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Very hard languages for bragging | ||
Tags: Show-off | Difficulty | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5925 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 25 of 53 19 February 2010 at 9:54pm | IP Logged | ||
I'll answer the question by adding a few languages that haven't been mentioned: Tsez, Lushotseed, Aymara (this site is in Spanish), Tabassaran and, because it hasn't been mentioned yet in this thread, Hungarian. Edited by mick33 on 19 February 2010 at 10:00pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Raincrowlee Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 6703 days ago 621 posts - 808 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Indonesian, Japanese | Message 26 of 53 19 February 2010 at 11:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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Oh, come on, people, you don't even have to know a language to impress Americans. I don't know how many times I told people that I was *learning* Chinese and the response I got was "Oh, you must be so smart." In addition, I don't think anyone ever asked me to actually say anything in the language, either, or more than a sentence. In general, they wouldn't know if I was actually speaking correctly or not.
Even fluent Spanish is impressive to Americans, except if you look Hispanic. Edited by Raincrowlee on 19 February 2010 at 11:23pm 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| chucknorrisman Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5449 days ago 321 posts - 435 votes Speaks: Korean*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, Mandarin, Lithuanian, French | Message 27 of 53 19 February 2010 at 11:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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I fully know that learning a language just to show off isn't the wisest usage of time either. I was just wondering what the people thought.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| skeeterses Senior Member United States angelfire.com/games5Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6619 days ago 302 posts - 356 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Korean, Spanish | Message 28 of 53 20 February 2010 at 1:26am | IP Logged | ||
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Aside from Mandarin and Japanese, here are some hard languages that an American could show off to impress other people,
Korean, Arabic, Navajo, Cherokee, Russian, and Hebrew. And they wouldn't be impossible for any American to learn and practice since there are communities of people in America who speak those languages. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Raincrowlee Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 6703 days ago 621 posts - 808 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Indonesian, Japanese | Message 29 of 53 20 February 2010 at 3:46am | IP Logged | ||
I think most Americans would say that any language that uses a different alphabet is especially hard, with the possible exception of Greek. No distinction between those with true alphabets (like Russian) and those with characters, syllaberies, etc. Arabic looks hard, and it's written right to left. Chinese and Japanese have a reputation for difficulty because they look difficult, with the characters, and most people know that Chinese has thousands of them. I think when you start getting into the truly harder languages like Cherokee, Hungarian or some small minority language, you'll run into the problem of the audience not knowing how much harder those languages are than any other. Oh, and Latin would probably be quite impressive, too. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ennime Tetraglot Senior Member South Africa universityofbrokengl Joined 5905 days ago 397 posts - 507 votes Speaks: English, Dutch*, Esperanto, Afrikaans Studies: Xhosa, French, Korean, Portuguese, Zulu | Message 30 of 53 20 February 2010 at 10:07am | IP Logged | ||
Well... studying languages such as Latin and Xhosa is not the wisest usage of time in general according to most in this world. ^_^ Not that we do it for the bragging, but showing off just a little when I produce a Xhosa tong twister (even here in SA) is kinda fun. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| mattvdm Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5422 days ago 15 posts - 19 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, Ancient Greek, Spanish, Russian | Message 31 of 53 23 February 2010 at 7:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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Learning to converse in Latin or (far more impressively) Classical Greek would put you in a God-like tier amongst even academic classicists.
But would probably terrify/bemuse members of the general public. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| pohaku Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5652 days ago 192 posts - 367 votes Speaks: English*, Persian Studies: Arabic (classical), French, German, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 32 of 53 23 February 2010 at 9:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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This conversation reminds me of similar ones among jugglers. The joke was that a fellow practiced and practiced to go beyond the usual three balls. He got good at four, then five, then six, and he was already in very rare territory because of the difficulty of his achievements. Then he pressed on and learned to do seven, eight, nine, ten. Finally, he learned eleven, which put him on a unique pinnacle of skill. The first person who happened upon him right after he had first done eleven came up to him and said, "Nice. Can you do twelve?" Moral: Whatever you do, do it for yourself, and perhaps for those who will understand what you are doing. Don't expect the great unwashed masses to understand and there is no pleasing them.
Similarly, the public has no clue when watching jugglers as to which moves are truly difficult. Only other jugglers know. Just like languages. Only a real linguaphile would know just how hard Georgian, say, is for an English speaker compared to, say, Dutch. 13 persons have voted this message useful |
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