People always think their native language is the hardest in the world.
It’s not true.
Well, obviously, it is true for some nation which truly has the most difficult language of the world. On the other hand, “difficulty” of a language is like “movement” of an object in Physics: it only makes sense relative to some frame of reference.
In any case, I’ve always heard it from people that their language is the most difficult. For example:
- Norwegians told me that Norwegian is extremely difficult and they knew some person who had lived in Norway for 18 or more years and still didn’t speak the language well. Well, Norwegian is easy.
- I’ve heard from Portuguese that Portuguese must be one of the most difficult languages in the world. I have met people who have learnt it to a point where they could work in Portuguese in very short time. I have learnt it up to a level where I can read books in 5 months myself.
- In Lithuania, people think that their language has been found by some scientific research to be the hardest in the world. Or, the second hardest after Chinese. Well, it’s not.
A point to be made, though: it is true that most of the languages are very hard to learn perfectly. But we’re not talking about learning things perfectly here… we prefer being able to communicate and leaving “being perfect” to those that wish to specialize in that language. But when people call their language “very difficult”, they don’t usually think of “learning it perfectly” but of “being able to utter basic things in it”.
The fact is, people always overrate their language in terms of how difficult it is to learn it. Do not get discouraged. In fact, it can even act in your favor: if you learn the language in the end, people think that you must be some kind of a genius to have been able to do that. Weird.
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I just think the opposite. I am Turkish. I learnt English and French at school.When I started to learn Lithuanian at the age of 56 I decided that Turkish is the easiest to learn because it uses the latin alphabet,it is read as is written,it does not have grammatical gender,adjectives are not declined,etc.. So may be we can speak of some criteria which make learning easy depending on what languages you speak
Cool. Kaip sekasi su lietuvių kalba?
There are indeed people who consider their language easy but I think they are usually in the minority.
On an unrelated note, I will probably look into Turkish some day. Well, I don't plan to learn languages forever but I could surely take on some more. I saw an ad for Turkish classes but they were expensive and I don't believe in classes that much. Anyway. :>
languagelearninglab.blogspot.com
Polish has long been considered a difficult language for English native speakers. However, the difficulty of any language really depends on the relationship between the learners native language and that the language they are attempting to learn.
The difficulty level of any language really has less to do with reality and more to do with perception. There are so many great methods for language learning and believe me when I say that there is no magic program for mastering a language in 30 days. Books claiming fluency in 15 minutes a day can give new learners false hope. The reality is that becoming proficient in any language requires a lot of time and work. It requires diligence. However, there are a lot of things that a person can do to help advance their learning and my blog is devoted to sharing those ideas.
But I do think in the other way probably. I think my native language is the easiest one to learn because I use it every day and I am comfortable of it. I learnt English and French in my school days and so i was comfortable learning them too. I think the reason behind this is, the earlier we start to learn a language, the easier and faster we learn it.Nice sharing and keep posting.
Açiu, gerai. Why don't you check Manisa Turkish on Google,and (other) section on that sıte includes some interesting links as well.
Yes, I can guarantee that you'll like Turkish. The textbook I used was Teach Yourself Turkish, which was written in a style definitely similar to yours so that's the one you'll want to pick up to learn. I didn't buy the one with the CDs as well so I'm not sure how well the dialogues were recorded.
It's this one:
http://www.amazon.com/Yourself-Turkish-Complete…
I have to agree, although I tend to rate English (my native language) quite easy – minus the irregularities. Norwegian is indeed pathetically easy and I think those people who live in Norway for 18 years are either extremely thick, anti-social or just plain unopen to learning a new language. We had a girl in my school go to Norway for 10 months on an exchange. Now, she wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, but she came back speaking beautiful Norwegian, so I think those kind of excuses are exactly that, excuses.
tomris somay,
I thought always that German was the most difficult language in Europe. As a girl in Istanbul helped me, an Austrian, to learn English I was convinced that I was right. Gerhard
when I was 18 years old in Istanbul I learned English with help by an Turkey-Girl, now I speak three languages. German Swedish and English. That was 1970.
I'm still convinced that German is one of the most difficult languages. Many Austrians and German have problems with it
Hi Geriva,
You might find this article interesting: http://bygonebureau.com/2010/03/19/the-awful-el… where the author argues English difficulty against German language's simpicity… :-)
Have you been in Istanbul Ataköy in 1970?
Maybe it was you who taught me English at that time,
I am from Austria
Love the first comment! My first thought after reading this article was that the only people I've ever met who think their language is easy were Turks and sure enough…. What's more, at least in Istanbul, locals are very supportive when you're trying to learn, which also helps. Of course, Turkish went through language reforms to make it so regular and “easy.”
But yes, people seem to like to score points for having a “difficult” language as their mother tongue. Some will scare foreigners with these statements and then wonder why foreigners don't try to learn. Sigh.
hello gerhard,how nice to have met you after all these years,but if I remember correctly, I had'nt taught you english ,you already spoke english,anyway, that's of no importance,wish the best for you all
Well, I guess that’s a small world. :)
Well, I guess that's a small world. :)
I think I had some contact with your husband lately on facebook. Great to have caught up again.
Yes, I had some school-English at that time. Twice I missed a grate in the same class. This might at least have been a good basis to work with. I place here an temporary e-mail adress, so we can get in touch. On this site you can find a multi-lingual experiment, when my daughter Esther had a cerebral haemorrhage. That was my way to work with it.
http://ivanovitsag.gmxhome.de/estherTagebuch1.html
aeg@topmail-files.de
Thanks to this forum for communication.
Me too, somehow. Although in my case, I have a feeling that Indonesian is scientifically proven to be the easiest language in the world!
Non-fussy pronunciation, no tenses, no cases, natives murder their own grammar on a daily basis, few conversational vocabulary, spelling not usually taken into account while typing etc.
Wow, do you speak Indonesian? I learned about it in one of my TTC courses.
I think the only phrase I know is “ayam makan” which was an example of easy grammar: it could supposedly mean (the) chicken eats, chicken will eat, chicken ate, chicken was eating, chicken is eating, chicken will be eating, chicken was eaten, chicken is eaten, chicken will be eaten, and a number of other things.
Hey~ Yep, I speak Indonesian.
Yes, technically 'ayam makan' can mean any of those things. In order to distinguish between all the meanings you mentioned, we add suffixes and prefixes to the verb. makan = dimakan (be eaten), memakan/makan (is eating), makanan (food) etc. To distinguish between the past, present and future, we insert 'time words' eg. akan = will be, lagi = currently, etc. Ayam akan dimakan, therefore, will translate to 'Chicken will be eaten'
Once you learn these rules (which are nearly always regular and should take about 1 month for the laziest learner), lo and behold .. I daresay a good 70% of conversational Indonesian will be open to you. 8) The other 30% comes from the hordes of Indonesian slang that my generation has created…
I shall now make my leave before I sound like I'm exaggerating too much (which I'm not, by the way)!
now I ask you… PORTUGUESE FROM BRASIL OR PORTUGAL? because… they 2 have nothing in comum……….