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What's the most difficult language to lea

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Poll Question: What's the most difficult language to learn?
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9 [19.15%]
25 [53.19%]
8 [17.02%]
2 [4.26%]
3 [6.38%]
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  Quote Slayertplsko Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: What's the most difficult language to lea
    Posted: 30-Jun-2008 at 16:11
What I'll never understand is why so many people voted English!Big%20smile

As for the hardest, I don't really know, but of those I tried, Arabic was the most difficult.
Anyway, I voted for Egyptian - it's an extinct language and pretty archaic one.


Edited by Slayertplsko - 30-Jun-2008 at 16:35
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  Quote Dynbertawe Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30-Jun-2008 at 16:03
Originally posted by Odin

Originally posted by gcle2003

 
Originally posted by barbar

Originally posted by gcle2003

   
The simple sentence "You went to Paris yesterday" depending on intonation can mean
"I thought it was someone else who went to Paris yesterday"
"You really hate Paris: why did you go there?"
"So you did go like you said you would"
"So you went even after saying you would never go"
"So you weren't already in Paris the day before yesterday?"
"I thought you were going somewhere else"
"I thought you were planning to stay here"
I thought you were going earlier (or later) than that"
and probably more things than that.
 
It's not easy for a non-native speaker to get them all right.
 
I wonder if native speakers can get them right either. It's nothing but confusion. Intonation is common to every language. 
But in some languages it is much more complex than others, notably Chinese. After all, words are common to all languages.
 Anyway, you don't give any of those meanings when you right them down without adding other sentenses, do you?
You don't need to add any other sentences or phrases. The entire meaning can be conveyed with intonation, just using the five words I gave.
 
A difficulty many English speakers with only a limited acquaintance with foreign languages is that they try to use intonation the same way as they normally would, and don't understand why they're not understood.
 
In French, especially it seems to my ear in Paris, the sentence 'Tu es all� � Paris hier' means nothing much more than the simple statement that you went to Paris yesterday, French being comparatively flat tonally.
 
Otherwise you have to construct something like 'C'�tait hier que tu es all� � Paris, non?'.
 
Of course you CAN say 'it was yesterday that you went to Paris, no?', but you wouldn't naturally do so. It makes you sound like a policeman questioning a suspect.
 
 


Quoted for truth! Using intonation to express meaning ("YOU went to the park?" and "you went to the PARK?") is so natural to me that it's hard for me to grasp that it doesn't appy to other languages. Confused
 
Funny you were talking about intonation, I was talking to one of my friends about this. In welsh, we don't have to do this, instead we just move the words around for emphasis.
 
YOU went to the park - CHI wedi mynd i'r parc?
 
You went to the PARK - Y PARC chi wedi mynd i?
 
Welsh is very flexible!
 
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  Quote Odin Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30-Jun-2008 at 14:55
Many Native American languages are extremely difficult for English speakers because they tend to be agglutinative to the extreme, with a single word making up a whole sentence.

The native language of my area, The Anishinaabe language of the Chippewa is an excellent example.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anishinaabe_language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ojibwe_phonology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ojibwe_grammar


"Of the twenty-two civilizations that have appeared in history, nineteen of them collapsed when they reached the moral state the United States is in now."

-Arnold J. Toynbee
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  Quote Odin Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30-Jun-2008 at 14:34
Originally posted by gcle2003

 
Originally posted by barbar

Originally posted by gcle2003

   
The simple sentence "You went to Paris yesterday" depending on intonation can mean
"I thought it was someone else who went to Paris yesterday"
"You really hate Paris: why did you go there?"
"So you did go like you said you would"
"So you went even after saying you would never go"
"So you weren't already in Paris the day before yesterday?"
"I thought you were going somewhere else"
"I thought you were planning to stay here"
I thought you were going earlier (or later) than that"
and probably more things than that.
 
It's not easy for a non-native speaker to get them all right.
 
I wonder if native speakers can get them right either. It's nothing but confusion. Intonation is common to every language. 
But in some languages it is much more complex than others, notably Chinese. After all, words are common to all languages.
 Anyway, you don't give any of those meanings when you right them down without adding other sentenses, do you?
You don't need to add any other sentences or phrases. The entire meaning can be conveyed with intonation, just using the five words I gave.
 
A difficulty many English speakers with only a limited acquaintance with foreign languages is that they try to use intonation the same way as they normally would, and don't understand why they're not understood.
 
In French, especially it seems to my ear in Paris, the sentence 'Tu es all� � Paris hier' means nothing much more than the simple statement that you went to Paris yesterday, French being comparatively flat tonally.
 
Otherwise you have to construct something like 'C'�tait hier que tu es all� � Paris, non?'.
 
Of course you CAN say 'it was yesterday that you went to Paris, no?', but you wouldn't naturally do so. It makes you sound like a policeman questioning a suspect.
 
 


Quoted for truth! Using intonation to express meaning ("YOU went to the park?" and "you went to the PARK?") is so natural to me that it's hard for me to grasp that it doesn't appy to other languages. Confused
"Of the twenty-two civilizations that have appeared in history, nineteen of them collapsed when they reached the moral state the United States is in now."

-Arnold J. Toynbee
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  Quote Odin Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30-Jun-2008 at 14:24
Originally posted by Reginmund

Like has already been pointed out, it depends entirely upon what your native tongue is. Studying a language related to your own is always easier than studying one that is so remote it doesn't even share the same alphabet or sentence structure.

As a Norwegian I suppose I'm favourably disposed for learning English, though it's been more like a natural process of assimilation than one of teaching. I've also studied Spanish for three years, which while harder than English I also found quite agreeable. French I studied last summer on my own, and I must say it's a fair bit harder than Spanish, since there is far less grammatical consistency and a pronounciation that is awkward for one used to rolling his r's. Latin, which I studied for one semester at university, is much harder than both Spanish and French, in fact it didn't really strike me how easy Spanish was until I tried to do Latin.

One a side note, I heard one linguist say Dutch would be the easiest language for a Norwegian to learn, maybe I'll check up on that.


I've heard that the continental Scandinavian languages are fairly easy for English speakers to learn because they are all Germanic languages and all lost a lot of the grammatical word endings during the Middle Ages.. The main differences are that the Scandinavian languages still have grammatical gender and Norwegian and Swedish have pitch accent (words have a rising or falling tone). I am of Norwegian ancestry so I have been trying to learn Norwegian (both Bokmal and NyNorsk versions)

Does anyone know any good on-line sites for learning Norwegian? I'd appreciate some good links.

Tusen Takk. Smile
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  Quote Dynbertawe Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 30-Jun-2008 at 11:43
Originally posted by Cryptic

Originally posted by Olme

However, I wouldn't say that there are two dates for its extinction, since the death of the last monolingual speaker doesn't signify extinction. 
I agree.  The later dates 1890-1910 should be used.
 
Originally posted by Olme

  For example, I don't think that there are many minority languages (that are prominent) in which the speakers aren't bilingual.  Frisian isn't extinct, but I would say that over 99 percent of the native speakers of it also speak Dutch.  Along with Welsh, which isn't exctinct, they all speak English. 
I agree, except with the reference to Welsh.  I believe that there are still several thousand  monolingual Welsh speakers in the North of Wales.  I guess that this is a testimony to their determination and stubborness.
 
 
 
 
Yes, we are stubborn old buggers!! The monoglots live in the north and west, they're usually the very old or the pre-school population.
 
The secret about learning one of the Celtic languages or any other language for that matter is to understand how they work, no language is really difficult to learn, I`d rather call them challenging!
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  Quote SuN. Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 02-Nov-2007 at 17:54
Cant we establish some scientific methofd to establish which language is the easiest to learn? We have people from all languages. Some brainstorming could certainly produce something.
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  Quote Darius of Parsa Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 02-Nov-2007 at 05:04
The Hungarian language is probably the hardest language to learn. It is the same difficulty, if not harder, than Chinese or Japanese.
What is the officer problem?
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 20-Oct-2007 at 23:02
In Louisiana, there were still quite a few monolingual French speakers left until about 30 years ago. This has now receded significantly so that in the next few years all of those who only spoke French will have probably died off. Bilingualism is still hanging on, however, but for how long is anybody's guess. The most fluent speakers are mostly those over 40, the younger people knowing either none or some bits and pieces of the language, although there are a few insignificant exceptions as there are  in all statistics.
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 11-Sep-2007 at 19:11

Yeah, Welsh was a bad example.  I love it that there are actually monolingual speakers of minority languages.  Much praise and hale the stubborness of the Welsh!

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  Quote Cryptic Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 11-Sep-2007 at 14:30
Originally posted by Olme

However, I wouldn't say that there are two dates for its extinction, since the death of the last monolingual speaker doesn't signify extinction. 
I agree.  The later dates 1890-1910 should be used.
 
Originally posted by Olme

  For example, I don't think that there are many minority languages (that are prominent) in which the speakers aren't bilingual.  Frisian isn't extinct, but I would say that over 99 percent of the native speakers of it also speak Dutch.  Along with Welsh, which isn't exctinct, they all speak English. 
I agree, except with the reference to Welsh.  I believe that there are still several thousand  monolingual Welsh speakers in the North of Wales.  I guess that this is a testimony to their determination and stubborness.
 
Here in the USA, my friend who worked for the Census Bureau told me that elderly monolingual Native Americans in Oklahoma Ozarks were rare, but not unheard of in the 1998 census.    My guess is that the Navajo / Hopi Reservation is home to the last large number of indigenous monolinguals in the USA.  
 
Well..... Louisiana might have very small numbers of Cajun / Creole French  monolinguals.   That would leave Native Hawaiian.  One of the Islands in the chain is a community land trust only for certain Native Hawiians.   If there are any monolinguals left, they might be there.  
 


Edited by Cryptic - 11-Sep-2007 at 16:29
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 11-Sep-2007 at 13:44
Nice post Cryptic, and thanks for the dates.  I didn't have anything on me but I was pretty sure that those were ball-park numbers (which is not preferable).  However, I wouldn't say that there are two dates for its extinction, since the death of the last monolingual speaker doesn't signify extinction.  For example, I don't think that there are many minority languages (that are prominent) in which the speakers aren't bilingual.  Frisian isn't extinct, but I would say that over 99 percent of the native speakers of it also speak Dutch.  Along with Welsh, which isn't exctinct, they all speak English.  So while the dates given are important, there should only be one that is considered as the 'extinction' date. 
 
The points regarding the break are very goodThumbs%20Up
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  Quote Cryptic Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 11-Sep-2007 at 08:26
Originally posted by Olme

And as to running across a Cornish speaker would be nearly impossible, even in Penzance!  Cornish technically went extinct in either the late 19th century or early 20th (I know that last speaker of Manx died in the 1950s and it died before Manx). 
 
I think the confusion regarding Cornish is because there are two dates given for its extinction.
 
- Death of the last known monolingual Cornish speaker (Molly the Fisherwoman)   1780s
- Deaths of the last speakers who had varying degree of fluency in the language    1890-1910
 
The continuity of Cornish,  can be looked at two ways.  There was an academic effort  to preserve grammar and vocabulary by studying both early written sources and interviewing the last speakers.  The strongest effort, however, occurred after the deaths of the last people speaking Cornish.
 
So... the break was relatively small and it was not a clear break.  Exact pronunication and subtle vocabulary was lost, but alot of the real language was preserved.  


Edited by Cryptic - 11-Sep-2007 at 14:23
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 06-Sep-2007 at 02:12
I'm CornishSmile.  really, but unfortunately an immigrant (of several generations) and not a native speaker (of course).  And as to running across a Cornish speaker would be nearly impossible, even in Penzance!  Cornish technically went extinct in either the late 19th century or early 20th (I know that last speaker of Manx died in the 1950s and it died before Manx).  There have been attempts at resurrection, and circa 300 people are claimed to be fluent.  Hopefully soon it will be once more alive and well, and with native speakers on the way! 
     The Brittanic languages (Breton, Cornish and Welsh) would be difficult due to the mutations (similar to Tolkien's Sindarin), but I think that the Amerindian languages would be very difficult.  They have features similar to the exceptionally long Turkish words that were demonstrated earlier.  As for the most difficult Germanic language, grammatically speaking, would be Icelandic or Faroese (both close to ON which was highly inflected).  Hardest IE language, I'm not sure.   Icelandic might rank in there, but Russian's rich morphology would make it a contender.  Also, Shughni, a dialect of Persian (though I am told that it is a very ancient dialect, and a native speaker of it told me it was Old Persian) spoken in Tajikistan (near the Afghani border) also is a very difficult language.  But, I would say that the many 'indigenous' languages to many areas are the hardest.  Some of the African tribal languages with their clicks would be a real pain!!
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 17-Jul-2007 at 18:28
All and none. Of this list I just speak English and know some Coptic, but I speak several others. Langauages are difficult depending on many factors. For instance, for me, learning any Latin language is relativelly easy, since I speak Catalan, but learning Tatar (I study it) is very difficult, but probably a Turk wouln'd say so.
Another important point is possibility of practising the language. English is "easy" since you can listen, speak and write anytime, but Cornish wouldn'd so "easy" since it is almost impossible to come across a Cornish speaker on any street of the world (even in Cornwall would be difficult!)
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  Quote gcle2003 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 29-May-2007 at 08:34
 
Originally posted by barbar

Originally posted by gcle2003

   
The simple sentence "You went to Paris yesterday" depending on intonation can mean
"I thought it was someone else who went to Paris yesterday"
"You really hate Paris: why did you go there?"
"So you did go like you said you would"
"So you went even after saying you would never go"
"So you weren't already in Paris the day before yesterday?"
"I thought you were going somewhere else"
"I thought you were planning to stay here"
I thought you were going earlier (or later) than that"
and probably more things than that.
 
It's not easy for a non-native speaker to get them all right.
 
I wonder if native speakers can get them right either. It's nothing but confusion. Intonation is common to every language. 
But in some languages it is much more complex than others, notably Chinese. After all, words are common to all languages.
 Anyway, you don't give any of those meanings when you right them down without adding other sentenses, do you?
You don't need to add any other sentences or phrases. The entire meaning can be conveyed with intonation, just using the five words I gave.
 
A difficulty many English speakers with only a limited acquaintance with foreign languages is that they try to use intonation the same way as they normally would, and don't understand why they're not understood.
 
In French, especially it seems to my ear in Paris, the sentence 'Tu es all Paris hier' means nothing much more than the simple statement that you went to Paris yesterday, French being comparatively flat tonally.
 
Otherwise you have to construct something like 'C'tait hier que tu es all Paris, non?'.
 
Of course you CAN say 'it was yesterday that you went to Paris, no?', but you wouldn't naturally do so. It makes you sound like a policeman questioning a suspect.
 
 
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  Quote gcle2003 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 29-May-2007 at 08:24
Originally posted by Styrbiorn


Originally posted by gcle2003

The simple sentence "You went to Paris yesterday" depending on intonation can mean
"I thought it was someone else who went to Paris yesterday"

"You really hate Paris: why did you go there?"

"So you did go like you said you would"

"So you went even after saying you would never go"

"So you weren't already in Paris the day before yesterday?"

"I thought you were going somewhere else"

"I thought you were planning to stay here"

I thought you were going earlier (or later) than that"

and probably more things than that.

 

It's not easy for a non-native speaker to get them all right.



Same as in Scandinavian then.
 
Similar, though the actual intonation patterns are different. I've found that the best non-native speakers at mastering English patterns are Norwegians.
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  Quote Styrbiorn Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 27-May-2007 at 11:55

Originally posted by gcle2003

The simple sentence "You went to Paris yesterday" depending on intonation can mean
"I thought it was someone else who went to Paris yesterday"

"You really hate Paris: why did you go there?"

"So you did go like you said you would"

"So you went even after saying you would never go"

"So you weren't already in Paris the day before yesterday?"

"I thought you were going somewhere else"

"I thought you were planning to stay here"

I thought you were going earlier (or later) than that"

and probably more things than that.


It's not easy for a non-native speaker to get them all right.



Same as in Scandinavian then.
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  Quote barbar Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 27-May-2007 at 07:54
Originally posted by gcle2003

   
The simple sentence "You went to Paris yesterday" depending on intonation can mean
"I thought it was someone else who went to Paris yesterday"
"You really hate Paris: why did you go there?"
"So you did go like you said you would"
"So you went even after saying you would never go"
"So you weren't already in Paris the day before yesterday?"
"I thought you were going somewhere else"
"I thought you were planning to stay here"
I thought you were going earlier (or later) than that"
and probably more things than that.
 
It's not easy for a non-native speaker to get them all right.
 
I wonder if native speakers can get them right either. It's nothing but confusion. Intonation is common to every language.  Anyway, you don't give any of those meanings when you right them down without adding other sentenses, do you?
 
 
Either make a history or become a history.
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  Quote gcle2003 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 25-May-2007 at 10:29
 
Originally posted by mamikon

I have heard Magyar and Estonian languages are the hardest (thus the Finno-Ugric group)

8 people voted for English Confused
Maybe because even the English find it hard to speak/write correct English. It's too wasy in English to get away with incorrect English.
 
Apart from that what makes English difficult for most people is the reliance on pitch and intonation to convey meaning. (Granted it's not the only language that does that.)
 
The simple sentence "You went to Paris yesterday" depending on intonation can mean
"I thought it was someone else who went to Paris yesterday"
"You really hate Paris: why did you go there?"
"So you did go like you said you would"
"So you went even after saying you would never go"
"So you weren't already in Paris the day before yesterday?"
"I thought you were going somewhere else"
"I thought you were planning to stay here"
I thought you were going earlier (or later) than that"
and probably more things than that.
 
It's not easy for a non-native speaker to get them all right.
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