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Difficulty of learning a foreign language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| QiuJP Triglot Senior Member Singapore Joined 5855 days ago 428 posts - 597 votes  Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Czech, GermanB1, Russian, Japanese | Message 1 of 13 10 February 2010 at 4:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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depends on the languages you have learned at young (at 5 years old or earlier) and retrained?
I am sorry for the long title, but this is what I felt when I saw the two threads on the ratings of difficulty. Let me give you a bit of my background: I grew up in Singapore, where the language of adminstration is English. However, my parents cannot speak or understand English well (they came from China). As a result, I communicated in Chinese at home and in English at school. Due to this exposure and practice, I can write, read ,speak and listen to these two languages very well. When I was first exposed to foreign languages, there were rather surprising thoughts regarding to diffculty of languages (especially to most people in the forum here). I felt that Malay and Tamil, the two other languages which are spoken here in Singapore, to be very diffcult. However, I can guess correctly the meaning of two other languages with fairly high accuracy. These two languages are Japanese and French, which I eventually decided to study. They were fairly simple to me as I didn't spend much time on vocabulary. The most diffcult language that I am studying now is Russian. I had to overcome the problem of forgeting to decline my words. Also, if I do not made an effort to read or revise my Russian, I can easily forget the vocabulary. As a result, I have found myself to be reading through my Russian materials almost everyday! I do not think that someone who has a background in Slavic language need to do this everyday. This is my experience regarding to the diffculties of learning languages. My unique language exposure to two different language types has affected my views on which languages are difficult to learn. How about other language combinations? Edited by QiuJP on 10 February 2010 at 4:30pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Frenchpro Triglot Newbie United States francetravelandfood. Joined 5402 days ago 29 posts - 38 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Korean | Message 2 of 13 10 February 2010 at 6:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yes, deffinitely, speaking certain languages will help you learn some of the "most similar" languages much easier. For example, my mother tongue being French and being fluent in Spanish helps me understand a whole lot of Italian and I can repeat anything I hear very esily in the Italian language. I have not taken the time to learn Italian yet, but when I do, I know that it will be a brise for me.
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| datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5585 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French | Message 3 of 13 10 February 2010 at 6:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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Spanish and Portuguese are VERY similar. German and Dutch?
French/Portuguese/Italian. Ukrainian/Russian Dutch/Afrikanns? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Wilco Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6330 days ago 160 posts - 247 votes Speaks: French*, English, Russian | Message 4 of 13 10 February 2010 at 6:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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Of course, learning other languages in your linguistic family will be far easier. Just look at the South Slavic, Turkic or Persian continuums. And just like Frenchpro, I don't feel the need to learn Italian, since I can understand about 60-70% of what's being said.
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| QiuJP Triglot Senior Member Singapore Joined 5855 days ago 428 posts - 597 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Czech, GermanB1, Russian, Japanese | Message 5 of 13 10 February 2010 at 7:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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How many of you have learnt 2 unrelated languages since young, and when you grow up, you can threat other related languages of the two language groups with the same diffculty or ease? For me, the knowledge of English and Chinese accquired since young have made me feel that Japanese is as easy as French.
The reason why I asked this question is that it affects your very own Cactus ranking in learning foreign languages! I think I have a radically different cactus ranking than most people here in the forum.... (and yes, sometimes I couldn't understand very well why people here think that Chinese or English is difficult to learn) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| delectric Diglot Senior Member China Joined 7181 days ago 608 posts - 733 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: German | Message 6 of 13 11 February 2010 at 5:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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QiuJP, about Japanese you're not the only one. It seems many Chinese see Japanese as the
'easy' language. Whether they're right or not is another matter but that's people's perception here. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| QiuJP Triglot Senior Member Singapore Joined 5855 days ago 428 posts - 597 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Czech, GermanB1, Russian, Japanese | Message 7 of 13 11 February 2010 at 6:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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But I am sure not much people will rank French, German and Japanese with the same number of cactus as me in the Cactus ranking. In fact, picking up another Chinese dialect will be very doable for me also......
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 13 16 February 2010 at 1:03pm | IP Logged | ||
It would be very interesting to see your cactus rankings. Couldn't you post them in the Cacti from non-native speakers thread? Edited by Iversen on 16 February 2010 at 1:04pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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