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Easiest language for an English speaker? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| anamsc2 Tetraglot Groupie United States Joined 4344 days ago 85 posts - 186 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Catalan, German Studies: French | Message 41 of 80 02 June 2012 at 7:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, I think that, aside from Scots, an English-based creole would probably be the most similar to English. My experience in creoles is limited to Limonense and HCE, but they are relatively easy for an English speaker to understand. However, in learning one of these languages, an English speaker might face a number of challenges.
-Lack of acceptance from native speakers (as montmorency stated) -Feeling "silly" and / or like you're making fun of the speakers -A lack of resources and probably some others that I can't think of right now I'm actually genuinely surprised that nobody has chosen Spanish. Not only are there a lot of cognates, but also the grammar and pronunciation are not particularly difficult*. Also, English speakers and language learners don't exist in a vacuum. At the end of the day, much of successfully learning a language comes down to availability of resources. There are a number of courses, books, podcasts, etc. aimed at English-speaking learners of Spanish, it is relatively easy to find Spanish speakers, and there is a ton of Spanish media that is easy for English-speakers to access. Plus, at least in the US, many people grow up with some exposure to Spanish, in school, in their towns, and in popular culture. * Please note that I am not trying to say that everything about Spanish is easy. There are certainly aspects of Spanish that can be difficult, but that is true of any language. I'm just saying that many other languages have much more difficult grammar and pronunciation for English speakers. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| jazzboy.bebop Senior Member Norway norwegianthroughnove Joined 5203 days ago 439 posts - 800 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian | Message 42 of 80 02 June 2012 at 8:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
To be honest, I agree with you. From my experience, Scots has been diluted so much now by English that today people essentially speak English with Scots remnants in there and this forms the current dialects. I kind of see modern Scots as almost like a sort of creole. At one point Scots was distinct enough to be seen as a different, though very closely related language to English, but has been diluted to the point where I don't think it exists as a proper, natural living language anymore. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5317 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 43 of 80 02 June 2012 at 8:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Leaving aside broad Scotts, which I find beautiful and fascinating, I'm actually going
to vote for French. I'm going to do what Benny Lewis sometimes does, and mention all the easy things about French. That's not to say that French doesn't have it's fair share of challenges, but a lot of them can be postponed until after B1, or they mostly matter when you're writing. Many people claim that French is much harder than Spanish. And I will admit that the orthography and pronunciation can be a little intimidating at first, with all the silent letters, nasal vowels and liaisons. But honestly, all that seems almost intuitive after 6 months of Assimil. And once you get past that hump, French as all kinds of things going for it: - French is the primary superstratum for modern English, and the two languages have arguably formed a Sprachbund ever since. In practice, this means that 2,500 of the most common 6,000 words in French are near-exact cognates with English, and that there are all kinds of similar idioms. - You can hold a rudimentary conversation in French with only 3 verb tenses (the présent, the passé composé and the futur proche). And the latter two are easy compound tenses. And as you add more tenses, they keep getting easier to conjugate. - In spoken French, many verbs have only two forms in the present tense: The singular forms all sound the same, as does the third-person plural. And nobody really uses the first-person plural in ordinary speech—they use on plus the third-person singular. So quite often, you only need to produce the first-person singular and second-person plural in real time. The exceptions tend to be very common verbs, which are easy to learn. - Modern French only has two subjunctive tenses, and they follow fairly rigid rules. So whenever you have a question about the subjunctive, there's almost always a yes/no answer, which you can stick in your Anki deck and memorize. - French spelling may seem a bit weird and archaic, but this mostly works in favor of English speakers. All those silent letters make the French word look more like corresponding English word. For example, even though cent ("one hundred") is pronounced as a consonant followed by a nasal vowel, the spelling is identical to the English word 'cent'. And the pronunciation of cent is easy to predict from the spelling. I could make a up a similar list full of scary-sounding things about French. But really, you can postpone a lot of the scary stuff until you've seen it hundreds of times in context, which makes it much more intuitive. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 4841 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 44 of 80 02 June 2012 at 8:58pm | IP Logged | |||||
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French grammar is two far from that of English, French phonetics even more, but I agree
tha due two the conservatism of spellings they have a lot recognizible cognates. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| COF Senior Member United States Joined 5616 days ago 262 posts - 354 votes Speaks: English* | Message 45 of 80 02 June 2012 at 10:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I find French pronunciation to be quite slurred, which can make it difficult to work out what they're saying, especially for a beginner.
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| staninbrooklyn Newbie United States Joined 4346 days ago 3 posts - 4 votes | Message 46 of 80 02 June 2012 at 10:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Perhaps there should be some type of metric that defines what makes a language "easy" for an English learner to learn.
For example, if you're an American living in a Hispanic part of Texas or LA or New York, you could argue that Spanish is the easiest language to learn since you see and hear it all the time. I've never studied Spanish in my life but can keep up a decent conversation having lived in Puerto Rican and Dominican parts of NYC for many years. (Though some would argue they don't even speak real Spanish anymore.) By this metric then you could just say that the easiest language for any native English speaker would be the second language he/she is most exposed to. The question though seems to assume an English speaker who lives in a bubble and exposure to any other language has no influence. I've often heard Norwegian is the easiest because the grammar is identical to English. If you learn a long list of words you can just swap out Norwegian ones for English ones and there you go. Ironically, I've never studied Norwegian formally but my mother is Norwegian and we grew up speakings bits of it at home. When I traveled to Oslo (her hometown) I was able to speak and understand several sentences without a problem. Usually the conversation would end not because my Norwegian was so bad but because Norwegians in Oslo speak English so well they would just interrupt me with their perfect English. However, when I've traveled to Bergen in the West or smaller villages up north, I find my "Norwegian" works less and less because of strong differences in accents and dialects. It's interesting how such a small country has such strong variations. Also, I think some languages allow you to be sloppier in pronunciation than others. In Mandarin, which I've studied for many years, precise pronunciation is so important. But in Spanish - and I think perhaps French as well - you can be a little sloppier with your pronunciation and people will still understand you. That's not to say you can or should be sloppy but a bad pronunciation of Buenos Dias still works. I think Spanish is the easiest personally. Also since many Spanish words are spelled exactly as they're spelled it's fairly easy to pick out pronunciation from a book. You can't do that with many other languages. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Pisces Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4407 days ago 143 posts - 284 votes Speaks: English*, Finnish*, French, SwedishC1, Esperanto Studies: German, Spanish, Russian | Message 47 of 80 02 June 2012 at 11:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think you certainly have a point. I was thinking about this the other day. Many people think that Spanish is easier than French, but I don't agree. I was looking at my Spanish/English dictionary and the word 'refuse' caught my eye. In Spanish it is 'rechazar'. In French it is 'refuser'. In Spanish 'development' is 'desarrollo'. In French 'développement'. French spelling is not as hard as some people say, it's actually quite regular. And an English speaker gets a lot of it for free, e.g. from words like 'plateau'. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| COF Senior Member United States Joined 5616 days ago 262 posts - 354 votes Speaks: English* | Message 48 of 80 03 June 2012 at 12:03am | IP Logged | |||||
I've heard the Norwegians, as well as the Dutch do this a lot to the point it can be very difficult to learn their languages. I was wondering, how do immigrants to Norway learn Norwegian when the attitude of Norwegians is to go into English every time they hear a foreign accent speaking not fluent Norwegian? Do the Norwegians have a different attitude towards immigrants speaking Norwegian, or do most immigrants tend to just get by in English until their Norwegian gets proficient enough that Norwegians don't go into English anymore? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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