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What 1st and 2nd lang pair is hardest? | ||
Tags: Learning Difficulty | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes  Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 1 of 5 11 March 2010 at 8:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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The question of what languages are hardest is a very common one, and the answer inevitably depends on the languages you already speak.
I assumed for a long time that if it was difficult for a speaker of language A to learn language B, the opposite would be more or less equally difficult. However, that it isn't always the case. For instance, Japanese speakers have many English words in their language, they are accustomed to the alphabet... Even if they hardly speak any English, they can read a text and get a general idea of what it's about. Definitely not true the other way around. As a speaker of a few European languages, it is harder for me to learn Japanese than it would be for a monolingual Japanese person to learn English. So it begs the question: which are the hardest language combinations? What are the most difficult 1st and 2nd language pairs? 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| GREGORG4000 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5523 days ago 307 posts - 479 votes Speaks: English*, Finnish Studies: Japanese, Korean, Amharic, French | Message 2 of 5 11 March 2010 at 8:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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Maybe an Esperanto native speaker learning Navajo...
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| Woodpecker Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5811 days ago 351 posts - 590 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), Arabic (Egyptian) Studies: Arabic (classical) | Message 3 of 5 11 March 2010 at 9:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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If we're sticking exclusively to major languages, my vote would go to Chinese -> Arabic. Here's my thinking:
1. Phonology: This is probably going to be one of the biggest challenges. Chinese has tones, but otherwise it's a pretty simple language phonologically, whereas Arabic is quite complex. A lot of native Chinese speakers who study English have a lot of trouble with phonology, and Arabic has everything English has [except (p) and, arguably, (ch)] and a whole lot more. 2. Grammar: This is the big one. Both seem pretty alien from my (English) perspective, but for opposite reasons. Arabic grammar is very heavily declined and fairly synthetic. Figuring out how to construct a sentence requires a lot of grammatical knowledge, and word order is fairly flexible. Chinese, the classic example of an isolating language, is basically the polar opposite. (Edit: upon rereading, that was overstated. The polar opposite of Chinese would be a poly-synthetic language like Navajo. Arabic is pretty far along on the other side of the spectrum, but not all the way.) 3. Script: Not a huge issue, but significant. At this point, I assume most native Chinese speakers have some familiarity with phonological systems thanks to the prominence of the alphabet we're all using. Furthermore, Arabic script isn't all that challenging, but it is neither familiar like this alphabet, nor a character system as is used in Chinese. 4. World-view: Admittedly, I think is true for everyone learning Arabic, but I doubt it's any easier to grasp for Chinese speakers. 5. They just generally have nothing in common and very little shared history. Both are really, really hard for most people to learn. I am pretty convinced that if you put them together, you have a truly serious challenge. Great topic, by the way. I'm very interested to see what other opinions people have. Edited by Woodpecker on 13 March 2010 at 9:09am 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| zhiguli Senior Member Canada Joined 6441 days ago 176 posts - 221 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Mandarin | Message 4 of 5 12 March 2010 at 10:28pm | IP Logged | ||
They're also forced to learn it in school and exposed to English-language media. Just like many, many others in many other countries. If English is "easier" for them it's because it's unavoidable, not because of some intrinsic property of the language. And judging by the woefully small number of those who manage to learn it to fluency in spite of the thousands of hours and billions of dollars thrown at English-language education, I'd say it isn't so easy for them after all. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| spanishlearner Groupie France Joined 5454 days ago 51 posts - 81 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 5 of 5 13 March 2010 at 12:02am | IP Logged | ||
I agree with this. If Arabic or Chinese were as ubiquitous as English and children were taught them from an early age, they'd be regarded as "easy" too. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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