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Swedish and Dutch harder than Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4949 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 1 of 6 16 May 2011 at 7:48am | IP Logged | ||
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http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/e/languages/index.html
I really have questions about that rating. How could Spanish be easier for an English speaker than Dutch or Swedish, two Germanic languages with very simplified grammar (particularly the last one), and very similar syntax and vowels? What is the basis of those ratings? In general the other ratings appear appropriate (though obviously common sensical, to give Japanese or Chinese difficult marks), but I just don't see what could be so difficult in Swedish or Dutch from an English language person learning another Germanic tongue to make them harder than languages in another sub-family entirely. Edited by outcast on 16 May 2011 at 7:49am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 6 16 May 2011 at 9:36am | IP Logged | ||
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Outcast definitely has a point. The only thing that could support giving Swedish and Dutch one cactus more than Spanish is the number of learners, which means that there are more study materials. And in the special case of the USA: the fact that half the country already is half bilingual. If you only looked at shared vocabulary and grammatical parallels you could even have argued that Dutch and Swedish should have one cactus instead of the three in the current list.
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| Saim Pentaglot Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5083 days ago 124 posts - 215 votes Speaks: Serbo-Croatian, English*, Catalan, Spanish, Polish Studies: Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, Occitan, Punjabi, Urdu, Arabic (Maghribi), French, Modern Hebrew, Ukrainian, Slovenian | Message 3 of 6 16 May 2011 at 12:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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The thing about Spanish is that it's more readily understandable, as the cognates that
English does share with Spanish are easier to recognize because they entired English more recently than the core Germanic vocabulary it shares with Swedish and Dutch. For example; English: Mathematics/maths Spanish: Matematicas/mate Dutch: Wiskunde but English: go Spanish: ir Dutch: gaan 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6582 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 4 of 6 16 May 2011 at 12:44pm | IP Logged | ||
Swedish: Matematik/matte You do have a point, though, especially if you choose words that don't come from the international European common vocabulary. Like: English: Prohibition Spanish: Prohibición Swedish: Förbud You can get thousands of free Spanish words by using simple rules on English words. The same cannot be said with Swedish, as when there are cognates, they are not as predictable. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| gambi Newbie New Zealand Joined 5109 days ago 37 posts - 52 votes Speaks: English Studies: Indonesian, Burmese | Message 5 of 6 16 May 2011 at 3:17pm | IP Logged | ||
It isn't just the grammar, you also have to take into account the pronunciation. As an English speaker, I find Spanish phonology far simpler and easier to tackle than Danish or German. However I haven't toyed around with Dutch or Swedish yet, and so I can't really comment on those two. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6011 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 6 of 6 16 May 2011 at 3:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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Swedish isn't that straightforward.
A) pitch accent, a concept so hard to pin down that many language materials ignore it and hope it will go away. B) the definitive article is a suffix rather than a clitic. And it's of the same form as the indefinite article, just in a different place. That's a bit weird. C) Lots of vowels. Dutch may have a simpler grammar than German, but it still sticks lots of its vowels at the end. It also has two gutterals -- Spanish only has one, and you can get away with saying an English "h" instead. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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