William8 Diglot Groupie Poland Joined 5103 days ago 62 posts - 73 votes Speaks: Polish*, English Studies: French, Arabic (classical), German, Italian, Spanish
| Message 1 of 5 20 February 2011 at 7:37pm | IP Logged |
Hello!
I'm a native polish speaker, and I make some researches on learning languages. I know that many people consider my language as one of the most difficult to learn. And that Spanish is one of the easiest.
I think that the difficulty depends on what is your native language. Polish is good, when you want to learn foreign languages. We don't have any problematic pronunciation, like french - it's harder for them to learn languages such as - japanese, chinese.
So I would like to know Your opinion. Write something about what makes the biggest difficulties in every language you learn, and what is the easiest thing. And tell, which language you consider the easiest/most difficult to learn.
Thanks in advance!
Bye!
Edited by William8 on 20 February 2011 at 7:38pm
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maxval Pentaglot Senior Member Bulgaria maxval.co.nr Joined 5074 days ago 852 posts - 1577 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, Bulgarian, English, Spanish, Russian Studies: Latin, Modern Hebrew
| Message 2 of 5 21 February 2011 at 12:22pm | IP Logged |
"I think that the difficulty depends on what is your native language."
In reality it depends not on your native language, but on any language you know.
For me Polish seems to be easy... :-)
Because I speak Russian and Bulgarian, none of them is my native language, and even now - without having learned Polish - I understand 50-60 % of any written text in Polish, and also 30-40 % of spoken Polish.
I think the hardest thing in ANY foreign language is the correct pronunciation and correct intonation. The easiest thing is the lexical part: any average person is able to memorize words. Grammar is in the middle between them, it needs theoretical knowledge and practice. The only impossible (or almost impossible) thing in any foreign language is to archive a native-like pronunciation.
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janababe Triglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 5515 days ago 102 posts - 115 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, German
| Message 3 of 5 21 February 2011 at 4:22pm | IP Logged |
Sure it depends on your own language and any other languages you already know. If you're learning a new language that's similar to the ones you know it's easier than one that's completely different.
For Swedes it's easy to learn Norwegian and Danish then English is good too. The hardest to learn mmm.... *thinks*... difficult to say, any language that has a different type of grammar or sounds but I can't say which that would be. Finnish is hot but damn hard to learn.
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polyglHot Pentaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5067 days ago 173 posts - 229 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, German, Spanish, Indonesian Studies: Russian
| Message 4 of 5 21 February 2011 at 5:05pm | IP Logged |
English:
Easy: Everything
Hard: Nothing
German:
Easy: Vocabulary, pronounciation
Hard: Cases I guess...
Spanish:
Easy: Pronounciation, vocabulary
Hard: Gerundio or what is that thing called, the fact that they use 5 tenses or
something like that, I don't remember exactly as I'm not studying it anymore
Indonesian/Javanese:
Easy: Beginner level grammar, conjugation
Hard: Pronounciation of Javanese words like, cerewet, nggak, njamur etc.
Russian:
Easy: Alphabet, reading, SMS, colloquial speach, tenses
Hard: Grammar of course, pronounciation at times
I can't say which of those were easier to learn, as I have employed very different
methods for each language. As I've only mastered English, I have no idea how much time
it would take me to potentially master one of the 3 other languages, perhaps 5 to 10
years for utter fluency, but this would only be if I were to live in each country
again...
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xander.XVII Diglot Senior Member Italy Joined 5055 days ago 189 posts - 215 votes Speaks: Italian*, EnglishC1 Studies: French
| Message 5 of 5 21 February 2011 at 9:11pm | IP Logged |
If we exclude English.
French:
Easy:vocabulary(similar to Italian),almost all grammar
Hard:pronunciation,intonation,some parts of grammar
Hungarian:
Easy:Nothing so far
Hard:Almost everything yet I am only at the beginning.
Esperanto:
Easy:All
Hard:I think nothing.
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