Hardest languages for Slavic natives (Specific Languages) Language Learning Forum

Hardest languages for Slavic natives
Tags: Native Speakers \| Difficulty
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Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages

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renaissancemedi
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
Greece
Joined 4359 days ago
941 posts - 1309 votes

Speaks: Greek*, Ancient Greek*, English^C2
Studies: French, Russian, Turkish, Modern Hebrew

Message 9 of 28

07 March 2013 at 1:10pm | IP Logged

Марк wrote:

renaissancemedi wrote:

This is a thread about slavic natives. What other nationalities
are you interested in?

We usually say "very well" in comparison with something else. They learn Greek very well
in comparison with whom?

Ohhhh! I stand corrected!

So when you say that you feel very well, you make a comparison?

Edited by renaissancemedi on 07 March 2013 at 1:47pm
2 persons have voted this message useful

Марк
Senior Member
Russian Federation
Joined 5057 days ago
2096 posts - 2972 votes

Speaks: Russian*

Message 10 of 28

07 March 2013 at 2:00pm | IP Logged

renaissancemedi wrote:

Марк wrote:

renaissancemedi wrote:

This is a thread about
slavic natives. What other nationalities
are you interested in?

We usually say "very well" in comparison with something else. They learn Greek very
well
in comparison with whom?

Ohhhh! I stand corrected!

So when you say that you feel very well, you make a comparison?

Yes, I do. We say "I feel very well" because we remember feeling worse.
So, those immigrants know Greek well due to the fact that they live in Greece for a
long time or due to their Slavic mother tongues as well? The question is: Is Greek
easier for native Slavic speakers than to speakers of other languages?
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 11 of 28

07 March 2013 at 2:44pm | IP Logged

I tried to elict something similar in this thread about "cacti" for foreign languages but it didn't go as far as I thought. Nevertheless, a few Slavonic natives did give their input.

Sennin wrote:

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.

trance0 wrote:

Native speaker of Slovene:

0.5 Cacti: Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian
1 cactus: all other Slavic languages
2 cacti: all Romance languages, except for French and maybe Portuguese
3 cacti: all Germanic languages including English + French and maybe Portuguese
4 cacti: Latin, Ancient Greek, Sanskrit
5 cacti: Asian languages(especially tone languages), Semitic languages, Ugro-Finnic languages, Turkish, African and American Indian languages

I must point out that although I have merged several languages/language groups under the same cactus that does not mean I consider all languages within one group to be of equal difficulty. Among Slavic languages I would say Russian stands out, because of its difficult pronunciation and not entirely phonetic script. I believe most Slovenes find French the most difficult among Romance languages because of its ridiculously difficult pronunciation and writing (liaison, e-muet etc.), grammar is moderately difficult, more difficult than English, but not as difficult as the most difficult amongst Germanic languages. Among Germanic languages I think German is generally more difficult than English and Scandinavian languages(except for Icelandic and Faroese, which I think are more difficult than German) because of the case system and all in all more difficult morphology. But English has a complex phrasal verb system and complicated historical script and also a lot of discrepancy in vocabulary plus a fairly difficult pronunciation(significantly more difficult than German pronunciation from Slovene native`s point of view). Since I have never studied any of the Non-Indo-European languages, I can but guess about their difficulty. However, I do believe they are more difficult than any from the Indo-European language family as they are more distant.

Siberiano wrote:

Russian perspective on languages:

0.5: Ukrainian, Belarus
1: Polish, Slovak, Bulgarian
2: Serbian, Spanish, Italian, Romanian, Portugese
2.5: Czech
3: English, French, Kazakh (and other Turkic: Yakut, Tatar, Tuvinian, Turkish, Azeri), Mongolian (Buryat)
3.5: German
4: Arabic, Korean
5: Chinese, Finnish, Hungarian, Japanese

tractor wrote:

What makes Czech more difficult than the other Slavic languagues?

I might be not accurate, but it has a very specific phonetic system, which makes pronunciation very difficult, and more German loanwords. All together, as people who tried both Czech and Slovak told me, this puts Czech aside from other Slavic languages and makes learning much harder.

I'm not certain, though. Maybe it's correct to give Slovak 1.5, and Czech 2.5 cacti.

1 person has voted this message useful

embici
Triglot
Senior Member
CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4611 days ago
263 posts - 370 votes

Speaks: English*, Spanish, French
Studies: Greek

Message 12 of 28

07 March 2013 at 3:37pm | IP Logged

A friend who is a native Russian speaker told me that when she lived in Israel (as an adult) she learned Hebrew to fluency in just six months. She said that it's a very easy and logical language.

It's generally not considered to be so easy for native English speakers. I wonder if her experience was unique or typical of Russian speakers.
1 person has voted this message useful

stelingo
Hexaglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 5833 days ago
722 posts - 1076 votes

Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian
Studies: Russian, Czech, Polish, Greek, Mandarin

Message 13 of 28

07 March 2013 at 7:04pm | IP Logged

Марк wrote:

renaissancemedi wrote:

This is a thread about slavic natives. What other nationalities
are you interested in?

We usually say "very well" in comparison with something else. They learn Greek very well
in comparison with whom?

I disagree. renaissancemedi's sentence was complete and correct.

Edited by stelingo on 07 March 2013 at 9:14pm
6 persons have voted this message useful

showtime17
Trilingual Hexaglot
Senior Member
Slovakia
gainweightjournal.co
Joined 6085 days ago
154 posts - 210 votes

Speaks: Russian, English*, Czech*, Slovak*, French, Spanish
Studies: Ukrainian, Polish, Dutch

Message 14 of 28

08 September 2013 at 6:28pm | IP Logged

Speakers of Slavic languages usually have a problem with articles of speech. For example speakers of Czech or Slovak never use "the" or "a" when speaking or writing in English. It's very easy to spot something written in English by a Czech or a Slovak. In one long paragraph you will encounter only one instance of "the" and it will be in the wrong place! :)
4 persons have voted this message useful

caam_imt
Triglot
Senior Member
Mexico
Joined 4863 days ago
232 posts - 357 votes

Speaks: Spanish*, English^C2, Finnish
Studies: German, Swedish

Message 15 of 28

08 September 2013 at 7:35pm | IP Logged

I opened a thread about something like this but for Spanish speakers some time ago, but
it didn't go anywhere. I guess a list for Spanish would be very similar to what's
available for English, except that we have an edge on Romance languages. But I supposes
it ends there.

But to stay on topic, I would venture to guess that a speaker of a Slavic language
would find the other Slavic languages the easiest, but out of that bubble it would be
hard to predict what's hard or easy for them. Or is it that having a case system is a
great advantage to them (e.g. in learning languages with case systems)? I think the
process of learning one's mother tongue is so different to that of an adult that all
the grammatical features included in said language might not be readily comprehended
and thus applicable by the native speaker. For example, some Finns have told me they
find German difficult, even though their mother tongue has many cases and other
nuances.

But I might be wrong...
1 person has voted this message useful

Aquila123
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Norway
mydeltapi.com
Joined 5307 days ago
201 posts - 262 votes

Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Italian, Spanish
Studies: Finnish, Russian

Message 16 of 28

08 September 2013 at 8:39pm | IP Logged

I find Finnish grammar easier than German and Italian grammar, actually.

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