which languages do u consider the more difficult ones

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ollychan
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07 May 2019, 10:26 pm

objectively speaking ..



Pepe
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07 May 2019, 10:43 pm

Asian languages for me, I think...
And those that require tonal inflections...



breaks0
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07 May 2019, 11:02 pm

Pepe wrote:
Asian languages for me, I think...
And those that require tonal inflections...


Yes this! So I was a double major in college: Politics and East Asian Studies and I took a few years of Chinese and also spent a summer in China studying the language. My ex is also Chinese. Since this was way before I was diagnosed, I had no clue why I was having such difficulty, but Chinese is way up there near the top for English and most Germanic and Romance language native speakers (can't speak for others like Slavic languages). Mandarin has four tones which lead to the same syllable meaning four different words depending on the tone. And of course you have to learn at least around 2,000 characters to become proficient/fluent. There is a logical system to how you classify them, but yes it's still complicated.

Japanese is also very difficult partly b/c it uses 3 or 4 different writing systems (including Chinese characters) and the syntax of its words is kind of the opposite of English (Subject +Verb + Object).

Korean and some others are supposed to be alot easier. But some of the Southeast Asian ones are also tonal (Vietnamese, Thai and others).

I've been told Arabic is also fairly difficult, though I don't know enough to say how.



naturalplastic
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08 May 2019, 3:31 am

English can be really tricky for non natives.

That's because some of the basic vocabulary is chocked full of linguistic fossils that we native speakers aren't even aware of.

The less-than-basic parts of spoken English are actually rather straightforward and consistent. Its the foundational parts that are crazy. And natives aren't even aware of how crazy it is.

For example in the main if you want make a noun plural in English you just stick an s on the end. But then why is the plural of "child" "children" and not "childs""? Of "ox" "oxen" and not "oxes"? Of "man" "men", and not "mans"?

And if you wanna make a verb past tense you just stick an "ed" on the end. But the past tense of "go" is not "goed", but is "went". :lol:

And then there is all of that modern slang English has. Seems like everyone in America has an immigrant coworker who mashes up the expressions "get off my case" with "get out of my face" when they get upset, and tells you to "get off of my face!". :lol:



BenderRodriguez
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08 May 2019, 6:40 am

^
English grammar is ridiculously easy, even compared with medium difficulty languages like German or French. I'm fluent in 4 languages and decent in 2 others - English is by far the easiest.

The most difficult one I've been exposed to is Finnish

Image

And this is an actual Finnish word: Lentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilas :lol:


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komamanga
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08 May 2019, 8:43 am

Turkish is pretty difficult to learn as a foreign language. Especially because it has nothing to do with European languages, well, maybe except Finnish and Hungarian.



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08 May 2019, 9:44 am

Hard to say since I've only studied a few... learning the proper spelling for English was extremely hard, but very easy when it came to the Japanese language. But Japanese has a difficult writing system so it's not easy either.

But you know, as someone who has very clumsy hands, I'd say sign language would probably be one of the hardest for me to learn.



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08 May 2019, 10:16 am

For to speak with the Englishness, I am have much trouble some speakings.


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Trogluddite
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08 May 2019, 11:08 am

Fireblossom wrote:
I'd say sign language would probably be one of the hardest for me to learn.

That's an interesting observation, and I agree with you. I find it almost impossible to follow what people are doing with their hands. I can be manually dextrous, but I have to learn things myself by trial and error, I can't be shown how - my brain just screams; "but those are your hands and I have to do it with my hands!". In a sense, sign language is communication using only body-language and facial expressions - the very things that limit my communication with people who do use spoken language. I also know from a former colleague with severely impaired hearing that I'm very difficult to lip-read, even when I'm making an effort not to mumble.


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08 May 2019, 11:09 am

ALL OF THEM


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naturalplastic
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08 May 2019, 11:39 am

BenderRodriguez wrote:
^
English grammar is ridiculously easy, even compared with medium difficulty languages like German or French. I'm fluent in 4 languages and decent in 2 others - English is by far the easiest.

The most difficult one I've been exposed to is Finnish

Image

And this is an actual Finnish word: Lentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilas :lol:


So...

what does that mile long Finnish word...mean?



BenderRodriguez
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08 May 2019, 12:51 pm

something along the lines "aeroplane jet turbine motor assistant mechanic, non-commissioned officer, in training"


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Pepe
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08 May 2019, 5:58 pm

Fnord wrote:
For to speak with the Englishness, I am have much trouble some speakings.


:lmao:
Always entertaining. :wink:
But isn't this politically incorrect these days? 8O



naturalplastic
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08 May 2019, 6:06 pm

Pepe wrote:
Fnord wrote:
For to speak with the Englishness, I am have much trouble some speakings.


:lmao:
Always entertaining. :wink:
But isn't this politically incorrect these days? 8O


How so?



Pepe
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08 May 2019, 6:10 pm

naturalplastic wrote:
Pepe wrote:
Fnord wrote:
For to speak with the Englishness, I am have much trouble some speakings.


:lmao:
Always entertaining. :wink:
But isn't this politically incorrect these days? 8O


How so?


Mocking immigrants??
How could you miss that? :wink:
It is frowned upon in Australia at least...



naturalplastic
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08 May 2019, 6:22 pm

Pepe wrote:
naturalplastic wrote:
Pepe wrote:
Fnord wrote:
For to speak with the Englishness, I am have much trouble some speakings.


:lmao:
Always entertaining. :wink:
But isn't this politically incorrect these days? 8O


How so?


Mocking immigrants??
How could you miss that? :wink:
It is frowned upon in Australia at least...


If you say so.

Fnord was making himself the butt of it. He didn't mention immigrants per se.

And you and I would sound just as bad, or worse, if we tried to speak Russian, or Japanese. So being that clumsy in any particular language is not really a slam at any particular group of people because everyone on earth would sound that bad in most foreign languages. The audience here is English speaking. So English has to be the language being botched for the audience to get the humor..