message 7 of 42
05 February 2010 at 11:13pm | IP Logged 
Chung wrote:
In an ideal world there should only be answers from monoglot learners who are fluent in a
language other
than English but are no more than dabblers in several other languages. Therefore, the "interference"/"discounts"
would be kept to a reasonable minimum (IMHO). However setting the post in this way could make it overly
restrictive as I get the impression that most monoglots here are just native-speakers of English. Most people
here who are native speakers of anything but English do have at least basic fluency in at least English, if not
more languages. I am aware of the thread's problematic assumption that these non-natives understand
enough English in order to answer the question.

[...]

I suppose that a better way for me to have done this is to have created a translation of my thread into various
languages, thus increasing the chance that it'll reach genuine monoglots of languages other than English. If
forum posters want to create a translation of this thread for use in the various multilingual lounges, I'm cool with
that since it should improve the integrity of the question.


I'm not so sure you would reach a great deal of extra people in the non-English lounges. I think that just
following the Spanish discussion room, for example, would be rather dull. On the other hand, there is of
course a leap form being able to follow and enjoy the discussions conducted in English to actually being able or
feeling confident enough to participate in them, and there may be quite a few that fall into that category.

Edited by tractor on 05 February 2010 at 11:16pm
2 persons have voted this message useful



Muz9
Diglot
Groupie
Netherlands
Joined 5525 days ago
84 posts - 112 votes 
Speaks: Dutch*, English
Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Somali

 
 Message 8 of 42
06 February 2010 at 1:14am | IP Logged 
Native speaker of Dutch

0.5 cactus: English
1 cactus: German & the Scandinavian languages
2 cacti: French, Italian, Spanish and all the other latin based languages
3 cacti: Slavic languages
4 cacti: Greek and all the other European and central Asian languages not mentioned previously
5 cacti: Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic

Comment:

Put English in the 0.5 category despite German being more similar to Dutch than English, but so many Dutch people seem to master this language without much effort.



4 persons have voted this message useful



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