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Camundonguinho
Triglot
Senior Member
Brazil
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| Message 17 of 80 01 June 2012 at 11:00pm | IP Logged |
tractor wrote:
| Scots, Afrikaans, Dutch, Frisian, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, HTML, CSS, AppleScript. |
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Norwegian is extremely easy to learn.
Edited by Camundonguinho on 04 June 2012 at 5:30am
5 persons have voted this message useful
| Pisces
Bilingual Pentaglot
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Finland
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| Message 18 of 80 01 June 2012 at 11:44pm | IP Logged |
COF wrote:
Only SNP supporting, highly nationalistic types think Scots is its own language. Such ideas tend to be rooted in anti-English sentiment and a desire to appear as distict from England as possible.
The truth is, no one really speaks Scots in every day life, it is a very archaic dialect and some would argue it was only ever really used in a poetic sense, not in every day speech.
Scots is no more its own language than broad Cockney is. |
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Scots is a language of its own; it diverged from Middle English in the Middle Ages. It's a separate language just as Norwegian is a separate language from Danish.
7 persons have voted this message useful
| beano
Diglot
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| Message 19 of 80 01 June 2012 at 11:49pm | IP Logged |
Pisces wrote:
COF wrote:
Only SNP supporting, highly nationalistic types think Scots is its own language. Such ideas tend to be rooted in anti-English sentiment and a desire to appear as distict from England as possible.
The truth is, no one really speaks Scots in every day life, it is a very archaic dialect and some would argue it was only ever really used in a poetic sense, not in every day speech.
Scots is no more its own language than broad Cockney is. |
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Scots is a language of its own; it diverged from Middle English in the Middle Ages. It's a separate language just as Norwegian is a separate language from Danish. |
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Although what most Scots people actually speak is Scottish English peppered with a few words from old Scots.
3 persons have voted this message useful
| Solfrid Cristin
Heptaglot
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| Message 20 of 80 01 June 2012 at 11:52pm | IP Logged |
Camundonguinho wrote:
tractor wrote:
| Scots, Afrikaans, Dutch, Frisian, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, HTML, CSS, AppleScript. |
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Norwegian is extremely difficult for non-Scandinavians:
1. the pronunciation is next to impossible (Norwegian Y, U, and the complicated pitch accent) (Dutch and German pronunciation is super easy)
2. weird word order in anything but the simplest phrases (Dutch and German word order is a piece of cake)
3. 2 written standards, each with at least 2 substandards (dronninga mina or dronningen min?; ei lita blond or en liten blond? katta or katten (these also happen to carry a different tone)).
4. million dialects, and people are not willing to speak the ''bookish'' language with foreigners, they worship their dialects as if they were something divine (unlike in Dutch-speaking parts of Flanders where people from different regions speak the Standard Belgian Dutch in formal situations or with foreigners).
5. complicated spelling: the pitch accent is not obvious from the spelling, there are so many silent letters (especially D's and G's), and many times the vowel length is not obvious from the spelling (both SKAL and SKALL have the short vowel; STJERNA has a long stressed E, and BARNA has a short stressed A). In Dutch, the correspondence between the spelling and pronunciation is more phonetic.
6. In the Netherlands, the two gender system is basically a rule. In Norway it's an exception limited to the Bergen dialect and the West Oslo sociolect.
7. the standard based on the Southeastern dialects. ''The Standard Southeastern Norwegian'' has he most complicated pitch accent, and a set of complex sociolinguistic issues which come as a baggage together with it (if you use a 2 gender system you're accused of being a right wing old fart, if you use a 3 gender system you're accused of being a Marxist radical)...It would be so much easier if the Bergen dialect had been chosen as an unofficial official standard, it has a pitch accent which is easier to imitate, the native 2 gender system not connected to politics, and the french R.
I learned German for many years, and can understand some Dutch even without studying it. Dutch is basically a mix of English and German. Norwegian is much further away from both English and German.
Norwegians say English is the easiest language for an English speaker to learn, because they're not in native English speakers' shoes. English is extremely easy for Norwegians to learn, but the opposite is not true. How many native speakers of English can speak Norwegian with a native-like accent? Very few of them, if at all.
The conservative/moderate Bokmaal/Riksmaal is not terrible difficult to learn (how to write.). But speaking a natural-sounding , native speaker-sounding Norwegian is a different thing. That's why you don't see many foreigners recording themselves speaking Norwegian on youtube. They/we already know they/we will always sound foreign./not-native. (The only solution is to choose a strong/thick regional dialect and imitate it. Paradoxically, the dialects from the West, the North, the South have somewhat milder ''singing'' and are easier to imitate, and many people in Olso are not familiar with dialects...So it will be easier for you to fool them).
The pitch accent IS essential. Now, I can get which word has which tone (1 or 2), but I'm still having problems with the realizations of tones. A Norwegian friend of mine told me I sound like someone from Scania (Southern Sweden) speaking Norwegian.
I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing : ( :)
So, between Dutch and Norwegian:
Dutch is easier for an English speaker to learn how to SPEAK with a native-like accent.
While Norwegian may have fewer morphological forms/changes, the phonology makes it up for that. So, Å ELSKE and (JEG) ELSKER have different tonemes, and so have BILER and BILEN. :=) |
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It is incomprehensible to me how you can make what is one of the easiest languages for English speakers into something which sounds as dificult as Mandarin.
I put it to you you that this is more about your own attitude problem and possible negative experiences than with any real linguistic problems. I have never seen such an odd mixture of facts and rubbish in my entire life. I suggest you start a vendetta against a new language, because this is getting old.
Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 01 June 2012 at 11:56pm
14 persons have voted this message useful
| PillowRock
Groupie
United States
Joined 4516 days ago
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Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish
| Message 21 of 80 02 June 2012 at 12:40am | IP Logged |
beano wrote:
| Even today, Scots people rarely use the English concepts "shall" and "ought" - preferring "will" and "should" respectively. |
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Without offering any opinion one way or the other about the "language-hood" of Scots, I would just point that this particular usage variation is also typical of American English.
1 person has voted this message useful
| stelingo
Hexaglot
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United Kingdom
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| Message 22 of 80 02 June 2012 at 12:48am | IP Logged |
Easiest language for an English speaker? That's easy. English of course!
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| 
jeff_lindqvist
Diglot
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| Message 23 of 80 02 June 2012 at 1:10am | IP Logged |
Second easiest:
Basic/Simple English ;)
3 persons have voted this message useful
| Serpent
Octoglot
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Russian Federation
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| Message 24 of 80 02 June 2012 at 3:24am | IP Logged |
A lot of people only speak a dialect of Simple English, though :)
1 person has voted this message useful
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