English is Difficult...

[GreekGoddess]

Language is divided into categories, which will be easy to determine their degree of difficulty to learn based on the native language you speak. (ex. If you speak French, it may be easier for you to learn a similar grouped Italic-based language such as Catalan or Italian, because much of the rules are the same.)

Language/Linguistics is based on a spectrum similar to that of the political spectrum.


Indo-European Languages (since this is the main subject of this thread)

Celtic:
Breton
Irish
Scots Gaelic
Welsh

Italic:
(Romance/Latin)
Catalan
French
Italian
Portuguese
Provencal
Romanian
Spanish

Germanic:
(Divided into two categories - West and North)
West:
Dutch
English
Flemish
Frisian
German
Yiddish

North:
Danish
Icelandic
Norwegian
Swedish

Hellenic:
Ancient Greek
Greek

Albanian

Armenian

Baltic:
Latvian
Lithuanian

Slavic:
Bulgarian
Czech
Macedonian
Polish
Russian
Serbo-Croatian
Slovak
Slovenian
Ukrainian

Indo-Iranian (split into two categories, one based on Old Persian and one on Sanskrit, which is a debated topic, so I'll just leave it to this list.)
Old Persian:
Persian

Sanskrit:
Bengali
Hindi
Punjabi
Urdu

(I apologize in advance if I blundered this list, it was off the top of my head)

If you took a look at all languages abstractly, they are just as difficult equally. They all have their rules, and even their much hated exceptions. As I had stated above, degree of difficulty has much to do with your native language. It's easier to relate to the similarities in the words, grammar rules, form, and usage. If you are a native English speaker, going completely out of your category and learning a Sanskrit language is going to give you a lot more trouble than trying to learn Dutch or German. Sanskrit has its own alphabet, very dissimilar to the English alphabet, and trying to relate the similarities would be far more difficult, even if it is an Indo-European language, it is far different, based on different things...etc.

I was once told by a very good professor that learning a language is need-based. If you were stuck in a foreign country and no one spoke your native language, you would pick up the essentials much faster than you would studying it for leisure. You may not become the most eloquent of speakers, but you will pick it up on need basis. Learning a language is just like programming, it's just a code, but instead of dealing with a device or other medium, you're dealing with humans. (Culture has everything to do with it. This is a topic that pulls at me because I have so many language theories that I think will change the world, this is one topic that I'm so very passionate about.)

You have to learn the slang and the gestures, gestures and facial expressions, how one moves, it's all part of language, and a book could never teach you that.

I could ramble on about this forever. Hope this helps.

[pwaring]

Originally posted here by garathjax


I'd have to disagree with you there cause I'm fairly sure Mandarin is the most wide spread language in the world, with Spanish coming in a distant second and then English in third.

Just to clear this point up, I was saying that English is the most *wide spread* language in the world, i.e. it is spoken all over the world in pretty much every country. Chinese is spoken by more people by anyone else, but then over 1 billion people live in China so what do you expect? However, people who speak Chinese are concentrated mostly in that area of the world, so English is still more widespread.

To recap on what are probably the 4 most spoken languages in the world (not in any order):

Chinese: Spoken mainly in China, but by the most people.
Spanish: Spoken in Spain, Portugal and South America (I'm simplifying a bit there though).
French: Spoken in France and Canada.
English: Spoken in Britain (England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales), America (albeit with incorrect grammer and spelling!), Australia and of course the various British colonies such as the Falklands. Also *the* internationally recognised language.

I've no wish to get involved with an argument over which country's language is best, except the fact that I *hate* it when the Americans change words and grammer to suit them. There is a "u" in colour!

[bimmer]

hee hee .... guys .... wait till u try learning arabic ..... then talk about Difficult languages ....

for us in the M-east, we know lots of languages ,
as for jordan: first language is the jordanian arabic then English then french.
egypt ( egyption arabic then french then english ) gulf ( they have their own arabic then english only no third )
morocco and algeria ( arabic then french )

i think the most Difficult language is the fareast ( japan , china, taiwan, korea etc. ) and then the arabic language ...

but i see english is a very simple and easy language to learn and communicate with , that's why it's the most language used world wide.....

[garathjax]

Hey Negative, close enough, not sure about the spelling though.

[Ouroboros]

Originally posted here by Geric
El gato es muy feo!

The cat is very ugly!

Spoken language, in my opinion is more about basic wording and intonation than pure verbiage or structure. I haven't 'studied' spanish for 10 years, but I remember a basic vocabluary and a basic set of verbs...the conjugation of said verbs comes to me through context more than knowledge, most of the time. I can also read ancient Greek (Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta.......Omega), but could never speak it. French seems to be the most difficult for me, as it isn't based in a Greek or Latin substructure. The same with Dutch, Russian, and the 'Eastern' dialects (Mandarin, Japanese, etc.).

In short...if you can dig up and learn the template language, you can easily figure out any following dialects from that. Granted, American English is rife with corruptions and slang, but the basic language is the same as Greek/Latin...you just have to be able to see it and mutate all words from the frame of the preceeding language.

Ouroboros

[valheru]

Originally posted here by pwaring

English: Spoken in Britain (England, Ireland , Scotland, Wales),

Come to some parts of Ireland and say it's part of Britain and you'll be lucky to leave with your kneecaps (not to mention your head).

Anyway I just thought I'd bring the whole Esparanto thing into the equation. A friend of mine used to subscribe to a paper in that language (I'm not sure if he still does or not). and once out of boredom I tried to read it and I discovered I could understand the whole thing, and me with only knowledge in Irish, English and very basic French, if all languages were as easy as Esparanto to learn we'd be away with it

[KissCool]

Aaaahh
lol
ok, firstly I think the world's most difficult language considered is Japanese.

Secondly my english level is very bad (I don't understand most of humour senses, I create some words and my phrases are badly constructs) but I think also this language is very easy to learn.

Verbs are easy to conjugate, there's only a few irregular verbs, a good voacabulary part is near french meaning...

yes, English is easy to use for transmission of basical informations contrary to french with his complex system to conjugate any verbs (I don't understand how you're able to learn it if it is not you're native language!)

[Negative]

Thx for that list, GreekGoddess Was looking for it, but couldn't find something like that on Google...


Although, I don't agree with the point you're making in your post...

Language is divided into categories, which will be easy to determine their degree of difficulty to learn based on the native language you speak. (ex. If you speak French, it may be easier for you to learn a similar grouped Italic-based language such as Catalan or Italian, because much of the rules are the same.)

Agreed, if you speak an 'italic' language (the Dutch term is 'Frankian', don't know the English variant...anyways, it's based on a tribe called the Franks, so I guess it should be something like 'Frankian'...), it's easier to learn another 'italic' language than to learn a 'Germanic' language.

If you took a look at all languages abstractly, they are just as difficult equally. They all have their rules, and even their much hated exceptions. As I had stated above, degree of difficulty has much to do with your native language. It's easier to relate to the similarities in the words, grammar rules, form, and usage. If you are a native English speaker, going completely out of your category and learning a Sanskrit language is going to give you a lot more trouble than trying to learn Dutch or German. Sanskrit has its own alphabet, very dissimilar to the English alphabet, and trying to relate the similarities would be far more difficult, even if it is an Indo-European language, it is far different, based on different things...etc.

Again, I don't agree...If you take all languages abstractly, they are NOT as difficult equally imo: Dutch, English and German are in the same categorie, but I didn't think anyone was going to argue about the fact that German is more difficult than English: of course there are a lot of English expressions....but so are there in German... The simple fact that Germans stilll use cases makes it more difficult than languages that don't use use cases, no? Or the simple fact that German still is 'gender enabled'... that makes it more difficult, no?
I'm Dutch, I should be able to learn both English and German fairly easily.... I didn't... German is just too bloody hard to learn. Doesn't have anything to do with vocabulary/whatever... German uses cases, English doesn't... German is gender enabled, English isn't... ("I am a boy" in English... All you need to know is the word for 'I', the conjugation of 'to be', and the forms of 'boy'). Try that in German...

[psychosquee]

I have found French to be easier than learning English, even though English is my first and most often spoken language. The fact that all nouns have a gender used to bother me, but it doesn't anymore.
The only reason Chinese is the most spoken is because it is spoken by over 1 billion people, but it isn't just Mandrin that is spoken (there are several other dialects, but Mandrin is by far the most popularly spoken).

[pwaring]

Originally posted here by valheru


Come to some parts of Ireland and say it's part of Britain and you'll be lucky to leave with your kneecaps (not to mention your head).

I know what you mean, although Ireland is still part of Britain (including Southern Ireland/Republic of Ireland - that's not in the UK though). It's like going to Gibralter and saying it's part of Spain - you'd be beaten up by a enraged gang of patriotic senior citizens!