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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4501 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 41 of 96 13 March 2014 at 5:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
The hardest Indo-European language is probably some obscure Celtic language because no one speaks it and it's hard to get into an immersion situation. I don't speak Polish, but I do know Russian and for me that language was easier (!!!!) than French to learn. Or than German. You see, any language is easy to learn if you do it right. Mobile stress is annoying in Russian but English phonology is equally confusing (and less well-indicated anyway). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| albysky Triglot Senior Member Italy lang-8.com/1108796Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4182 days ago 287 posts - 393 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German | Message 42 of 96 13 March 2014 at 5:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
Indeed yes , time is really important especially with a language like russian , mental energy is really important as well ,in this regard a hectic schedule is not exactly the best option . Edited by albysky on 13 March 2014 at 5:47pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lykeio Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4038 days ago 120 posts - 357 votes | Message 43 of 96 13 March 2014 at 5:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hard for whom? I've never felt languages with huge amounts of accidence difficult to
master, but then I come from a background littered with such. See, this is one of the many many reasons why labels like "Indo-European" aren't very helpful for modern language learners unless you're telling me it would be easier for a modern...let's say....English speaker to pick up Luwian or Sanskrit by virtue of their being Indo- European than Finnish or Turkish? Not directed at you, I just hate the way its bandied about. On the other hand I ought to point out that as per your example, the realisation that Celtic was a branch of Indo-European is considered one of the intellectual triumphs of the discipline given how divergent and complex it can be in areas. Which is odd since I'm young and grew up post all the hard work done so it seems obvious. Just saying you may have a point, all other things considered. But then, as we know, language difficulty is highly relative. I mean I've never heard anyone say Russian is easier than French before. I believe you! Just find it interesting. :) As per this thread well, if you exclude dead languages...than not so much. There used to be a time when I'd go hardcore on a modern language for 6 months, get to reading, read some stuff and then forget and move on but nowadays I can't hold everything in my head with any great facility so I'm more careful. I really would like to have an "exotic" language however. Ah...one day.... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4501 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 44 of 96 13 March 2014 at 6:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The first time you do something is always the hardest one because you need to figure out
how the goddamn controls work. I learned how to pilot the aircraft of the Dutch/English language quickly (because if you grow up on the damn plane, then that helps), but French was the first time someone told me "and now it's your turn, fly". Any language we speak on this planet is spoken by humans with human larynxes and human glottises. So you can learn it. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4048 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 45 of 96 13 March 2014 at 6:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
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There are a lot of challenging things about Russian, but I think it also has some features in the learners favor as well.
For one thing Russian sentences always seem very streamlined to me without too many little extra words floating around. I've been studying French for a good deal longer than Russian, and I would say my French is stronger than my Russian in all areas. But still when using Assimil Le Russe Sans Peine, every once in a while I'll come across a more complicated French sentence that will make me go "huh?" for a second and then I'll look at the much shorter Russian equivalent and everything will immediately become clear. I also think a lot of the most difficult aspects of Russian lie more in speaking correctly. But in passive comprehension I don't think Russian is significantly more difficult than any other indo-european language I've studied so far except perhaps for being less transparent to anglophones. And I've noticed a good drill based course seems to help a lot with getting more comfortable with the inflections and irregularities. Edited by YnEoS on 13 March 2014 at 6:19pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5022 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 46 of 96 13 March 2014 at 7:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
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We seem to have moved on to talking about the hardest IE language. A few comments about this. It seems to me that language can be hard for at least three reasons.
The first reason is relational, and is a measure of the distance between a language one already knows and the language one is trying to learn. This is just a matter of difference: one who only speaks inflected languages will have more trouble learning an analytic language, ceteris paribus, than another inflected language--and vice versa. Differences may show up in multiple ways--vocabulary, conjugation, tense, and phonology. There may be nothing intrinsically hard about an analytic language or inflected language, a tonal or non-tonal language, it's merely the lack of familiarity that makes it difficult. The second reason is non-relational, and measures the intrinsic complexity of a language. A language that has 2000 irregular verbs will be, holding other things equal, more difficult than a language with 2 irregular verbs. Certain languages may use phonemes that are hard for the human vocal tract to produce--not because one isn't used to producing such sounds, but simply because of the physical makeup of the human throat. Or an alphabet may be poorly designed. The third reason is logistical. How easily can we find materials, literature, native speakers? This will be somewhat relational as well, since those speaking different languages can access different written materials, but is still distinct from the first factor. We should be careful to specify which kind of difficulty we refer to, otherwise misunderstandings may result. Also, when we discuss the first factor, the relational one, we must specify both the languages the speaker already speaks and the language they're learning. That is to say, Russian may be pure agony for English (only) speakers to learn, but a breeze for Minskites. Edited by ScottScheule on 13 March 2014 at 7:47pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Stolan Senior Member United States Joined 3826 days ago 274 posts - 368 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Thai, Lowland Scots Studies: Arabic (classical), Cantonese | Message 47 of 96 13 March 2014 at 7:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
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To Tarvos
Russian vs Icelandic Russian can compete with Icelandic according to this. Russian is not hard Look at how the remaining pages are of folks shooting this guy down. Maybe these are from an elder era of HTLAL, albeit things must age really fast if change occurs that way. But nearly every other post on difficulty always finds its way back to Russian, and Russian only with some point being made on how Russian is harder than other Slavic languages or something. I just want to know why. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4501 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 48 of 96 13 March 2014 at 7:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
Those threads were equally nonsensical back then too. I have experience with Icelandic and can tell you that it isn't harder or simpler than Russian. It's different, though, but I have a huge bonus when learning it because I can pidgin in Swedish. People's egos are easily challenged on the net when they see someone have success. I don't pay attention to "hardest language ever" claims. Edited by tarvos on 13 March 2014 at 7:19pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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