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Most difficult IE Language? | ||
Tags: Indo-European Languages | Difficulty | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Merv Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5051 days ago 414 posts - 749 votes  Speaks: English*, Serbo-Croatian* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 17 of 69 25 June 2010 at 12:34am | IP Logged | |||||
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6 vs. 7 cases does not matter as much as the dual number. Dual number means that in Slovenian both dual nouns
and their corresponding adjectives will have their own set of declensions, and that verbs dealing with dual subjects will have their own set of conjugations. Also the pitch accent of Slovene is something not present in many other Indo-European languages (the only other major ones are Serbian/Croatian, Lithuanian, Swedish, Norwegian, and Punjabi). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6481 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 18 of 69 25 June 2010 at 1:06am | IP Logged | |||||
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I can't say anything about Indian languages because I haven't tried to learn them. But among those I have tried so far I think that Irish is the weirdest one - and also problematic because of the low number of speakers with the resultant lack of things to read. Russian comes in at the second place: it is like a huge machine where thousands of small wheels have to run smoothly. Icelandic is about the same level as German, but has far fewer resources, so it comes in at the third place - even though I have an advantage as speaker of another Nordic language.
If you only look at the spelling and its ties to the actual pronunciation, then Irish is again the most complicated language I know, but English comes in as a close runner-up. If I hadn't learnt English for so many years I would see that spelling as an affront to humanity. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5920 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 19 of 69 25 June 2010 at 1:39am | IP Logged | |||||
Iversen, where would you say Greek comes in on that scale? I recall reading one of your posts from a year or two ago where you said that you thought that Greek was much harder than Russian (or something to that effect). Do you still think this? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6481 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 20 of 69 25 June 2010 at 2:03am | IP Logged | |||||
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My honest, but maybe surprising opinion is that Modern Greek is fairly easy (if I ever have written the opposite I have changed my mind).
Its morphology has not only been reduced since the antiquity, but also become quite logical in the process. There is one weird point in the syntax, namely the loss of the infintive which forces the Greeks to use subordinate phrases instead -but the principles behind these constructions are also quite logical. The spelling looks fiendish because of the alphabet - but that can be learnt in a few hours. With the latest spelling reform three accents were reduced to one, and two completely silent aspirations were kicked out. The reformers just forgot one irritating detail: the many ways of writing certain vowels. One thing which may be difficult for learners is the position of the accent, which can be surprising in some cases. In the beginning I just followed one golden rule: the accent would never be where I expected it to be. But at least it is always marked in polysyllabic words. As far I can see the ancient stages of Greek are much more complicated to learn. But I have left those for later. Edited by Iversen on 25 June 2010 at 2:05am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6546 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 21 of 69 25 June 2010 at 2:47am | IP Logged | |||||
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Although the OP specified living languages, I think Ancient Greek is the hardest language I've tried learning.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ennime Tetraglot Senior Member South Africa universityofbrokengl Joined 5682 days ago 397 posts - 507 votes Speaks: English, Dutch*, Esperanto, Afrikaans Studies: Xhosa, French, Korean, Portuguese, Zulu | Message 22 of 69 25 June 2010 at 10:54am | IP Logged | |||||
yeah and due to needing words for the modern era... the sanskrit word for physics is actually literally "idiot science" ^_^ 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| liddytime Pentaglot Senior Member United States mainlymagyar.wordpre Joined 6007 days ago 693 posts - 1328 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written) | Message 23 of 69 25 June 2010 at 1:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
I would totally agree. There are so many cognates with English and roots of English words that many times you can figure out a Greek word without ever seeing it before. eg: pedia = child, yiatros = doctor = pediatrician. zestos = hot = "zesty". etc.etc.... I'm still sticking with Albanian for the most difficult! :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 6793 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 24 of 69 25 June 2010 at 2:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
As in "you're an idiot for learning it" or does it mean something else? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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