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Greek and Turkish : Which is Harder? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Wilco Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6334 days ago 160 posts - 247 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Russian | Message 1 of 21 14 July 2010 at 12:10am | IP Logged |
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From a English-speaker perspective, which language would you say is harder: Modern Greek or Turkish?
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| MäcØSŸ Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5813 days ago 259 posts - 392 votes Speaks: Italian*, EnglishC2 Studies: German | Message 2 of 21 14 July 2010 at 8:35am | IP Logged |
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Turkish, of course.
It isn’t an indo-european language and it has much less common vocabulary. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| feanarosurion Senior Member Canada Joined 5285 days ago 217 posts - 316 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish, Norwegian | Message 3 of 21 14 July 2010 at 8:38am | IP Logged |
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The two really aren't all that comparable to be honest. Turkish uses a lot of agglutination which is a tough thing to get used to. From the perspective of an English speaker, Turkish would definitely be harder. On the other hand, it all depends what you've been exposed to, and what motivations you have for learning the language. Either way though, for the average English speaker, Greek is going to be an easier bet than Turkish.
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| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6276 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 4 of 21 14 July 2010 at 2:49pm | IP Logged |
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Neither is easy for a West European or Anglophone but Turkish is harder, I reckon. Turkish has a very non-Indo-European syntax and a vocabulary that is not very transparent, though perhaps Arabic or Farsi speakers might pick up on more than English etc. speakers would.
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| leblebi Tetraglot Newbie Greece Joined 5377 days ago 6 posts - 14 votes Speaks: Greek*, EnglishC2, GermanC1, TurkishA1 | Message 5 of 21 03 January 2011 at 3:30pm | IP Logged |
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I am a native speaker of Greek whith a fair good knowledge of Turkish. I cannot really tell which language would be the easiest for a foreigner to learn. An English speaker could gain a better grasp and understanding of a big chunk of Greek vocabulary, but nothing really more.
In my opinion the sole trap/obstacle is hidden in the conjugation system of Greek which is rather formidable, and that alone would counterbalance any difficulty from the agglutinated and twisted Turkish syntax. Turkish grammatical structure on the other hand is so smooth and logical to an unbelievable degree; no irregular verbs, no genders, straightforward spelling. I think the matter should be decided mostly on cultural and emotional grounds. Last but not least: although linguistically completely different, the semantics of Greek and Turkish are amazingly close together (in everyday speech, proverbs, idioms etc). I could claim that up to an intermediate level there is an almost one to one "semantical" correspondence between the two languages. Past this point (newspaper language, politics, law, etc.) the semantics of the two languages diverge, as formal Turkish relies heavily on the Ottoman substratum and tradition. 9 persons have voted this message useful | |
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6146 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 6 of 21 03 January 2011 at 7:53pm | IP Logged |
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Both languages will be difficult and easy for you for different reasons.
Greek is Indo-European, and thus has much more in common with the languages you speak than does Turkish. The basic structure of the grammar should seem quite similar to other common Indo-European languages such Spanish, French, Russian, etc (I find that Romanian is very similar). Also, there are several Greek words/roots which have been borrowed into many other languages, so this can be helpful in understanding Greek, although the majority of Greek vocabulary will be foreign. Unfortunately, Greek is a very irregular language and a good deal will just have to be memorized because it doesn't exactly follow the rules. Greek spelling is also quite difficult to master, even for Greeks, because of the many ways to write one sound. However, the alphabet is not difficult to read, but it might present another obstacle to tackling Greek. Greek culture/society is also more similar to Western European ones than is that of Turkish, so that makes it easier in that respect. Turkish is not Indo-European, but rather a Turkic language (will I be yelled at if I say Altaic?) and as such has little in common with the languages you know. The language is highly agglutinative and uses vowel harmony, both of which are entirely new to speakers of English, French, Russian, etc, and can take some time to get used to, but are not all that difficult once you do. The vocabulary is very foreign aside from some loanwords, but it's formed very logically. Unlike Greek, Turkish compensates for its unfamiliar grammar and vocabulary by being very regular and logical. Turkish also uses the Latin alphabet, and is very phonetic. Καλή τύχη! İyi şanslar! Edited by ellasevia on 04 January 2011 at 4:13am 7 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Demiurg Triglot Newbie Turkey Joined 5076 days ago 12 posts - 19 votes Speaks: English, Turkish*, German Studies: Russian | Message 7 of 21 07 January 2011 at 8:14pm | IP Logged |
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Firstly, in our schools we're being taught that Turkish is a "Ural-Altaic" language and not even Altaic. Stepping aside the miscellaneous, from the native speaker's view of perspective, Turkish is extremely logical and has no exceptions except highly advanced material that's taught in highschool in here, and the verb "olmak" (To be, but in a very weird sense most non-Turks can't comprehend, similar to the Russian есть). The agglutination would probably seem very bizarre and obscure at the first, but after some time, it will just fit in as you speak. As the progressive difficulty, it starts off very hard, based on pure memorization, it will gradually become easier and then will start to increase in difficulty again as you progress on to advanced material and when you come to the participles, you might have nightmares. After you get the participles and the other advanced grammar, your Turkish studies will almost immediately come to a halt and you'll be at advanced fluency given enough practice.
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| genini1 Senior Member United States Joined 5472 days ago 114 posts - 161 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 8 of 21 08 January 2011 at 5:52am | IP Logged |
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FSI ranks them at about the same difficulty so I would say it just depends on which aspect of language you find more difficult.
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