Language Difficulty Rating

[MissAnaHappy]

I'm a bit surprised about everyone saying English is difficult... All languages are complex, but English was the easiest one for me to learn. Specially in terms of grammar. In terms of pronunciation, you just pick things up along the way.

I'm Portuguese, but I've given up on learning any other Romance languages for now. I already have the bases for French, so I'll probably end up going for fluency someday. But for now, with University... I can' t squeeze anything else into my brain. x.x

[Wraith_92]

PAnZuRiEL

goddess-Kelsey-Catface

cause we have no distiguished sentence paterns and there is so many meanings to one word.

Le Doctor P

Indeed. English is the hardedst language in the world to learn for foreigners, especially written, because nothing is pronounced the way it is spelled.

You two are hopelessly naïve.

It's rare to find a written language that exactly and uniquely describes a spoken language. Phonetic script is the exception rather than the rule. And I don't think you'll find a single language in the world in which the correspondence of words to meanings is 1:1. English is difficult, I give you that -- extraordinarily so. But "the hardest"? Give me a break. rolleyes
quote]Look at German and Russian. Both are completly phonetic.

[Figmented Imagination]

My father is an English professor, in America, and he even agrees that English is a silly language.

For me, Spanish is fairly easy, French is harder, Japanese is okay, German is harder...

[Cami Haru]

Le Doctor P

goddess-Kelsey-Catface

English is seen as one of the most hardest languages in the worldto learn, cause we have no distiguished sentence paterns and there is so many meanings to one word.

Japanese is farely hard, but it is alot better to learn if you are passionate about it.

Indeed. English is the hardedst language in the world to learn for foreigners, especially written, because nothing is pronounced the way it is spelled. Pyscho is an example.
"Sai-e-ko". Some people would be like.. um.. "Fis-co"? or something.

Spanish is rather easy because everything is literally pronounced the same way it is written.

Japanes is easy if you are learning it by "Romaji" and not it's original written characters.

Sentence/grammar structure in Spanish and Japanese is relatively the same. And It also has the exact same pronouciation. Thus learning Japanese is far easier for the Spanish speaker than a English speaker.

Vietnamese. OMG. my best friend is vietnamese and well, I really can't pronounce that stuff the way it is written.

I studied French for a while but gave up because it was useless to me in my location, and I had no one to talk to , in order to keep up with it.

Italian and Portugese is similar to Spanish so I have those down.

I hate German. They speak too strongly.

Chinese is easy. Written language is hard. But did you know you can be a fluent Chinese reader without knowing spoken Chinese at all? If you're good at remember the characters and what they mean in your language, it's not necessay to learn their way of the word. And you could be a translator. I know I guy like that. He was French..

Yeah speak English and Spanish so Japanese was pretty easy for me C:

[PAnZuRiEL]

Wraith_92

PAnZuRiEL

goddess-Kelsey-Catface

cause we have no distiguished sentence paterns and there is so many meanings to one word.

Le Doctor P

Indeed. English is the hardedst language in the world to learn for foreigners, especially written, because nothing is pronounced the way it is spelled.

You two are hopelessly naïve.

It's rare to find a written language that exactly and uniquely describes a spoken language. Phonetic script is the exception rather than the rule. And I don't think you'll find a single language in the world in which the correspondence of words to meanings is 1:1. English is difficult, I give you that -- extraordinarily so. But "the hardest"? Give me a break. rolleyes

Look at German and Russian. Both are completly phonetic.

Uhh, no and no.

I can take one example from German to disprove this. The "ch" in "ich" and the "ch" in "Bach" are two distinct phones -- [ç], the voiceless palatal fricative and [x], the voiceless velar fricative -- which German speakers do not distinguish between. However, Irish speakers do distinguish between those sounds, and if you pronounce the wrong member of the pair you change the word. In German, they are allophones of the same phoneme. In Irish, they are separate phonemes.

Phonetic and phonemic are not the same, douchebag. Now accept that I know what the ******** I'm talking about, and not just running my mouth.

[Le Doctor P]

PAnZuRiEL

Uhh, no and no.

I can take one example from German to disprove this. The "ch" in "ich" and the "ch" in "Bach" are two distinct phones -- [ç], the voiceless palatal fricative and [x], the voiceless velar fricative -- which German speakers do not distinguish between. However, Irish speakers do distinguish between those sounds, and if you pronounce the wrong member of the pair you change the word. In German, they are allophones of the same phoneme. In Irish, they are separate phonemes.

Phonetic and phonemic are not the same, douchebag. Now accept that I know what the ******** I'm talking about, and not just running my mouth.

lmao... xd no one knows wtf you're talking about. It's seriously not worth having a serious argument with them about it. You're speaking beyond their level. ninja

[PAnZuRiEL]

I must take every attack on my credibility with utmost seriousness. talk2hand


dramallama

[iNob]

PAnZuRiEL

I don't believe for a second that written Spanish is phonetic. The script is phonemic, true, but there's a very important difference between phonemic and phonetic. Oh look, a 2-second Google search for "Spanish allophones" produces a wealth of results that illustrate my point. Go study linguistics and then try arguing with me again.

My Spanish teacher always says that Spanish is ridiculously phonetic.
She is a native Spanish speaker from Colombia and has a masters degree in the Spanish language.
I mean, as long as one knows the Spanish alphabet, one can speak any word presented to them (isn't phonetics the showing of pronunciation?).
From my knowledge, The Spanish Royal Language Academy has even claimed that Spanish is phonetic (I'm trying to find a reliable sources that backs this claim).
I'm not an expert on this matter, but it would be nice to see where you are getting your information PAnZuRiEL.

[A I J I N Incubus]

I'm saying from a perspective of a native English speaker.

1) English - There are more exceptions to their rules than anything. The language can be hard to pronounce and hard to translate.
2) Icelandic - I don't know too much about it, but it's quite hard to pronounce and has many exceptions as well.
3) Hungarian - Similar to Icelandic, just more bearable.
4) Thai - For me, this language as given me a head-ache with pronunciation. The writing system is also infuriatingly confusing.
5) Cantonese - I dropped this quickly, too many tones. Although the grammar is pretty straight forward, the tones just throw a stupid foreigner like me off.
6) Any Bantu language - For one, it's nearly impossible to learn anywhere. For two, you can barely write it. For three, it's just difficult to say for a stupid foreigner.
7) Arabic - I don't know much about speaking it, but it's very intimidating to write.
cool Finnish - One of the harder Scandinavian languages.
9) Farsi and Persian - Like Arabic, the language is simply hard to grasp for me.
10) Vietnamese - Not too bad, just pronunciation can be tough.

Runner-ups: Korean - Effective writing style, but pronunciation is tough.
Japanese - Very simply pronunciation, but the writing style is inconsistent.
French - Let's face it, they add too many letters to their words. I do like the language though.

[PAnZuRiEL]

iNob

PAnZuRiEL

I don't believe for a second that written Spanish is phonetic. The script is phonemic, true, but there's a very important difference between phonemic and phonetic. Oh look, a 2-second Google search for "Spanish allophones" produces a wealth of results that illustrate my point. Go study linguistics and then try arguing with me again.

My Spanish teacher always says that Spanish is ridiculously phonetic.
She is a native Spanish speaker from Colombia and has a masters degree in the Spanish language.
I mean, as long as one knows the Spanish alphabet, one can speak any word presented to them (isn't phonetics the showing of pronunciation?).
From my knowledge, The Spanish Royal Language Academy has even claimed that Spanish is phonetic (I'm trying to find a reliable sources that backs this claim).
I'm not an expert on this matter, but it would be nice to see where you are getting your information PAnZuRiEL.

Oh, a masters in Spanish! I don't care! Does she have a masters in linguistics?

Native speakers are not reliable when it comes to concrete things about their language. She thinks it's phonetic, but that doesn't mean it is. As a native speaker, she is unable to tell some sounds apart because there is no distinction between them in her language. To her, they are the same sound.

There are two terms for this, allophony in which two different sounds appear in a complimentary distribution (like German [ç] after front vowels and [x] after back vowels, above); and free variation, where either sound can be pronounced anywhere, it's a matter of personal choice and makes no difference.

Mucking up your allophones (like pronouncing "ich" with a [x]) won't confuse anyone you're talking to, they'll just think you've got a funny accent.

[twilight again]

I live in the USA, so my main language is English. Obviously I speak it well enough, but still have little mistakes with spelling, and what not, and to be honest, I am really not that good at grammar lol! I'm a junior in high school, and in my English class, we're doing all this grammar stuff, and it just kills me!

I love learning other languages though, but the only 2 that I have actually sat down, and did them in a class in school would have to be Spanish, and German. I did fairly well in Spanish when I took it in 7th, and 8th grade, but when I took it in 9th grade, and verb conjugation came up -- I was totally lost, and it made me hate Spanish, so I didn't bother taking it again. Last year in 10th grade I took German, and absolutely loved it, I struggled with sentence structure though. sad I wish I could fully grasp it, so I could speak German fluently.

Anyway, I would love to be able to speak German, Italian, Russian, Croatian, and Swedish (maybe a few more languages) fluently someday. I haven't really had a chance to fully look at Italian, Russian, Croatian, and Swedish, so I don't know what's in store for me. sweatdrop lol!

[mail-order slut]

PAnZuRiEL

iNob

PAnZuRiEL

I don't believe for a second that written Spanish is phonetic. The script is phonemic, true, but there's a very important difference between phonemic and phonetic. Oh look, a 2-second Google search for "Spanish allophones" produces a wealth of results that illustrate my point. Go study linguistics and then try arguing with me again.

My Spanish teacher always says that Spanish is ridiculously phonetic.
She is a native Spanish speaker from Colombia and has a masters degree in the Spanish language.
I mean, as long as one knows the Spanish alphabet, one can speak any word presented to them (isn't phonetics the showing of pronunciation?).
From my knowledge, The Spanish Royal Language Academy has even claimed that Spanish is phonetic (I'm trying to find a reliable sources that backs this claim).
I'm not an expert on this matter, but it would be nice to see where you are getting your information PAnZuRiEL.

Oh, a masters in Spanish! I don't care! Does she have a masters in linguistics?

Native speakers are not reliable when it comes to concrete things about their language. She thinks it's phonetic, but that doesn't mean it is. As a native speaker, she is unable to tell some sounds apart because there is no distinction between them in her language. To her, they are the same sound.

There are two terms for this, allophony in which two different sounds appear in a complimentary distribution (like German [ç] after front vowels and [x] after back vowels, above); and free variation, where either sound can be pronounced anywhere, it's a matter of personal choice and makes no difference.

Mucking up your allophones (like pronouncing "ich" with a [x]) won't confuse anyone you're talking to, they'll just think you've got a funny accent.

I think if someone has a masters in a language, they would probably know. vv

[Laughing Platypus]

Probably English. I love writing and I love writing, but I never knew how dang confusing and contradictory all of the rules of it were until I started tutoring a kid in reading and writing. confused

So yes, it pretty much sucks, in that sense.

[This is a pen]

From my perspective:

Hebrew: I learned this language in elementary school, since my family is partially of Israeli and Jewish descent.
It's easy to read/write if vowels are included. Without vowels, however, it's just like English: it's a guessing game.
Hebrew is ANNOYING AS HELL to speak, and it sounds completely awkward whenever someone who is not Israeli speaks it.
The grammar, however, is easy. It's just annoying how adjectives are sometimes switched.

Due to my biased hatred of my Israeli/Jewish background, I can't really give a true, indepth, judgement to the Hebrew language.

English: My native language.
Very annoying and sounds stupid. ~_~
Perhaps it's my biased opinion again, but I REALLY hate the English language. It makes no sense at all whatsoever.

Japanese: The grammar is a bit complicated for my brain, but it's not too bad.
Very easy to pronounce. No tones! Yay!
The writing interests me, although it's a bit awkward because there are 3 writing systems for 3 different uses and all are used within the same sentence. However, this makes it easy for me to understand what people are trying to say when I'm reading Japanese.
Overall, I like the Japanese language, although I'm not fluenty. xd

Mandarin Chinese: VERY EASY.
The grammar is so simple and it's not difficult to learn the four tones.
Learning the characters isn't even as complicated as people think it is. If you know the basic radicals, you can easily learn (and sometimes understand) unknown characters.
I'm picking up Mandarin much faster than Japanese, although I have an advantage considering I'm learning it at school.
In any case, I'm on the 6th unit for IB Chinese 1 when the rest of my class is on the 3rd or 4th unit. Perhaps it's just easy for me to pick up languages if I desire to learn them.

Vietnamese: English alphabet. No problems with reading~
Also tonal, just like Mandarin. Not very difficult.
My Viet friends think that if you know Mandarin, it's easy to learn Vietnamese and vice versa.

[PAnZuRiEL]

RKTOMO

PAnZuRiEL

iNob

PAnZuRiEL

I don't believe for a second that written Spanish is phonetic. The script is phonemic, true, but there's a very important difference between phonemic and phonetic. Oh look, a 2-second Google search for "Spanish allophones" produces a wealth of results that illustrate my point. Go study linguistics and then try arguing with me again.

My Spanish teacher always says that Spanish is ridiculously phonetic.
She is a native Spanish speaker from Colombia and has a masters degree in the Spanish language.
I mean, as long as one knows the Spanish alphabet, one can speak any word presented to them (isn't phonetics the showing of pronunciation?).
From my knowledge, The Spanish Royal Language Academy has even claimed that Spanish is phonetic (I'm trying to find a reliable sources that backs this claim).
I'm not an expert on this matter, but it would be nice to see where you are getting your information PAnZuRiEL.

Oh, a masters in Spanish! I don't care! Does she have a masters in linguistics?

Native speakers are not reliable when it comes to concrete things about their language. She thinks it's phonetic, but that doesn't mean it is. As a native speaker, she is unable to tell some sounds apart because there is no distinction between them in her language. To her, they are the same sound.

There are two terms for this, allophony in which two different sounds appear in a complimentary distribution (like German [ç] after front vowels and [x] after back vowels, above); and free variation, where either sound can be pronounced anywhere, it's a matter of personal choice and makes no difference.

Mucking up your allophones (like pronouncing "ich" with a [x]) won't confuse anyone you're talking to, they'll just think you've got a funny accent.

I think if someone has a masters in a language, they would probably know. vv

And I think that that kind of thinking promotes ignorance.

They don't teach you the nitty-gritty linguistic details in a language course. You can only learn those things in a linguistics course. The reason they don't teach you them is because for almost all intents and purposes, you don't need to know! They want to teach you to speak the language, to read and write it, to converse and compose in it. They don't want to teach you how to analyse its phonetic and morphological features and write a complete grammar for it. rolleyes