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Which language is easier to master? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Voltman Newbie Australia Joined 4888 days ago 39 posts - 44 votes | Message 1 of 15 19 February 2011 at 1:11am | IP Logged | |||||
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Spanish or Indonesian? What does everyone think?
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| mr_chinnery Senior Member England Joined 5554 days ago 202 posts - 297 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 2 of 15 19 February 2011 at 1:25am | IP Logged | |||||
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I have no experience of either but I thought Spanish is considered the easiest language
to learn, assuming you speak an Indo-European tongue. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5059 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 3 of 15 19 February 2011 at 2:25am | IP Logged | |||||
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Barry Farber wrote about his experience learning Indonesian in his book of many years ago- "How To Learn Any Language".. He had been on a Dutch ship (that's apparently how it was done- back in the day) returning from Europe to NYC. Of course, Holland was the former colonial master of Indonesia. The Dutch captain, Hans, had grown up in what was then the Dutch East Indies. Farber heard the captain speak to an Indonesian crewman in Indonesian and it mightily impressed Farber, who asked the captain to teach him Indonesian:
"For the next eight days, until we were interrupted by the New York City skyline, Hans patiently taught me the Indonesian language. When we parted, I was able to converse with the Indonesian crewmen, just as Hans had that first day on deck. Lest this come across as a boast, let me hasten to point out that Indonesian is the easiest language in the world– no hedging, no “almost”, no “among the easiest”. In my experience, Indonesian is the easiest. The grammar is minimal, regular, and simple... The Indonesians obligingly use the Roman alphabet, and they get along with fewer letters of it than we do. And their tongue has an instant charm. The Indonesian word for “sun”, mata hari (the famous female spy was known as the “sun” of Asia) literally means “eye of the day”. When they make a singular noun plural in Indonesia, they merely say it twice. “Man,” for example, is orang. “Men” is orang orang. And when they write it, they just write one orang and put a 2 after it, like an exponent in algebra (Orang 2)." He didn't say that it only took him 8 days to learn the language fluently, just that he was able to converse with the crewmen. I read this passage several years ago and have always wanted to learn Indonesian because of it, someday.... Edited by iguanamon on 19 February 2011 at 2:47am 10 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5131 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 4 of 15 19 February 2011 at 6:45am | IP Logged | |||||
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Oh. No! You just added yet another language to my wish list... Which is really long as it is.
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| polyglHot Pentaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 4863 days ago 173 posts - 229 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, German, Spanish, Indonesian Studies: Russian | Message 5 of 15 19 February 2011 at 4:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Having studied both I will give you my opinion;
Yes one can do a VERY basics level in a week because they don't conjugate or speak in the past tense etc. It's an easy language when you first encounter it because it uses the English alphabet and some words are of Dutch/German origin. However Indonesian is no ones first language, and wherever you go the Indonesian that people speak will either be very formal (thus requiring you to having mastered the language) or littered with Java -or Sundanese vocabulary. I am tired of hearing people claiming that Indonesian is easy. I certainly haven't mastered it. To master Indonesian one would also have to speak Javanese. Or how would one communicate with the majority of the people of Indonesia? I don't get it. So to "master" Indonesian you'd have to master two languages, one having 3 levels of politeness. To master Spanish one would only have to master one. 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tmp011007 Diglot Senior Member Congo Joined 5866 days ago 199 posts - 346 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: French, Portuguese | Message 6 of 15 19 February 2011 at 7:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
spanish? I thought it was Italian 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| goban Triglot Newbie Germany Joined 4855 days ago 1 posts - 7 votes Speaks: Indonesian*, English, German | Message 7 of 15 19 February 2011 at 11:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
Most Indonesian grow up speaking two languages, Indonesian and the local one. Depending on their upbringing some will acquire the local language at home as their first language, or somewhat later from the people around them (school, friends, other family members). In my case Indonesian is my first language. It is also the case for many people who is living in Jakarta, since the local language there (Betawi) is not really as dominant as Javanese in Yogyakarta or as Sundanese in Bandung.
I speak some Javanese, since I lived several years in the "Java part" of Java island. As the language of largest ethnic group in Indonesia, over the years, many of Javanese words have been absorbed into Indonesian. Still I don't see Javanese as a prerequisite to master Indonesian. Growing up in Jakarta my wife does not speak any local language and yet it doesn't prevent her from speaking Indonesian as well as any other Javanese speaker. 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5142 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 8 of 15 20 February 2011 at 4:36am | IP Logged | |||||
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The notion that there is an "easy to learn" language is really stupid. Barring exceptional instances of genuine complexity like Sanskrit, grammar is the least of your worries when learning a new language.
The real difficulty in truly assimilating a language -as opposed to making chit chat like Mr. Farber- lies in vocabulary, forms of expression and syntax - the latter made more difficult, not easier, by a sparsity of grammar. Due to the tight concordance of subject, pronouns, verbs, adjectives and objects in Russian you're seldom in doubt as to who does what to whom. In a language devoid of these markings a more thorough familiarization is needed before one can comfortably make precise sense of meanings. This concept of "easy languages" is for people who believe making idle and meaningless conversation equals having learnt a language. To be sure, for different reasons (writing system, remove from one's own language and culture), some languages certainly require far more work than others to get started, but this is something distinct from intrinsic difficulty, and beyond this initial, lengthy stage they reach a point from which reaching mastery entails just as much "difficulty" as those ostensibly easier ones. 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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