Dicer Posted August 30, 2014 Share Posted August 30, 2014 What about the 400 languages spoken in India... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers_in_India Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Selig Posted August 30, 2014 Share Posted August 30, 2014 According to a friend who studied languages, Slavic is the most difficult. The rest, she said, have their own structure and it's easy to catch up. What Slavik language would that be? There are lots of them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PlainJeyne Posted August 30, 2014 Share Posted August 30, 2014 Of the languages that I've been exposed to, I would say Arabic. My husband and in-laws are polyglots and the following languages flow freely at a normal dinner party with them: English, French, Arabic, Romanian, Hungarian, Yiddish, Spanish and German. I am only fluent in English but can pick up some of what is going on in most of those languages other than Arabic. Arabic leaves me looking very confused. I know only curses (as ya do) and 2 phrases to use in case of emergency need for pleasantries with elderly Egyptian people that basically amount to "is that so?" And "can you believe it?". My husband is conversational at best in Arabic, even though it is his mother's native language. He can't read or write in it and he agrees that it's the hardest to learn of the ones his family speaks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Galactus Posted August 30, 2014 Share Posted August 30, 2014 Why Danish, Norwegian and Icelandic, but not Swedish? Icelandic has a lot of old stuff that the other scandinavian languages has dropped, a functioning case system f.ex. Danish has tricky pronounciation and an incomprehensible numbers system. Norwegian I'd think would be the easiest scandinavian language to learn though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stannisaurus2 Posted August 30, 2014 Share Posted August 30, 2014 I always had trouble learning French, although English was the easiest class I ever took. That doesn't mean that its just the language itself, availability of English (e.g. watching cartoons and later movies in English with subtitles, the internet being mostly in English especially when I was a kid, many tourists speaking in English) as well as extra lessons in English played a huge part. But still French seemed quite harder to me. Italian looks fairly easy (at least to me because my language is very similar and they are also similar to English) although I haven't learned more than a few words but that's just for lack of trying. Then again, French are also similar so I don't know maybe I'm just biased because I really dislike French lessons. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Unlady B Posted August 31, 2014 Share Posted August 31, 2014 Wow, I'm really impressed to see a lot of polyglots here! The truth is that to really "learn" and be fluent on any language, you need to study and practise a lot, for a lot of years (unless you're a prodigy). My mother tongue is spanish, and english is my 2nd language. I defend myself pretty well in japanese (there's several of us in this thread, yeay!), and kind of in portuguese (mainly written but when spoken I tend to end up speaking portuñol :blushing: ). I can't remember having real difficulties with any of the aforesaid languages. I can't speak them flawlessly - ffs, I sometimes have problems with spanish!- but I think the main point is the communication. Polishing a language helps you to communicate your ideas more accurately, and that's the point I think. And those skills are generally better learnt by experience.That's why when learning a language, you also have to learn about their culture to fully understand certain things or ways that are untranslatable. Depends on the person's (linguistic, cultural and other) background as well :agree: Pretty much this. Also, as you said in your last post, the availability of the language around you. That's why English is pretty easy to grasp: movies, songs, internet, cultural infiltration, etc, most of them are in English, so it's not difficult to keep up. Even if you're not a willing student, it's nearly impossible to scape from it. Unless you're living in the country or among people who speak the language you are learning, you have to make an extra effort to catch the phonetics right, most of the vocabulary, and other skills. I've always felt that way. I went to a French school and the grammar and structure wasn't actually hard for me (my native is Spanish). There is also the case of brazilians understanding us, the rest of South America and we understanding them, even though we don't actually speak each other's languages. Odd. I find Portuñol the funniest and most heartwarming way of comunication (it is also a factor that we're all charming people). At least with spoken Japanese you can tell where one word ends and the next begins. It's impossible to do with Mandarin and Cantonese. Sometimes with these two languages the difference between FISH and BRIDGE can be a slight inflection inaudible to non native speakers. That's just an example of course, but I know it happens because I have Chinese South African friend who often gets it wrong when speaking to Chinese people born and raised in China.Pronunciation is a bitch in Chinese. It is known.I tried learning the basics from an internet page, and when I realised that it was going to be fruitless to figure out the pronunciations by myself, I gave up. I also agree that Korean has an amiable alphabet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lightning Lord Posted August 31, 2014 Share Posted August 31, 2014 I am getting my ass handed to me when I try to say...anything... in Vietnamese. So, I'd say that it is easily the hardest language of forever. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lady Isis Posted August 31, 2014 Share Posted August 31, 2014 I'd say that of all European languages Hungarian and Finnish seem the most difficult to learn to me, most of all because they are not similar to any other language. Slavic languages are tough too, but since my native language is Slavic I have an advantage on those with native language from different group when it comes to learning Slavic languages. English and German don't seem too difficult to me, but I started learning English when I was 6 and never really focused on learning German though I did take classes. Scandinavian languages sound great to me, like a more melodic version of German and without those harsh "r" and "ch" sounds but I couldn't understand them one bit though I could get bits and pieces when I'd read newspaper articles and such since they're somewhat similar to German. As far as Romanic (is that the right word?) languages are concerned, I must say they don't seem too difficult to me though I will admit my mistake on that, if needed. It's just that, even without ever learning any of them, I can grasp bits and pieces from Spanish and Italian because of heavy influence of Latin which I took for a year in high school. Outside of Europe, I'd say that almost any Asian language would prove to be difficult - Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, Hindu, Farsi, Arabic... you name it. And that's without ever getting into smaller languages such as Native American languages and dialects etc. Just for the record, Serbian is my native language (which means I'm officially fluent Croatian, Bosnian, Montenegrin too but those are pretty much the same language and I don't count that ;)), I'm fluent in English and have basic knowledge of German and Russian. Nice to see another Serb on the forums :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Marquis de Leech Posted August 31, 2014 Share Posted August 31, 2014 Mielestäni Suomen kieli ei ole hyvin vaikeaa, mutta on erikoista. Ja kaunista. (Olen kiinostunut Suomen kielestä. Opiskelen). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Marquis de Leech Posted August 31, 2014 Share Posted August 31, 2014 Luulen, vastaus on tämä: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navajo_language Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andriy Czarchenko Posted August 31, 2014 Share Posted August 31, 2014 Looking good RBPL. And yea it´s the difference to other languages that makes Finnish difficult. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Game Of Thrones Posted August 31, 2014 Author Share Posted August 31, 2014 Kirundi is kicking my ass at the moment. I still figure it's all down to familiarity - all European and Semitic languages look more or less manageable to me. Further afield from that, it gets hard. Do you speak Arabic? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Game Of Thrones Posted August 31, 2014 Author Share Posted August 31, 2014 The answer is clearly whatever you call what Glaswegians speak. Scots? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lyanna Stark Posted August 31, 2014 Share Posted August 31, 2014 Why Danish, Norwegian and Icelandic, but not Swedish? Icelandic has a lot of old stuff that the other scandinavian languages has dropped, a functioning case system f.ex. Danish has tricky pronounciation and an incomprehensible numbers system. Norwegian I'd think would be the easiest scandinavian language to learn though. Prolly cos they have diffierent kinds of Norwegian, depending on whether you use Bokmål or not? I must admit I am not totally up to speed on it either, and my main impression of why Norwegian is hard is because the inflections vary a lot between areas. I can understand someone from Oslo or some parts of northern Norway ok, but next to someone from say, Bergen? Not a chance in hell. Apart from that Swedish and Norwegian should be similar enough that diffierences must be neglible? I always also assumed Swedish is fairly easy, since our grammar is rather "English" (unlike say, German sentence structure) and the only really weird things we have are reflexive pronouns and a few tonal words (banan, tomten, for instance, can have different pronounciation depending on context, and also then mean different things.) Both are great for tormenting second language speakers.Not that I ever do that tho. :P The tonal thing makes me wonder if we'd have an easier time to pick up other tonal languages (isn't mandarin tonal? I've heard rumours it is, but they may be untrue.) Or perhaps it doesn't matter. As for most difficult language, I was thinking of Xhosa, or one of the Bantu languages. Also tonal as it happens and with click sounds! Or maybe it's just because they sound so strange to my ears, almost as if it's some sort of song going on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Marquis de Leech Posted August 31, 2014 Share Posted August 31, 2014 Looking good RBPL. And yea it´s the difference to other languages that makes Finnish difficult. Kiitos. Suomella on paljon loogisempi kieli kuin, esimerkiksi, Englannilla. (Mutta vihaan partitiivia!). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Talleyrand Posted August 31, 2014 Share Posted August 31, 2014 Scots? Weegie Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Buckwheat Posted August 31, 2014 Share Posted August 31, 2014 Slavic languages do have rather complicated grammar. For example, Serbian has seven cases, 6 tenses and a few more verb thingies I don't know the english word for :D, quite complicated clause structure at times, a lot of phonemic changes that can be confusing even for a native speaker etc. Still, with proper instruction and being surrounded by the language (for example, living in Serbia or spending a lot of time with native speakers) I'm certain everyone with at least some talent for languages could speak Serbian more than well enough within a year. Just out of curiosity, how many of those tenses do you actually use in day-to-day communication? Slovene has 4 tenses technically, but we come by with only ever using 3 and very rarely the fourth one. (A translation professor at a course I attended actually discouraged me from using it because it apparently sounded too old-fashioned and unsuitable to my translation.) According to a friend who studied languages, Slavic is the most difficult. The rest, she said, have their own structure and it's easy to catch up. I've always felt that way. I went to a French school and the grammar and structure wasn't actually hard for me (my native is Spanish). There is also the case of brazilians understanding us, the rest of South America and we understanding them, even though we don't actually speak each other's languages. Odd. Define "Slavic". ;) The same as you say about Romance languages can be said about Slavic languages. My native is Slovene, but I realised I can somehow get by in Croatian as well. (I wonder, if Baxus here and I ever met in person, what language would we use? :idea:) The tonal thing makes me wonder if we'd have an easier time to pick up other tonal languages (isn't mandarin tonal? I've heard rumours it is, but they may be untrue.) Or perhaps it doesn't matter. I suppose so. Some dialect of Slovene have tonemes, and some do not. The speakers of the dialects that are without tonemes are said to not be able to even hear the difference between tonemes in other dialetcs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
straits Posted August 31, 2014 Share Posted August 31, 2014 Define "Slavic". ;) The same as you say about Romance languages can be said about Slavic languages. My native is Slovene, but I realised I can somehow get by in Croatian as well. (I wonder, if Baxus here and I ever met in person, what language would we use? :idea:) I spoke Serbian with someone from Slovenija, and they spoke Slovenian. We understood each other pretty well, and explained words we didn't understand with gestures and synonyms. I think it's the same deal with Macedonian. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Buckwheat Posted August 31, 2014 Share Posted August 31, 2014 I spoke Serbian with someone from Slovenija, and they spoke Slovenian. We understood each other pretty well, and explained words we didn't understand with gestures and synonyms. I think it's the same deal with Macedonian. Well, I supposed I could get by with "Serbian" too, since I cannot tell the difference. But I do not think I could understand any Macedonian. I recently heard some Bulgarian, which is nearest to Macedonian, and could not understand a thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
straits Posted August 31, 2014 Share Posted August 31, 2014 Well, I supposed I could get by with "Serbian" too, since I cannot tell the difference. There is none. It just means you can pretend that you know several languages to people who don't know better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.