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Maziar
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Arteshbod
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Topic: What's the most difficult language to lea Posted: 08-Jan-2007 at 15:33 |
I think it depends on which mother tangue we speak. For me as Iranian is Arabic easier to learn than Chines. For a Chines is Korean easier than Arabic.
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Ikki
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Posted: 08-Jan-2007 at 17:17 |
Originally posted by pinguin
Well, it depends from which mother language one comes from. Mine is Spanish so I can understand most of what is written in Latin. Besides, when I saw "The Passion" of Gibson, and I listened those Romans speaking latin, I could follow them without much effort :)
For me, the easiest languages are Portuguese, Italian and French in that order. English is the non-Latin language more easy to learn. All the rest are a lot more difficult but European languages like German and Russian seem relatively accessible for me.
Non-European languages are another matter. Korean, Egyptian and Arabic, together with Polynesian and Native American languages, seem to me in a similar level of difficulty, which is to learn a language which has an alphabet, and that is not in anyway related with the Indo-European languages.
Worst of all is Chinese, because is a tonal language, it is written with ideograms, and has no point in contact at all with western culture.
Pinguin
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Agree point by point, i can't say it better
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pekau
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Posted: 08-Jan-2007 at 23:11 |
Originally posted by Ikki
Originally posted by pinguin
Well, it depends from which mother language one comes from. Mine is Spanish so I can understand most of what is written in Latin. Besides, when I saw "The Passion" of Gibson, and I listened those Romans speaking latin, I could follow them without much effort :)
For me,the easiest languages are Portuguese,Italian and French in that order. English is the non-Latin language more easy to learn. All the rest are a lot more difficult but European languages like German and Russian seem relatively accessible for me.
Non-European languages are another matter. Korean, Egyptian and Arabic, together with Polynesian and Native American languages,seem to me in a similar level of difficulty, which is to learn a language which has an alphabet, and that is not in anyway related with the Indo-European languages.
Worst of all is Chinese, because is a tonal language, it is written with ideograms, and has no point in contact at all with western culture.
Pinguin
| Agree point by point, i can't say it better  |
Point taken. I guess my question was too general.
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Decebal
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Posted: 09-Jan-2007 at 09:21 |
From what I've heard (and even my own personal experience), the hardest language to learn is Hungarian. Granted, the alphabet is easy since it's the latin one. But the vocabulary doesn't resemble any other language (even Finnish), the pronounciation is tricky and the grammar is exceedingly complicated.
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pekau
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Posted: 18-Jan-2007 at 23:14 |
One of my friend, the smartest kid I ever seen, is an Hungarian. I didn't quite believe him saying that Hungarian is the hardest language to learn, since he has some obsession with Hungarian pride thingy... but who knows.
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Suren
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Posted: 20-Jan-2007 at 07:19 |
Chinese is the most difficult language. Egyptians speak arabic.
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Paul
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Posted: 20-Jan-2007 at 09:14 |
I dont really think there is a most difficult language. It all depends how different the language you are learning from the one you know.
I've heard North American Indian Languages can be the very difficult.
SE Asia and East Asian languages are tonal, varying from 4-6 tones. These can be very difficult if you are from a non--tonal background. But it's not so difficult to learn a different tonal language if you speak one aready. The 4 tones of Chinese are not so hard to learn if you speak the six tones of Lao.
Edited by Paul - 20-Jan-2007 at 09:19
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DocStaph
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Posted: 20-Jan-2007 at 23:09 |
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Guests
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Posted: 20-Jan-2007 at 23:56 |
Originally posted by sirius99
Chinese is the most difficult language. Egyptians speak arabic. |
Yes, but Coptic schollars speak Coptic, which is Ancient Egyptian.
Pinguin
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Reginmund
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Posted: 21-Jan-2007 at 15:17 |
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.
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mamikon
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Posted: 21-Jan-2007 at 15:53 |
I have heard its Magyar, followed by Estonian...this is coming from a professor I had who is fluent in 7-8 languages
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Roberts
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Posted: 22-Jan-2007 at 15:54 |
I have heard that the hardest languages to learn from Indo-European are Baltic ones - Latvian and Lithuanian, due to very complex grammar and they both are mutually unintelligible, because of different influences from Finnic, Germanic and Slavic.
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TheDiplomat
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Posted: 23-Jan-2007 at 06:31 |
Originally posted by axeman
I have heard that the hardest languages to learn from
Indo-European are Baltic ones - Latvian and Lithuanian, due to very
complex grammar and they both are mutually unintelligible, because of
different influences from Finnic, Germanic and Slavic.
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For me learning Latvian is much harder than English and German due to
verb conjugations, long vowels, and complex cases of nouns. But on the
other hand, it seems easier than Russian because of latin alphabet,
which is also familiar for a Turkish guy.
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ataman
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Posted: 24-Jan-2007 at 12:14 |
The most difficult language? It is of course foreign one
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pekau
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Posted: 24-Jan-2007 at 15:27 |
Originally posted by ataman
The most difficult language? It is of course foreign one  |
Ah... tricky! 
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pekau
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Posted: 24-Jan-2007 at 15:28 |
Although I think your first language may be the hardest to learn, technically speaking. It's hard to learn a language when you could not speak any other language in the first place. Ah ha, got you there.
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ataman
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Posted: 25-Jan-2007 at 09:00 |
Originally posted by pekau
Although I think your first language may be the hardest to learn, technically speaking. It's hard to learn a language when you could not speak any other language in the first place. Ah ha, got you there. |
Well, I've learnt my native language much faster than English one. And I can say that opposite to English language I know my native language perfectly 
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pekau
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Posted: 25-Jan-2007 at 12:26 |
Originally posted by ataman
Originally posted by pekau
Although I think your first language may be the hardest to learn, technically speaking. It's hard to learn a language when you could not speak any other language in the first place. Ah ha, got you there. |
Well, I've learnt my native language much faster than English one. And I can say that opposite to English language I know my native language perfectly  |
How? Ho long did it take for you to learn your first language? It's got to be at least over 7 years... (Assuming that you are exceptionally talented)
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T. Ape
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Posted: 25-Mar-2007 at 22:44 |
I am taking Japanese, and it has not been too hard for me. In fact, I had a harder time speaking Spanish than I do Japanese even though it has its own lettering system.
As such, I do not imagine other language sytems to be hard to learn either.
Edited by T. Ape - 25-Mar-2007 at 22:44
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Kamikaze 738
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Posted: 27-Mar-2007 at 15:11 |
I do believe that the Chinese language is the hardest of all languages but all it takes is just alot of memorization. Though learning english was pretty hard in my opinion but I nearly master the basic of it
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