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Hardest languages for Slavic natives | ||
Tags: Native Speakers | Difficulty | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4669 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes  Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 17 of 28 08 September 2013 at 8:52pm | IP Logged | ||
This may be due to every language having their own rules ''when to use articles and when not to use them''. Portuguese and Spanish article use has never given me headache, English articles are a major pain. :( O presidente Obama / El presidente Obama (+article) President Obama (-article) Ele é professor / Él es profesor. (-article) He's a professor (+article) Topa um sorvete? / ¿Te apetece un helado? (+article) Wanna ice cream? (-article) The most difficult IndoEuropean languages for Croatians: German, Icelandic, Persian and Sankrit. Hindi/Urdu is easier than them. Croatia was a part of Hungary from 1100-1918 but was never culturally/linguistically Hungarized because Hugarian is like an alien language to us. I'd say 99% of non-Indoeuropean langueges are difficult for speakers of Indoeuropean languages, except for Malay/Indonesian and Swahili. PS Many Croatians will say Slovenian is the most difficult language for them to learn, just like Swedish sometimes say Norwegian is the most difficult language to learn properly, and Brazilians say the same about Spanish. When you understand 95% of what is spoken, why bother learning it from scratch in the 1st place?! ;) Edited by Medulin on 08 September 2013 at 9:08pm 4 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 18 of 28 08 September 2013 at 10:16pm | IP Logged | ||
That's true as well, however I think the main reason for this is the lack of articles in Slavic languages. When speaking English, Czechs and Slovaks don't use any articles and you can always spot a text that was written by them. Speakers whose native language is a non-Slavic language usually don't have this problem (even if they sometimes don't know when to use which article, however in general they do put them). I've often had to correct texts in English written by Czechs and Slovaks and this is most often the biggest mistake that they make. Edited by showtime17 on 08 September 2013 at 10:19pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jhaberstro Senior Member United States Joined 4394 days ago 112 posts - 154 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, Portuguese | Message 19 of 28 09 September 2013 at 12:09am | IP Logged | ||
To be fair, "professor" (and all professions in general) is both an adjective and noun in the romance languages (well, the two you've listed + French. I can't speak to the others), while in English it's only a noun. If you know that, the article's usage is very obvious (it follows the form: "subject" + "conjugation of 'to be'" + "article" + "noun"). Also, "wanna" is not a real word. It's a spoken/slang contraction of "want a", so there is indeed an article there. Edited by jhaberstro on 09 September 2013 at 12:11am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5010 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 20 of 28 09 September 2013 at 10:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think English is the most difficult of the Germanic/Romance languages for Slavic speakers. It is very irregular and many people across all the ages struggle with the huge difference between the written and spoken words. It is a very popular language with tons of resources which makes it easier, it is supported by a lot of propaganda but it is not an easy language.
I think the romance languages in general, including French, are much easier. French may be more difficut right at the beginning but once you get past a certain point, you are just putting together the same pieces in different ways. The romance languages have quite regular pronunciation and grammar. However, the subjonctif is often a trouble and the partitive article in French. What makes these languages "hard" is the geography. Apart from Romanian (and the Italia-Croatia border), no countries of the Slavic languages are neighbours to the Romance ones. The Romance languages are therefore seen as economically uninteresting and get much less support than English and German in most of the countries. German isn't that hard for Slavic speakers in my opinion. It is a logical language (like Latin), a regular one, with a lot of resources. The pronunciation isn't much of a trouble for Czechs (and I've never heard any Polish or Slovak complain about it, unlike English) And the socio-economical importance makes it easier (resources, opportunities, teachers in public schools and so on). When it comes to non-european languages, I'd guess the tonal ones are difficult for us in general. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4669 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 21 of 28 10 September 2013 at 2:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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English may be difficult for people in Poland, Russia, the Czech republic because of frequent dubbing of English-language movies, sitcoms and other programs.
For Slovenians, Serbians, Bosnians, Croatians, Macedonians it is not difficult since nothing is dubbed. My father learned English by watching western movies and series like Peyton Place back in the 1960ies. In my case these were to blame: Santa Barbara, Beverly Hills, Merlose Place, Baywatch, X-files, Star Trek Voyager and in-numerous sitcoms (Full House, The Nanny, Seinfeld, Friends, Suddenly Susan...) I used to write down new phrases as I watched TV. I still remember phrases like ''We seem to be held hostages'' from ''Star Trek Voyager'' ;) or ''Don't go chasing any cats!'' from ''Cosby Show'' In high school I had 3 school hours of English per week, and 10 hours of TV English a day :) Edited by Medulin on 10 September 2013 at 2:21pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Via Diva Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation last.fm/user/viadivaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4235 days ago 1109 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German, Italian, French, Swedish, Esperanto, Czech, Greek | Message 23 of 28 10 September 2013 at 4:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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Speaking of English-German dilemma. I saw lots of questions from people who tries to choose between these two: what's harder/ easier? Now I'm convinced that German is easier. The reason of my personal slowness is not because of difficulties but because of lack of experience. And one of my friends which learned German from school time says that the can't understand how to deal with English due to difficulty of pronunciation and huge difference between written and spoken.
On the other hand, I got education in gymnasium which was a little bit higher than ordinary schools. First years with English was insignificant, it barely can remember them, but when in 5th grade we got an excellent teacher, all changed. Well, maybe I have problems with pronunciation and grammar, but I truly enjoyed translating from English and even that primitive motivation did a lot of good for me. As our teacher used to say, I have the brains. Then we had to deal with other teachers during 6-8th grades, and English became very boring for me, so I barely had any improvements in that period. Then at final grades we came back to our teacher and she easily restored everything that she taught us before. And once you good in English, a wide choice of roads come up... So, I wanted to say, that situation always depends of some factors. You could be native German but unable to get Swedish because of some problems which you can't deal with. I suppose that any of East/Asian languages would be extremely hard for me just because of its alphabets (in the beginning). Plus, I think that the "freedom" in syntax of Russian makes every strictly structured language difficult a priori. But, I repeat, all depends. There was one and a half / two centuries of high French influence in Russia and most of the high society ought to know the language. Pushkin knew French perfectly, but he managed to make a huge improvement in Russian literature language without much of that influence. I don't even dare to look at French now due to its pronunciation, but if I hadn't another choice - who knows? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Svrbisha Newbie Yugoslavia Joined 4178 days ago 2 posts - 4 votes Studies: Dutch | Message 24 of 28 24 September 2013 at 12:25pm | IP Logged | ||
Sooooo true :) 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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