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Most difficult language combination | ||
Tags: Learning Difficulty | Multilingual | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| hribecek Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5135 days ago 1243 posts - 1458 votes  Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian | Message 1 of 25 22 November 2010 at 10:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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If we could take the most difficult areas of any language, what language would be the most difficult for each area?
Most tenses - Spanish (12/13???) Most tones - Mandarin 4 + 1 Most cases - Czech has 7 Most genders - Czech has 4 including the 2 for Masculine. Most conditionals - Most complex Imperative form - Spanish Most complex prepositions - Most complex passive - Most complex Comparatives/superlatives - Hardest spelling - English??? Most complex number system - French??? Most subject pronouns - Spanish 12??? Most article forms - Most complex time system - Most letters - Czech 42 Most sounds - Most complex adjective forms - I'm sure there are more possible categories so add more if you can. If you think one of your languages challenges for one of these categories then add it or correct mine if I'm wrong with the numbers I wrote (they were off the top of my head). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5167 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 2 of 25 22 November 2010 at 11:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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...off the top of my head...
Many languages have more tones, such as Vietnamese, Thai or Cantonese Hungarian has 8 cases, I think, and Finnish is said to have 15. Estonian probably way up there too. Some languages have noun classes, up to 20, such as many Australian aboriginal languages. Hardest spelling has got to be pictograms of any kind, such as Chinese characters. I think Japanese characters are even harder due to the multiple readings of each character. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Yurk Triglot Newbie United States Joined 5516 days ago 29 posts - 37 votes Speaks: English*, Russian, Azerbaijani Studies: Modern Hebrew, Sign Language, Korean, Spanish, Indonesian, Irish Studies: French | Message 3 of 25 23 November 2010 at 12:40am | IP Logged | ||
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Most tones - Dong has 9 or 15 tones, depending on how you look at it.
Most genders - Yanyuwa has 16 "noun cases," which according to wikipedia is sometimes considered synonymous with gender. Hardest spelling - Chinese characters Most complex time system - Korean? Most letters - Abkhaz has 62 letters. Most sounds - Ubykh? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5928 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 4 of 25 23 November 2010 at 12:43am | IP Logged | ||
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I can't be sure on these, but here are some guesses for some of the more mainstream languages (excluding very small African, Aboriginal Australian, and Native American languages, for example).
Most tones - Hmong and Cantonese (7) Most cases - Hungarian (18) Most genders - Swahili (16) Most conditionals - Hungarian (4, if you count definite/indefinite conjugation) Most complex Imperative form - (Ancient) Greek Most complex prepositions - English Most complex passive - (Ancient) Greek Hardest spelling - English or Danish (of alphabetic) // Chinese and Japanese (of pictographic) Most complex number system - Danish Most subject pronouns - Slovenian (27) Most article forms - Ancient Greek (36) Most complex time system - Swahili (just different, but I don't know of another language that doesn't use the western time system) Most letters - Slovak (46), Vietnamese (88 if you include tone markings) EDIT: I realized just now that the 36 articles I listed for Ancient Greek are just for one gender, so presumably there would be 108 forms, but I'm sure many repeat, like in Modern Greek where there are 18 possible article forms, but only 13 distinct forms (or 12, if you don't count τη and την as distinct forms). Edited by ellasevia on 23 November 2010 at 7:06am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jeeb Groupie Joined 4946 days ago 49 posts - 80 votes | Message 5 of 25 23 November 2010 at 5:04am | IP Logged | ||
Mainstream Cantonese only has 6 tones. You may hear that Cantonese has 9 tones and it is because they counted syllables that end with p, t, and k as tones. However, these syllables that ends with plosive can be distributed into the existing tones. As in English, the plosive end in a word makes the pronunciation of the vowel shorter. 6 tones aren't that hard if you remember the graph of Ying-Yang. 
ying is represented by the dark side and yang is represented by the bright side. (white side) According to Chinese philosophy, ying can mean dark, soft, woman... yang can mean bright, hard, man... In Cantonese Tone, there are 3 ying and 3 yang. It's very tidy. Ying = Woman = Relatively high pitch Ynag = Man = Relatively low pitch Ying Level Yang Level Ying Rising Yang Rising Ying Departing Yang Departing -----------Not about Tone---------------- 6 is an important number in Chinese philosophy. You may heard of a Chinese idiom called "六六無窮" (six six no endings) And the "six" comes the hexagram in I-Ching, the book of Change. 
Hexagrams are those 6 horizontal lines in the picture. And hexagram itself is composed of 2 trigrams. 
Trigram = 3 horizontal lines. You may also heard of another idiom called 扭轉乾坤, which means "twist turn sky and earth" literally and it roughly means some actions that bring silver lining to a situation. 乾 and 坤 are from the trigrams in I-Ching. ----------------------------- Tone is not that difficult.It is difficult because people TELL you that tones are difficult. In long term, it becomes a self-fulfilled prophecy. This is the reason why a placebo can heal a disease and why worries can cause cancer. Chinese languages are difficult but it is not because of tones., Tones will come to you naturally as you listen and mimic. What really tricky about Chinese is something like I-Ching goes into daily usages and people don't know how to explain to you. Why does anther Chinese idiom"不三不四" (not three not four) means "a person with low character? Again, it comes from I-Ching's hexagram 
"not three not four" = not in the middle in a hexagram. (count from bottom to top and you will see line 3 and line 4 are in the middle of a hexagram) It eventually means "derail from the right path" (because not in the middle) You've to have knowledges in Chinese philosophy and literary Chinese in order to get into advanced level. Edited by jeeb on 23 November 2010 at 6:01am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6489 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 6 of 25 23 November 2010 at 9:53am | IP Logged | ||
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OK, new item:
Most complicated philosophy needed to learn a language: Chinese (presumably Mandarin if the philosophical texts are in that language - else Ancient Chinese) Edited by Iversen on 23 November 2010 at 9:54am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Fat-tony Nonaglot Senior Member United Kingdom jiahubooks.co.uk Joined 5926 days ago 288 posts - 441 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian, Esperanto, Thai, Laotian, Urdu, Swedish, French Studies: Mandarin, Indonesian, Arabic (Written), Armenian, Pali, Burmese | Message 7 of 25 23 November 2010 at 10:05pm | IP Logged | ||
The most complex number system, I think, would be the one employed by the North Indian languages (Punjabi, Hindi/Urdu, Nepali and others all employ their own variants) in which every number from 1 to 100 needs to be learnt individually. The East Asian/South-East Asian languages have very complex pronominal systems. Personally I'd put Thai or Khmer on top - both languages have a bewildering array of terms from the royal family down to terms used only as an insult. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| rostocpj Pentaglot Newbie United States Joined 5277 days ago 21 posts - 33 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, French, Toki Pona Studies: Esperanto, Indonesian, Shanghainese, Cantonese | Message 8 of 25 24 November 2010 at 3:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think I would rename some categories:
Most difficult writing system : Chinese Alphabet (abjad, abugida, etc.) with the most letters : Khmer (Cambodian) ~68 letters Most particular about language being spoken correctly : French 1 person has voted this message useful |
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