This thread is for discussing the difficulty of languages

[Clownfish]

This thread actually brought up something I found quite interesting to discuss.

Personally I think that most native speakers consider their own language hard to learn. I also think that this is incorrect in the case of English. Some arguments:

--The english does not have a grammatical system that is based on the gender of words. (Note that I am not saying these words have o gender - see ship etc.)

--The English doesn't use forms.

--The English knows only a limited number of cases where you have to learn the correct use by heart. (IE irregular verbs most importantly)


I would also like to shortly reply to this post:

Originally Posted by feuerdrache

It's not so much that learning the language is hard. It's mastering the nuances.

There are millions of native English speakers who can't convey **** from shine to most of us, but are completely understood by their peers. Why? Idioms and dialects.

Y'all come back now, hear?

To illustrate the following example: the country I currently live in is smaller than most American states, yet still has at the very least three pronounced dialects, or at least accents. Someone from the south of the country will probably have difficulty communicating with someone from the north unless they are listening very closely. Compared to this I actually find it miraculous that the difference in language between many English-speaking nations is so small.

Besides, most people not from the UK use American English anyway, which is simillar in all states. What the hell is a dust bin?

[ButteBlues]

Being pseudo-fluent in French, a novice in Norwegian, and a native English speaker... I have to say English was the easiest to learn.

[Spanglegluppet]

Well English is the only language I know fluently, and I grew up with it and around people who spoke it, so of course it would appear easy to me...I have heard, however, that English is very hard to learn (from people who don't speak it as a first language.)

[Clownfish]

Originally Posted by ButteBlues

Being pseudo-fluent in French, a novice in Norwegian, and a native English speaker... I have to say English was the easiest to learn.

Do you have difficulty understanding UK English?

I actually know some people from the UK who told me that they can only follow American movies with the subtitles turned on.

@spanglegluppet:
Do you know what their native language is, and why they find the English language hard?

[ButteBlues]

I understand UK English fine, generally, excepting that the speaker doesn't talk faster than a valley girl on meth.

[Cyan]

I think English seems like one of the most difficult languages to learn. I've studied a few years of spanish, and briefly dabbled in various other languages, and English seems significantly more complex than anything else. It has almost no actual rules that the language is based upon. Everytime you think that you learn something, later you learn that it's not exactly right. And nevermind that there are so many words in the English language that sound exactly the same but are spelled differently based solely upon syntax.

[El Garbo]

I think English is quite difficult. Here's a few examples.

Take something as basic as pronunciation. There are a few rules, but they get broken, and broken regularly.

Bite. Fight.
Trough. Gruff.
Xenophobic. Zebra.
Chef. Shell.

That's just something extremely basic. Start delving into the deeper aspects and the inconsistencies just keep on coming.

The basic, underlying principles of English are so chaotic and disorderly that I think that it is inherently a very difficult language to learn. I say this as a native English speaker - I've had the benefit of 21 years to learn it, and I still don't understand all of it's intricacies and random quirks... and I doubt many people actually do.

[mondu_the_fat]

Primarily, what I do not like about english is spelling.

"colon" is pronounced so differently from "colonel". "now" vs "know". etc.

Another is pronunciation. Non-natives learn pronunciation of words from dictionaries and other formal english lessons. However, americans pay no heed to their own language as defined by textbooks. "Twenty" becomes "twenny". "Dentist" becomes "dennist". "Guadalupe" is "Guadaloop". "Tuczon" is "Tuzzon". and so forth. One aim of training for call centers is to "unlearn the english that you have learned in school". In other words, unlearn proper english, and learn american english. Filipinos, who have regional dialects and accents, will be able to understand each other if they try to speak english to one another -- their english pronunciation will be uniform. Get a Filipino and an American in a conversation and watch in fascination as they talk about the same thing but completely miss what each other is trying to say.

However, I've found english to be easier to learn than, say, Mandarin, which everyone in the family except me can speak. Tagalog (my native language/dialect) is easy to learn, mainly because no matter how you mangle it, you can still get understood. You can do a direct substitution for english to tagalog/other dialect words and throw away tenses, and people won't dismiss you as uneducated.

[votan]

English is like the bastard language of different other languages. That's why it's so Irregular. I'm not a linguist, but I read somewhere this was the reason for the excessive irregularities.
About learning languages, I think Portuguese and the Nordic languages are the hardest to learn. Why? Because we use a lot of Phonemes that most languages don't. That's why when someone tries to learn Portuguese, they ussually sound like cats trying to bark. it's hilarious.
Also, as a result of that, Portuguese people can easily catch any accent and speak any language (given enough time to learn the language) without much dificulty. This is also true for the Nordics as I said before. The fact that our own language challenges our vocal capabilities, makes up better at speaking essentially

[Clownfish]

Originally Posted by Cyan

I think English seems like one of the most difficult languages to learn. I've studied a few years of spanish, and briefly dabbled in various other languages, and English seems significantly more complex than anything else. It has almost no actual rules that the language is based upon. Everytime you think that you learn something, later you learn that it's not exactly right. And nevermind that there are so many words in the English language that sound exactly the same but are spelled differently based solely upon syntax.

I may be mistaken, but from what I know Spanish is a very easy language, so it might not be the best languag for comparing.

I think that most languages have it's intricacies. However, when learning the basics of the language this is hardly important. For example, when someone who speaks English as a second language speaks of a 'man who was hung', everybody will still understand him and I think only a small portion of people will be bothered by the mistake. Obviously mastering the English language is difficult, but both the other languages I consider myself proficient in have similar cases. And when you look strictly at the difficulty of getting the basics down, I think English isn't that hard.

Edit:
@votan: I have also heard that scandinavian languages are notoriously hard to master because of the number of forms they employ. I need to look into that though.

[El Garbo]

@votan: I have also heard that scandinavian languages are notoriously hard to master because of the number of forms they employ. I need to look into that though.

I tried my hand at Icelandic once. I gave up when I realised my tongue was too inept to get around some of the pronunciation. I'd throw it up as a random contender for the most difficult language of all time...

[Diggy]

I'm an UK English Speaker and have to say i can see why it would be hard, i was reading a poster a little while back and it put words spelt the same into a sentence and while i was ok saying them outloud with the different pronuciations i can understand why any non english speaker would find it hard.

And American English is ok, it's the accent thats the problem. Although for such a small country the UK has a huge amount of acccents and sometimes it's hard to talk to someone from the London if you're from the North.

[votan]

Originally Posted by Diggy

I'm an UK English Speaker and have to say i can see why it would be hard, i was reading a poster a little while back and it put words spelt the same into a sentence and while i was ok saying them outloud with the different pronuciations i can understand why any non english speaker would find it hard.

And American English is ok, it's the accent thats the problem. Although for such a small country the UK has a huge amount of acccents and sometimes it's hard to talk to someone from the London if you're from the North.

I find it hard to speak to Englishmen in general. It's not the accent as much as it is the short temper and the inability to accept someone else is right

But seriously, Icelandic (is that the name of the language) is another language that uses a lot of phonemes. For me (or any other Portuguese) it'd be easy to learn them and say their words correctly, as they find it easy to speak portuguese.

On another note, if you hear a Portuguese and a Romanian (or a Kazakh) you'll think they're all speaking the same language. Although they are totally different, the sound base is the same, so to someone who doesn't understand them, they sound alike. Even to a Portuguese, a Romanian speaking will sound like a Portuguese in that second it takes him to understand the other guy is not saying Portuguese words.
[/random factoid]

[RMS Oceanic]

Native English speakers should thank God that's the language they started off with, because it's very hard to learn later in life. Languages like French, Spanish and Italian all have Latin as a common ancestor, and Latin is definately a language with set rules, so that got passed down. Forget to say a word in French and the entire sentance means something different. English was, at most, heavily influenced by Latin, but I've noticed there are more similarities with English and Dutch/German, in terms of sentence grammar. With English, it's much more likely that you can still get your point across with skewed grammar. I get the vibe that it's a mixture of Romatic (Latin-based), Germanic and Celtic languages, developed into one of the most versatile (read "Nightmarish") languages ever seen.

[Lightster]

Originally Posted by Clownfish

This thread actually brought up something I found quite interesting to discuss.

Personally I think that most native speakers consider their own language hard to learn. I also think that this is incorrect in the case of English. Some arguments:

--The english does not have a grammatical system that is based on the gender of words. (Note that I am not saying these words have o gender - see ship etc.)

--The English doesn't use forms.

--The English knows only a limited number of cases where you have to learn the correct use by heart. (IE irregular verbs most importantly)

Almost every English rule that I know of has an "except ..." clause on it, making it difficult to know the exact grammar for the situation.

I don't really think that my first language was difficult to learn. In this case, it was English, but I think the difficulty for native speakers is unrelated to the actual difficulty of the lanuage, due to the submersion.

Even if you do consider it valid, you have to look at the languages the person learned after their native language. If they are from the same family of languages, it should be much easier to pick up a second language, than if they were to try for one completely disassociated (French -> Spanish vs French -> Mongolian).

Originally Posted by Clownfish

I would also like to shortly reply to this post:

To illustrate the following example: the country I currently live in is smaller than most American states, yet still has at the very least three pronounced dialects, or at least accents. Someone from the south of the country will probably have difficulty communicating with someone from the north unless they are listening very closely. Compared to this I actually find it miraculous that the difference in language between many English-speaking nations is so small.

Besides, most people not from the UK use American English anyway, which is simillar in all states.

American English does have it's own seperate dialects, but they are most likely much less pronounced than in your country, especially if the example you give is true.
Canadian and Austrailian are also seperate dialects from American English. I don't know how Austrailian is faring, but I know Canadian English is fading pretty rapidly. Canadian is a sort of hybrid between UK and American English, with our own thrown in for fun.

The reason for our dialect differences being so much more slight than those in your country is simply because of the way our language grew. As has already been mentioned, London vs North England speakers have a difficult time understanding each other supposedly. Canada, US, and Austrailia (to my knowledge) all spread very rapidly, compared to the growth of most languages. We also didn't have any time where large pockets of population were cut off from communication to form their own distinct dialect.

My observation on American English is that it is very very prone to exactly what El Garbo mentioned, and that goes for spelling as well. Things like removing our 'u's (colour, armour, etc), and the spelling of grey/gray to what they think is more natural.

What the hell is a dust bin?

Like a waste basket, but it's called a dust bin because... I guess if I had to pin a difference on them, a waste basket is more of an office item and can go unbagged easily. A dust bin is for more household related garbage, and requires a bag (for the dust, food, what ever). This is probably a good example where so long as the other person knows both words, either word is fine. To me, that seems like it would make the language harder the more common this is, as it requires a greater base knowledge.

Originally Posted by Clownfish

Do you have difficulty understanding UK English?

I actually know some people from the UK who told me that they can only follow American movies with the subtitles turned on.

Being a Canadian English speaker, it's a bit easier for me to understand both American and UK than for them to understand each other probably, but I haven't seen a dialect of English I have had serious problems with.

As for more specific dialects, our East coast dialects seem quite a bit different from the rest of the language, but I haven't paid enough attention to tell if that's the dialect or the accent that is so skewed.

When I had my French classes, my first 2-3 teachers all taught us Paris French, and it seemed really easy and quick to pick up. The highschool teacher for it however switched us over to Quebecois French (The Canadian dialect), and it seemed much more difficult. But that is probably more from being half way through one set of rules, and suddenly having a similar but different set thrust upon me, than the actual difficulty of the dialects.