Hardest language to learn? (217)

1 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2006-04-03 16:30 ID:yuiNFSb2

I know this is subjective since a person that knows English would be able to learn Spanish more quickly than say, Chinese. But in light of that please discuss which language you think is the hardest to learn.

101 Post deleted.

102 Name: Eric : 2007-10-22 05:42 ID:bCJFZZP+

I am learning japanese now. I'm sorry, but its a pretty darn easy language. I also think, if you have a passion of the language, it helps a whole lot. That would help a lot.
Asking, "what is the hardest language in the world?" has to many biases to ever be answered accurately.

103 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2007-10-24 03:56 ID:CbQSghqT

I heard from somewhere that Czech is the hardest...
But this type of question does depend on who you ask because one language may seem easier to one person that it does to another.

104 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2007-10-24 05:44 ID:vjdd9z8O

How about Polish? 16 different cases, not fun at all.

105 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2007-10-24 11:15 ID:Heaven

I suppose Japanese is easy to learn without writing and reading. Anyway, even if
people speak in the most difficult language, it doesn't mean that they are intelligent.

I think Chinese seems to be difficult to pronounce. Also Chinese character is difficult to learn. Arabic character as well. It is very strangely shaped.

106 Name: sage : 2007-10-24 15:17 ID:8R0b8i5f

Being a mandarin student is a pointless, tedious, and painful experience. I would have flunked it it I didn't have Taiwanese neighbors...

107 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2007-10-25 06:49 ID:saZ0+CaW

Mandarin Chinese.

108 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2007-10-25 07:13 ID:saZ0+CaW

>>26

After a while you can, but it takes a long time to clue in. Some of the characters that use the same phonetic sounds look similar to each other. It's not always a sure thing, though.

109 Name: Gimme Mah Money : 2007-11-07 17:54 ID:Lf6EhCez

Icelandic. It has been proven by the University that I attened. National Geograpic did a report on how hard some languages are to learn. Below is the list.

  1. Icelandic
  2. Chinese (Traditional Han)
  3. Korean
  4. Russian
  5. Japanese

110 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2007-11-08 00:20 ID:EYkAxj7S

Threads like these are completely meaningless. It just turns into a massive pissing contest.

This is like apples and oranges.

The difficulty of a language is an individual thing, based on your lingual (and cultural) experience, and which linguistic topics you are most comfortable with.

For some, the completely different mindset behind Russian, Japanese or Arabic might be a massive setback, for others it's the huge set of phonemes in Abkhaz, Ubykh and !Xoo, and for yet others, it's the cases in Finnish (though this is less of a problem in practice; Finnish is extremely regular, and the 'cases' are merely semi-fancy equivalents of prepositions; though, like Russian, Finnish has a completely terrifying verb system), and so on.

tl;dr: Pointless topic with a pointless question to which there's only a subjective answer. Go to bed.

111 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2007-11-08 15:27 ID:Xm6KS0fq

>>110
well spoken

112 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2007-11-09 10:09 ID:2Sh16PPy

>>110

Hear, hear.

113 Name: Maxund Morritz : 2007-11-09 16:34 ID:yDX/lz8Z

Russian is easy to learn. Plus, it has a wonderful system of handwriting similar to copperplate. Learn Russian and there are many languages spoken from the Italian border to Alaska that are close enough so you can communicate your basic needs if you are a tourist. Example, the word "pivo" or beer. Knowing that word will get you a refreshing beverage that is safe to drink. Finnish is very hard to learn. Basics like the names of numbers which are similar in many languages don't hold up in Soumi.

114 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2007-11-10 04:29 ID:Heaven

>>113

Lies.

See >>110, >111, 112.

115 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2007-11-11 21:56 ID:JnL+nLAi

>>1
As a native Russian speaker that must be one of the hardest. Especially after Soviet rule maimed the language to what it is now :-(

116 Name: !!xIb4rnRy : 2007-11-14 11:11 ID:B1IKKh1R

Gahhh... I'm reading this thread, and well-informed and well-thought-out replies amount to about 5% (>>33, >>65, >>69, >>75, >>76, >>110... and >>39 for explaining well why Japanese is hard for him). But I can't not comment, so...

  • "Difficulty" is indeed subjective and depends on the person's background.
  • Nobody mentioned Native American languages. If you think Hungarian is difficult, try some polysynthetic goodness, like Inuktitut (or old Ainu, for that matter).
  • Writing is not language. Discussion on Kanji / Hanzi / Hanja is largely irrelevant. Speech always preceded script. 10000 years ago people were already chattering away in all corners of the world, but couldn't write worth a damn. Were they dumb? And even if we were to take it into account, just to make it explicit, >>54, Japanese has many more than 2000 characters, but you're "literate" with 1945 (IIRC). Comparable amount for Chinese is about 5000, as I've heard told. Even the most educated Chinese scholars don't personally know more than about 20000. The rest are obscure or obsolete or both.
  • While culture is not language, it certainly has a large impact on its pragmatics and semantics. This is the primary reason Japanese is hard (besides its grammar being rather different, albeit almost completely regular)
  • Chinese grammar is English in disguise, except for couple of strange concepts (prenominal relative phrases, verb complements, counters). If you get past pronunciation, and manage to learn the completely cognateless vocabulary, it's easy for English speakers.
  • Polish does not have 16 cases. No indoeuropean language has over 8. Finnish has 16, Hungarian even a couple more, but their formation is easier than in Slavic languages. I don't know about Russian... but I would not even wish my mother tongue (Croatian) upon an enemy - it would be a curse worse than death. Irregularities abound, and descriptions are scarce. Accents are quite unpredictable. Many Europeans struggle with our consonants, and they're not even particularly challenging (compared to Arabic, Georgian, Xhosa...). Verbs change in almost regular ways, but there's always a catch around the corner.
  • Japanese, as well as my language, has pitch accent. In both, you are understandable regardless of accent. As a matter of fact, I understand that some Japanese dialects have exactly opposite accents on similar words: in one dialect haNA is flower and HAna nose, in another it is vice versa.
  • English has a huge vocabulary. Huge. Humonguous. Nuff said. (A case in point: "nuff" has its entry in the OED.)
  • African languages differ considerably among themselves. They are not one group. Swahili is quite easy for us Europeans - familiar phonology (at least in some dialects), rather logical word order... while Jul'hoan pronunciation alone gives me the creeps, even if its basic grammar is similar to English (~30 vowels, a bunch of consonants of which 48 are clicks... are you freaking kidding me?!?)
  • Hardest by US Military is only among those languages US Military believes to be worth teaching, and its data is only relevant to other English-native learners.

Finally, any language is equally easy as one's first language. Kids will learn whatever you throw at them with equal ease. Does it not then prove beyond any doubt that this is a wrong question to ask?

117 Name: boob : 2007-11-14 18:02 ID:Delne7uj

I've tried learning alot of different languages (Russian, Polish, Korean, Finnish, Greek,Malaysian etc) but Japanese is the only language that I am actually progressing in. I can learn 80+ words in a day whereas with any other languages such as Russian I struggle to learn just 5 words.

Although Finnish has no relation with Indo European languages,
I found Suomi numbers to be very easy to learn. However, I can't remember Russian numbers. or any other european numbers lol.

yhdeksankymmentayhdeksan= ninety nine

yhdeksantuhatta-yhdeksansataa-yhdeksankymmenta-yhdeksan=9999

118 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2007-11-21 13:44 ID:rX9yzlhU

For me personally, it would be Welsh or Irish. First off, mutations, I can't keep straight when to use them and when not to. Secondly, there are a lot of irregular conjugations. And not only for the verbs, but for prepositions. And there are not really any rules for this, other than memorize.

Korean, Chines, and Japanese are gramatically easy enough, but do to cultural considerations, it's easy to understand the words and still not be able to say much. They tend to talk around some things to avoid giving offense. But if you don't get the context, you lose out. Or at least sound like the asian equivelent of Cletus the Slackjawed Yokel.

Greek looks tough too, though it can probably be done.

119 Name: fine languages researcher : 2007-11-24 05:19 ID:MTWG+JSt

i think, imho, Finnish is the most difficult language after Japanese...i sometimes tried to understand the way such cases as "essive" "ellative" "allative" etc. have to be used.....but is abominiously difficult to learn all of them....and then the fact finnish has (as in every ugrofinnic language) the infamous "wovel harmony", not to mentition the "consonantic weakening", (just squicking)...and then things like using a kind of "tonal pronunciation" which makes changin' the meaning of a word just by slightly swithcing its pronounciation (as in chinese)...definitely not the funniest language to learn....

one good note about it is, by the way, that Finnish has a very soundful and somewhat "spanish-like" sound that's very similar at the Italian's one (my mother language)...at least this....

i tried German, btw...and i must say that those 6 months spent at university (i'm 23) learning it helped me alot in understanding more than ever about English and other Anglo-saxon-germanic-heritage languages....but then i left it because was too hard learning how to tell the hour!!! and because ehr....my stereotypic thoughts about German were a bit too much toony

another very scruffy language but more soundful and french/english-like than german is Dutch....it has a lot of things borrowed (forever) from french and english and both in writing and sounding is "meltingly rough" or better "clumsly harmonic", and grammar is quite easy...way easier than german one for sure...its most exciting (not exactly the right word, but...)feature is that it has 5 or 6 way to say the pronoun "you" , the english like pronunciation of the "R" and "OE" diphtong pronounced as in "shoes"

then another language that drives me crazy (literally) is Hungarian!!! i soooo like it!! although it has some spooky finnish-borrowed feature (like wovel harmony, or case-like suffixes...for example "Magyarorszagban"..."to Hungary", or things like objective and subjective conjugation...which is almost a mistery again for me) it has a really exciting (this time is the right word!) pronounciations thats very different from other ones...for example "ZS" is pronounced as in "juillet" in french....or "dzs" is like in "jack" or even SZ that unlike the other languages, is not as in "ship" but as in "sick" and "C" is like "take" with a very strong "t":zake

but the number one is my favourite language forever: Portuguese (portugal's one, of course) the most roughly joyful, crustly, freanzy, overtightened language i ever heard!! with a really complex grammar but it does really worth an effort to study it!!
and so useful indeed!!! i'm improvin' my knowledge of Spanish of North Italy dialects, of French grammar and pronounciation , adn even British English (and somewhat also German...i'm not joking'!) just learning Portuguese!!! it's just amazing!!!

120 Name: LinguaOtaku : 2007-11-29 01:39 ID:/ydyx0yz

>>116

Polysynthetic languages aren't so hard to learn once you wrap your head around the boundaries between morphemes. You're pretty much good to go for any polysynthetic language then. Fusional languages are much more difficult imo because you get weird stuff happening like irregular verbs and awkward IP constructions, and ambiguity/vagueness is just a whole shitpit kettle of fish you get yourself bogged down in.

I'm learning Aleut at the moment as I'm planning on doing my doctorate on split S system languages (i.e. languages that have both NOM/ACC and ERG/ABS inflectional systems in different situations) and I'm finding it -reasonably- trouble-free (in terms of theory anyway - some of the phonology is proving challenging!), at least compared to the Huallaga Quechua I had to learn. Now THERE'S an interesting language. NOM/ACC, SOV, polysynthetic and with free word order in main clauses. Kept me in my room all fucking summer lol.

121 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2007-12-02 20:05 ID:u36OhyNQ

actually depending on who you are and your backround of language depends on whats hard. im fluent in 10 languages and i hd french german polish and english as native languages. so i basically conquered europe's languages easily. but i had difficulty with asian languages such as japanese and chinese because i was so use to one sentence thing and the are alike.

122 Name: Piraten : 2008-01-15 00:48 ID:gqxJUaRm

>>116 Your in most cases but...

In all Slavic languages I find Slovakian to be the easiest of them all. It may be my mother language, but I haven't even tried to to learn the writing. I may master the speech, but the writing, well... you can forget about that.

As for people saying the Czech is hard, well I could tell you that's it's not much of a difference if you compare Norwegian and Swedish.

>117

For Russian and most of the eastern Slavic languages. Compared to Slovakian/Czech. We do use the letter "H" for most (well "some words") while the most eastern (even Poland) use the letter "G" for certain words that have the same meaning but speleld differently due to the first letter like for example "Shit". Govno in Polish (and in Russian/most former jugoslavian parts as well?) While it's Hovno in Slovakian. I do know that the Czech do have a softer more "richer" spoken language, I could compare that to the "High form" of Swedish/English (that spoken in the medival age, up to like 1800/1900 or so?

>>110 Your are so goddamn right.

All I can say is.. stick to your and your border languages, end of story. If you really need that language, hope for an afterlife, so it may actually be useful other than just learning it for fun (or learning just to travel to another country for befits, if your hate your country that much, DO SOMETHING about it!). You can curse us of for having different religions(or none at all, yay!~)/languages. If the Earth had stayed as Pangea, that way it would've not have been that different.

123 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2008-01-15 14:16 ID:ruaLqA8F

>>119

Telling the time in German is basically the same as English, but with an inverted 'half-past' concept.

124 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2008-02-18 17:43 ID:Y4TxFAYv

Hungarian!! I know ppl who lived there all their life and oouldnt learn it

125 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2008-02-19 14:33 ID:q89yj9y2

>>124

I think the cause of that is the people being morons, not the language being difficult.

126 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2008-02-26 16:30 ID:Wjipaeoj

Did anyone ever tried to learn Slovak language :)

127 Name: Finno : 2008-03-27 08:31 ID:kacbtuT4

Okay, here's a real tongue twister from Finland. A one compound word:

Epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydelläänsäkkäänköhän.

Don't ask a perfect translation for that, it's hard even for a native Finnish speaker. =) But the translation is about like this: Even with his disorganizing skills? etc.
It's a form of a question, but the same kind, kinda rhetorical answer.
Go figure.

128 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2008-04-30 05:38 ID:T6f14nQa

learning Korean Hanja would make the Japanese Kanji a breeze...

129 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2008-04-30 07:22 ID:dw9p6YCi

>>127
Actually it's epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydelläänsäkkäänköhän, with a single K.

The word could be divided into little components, like this:

Epä järjestelmä llis tyttä mättö myydellää nsä kään kö hän

To be honest it's plain nonsense, although it is grammatically correct.

130 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2008-05-02 03:13 ID:NCIGtFcG

>>119
Why do so many people call it ``wovel harmony''? Am I missing something, or is it just that nobody can spell?

131 Name: Un hombre de Escocia : 2008-05-02 12:46 ID:ruaLqA8F

>>130

No, it should be "vowel harmony". This is present in quite a number of languages.

132 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2008-05-03 08:33 ID:Heaven

>>119

I don't know, I would think a variety of locative cases would be better than the weird case-preposition in Russian...

The essive cases seem a bit weird though.

133 Name: Bill : 2008-05-11 23:35 ID:mL3zpU5N

Guys I think everyone writes based on their experience, not based on culture and history....a clear example is noone has mentione Greek..! probably the mother of all western languages and one of the oldest, are you serious?? :)

in my opinion, Greek, arabic and chinese. anglo-saxon languages are simpler trust me.

thanks

134 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2008-05-15 15:38 ID:ruaLqA8F

>>133

Greek is not the mother of Western languages, go read a history of language textbook. It has certainly influenced a variety of western languages, but they did not evolve from it.

135 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2008-05-18 07:14 ID:Heaven

>>126
If you know one Slavic language you know them all.

Well, except that you might not be able to read/write Cyrillic.

136 Name: Anon : 2008-05-22 00:26 ID:SzL2qHCj

Well, if you already know English, I would have to say Russian is fairly difficult. Japanese is rather simple once you learn pronunciation.

137 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2008-05-22 08:27 ID:ruaLqA8F

>>135

Cyrillic is pretty easy to pick up.

138 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2008-05-22 21:33 ID:BkodDKOk

>>135
I'm not sure that's entirely true across the Eastern, Western, and Southern Slavic lines--if you know one East Slavic language (say, Russian), you can probably fake your way through the others (Ukrainian or Belarusian) with a high degree of accuracy, but you'll have a much harder time doing that in Czech or Serbian. I guess basic comprehension's not necessarily difficult, but there are some pretty significant pronunciation and grammatical variances among the branches.

>>137
Very true; you can read Cyrillic before the end of your first Russian class unless you have a very poor visual memory.

139 Name: Here's the Perkele : 2008-06-10 11:46 ID:GwUZSNnp

I'm just a simple minded fool, but pronouncing the letters can be tricky too.

From the Finnish point of view, English is a strange language.
For a finn, the Finnish alphabet sounds "right" and the English one is twisted.

Here's how finns pronounce English alphabets
============================================

A - Ei
B - Bii
C - Sii
D - Dii
E - Ii
F - Ef
G - (Tsh)ii
H - Ei(tsh)
I - Ai
J - (Tsh)ei
K - Khei
L - El
M - Em
N - En
O - Ou
P - Phii
Q - Kjuu
R - Aa(r) *
S - Es
T - Thii
U - Juu
V - Vii
W - Vii
X - Eks
Y - (U/V)ai **
Z - (Z)ii ***

  • English R is 'soft', instead Finnish R is 'hard'
    - search youtube for "children of bodom + oops i did it again" and you'll hear the singer shout "Perrrrkele"

** U/Vai has 'open' or 'soft' V in it

*** (Z)ii has 'soft' Z

Here's how english pronounce Finnish alphabets
==============================================

A - U in fuck / A in car
B - B in bee
C - S in see * in swedish-based names, it sometimes is K
D - D in down
E - A in hate
F - F in fuck
G - G in gun
H - H in hate
I - I in shit
J - Y in you
K - K in fuck
L - L in lame
M - M in milk
N - N in no
O - O in open
P - P in please
Q - Q[?]
R - *english doesn't have this sound
S - S in snake
T - T in shit
U - U in you
V - W in wait
W - W in wait
X - X[?]
Y - *english doesn't have this sound
Z - Z[?] - 'hard sound'
Å - O in open
Ä - A in dad
Ö - A in 'a chair', 'a candle', 'a cat', 'a car'

Finnish letter, pronounced as a "letter" and how
it's pronounced when spelled
===================================================

A - a - aa
B - b - bee
C - s - see *in some names like Carlsberg it's K
D - d - dee
E - e - ee
F - f - äf * snobs prefer 'ef'
G - g - gee
H - h - hoo
I - i - ii
J - j - jii
K - k - koo
L - l - äl * snobs prefer 'el'
M - m - äm * snobs prefer 'em'
N - n - än * snobs prefer 'en'
O - o - oo
P - p - pee
Q - k - kuu
R - r - är * I've never heard anyone say 'er'
S - s - äs * snobs prefer 'es'
T - t - tee
V - v - vee
W - v - vee [tuplavee - double v]
X - ks - äks * snobs prefer 'eks'
Y - y - yy
Z - ts - tset
Å - o - oo
Ä - ä - ää
Ö - ö - öö

140 Name: part 2 : 2008-06-10 11:47 ID:GwUZSNnp

"Good day to you, my students! It's a fine day - is it not?"
translated so that a finn can pronounce it [almost correctly] even if they don't know english would be
"Guuddei tsujuu, mai stjudents! Its ö fain dei - isit nat?"

So when I'm thinking of what I'm writing, I have to be sure not to write how it sounds in my head.
Because this is how it sounds:
Sou vhen aim thinkin of vhat aim v(r)aitin, ai hav tsu bii shuo(r) nat tsu v(r)ait hau it saunds in mai hed.

And to make things more complicated
===================================

I = Minä
You = Sinä
He/She = Hän *
We = Me
You = Te
They = He

This = Tämä
That = Tuo - not to be confused with "Tuo jotain" = "Bring something"

  • Finnish language doesn't have he/she kind of indicator of sex.

Instead it has nurse = sairaanhoitaja [lit. sick's caretaker], but a female nurse would be
naissairaanhoitaja [lit. female sick's caretaker] BUT sairaanhoitajatar could also
be used. -tar end can be used in some [career] names.
Ompelija [sewer - career] doesn't tell what sex the person represents. With -tar
ending it becomes clear that ompelijatar means a female sewer. -tar ending would
change into -tär if the career's name would end with ä instead of a:
pilot = lentäjä -> lentäjätär
Fortune [spirit of good luck] = onnetar [this one is always femine]

And here's some extra flavor
============================

I, Me = Minä
My = Minun
I think that.. = Mielestäni
From me = Minulta
(come to) me = (tule) Minuun
(become) me = (tule) Minuksi
(out of) me = Minusta
In me = Minussa
I have = Minulla on

I = Minä
Bring = Tuo
Gifts = Lahjat

Bring the gifts = Tuo lahjat - "tuo" not to be confused with "That ball" = "Tuo pallo"
[Tuo tuo pallo = Bring that ball]

I bring gifts = Minä tuoda lahjat - this is wrong
I bring gifts = Minä tuon lahjoja - this is right
I bring gifts = Tuon lahjoja - this is right

"Tuoda" is the basic form of "to bring"
"Tuon" already tells that "(I) bring"
"Tuot" tells that "(you) bring"
"Tuovat" tells that "(they) bring"
"Tuo lahja" = Bring a gift - as when invited to a party
"Tuo lahja" = That gift - as when talking about a certain gift

Finnish can be spoken without directly saying "I - minä". "Tuon - I bring" already tells that
it is me who is bringing..

  • Tuon teille tuon lahjan merkkinä ystävyydestä.
  • I bring you that gift as a sign of friendship.
  • Opiskelen kieliä
  • I study languages
  • Osaan suomea
  • I know finnish

And finally..
=============

Kokoa kokoon koko kokko.
Koko kokkoko?
Koko kokko!

Gather up the whole bonfire.
The whole bonfire?
The whole bonfire!

=)

141 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2008-06-11 06:53 ID:1ooa1EuP

You want to get into that? How about this:

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo.

It uses three definitions of the word: Buffalo, the city in New York; buffalo, the four-legged animal; and buffalo, the verb meaning to bully.

Oh, and then there are the words that can be their own antonyms, with only the context to decide which meaning is used. Take 'cleave' for instance. It can mean either to bond closely with something or to cut something in two. Bugger of a word.

142 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2008-06-11 15:50 ID:XDd1KpmA

>>141
Who the hell uses that as a verb?

143 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2008-06-14 19:20 ID:FQ3Dww9H

Dunno, I'm Lithuanian by birth. I picked up English very easy, far easier then Russian and as a matter of fact, I still heavily suck at Lithuanian and I'm bloody 17.

Japanese was even easier for me to learn to speak then Russian, and I live in an ex-soviet union state. Lithuanian letters are pronounced roughly the same as the Japanese counter parts, for a Japanese to clearly understand me reading Japanese, all I needed was a sheet of Kana to Romanji translations and a basic vocabulary of Kanji.

144 Name: majd : 2008-06-30 00:25 ID:jAAu3wKp

duh arabic is the hardest

145 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2008-07-02 01:51 ID:s799Xe1u

Try Banyumasan language if u dare...........

146 Name: Here's the Perkele : 2008-07-05 19:28 ID:HokF5e/h

Ahh.. I managed to realize that english language does have finnish Y in it: New!

"New" would be pronounced like "njyy" or "nyy".
New Orleans = Nyy Oolians * the R is mute.

147 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2008-07-23 21:17 ID:qaeaResa

Happy new Year => "Frohes neues (Jahr)" (literally only 'happy new', but at that time of the year its clear what you mean.

More informal: "Guten Rutsch" (literally 'good slide', wikipedia claims it originates from a hebrew phrase)

148 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2008-07-23 23:02 ID:VFuw7om3

I'd vote Arabic

149 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2008-07-25 13:15 ID:cF9iM2NF

I vote Segarian. It's impossible to learn to speak it.

Granted, mainly because it doesn't exist.

150 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2008-08-10 20:10 ID:VFuw7om3

>>149
explain yourself.

151 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2008-08-13 03:09 ID:KLLoQjTl

I've been living in China and picking up Mandarin as I go. I can see how it would be a nightmare in a classroom, but through immersion I've been finding it pretty easy.

Ignoring tones, the spoken language itself is simple compared to English. As for the tones themselves that's a hurdle that takes a couple of weeks to develop an ear for by osmosis but it's natural after that (and I'm assuming that in a classroom you'd be deliberately tackling them and trying to force your brain through tone-shaped holes would be the main reason it'd suck).

When it comes to reading, naturally it's a given that understanding shit you need in your daily life would make retention pretty straightforward... but then again my reading ability is currently limited to things relating to the subway system and restauranting as a result. So while not difficult I'm going to wind up with huge gaps everywhere in my written Chinese. Planning on enrolling in proper classes once I'm more fluent to fix the errors I'm bound to pick up doing what I'm doing.

tl;dr: Agree that the difficulty of Chinese is overrated, but I can see how people get that impression.

152 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2008-08-14 13:30 ID:XrQWcSxy

Gaelic

153 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2008-08-17 05:23 ID:MpnQB+39

>>151
Very informative. Thanks. My boyfriend keeps trying to teach me chinese but i keep thinking i'm too stupid to pick it up or it's too hard. Maybe i'll give it a try, granted I'm not in china but I do have a lot of chances to learn.

154 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2008-08-17 22:23 ID:KLLoQjTl

>>153
Unless you're both fairly serious about it you'll have slow progress since it's so tempting just to revert back to English all the time, but go for it. Most of my spoken Mandarin was learned from Chinese girlfriends.

155 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2008-08-19 12:35 ID:YH/SQTg8

>>151

> osmosis

?

Well...you could say the same about any other language. If you live in the place, you're bound to pick up a couple of words or two, but that doesn't make it easy >_>.

156 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2008-08-19 12:39 ID:IGOQsEzD

>>155
That's not even close to what I said.

157 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2008-08-22 14:31 ID:YH/SQTg8

>>156
You're learning because you live in China, and hence manage to pick up some of the colloquial language. Naturally, your rate of learning will be rapid because you're forced to use it to communicate daily. So this doesn't really justify how "easy" it is compared to other languages. I could say the same thing about living in Italy, and learning Italian. Point is, you can't really compare it to other languages like that without living in other countries and doing the same thing.

158 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2008-08-22 16:01 ID:zz8fM6Hz

spanish D:

159 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2008-08-23 00:41 ID:IGOQsEzD

>>157
No, I'm learning because I fucking study it in the evenings. If I lived in motherfucking Italy I'm sure I'd just "pick up some of the colloquial language" given the similarity to English, but there is no common ground between English and Mandarin. The "colloquial language" around here is in Cantonese.

All I said was that the difficulty is overrated. You're reading shit into what I said because you wrote something stupid and now feel the need to defend it by twisting my post, so I'll restate my point for the dumbfucks in the audience:

  1. People think Chinese is hard because of the tones.
  2. I can see how the tones would be difficult to develop an ear for in the classroom, but fortunately I've been able to do so through immersion, which means I can see:

3. Apart from the time it takes to learn to differentiate tones, the language itself is simple. Almost everything about it is easy for a native English speaker.

>Naturally, your rate of learning will be rapid because you're forced to use it to communicate daily.

You're clueless. I went months here without speaking a word of Chinese. Not exactly "forced". My average daily usage is now saying "thanks" to the supermarket chick when she's watching me bag my own beer, and maybe giving directions to a taxi driver on weekends. I set aside time to practice with a Chinese friend at least once a week, just as I would learning a language back home.

160 Name: bobjoe : 2008-08-24 02:09 ID:e8Zf/PnM

for the people who say russian is hard, russian isn't hard and the alphabet is easy also. Polish is harder then russian.
>>136

161 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2008-08-26 12:04 ID:YH/SQTg8

>>159

Before you start questioning other people's intelligence, you might want to consider that that was the impression you gave in your post. You're telling everyone that it's overrated just because of the tones, and that you've managed to pick them up through "osmosis". But my point was that you living there is the main variable between you learning learning Chinese, and say, those learning Chinese in a Western country. I don't think it's overrated because of the tones.

And on a totally different point, fyi, I have been to China. Quite probably around the place you are, seeing as the colloquial language is Cantonese. So I can't relate when you say you were their for months without speaking Chinese. I was there for only a month, and picked up a significant amount of Mandarin, granted I can understand Cantonese. Besides, the fact that you didn't speak it for ages, doesn't that justify how hard the language is?

162 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2008-08-26 12:05 ID:YH/SQTg8

*there

163 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2008-08-29 10:46 ID:Heaven

>the impression you gave in your post

You mean, the way you misinterpereted it. These are different things. People who are not retards think differently than you do! That's why you had to be in a special class at school and weren't allowed to hug everybody.

>Besides, the fact that you didn't speak it for ages, doesn't that justify how hard the language is?

I know foreign teachers that have been in China for years and can't say anything besides the sheer basics. This is common. There are no shared words between English and Chinese, like there are between English and all the other Romance languages, so the usual folk knowledge of simply picking up a language by being in a place does not apply. You do not learn Chinese by eating Chinese food.

I'm not even going to bother adressing the tone issue yet again, because your original misinterpretation is not the argument you're promoting now. What you really meant is only, like, five posts up so I don't know who you think you're fooling.

164 Name: Ben : 2008-09-19 13:07 ID:4PJhOy3C

庭にわ二羽鶏がいる。
niwa ni wa niwa niwatori ga iru.

There are two birds in the garden.

Japanese is hard. F'ing homophones. That's a bit of a famous tongue twister.

きたさんは北から来たと聞いた。
Kita san wa kita kara kita to kiiita.

I heard Kita came from the north.

165 Name: Ben : 2008-09-19 13:10 ID:4PJhOy3C

Er, sorry... the first one is "There are two chickens in the garden."

Wasn't really thinking...

166 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2008-09-28 17:58 ID:m70UEUTz

I've heard that Japanese pronouncing would be 'easy' to learn if you are fluent in Finnish. Figured it would be same thing vice versa. There is a word descriping languages whichs pronouncing is how they are written, aw anyway. I don't know how to put it, so bare with me:

Couple of Finnish names
Teemu Selänne
Saku Koivu

Now, what I've heard yankees pronouncing these names they sound like 'Thiimu Selaani' and 'Sakhu Khoiivu'. Of course these sound silly as you can see with the help of >>139 >>140
For instanse 'George W Bush' should be written as 'Tsoots Dabljuu Bus' for a Finn to pronounce it ~correctly. So I guess that what I'm trying to ask is that would it have to be written like that for Japanese to pronounce it ~correctly?

167 Name: Catherine : 2008-11-23 03:53 ID:p9hubuqa

I speak english obviously, haha, but I took Italian in school. It's very hard, so I'm going to say Italian. It's very fun and beautiful though. Hmn, but Japanese and Chinese and german look hard as well. Well, writing the language does... Ah well, and I dont see how english is hard though, I can understand spelling, but pronounciation?

168 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2008-11-25 18:26 ID:1/shwDVD

Anyone who has an idea what kind of a language Finnish is would agree on it being the hardest one, really!

169 Name: Living in China : 2008-12-15 08:37 ID:XjqiX1d0

I would say chinese is the hardest. you need lots and lots and lots of will power to keep going.

I live in china and i've been studying chinese for 2 years(only 1 in china). I am a native english speaker.

Grammer:doable but not as 'easy' as some other above have made it seem.

tones: verbally, they are a pain in the ass if you want to be perfect. however you don't need to be perfect to be understood. just pretty good.

Character system: while learning, it seems almost never ending. like its this black hole of knowledge for which your brain will never truly capture...until one day you sort of just...do. I've literally woken up one morning, and picked up something i was never able to read before, and all of a sudden it was making sense to me. Today I was reading chinese magazine without any difficulty. before i always had tons of trouble with the same issue. however, if i look at a newspaper, i am once again filled with dread.

Chinese is simply a lot of patience, waiting for your brain to come around and learn the abominable amount of information you need to make it work.

one other thing i hate. I have a horrible time distinguishing names from normal nouns unless the phrasing makes it super obvious. I guess that means i just need to see more names...

170 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2009-01-02 22:31 ID:FfGqEnEU

I know this is going to make me sound weird or something, but I really find that Chinese and Japanese were easy for me to learn... I'm by no means fluent in either, but I picked up lots of stuff really fast. I think it just depends on how devoted you are to learning the language, and I really think that you should make yourself have fun with it rather than putting stress on yourself when you learn it.

171 Name: shuukyou_gakusei : 2009-01-18 00:02 ID:jsFolgd5

Navajo.

172 Name: heh man!fi.Jek4HW6!!gGKYHXFO : 2009-01-20 02:37 ID:+jv8XjUX

Vietnamese

173 Name: Ian : 2009-03-03 12:23 ID:fxu+8T7R

The top 9 hardest languages to learn in the world according to LexiBlog.

174 Name: The top 9 hardest languages to learn in the world : 2009-03-03 12:24 ID:fxu+8T7R

The top 9 hardest languages to learn in the world according to LexiBlog.

175 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2009-03-06 08:24 ID:gLOX1ihe

>>174
Ah, yes, I saw that on reddit. It is very inaccurate in its details, and generally misses the point, IMO.

176 Name: Roman : 2009-03-12 05:28 ID:5PEaXmwM

I was brought to USA when I was 12 years old and I can say that I know English now better than Russian. Russian words can change dozens of times, which is called a highly synthetic morphology. You can mold one word into dozens and then you can mold those words which can create a near unlimited amount of words that is why no one really knows how many words there really are in russian language. then after you done with morphology each word is then subject to six cases of nominal declension – nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, and prepositional.

Many people say that Chinese is the hardest, but I think it is one of the easiest ones. People get scared when they see something unfamiliar, like Chinese characters. But the characters are just pictures basically. each picture means something. there are no tenses as far as I know, which is good.
The hardest language of all, at least for me, are Nordic languages, such as Icelandic and Norwegian. I may break all my that with my tongue if I attempt to pronounce even one sentence in those languages.

177 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2009-03-12 21:10 ID:G45Dc6nm

Vagina. I try to speak Vagina sometimes but everything comes out muffled.

178 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2009-04-04 10:57 ID:MzExQBXB

german, with the hardest grammar.

179 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2009-06-21 15:57 ID:56DiEx91

How about Ubykh? It's phonology is the craziest I've ever seen.
2 phonemic vowels : /a/ and /@/
84 phonemic consonants : 31 plosives, 15 affricatives, 30 fricatives, 3 nasals, 4 approximents, 1 trill

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubykh_phonology

180 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2009-06-22 10:40 ID:kF4XT71f

>>171
Yeah Navajo is hard as hell because you'll have one word for like 3 sided geometric shaped land form, and it's tonal as well, so you have to pick up on the subtleties of language more. Beautiful though.

181 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2009-06-23 12:52 ID:ruaLqA8F

>>179

Ubykh is extinct, so there's not much point in entering it into this debate. No-one speaks it any more.

182 Name: Mustahsan : 2009-07-13 04:41 ID:Qr4q2oTY

fuck

183 Name: That Polyglot Bastard : 2009-07-23 18:51 ID:BkodDKOk

Since this thread is already a near-meaningless opinionfest, I'll offer my opinions and personal experiences.

I'm a native speaker of American English, and have formally studied eight languages to date. I'm fairly proficient in six, and have limited functionality in another four. The hardest of all the languages I've studied to date (which range from Russian to Cantonese) was almost certainly Pāli, a historical Indian language that is the canonical language of Theravada Buddhism. Even though it's a dead language, it's still used in millions of people's daily ceremonial lives--it's a little like Classical Arabic in that respect. It's also had a significant influence on the vocabulary and grammar of the indigenous languages of modern Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia.

I found it difficult for three main reasons: first, it's a very highly inflected language, with three genders and eight cases. Case forms are often identical, but which forms look the same varies depending on classes of words, gender, and number. So while for some words the nominative, vocative, and accusative case endings look the same, for others it's the genitive and dative, or instrumental and ablative. The paradigms are very difficult to memorize, and it's often really hard to tell what case something's in as a result. Even my Sanskrit student classmates were confused, and the two languages have a lot in common. The next incredibly difficult aspect is compounding--it's really hard to parse morphemes. After two years of dedicated study, I had no more than the most basic of reading abilities.

Adding further insult to injury, it no longer has any indigenous script--it is written in different alphabets in all the countries in which it is used or studied (modified Thai script(s) in Thailand, modified Devanagari in India, modified Burmese in Burma, etc.) Each orthographic system that's been superimposed upon it has influenced local pronunciation. So a Thai monk, a Sri Lankan monk, and a Hindi-speaking professor would read the same text in accents that are almost mutually unintelligible. Not that critical for a language that isn't spoken? Well, yes and no--nobody speaks it in conversation anymore, but millions of people chant in it every day.

184 Name: Nil : 2009-08-04 21:08 ID:xSWfxRTL

>>119
Just a remark for the hungarian part.
-ban,-ben = in
-ba,-be = to

"Magyarországban" means "in Hungary".
"Magyarországba" means "to Hungary".

185 Name: usude : 2009-08-07 05:37 ID:8yUWXGaM

The hardest in the military is Korean, beating even Japanese.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardest_language

186 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2009-08-27 17:20 ID:r8ooUcEq

Really? no ones gunna say it? ....sigh.. alright ill be the one. Comunicating with women. Like trying to learn the language of a brick wall no matter where your from. there i said it. NOW QUICK!! some one call me sexist!!

187 Name: asdf : 2009-10-29 04:01 ID:zBPzQ80U

it is scientifically proven that korean is the most hardest language to learn, and it really is hard. However, people always have to keep in mind that the hardest language is chosen by what kind of language they are speaking as their first language.

188 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2009-11-03 23:37 ID:Heaven

>>187
I wouldn't call Korean the hardest language to learn. It's certainly difficult especially if you have no prior experience with other East Asian languages (namely Japanese whose grammar is strikingly similar). For English speakers, I think the most difficult language to master would be Arabic, followed by Japanese and Korean and then Mandarin Chinese.

189 Name: Bilingual Anonymous : 2009-11-10 13:51 ID:ZhrQ/Riu

I heard that in Korean language there's countless dialects/grammar sets to use in specific situations. (the terminology I used probably isn't perfect, so kindly excuse that) He said something like "Talking to your grandmother and talking to a store clerk ain't even the same language." Can anybody add/comment on this? How he described it sounds a lot more complex than say, Japanese which just has suffixes to add a level of politeness and dialects for use in different areas which mainly just modifies some words with the basic logic being relatively the same.

Saying this for the people who need to hear it. (Those who don't know who they are and I thank you for contributing) Keep in mind that this thread is not absolute, you're not deciding, you're discussing. And try to cut the "I am a professional linguist, I studied Japanese (a lot), Italian (a little), Brainfuck (my mother tongue) for 10 years at Harvard," etc. out of your posts. If your opinion would matter, it would be based on the content of your post and not your alleged past experience.

190 Name: Bilingual Anonymous : 2009-11-10 13:52 ID:Heaven

correcting:
(Those who don't need to hear it know who they are and I thank you for contributing)

191 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2009-11-17 19:39 ID:uGJnHs+o

the hardest language to learn is a language that doesn't use the alphabet of your native tongue.

192 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2009-11-30 02:03 ID:C0ls7KBl

>>47

What is your source for Korean being the hardest in the Army?

193 Name: That Polyglot Bastard : 2009-12-04 00:26 ID:BkodDKOk

>>191

>>the hardest language to learn is a language that doesn't use the alphabet of your native tongue.

Not necessarily true, in my experience. I've studied languages using seven or eight writing systems, and learning the alphabet has never been the hardest part.

But many people seem to find new scripts intimidating--for example, when I first started studying Russian in high school, most people's first reaction was "Wow, that's so hard, the alphabet's different," which any student of Russian knows is a ridiculous thing to say. Yes, Russian's a challenging language to learn. But you'll know the alphabet before the end of the first lesson.

194 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2009-12-11 16:49 ID:m6OXibkw

i havent learnt that many languages but i can definitly say that Mandarin is NOT easy as some of you have said. Just being able to listen and speak does not mean you have learnt the language. There is no 'alphabet' for chinese, unlike korean and japanese where if you can speak the language then there is a high chance you can read most things you see everyday.(not including the complex japanese texts which use a tonne of kanji, which are chinese characters.)

When it comes to speaking a language japanese is definitly easier than korean and chinese simply because of the sound of words. You can have a horrible accent speaking japanese but japanese people will still understand you. A horrible accent in chinese could easily make people think you are saying a totally different word. You cant say you can speak chinese if no one can understand your chinese.

195 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2009-12-19 11:59 ID:nYMUu/gn

>>191
not really.

196 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2009-12-19 11:59 ID:nYMUu/gn

The hardest still is German. It has the most complex grammar.

197 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2009-12-19 22:07 ID:9ezxW0JR

For an English speaker? Definitely not. German is quite easy, English is much harder I think. German makes sense most of the time, while English is riddled with exceptions :/

198 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2010-03-30 10:41 ID:DM8aJppk

>>197
Isn't it a little hard to distinguish the grammatical genders?

199 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2010-04-03 16:46 ID:cNVbqAOI

>>185

This discussion has collapsed on itself.

>>28

200 Name: Anonymous Linguist : 2010-05-10 09:09 ID:Z5OeO6gx

>>37

>Mandarin and Cantonese are both dialects. They are not separate languages.

Replace Mandarin and Cantonese with French and Spanish, you got the idea.

>>43

>Cantonese is the older

Aren't they both descendant of Middle Chinese, that should make them equally old.

>It is the closest resemblance in linguistics to the Han Dynasty.

What about those Min or Hakka?

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