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Danton Marcellus
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Posted - 2005.01.08 20:54:00 -
[1]
Trying to settle an argument here, does anyone have a list over the hardest languages to learn?
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Hakera
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Posted - 2005.01.08 20:57:00 -
[2]
well depends on where you come from but one of the swahili dialects or another language group your not familiar with like arabic or japanese would be more tasking than say a latin based language.
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Danton Marcellus
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Posted - 2005.01.08 20:59:00 -
[3]
From a universal standpoint that is, there has to be languages that are more complex than others. I have this guy trying to talk me into english being a hard language to learn. Is it really, anywhere in the world, for anyone with a head?
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Discorporation
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Posted - 2005.01.08 21:03:00 -
[4]
Appearantly, Dutch is pretty hard to learn. Harder then Japanese.
Have you Googled?
[Heterocephalus glaber]
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Danton Marcellus
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Posted - 2005.01.08 21:05:00 -
[5]
Getting a lot of boards with people whining, 'don't you think english is hard to learn?' and no-one agreeing with them.
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Dau Imperius
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Posted - 2005.01.08 21:55:00 -
[6]
Japanese was easier for me to learn mostly because I grew up with it. (Although learning kanjii, not the kana was what made it difficult..too many characters. Don't know how the Chinese do it.)
Same pretty much goes for any language. English is actually harder then any language to learn because it isn't as static as most other languages. Hard to understand if you can speak if fluently. Half the words aren't spelled like they sound, words have more meaning then trying to figure out religion and for every rule there's a few exceptions.
There's a few African tribes whose language still consists on actual clicking, popping, etc sounds. Those would most likely be even harder for most to learn, rather then the West/East language differences, since it becomes trying to think in sound rather then words. (and boy is it fast!)
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j0sephine
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Posted - 2005.01.08 22:03:00 -
[7]
"Have you Googled?"
Hungarian and Finnish appear to be extremely difficult to learn because of the grammar complexity (agglutination principle) and the curious vocabulary.
These two languages belong to the language family called "Finno-Ugric".
Chinese is also a very hard language because of the tonal aspect.
for what's worth -.^
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Sphalerite
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Posted - 2005.01.08 22:23:00 -
[8]
While I doubt that there is an objective way to say that a specific language is the hardest to learn, I think that there are a couple of things that will make a language harder or easier to learn depending on the person doing the learning.
Similarity to one's native language has to be the most important part of learning a new language. Going from Spanish to French or Mandarin to Cantonese is much easier than going from Spanish to Mandarin, both in terms of vocabulary and syntax.
After that, I would say that it really depends on the way you think. Is it harder to remember 60 different conjugations for every verb, remember only 2 conjugations but have every 3rd word follow different rules, or to learn a language with much simpler rules but a completely different system of grammar?
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Danton Marcellus
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Posted - 2005.01.08 22:38:00 -
[9]
Sure I know all about hungarian/finnish being hard, that and basque, gaelic I'm sure too not to mention navajo but I was looking for some sort of barometer made by linquists.
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Haxar
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Posted - 2005.01.08 23:27:00 -
[10]
 Originally by: Discorporation
Appearantly, Dutch is pretty hard to learn. Harder then Japanese.
Have you Googled?
Huh? I understand Dutch pretty fine (written, not spoken) 
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Maule
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Posted - 2005.01.09 03:06:00 -
[11]
afaik danish is the hardest to learn for english ppl as we have µ°Õ in our words.. and english men suck at saying words whit those letters in it (no offence but you do)
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Admiral Seafort
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Posted - 2005.01.09 04:07:00 -
[12]
Gramatically or fundamentally, English is very difficult because so many usages don't follow any real rules (they're almost arbitrarily used), and so for those who haven't been exposed to everyday use of English it's hard to understand why certain words and phrases are that way.
That said, I'm sure that the Chinese dialects are among the most difficult for those whose native tongue is Western to learn to pronounce, because of the tones, which are not similar to most Western tones. And of course with the Asian characters, the vast majority of words have to be memorized (there aren't any letters and you can't "sound it out").
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Liu Kaskakka
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Posted - 2005.01.09 05:09:00 -
[13]
-lkõõ haistelko sitõ sormeanne, ku se menee vessapaperista lõpi.
Translation: Finnish is a very easy language to learn, you can start with this sentence.
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Sithlord Revan
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Posted - 2005.01.09 06:28:00 -
[14]
Edited by: Sithlord Revan on 09/01/2005 06:28:26
afaik danish is the hardest to learn for english ppl as we have µ°Õ in our words.. and english men suck at saying words whit those letters in it (no offence but you do)
I agree. I speak American-English and Spanish. American-English is my native language. According to that site, English is in the same family as danish languages (Teutonic) however I have no clue how to pronounce those letters. If I see an '°', I just pronounce it as if it was an 'o' and I guess thats wrong.
However, I've managed to pickup on several words in Swedish and 'Norwish' as i like to call it from corp members and from playing a Norwegian based mmo called Anarchy Online. Perhaps in the future I can learn these languages after I've finished Spanish.
Btw. This word makes me wanna cry: Fl³ggÕənk¶Çčhi£¯°isÛn -- any idea how to pronounce? :) |
Sithlord Revan
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Posted - 2005.01.09 06:32:00 -
[15]
Originally by: Liu Kaskakka
-lkõõ haistelko sitõ sormeanne, ku se menee vessapaperista lõpi.
Translation: Finnish is a very easy language to learn, you can start with this sentence.
no offense, but a swedish friend of mine agrees with me that finnish has to look like the most f'd up language on the planet :). once again no offense, sorry heh
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4ZakeN
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Posted - 2005.01.09 14:19:00 -
[16]
Im from Sweden and I can only agree. Finnish do sound like.....well as it sound :D
I think that for European/Amercian ppl, I belive chinse of japanse is the hardest lanuage to learn. Dont think we can pronounce half of the chinse letters and I have tried to learned japanse but their grammar is so far from our that it¦s like close to impossible to learn....
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mahhy
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Posted - 2005.01.09 15:53:00 -
[17]
Originally by: Maule
afaik danish is the hardest to learn for english ppl as we have µ°Õ in our words.. and english men suck at saying words whit those letters in it (no offence but you do)
I'm English native and I 100% completely agree with you. I can barely HEAR the difference and without that its pretty had to pronouce them  The "soft-d" sound is incredibly frustrating as well.
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Kostantin Mort
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Posted - 2005.01.09 16:06:00 -
[18]
I only learnt how to speak english 8 years ago, but I have been fully immersed in the english culture from then on, so it's obvious that I don't consider English a hard language to learn.
I would guess that some of the hardest languages are the ones in Africa, especially the one that involves those clicking sounds (don't remember its name atm).
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Stormking
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Posted - 2005.01.10 00:41:00 -
[19]
English is generally considered to be one of the most difficult languages to learn if it's not your native language.
Japanese is actually relatively easy as far as the spoken element goes - but it's one of the most difficult, if not *the* most difficult, as far as the written system goes.
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Elita
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Posted - 2005.01.10 01:15:00 -
[20]
My two cents' worth as a former ESL teacher:
If you are learning English as a Second Language (ESL), it is easy to get to a point at which you can make yourself understood. At that point, it is possible to live in an English-speaking area without too much difficulty, even though you may speak at a middle-school grade level (and write at a primary-school grade level).
Becoming fluent in written English, however, is much more difficult. English grammar is very precise, but not terribly complex as far as languages go. The biggest mechanical problem for a new English writer is the spelling. English imports words from many other languages, sometimes anglicizing the spelling, sometimes keeping the original spelling, and it has done so since the Anglo-Saxons started adopting words from their Norman conquerors a thousand years ago.
This partial assimilation of foreign words presents problems in spoken English too. How do you pronounce "envelope" or "tomato"? Thousands of the more than half-million words in English have more than one acceptable pronunciation. As if this were not problematic enough, some words even have more than one acceptable spelling ("chlorophyl(l)", anyone? How about a weiner?)
I can't say with any certainty that English is the most difficult language to learn. But I can remember my students' consternation when dealing with groups of words such as "though", "through", and "tough". And I can certainly see the difficulty of English even for those who grew up speaking it when I see the almost universal difficulty with "its" and "it's", or "there", "their", and "they're".
English is easy because everyone uses it, but it's difficult because very few people use it well.
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"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -Arthur C. Clarke |
Benedictus Setaro
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Posted - 2005.01.10 01:18:00 -
[21]
I'm gonna plump for Chinese because of the tone aspect.
Apparently Basque is meant to be very, very difficult to learn as it's different from every other language on the planet, as far as I know, though I stand ready to be corrected.
A book on apes I have (which covers human development and other things) says that the Basque language is probably the last surviving remenant of an original european language spoken before the eastern tribes migrated into europe about 8000 years ago.
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Stormking
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Posted - 2005.01.10 02:34:00 -
[22]
Originally by: Benedictus Setaro
I'm gonna plump for Chinese because of the tone aspect.
Apparently Basque is meant to be very, very difficult to learn as it's different from every other language on the planet, as far as I know, though I stand ready to be corrected.
A book on apes I have (which covers human development and other things) says that the Basque language is probably the last surviving remenant of an original european language spoken before the eastern tribes migrated into europe about 8000 years ago.
I have a linguist friend and I seem to remember her mentioning Basque as one of the only truly "isolated" languages in the world, meaning in part that it's the only one of its kind. That would confirm your info if I'm remembering properly.
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Luc Boye
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Posted - 2005.01.10 02:57:00 -
[23]
For latin or germanic language people, slavic (russian etc) languages are pretty hard to learn right, since they have more complex grammar (7-8 casus, etc), words are bending all the time and stuff.
Other way around the spelling is hard, cos slavic languages have phonetic spelling compared to schizophrenic spelling in english. 
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2004.12.29 23:33:40combatMining Pollution Cloud hits you, doing 140.0 damage. |
Benedictus Setaro
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Posted - 2005.01.10 10:52:00 -
[24]
Case systems arn't bad per se, Latin for example isn't that hard to learn.
Phonetic spelling is a system all languages should be forced to use, it's one of the main reasons Italian is so easy to learn, and one of the main reasons French is almost as stupid as English, dropping the letters at the end of words all the time.
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Matanga
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Posted - 2005.01.10 15:44:00 -
[25]
English is not hard
The amount of exposure you can get to the language makes it really easy to learn.
I agree that spanish is easy (is my mother tongue though)
(except for 2 sounds that no other language has except for Arabic : The J and the RR)
For example compared to French, Spanish makes sense French is just a bunch of exceptions to rules
As a side Note: Hungarian is a pain,I know some Hungarian people and even though the pronunciation is actually quite similar to Spanish (without the accents and other modifiers) the grammar is too much.
Just try to translate an Hungarian text in an online translator and you'll see
"ÆIn accordance with the principles of double-think it does not matter if the war is not real. For when it is, victory is not possible. The war is not meant to be won, but it is meant to be continuous.Æö
George Orwell ô1984ö |
Lig Lira
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Posted - 2005.01.11 22:35:00 -
[26]
klingon?
Which PA character are you?
That's no flying saucer, that's my ass! |
Liu Kaskakka
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Posted - 2005.01.11 23:47:00 -
[27]
Originally by: Luc Boye
For latin or germanic language people, slavic (russian etc) languages are pretty hard to learn right, since they have more complex grammar (7-8 casus, etc), words are bending all the time and stuff.
I think we've got 27 cases or something in Finnish ..
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Vegeta
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Posted - 2005.01.12 09:53:00 -
[28]
You don't know what grammar is until you've learned Icelandic.
2005.04.25 16:40:42 combat Your 1400mm Howitzer Artillery II perfectly strikes LawrenceNewton [WARAG], wrecking for 2706.9 damage.
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Riddari
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Posted - 2005.01.12 11:50:00 -
[29]
The Finnish have Icelandic soundly beaten when it comes to grammar, although Icelandic does have a fair amount of it.
For european languages it's not maybe learning the words but trying to pronounce the languages that make Finnish and Greenlandic (ok, so technically a North American language but... hey), we saw a finnish sentence above and while it is odd to me, it's not as odd as Greenlandic:
Just look at this little tid-bit
Quote:
Nalunaarsimallutik atuisut periarfissaqarput ajornanngitsumik aaqqissuussinissamut, ingerlaqqiffissanik katersisinnaallutik aviisiniittunik quppernernik aalajangersimasunik immikkoor****illutik piumasaminnik.
These are some really long words!
However I think Vietnamese and those languages where the same "word" can be 6 different words depending on pronounciation is the hardest one for us in the Germanic language group.
If I hit the wrong note I might have called someone a slag when I was trying to compliment them on their hat? 
¼©¼
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Estios
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Posted - 2005.01.12 12:05:00 -
[30]
I reckon Dolphin would be pretty hard to grasp
So HMV consider Andy Williams and Dean Martin to be "easy listening" do they? Tell that to my mate Dave, he's been deaf for 20 years.
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