[happy711]

What do you believe the hardest language is to learn? I would think english if I was't taught it from birth but italian is pretty confusing too.

[shygrneyzs]

I think Russian is, can't imagine trying to do that anymore.

[Blackkdark]

HAHA, no. Neither of those are. Basque is harder than them both combined and doubled. There are some Mayan languages that have a crazy number of sounds and suffixes. Finnish has more inflections than both of the as well.

[Renok75]

I would think all tonal languages would be the most difficult. Arabic and Chinese seem the most complex to learn to read, and Cantonese and Mandarin with their many tones the most difficult to learn to speak. Bantu languages have such a different structure than the romantic languages, but the beauty is that once you learn that structure, all you have to do to learn another Bantu language is learn a new vocabulary (My daughter in law knows 7Bantu languages and she would say English was the hardest to learn.)

Languages are fascinating and I have made myself learn the basics of a number of languages so that when I travel I can at least greet people properly and respectfully. Once you start to understand the culture of a country, the language understanding comes much quicker because it is logical. For instance, there is a logical reason that Asian children learn math so much easier than American children - you have to look at the language comparison and what numbers are called. Very interesting.

[Blackkdark]

I would think all tonal languages would be the most difficult. Arabic and Chinese seem the most complex to learn to read, and Cantonese and Mandarin with their many tones the most difficult to learn to speak. Bantu languages have such a different structure than the romantic languages, but the beauty is that once you learn that structure, all you have to do to learn another Bantu language is learn a new vocabulary (My daughter in law knows 7Bantu languages and she would say English was the hardest to learn.)

Languages are fascinating and I have made myself learn the basics of a number of languages so that when I travel I can at least greet people properly and respectfully. Once you start to understand the culture of a country, the language understanding comes much quicker because it is logical. For instance, there is a logical reason that Asian children learn math so much easier than American children - you have to look at the language comparison and what numbers are called. Very interesting.

Tonal languages aren't really that difficult. They often trade off grammatical endings with Tones, such as Mandarin which has no inflectional endings, just participles. The problem is that when you simplify those endings, you need to differentiate between them. English by contrast might shift stress, but if simplification continues, English has potential to develop tonal patterns, such as how Norwegian and Swedish are today.

Mandarin only has 5 tones, including the neutral tone. Cantonese has more, but that means the complexity of the syllables are lessened. They aren't the only ones to have tones, Igbo and even Ancient Greek had tones. Bantu languages are all related, making them easy to learn once you have one or two. The same can be said about Slavic languages, Romance (not romantic) languages, Austronesian languages, and in some respects Germanic languages, as well as other language families.

And no, there is no such thing as "logical" languages. And no, it's only a stereo type that Asian children are better at math than other groups, that is directly related to how the country and culture views education. In fact it might have to do more with generational views on whether learning is "cool" rather than whether it's language is logical. The same bell curves of learning applies for all humans.

[Renok75]

And no, there is no such thing as "logical" languages. And no, it's only a stereo type that Asian children are better at math than other groups, that is directly related to how the country and culture views education. In fact it might have to do more with generational views on whether or not learning is "cool" rather than whether or not it's language is logical. The same bell curves of learning applies for all humans.

Okay, so it's been a while since I have studied linguistics, but when you think of how an abacus works, so the Asian languages use what would be translated "ten plus one" for our English "eleven" and "ten plus two" for our twelve, which makes a whole lot more "logical" sense, does it not, for when you are adding or subtracting. Have you read the book, The Outliers? The author makes a very good case for this.

Also, I find the a language is congruent with its culture, which is what I meant by logical. The more I learn of a certain culture, the congruent the language becomes to me.

You are very good at making me think of other viewpoints! :) I have not had that in my circles for a while.

[Blackkdark]

Well, if you look at that in the case, look at French, whose number 80 is literally four-twenties, or 70 which is sixty-ten, or the worst 90, which is four-twenties-ten. Then you would say 91 as four-twenties-eleven, etc. Our numbers go back a far way, but even thirteen is actually Three + ten (teen being the root). So eleven and twelve are irregular from the Germanic root, it doesn't make them illogical, whatever that means.

Also the numbering is arbitrary. Why is it that we have ten digits in repeat sense, only varying the 0-9 symbols. Some cultures have more, some have less. Some cultures don't need numbers past 4 or 5, after that it's just many.

Logic itself is arbitrary and constructed by man. No culture is more or less logical. Our modern concepts of math are traditions pasted down over generations. There is no such things as a Logical language, even "Asian" ones, which differ extremely, and in fact have a few related to English. Asian languages such as Hindi, and its ancestor Sanskrit, or Persian and Armenian, are all Indo-European, thus related to English.

Those like Mongolian are of a different family, but they too are related distantly to Hungarian, Finnish, and Turkish.

Language and Culture are important, but you can't look for "logic" in either of them, regardless of them all being Human constructs.

[Renok75]

Okay, I get the point.
Are you a professor of languages or linguistics? You obviously take everything very literally. Is that a part of your culture or your personality? : )
When I read your first post on this link answering the person who said Russian was the most difficult language, I assumed you were a young college student, but I think you are a PHD in disguise.
Anyway, I am a 55 year Marketing Manager in a Motorcycle dealership... what do I know about languages anyway. Except that I have an uncanny ear to learn new languages quickly, perhaps because I did not speak English until first grade. Languages fascinate me, and I do still think that language and culture are CONGRUENT.

[Blackkdark]

You don't have to be a professional linguist to study languages. I'm a student, yes, of both Linguistics and Anthropology, as well as English history. Though I am near the end of my college career.

Yes, you should look up the Whorf-Sapir hypothesis. I think you would like their work in Linguistic-Anthropology and how culture affects language and the other way around.

My culture is often full of non-academics, which makes the few of us who try to be very intent on getting accurate information to the masses who care to learn it. I have had many misconceptions on Language, but I have since learnt a great deal.

This question in general is flawed, because the difficulty of a language only depends on the background language from which you start. A speaker of Low German or even French will have an easier time with Dutch than will a Bantu speaker or Navajo speaker. The question is like saying what's the best music band? It's mostly a matter of opinion. (Remember, children around the world learn any language at the same rate, regardless of 'difficulty')

[YoungHyperLink]

Blackdark,
No logic in language? I'll take issue with you there. Actually, I'm about to leave on a week of vacation, and this is my last post for a week, but I do have a little piece of advice: Don't be so cocksure about things. Experience and intuition can sometimes teach things that a college course cannot.

That being said, I wish I knew half as much about anthropolinguistics as you do; it's a fascinating subject, and one I've only begun to scratch at. I'll look forward to hearing more on this!

Renok, you stick around, OK?

Bye to everyone for a week.

[Blackkdark]

Blackdark,
No logic in language? I'll take issue with you there. Actually, I'm about to leave on a week of vacation, and this is my last post for a week, but I do have a little piece of advice: Don't be so cocksure about things. Experience and intuition can sometimes teach things that a college course cannot.

That being said, I wish I knew half as much about anthropolinguistics as you do; it's a fascinating subject, and one I've only begun to scratch at. I'll look forward to hearing more on this!

Renok, you stick around, ok?

Bye to everyone for a week.

Well, I think you misunderstood me. I'm not saying there's no logic in language, I'm saying there's not a logical language, HUGE difference. Logic itself is supposed to be this highly ordered system which was constructed artificially by man. Language isn't like that at all, it's chaotic, constantly changing and molding into new forms, with irregular forms all over the place. It's constructed by man, but constructed naturally. It is like evolution, there is no goal, not higher purpose, and it always changes. There are some patterns which you can see, not always predict, but it's still wonderful in its own way. Logic can be superimposed on any language, and there is something like the "language of logic" which is just a term for the jargon used by logicians. However, there is no language which is purely, or more or less "logical." Those judgements don't apply.

And 90% of the stuff I discuss here I didn't learn in any college course. This stuff I have learnt over years of personal interest and research. But I have taken courses in Logic (not my favourite subject but ne'ertheless).

The two most important things I took from my courses was my intense interest in Phonetics/Phonology, and that we are to describe language, not prescribe it. The latter one was hardest to give up, but I have since learnt so much more because of it.

[dolly210]

I would say pretty much all asian languages and russian

[Blackkdark]

It's only hard for you, because you don't speak any of them, Dolly. Russian is actually fairly easy compared to Finnish or Turkish, or Basque. Especially since the latter has no relatives, meaning there aren't really any group which has similar grammar and vocabulary.

[dolly210]

Turkish is easy in my opinion.

It may be hard for a person who only speaks english. The grammar and sentence structure is completely different than in english and in romance languages.

The is no gender whatsoever in Turkish. There is no he or she for speaking in third person.

In Russian, there is a lot of conjugation and agreement. It can get tricky with mascualan, feminin, and neuter words.

Asian languages have many different dialects that's why are considered hard

[Blackkdark]

Yeah, but Turkish has 20 declensions. Russian has 8. The verbs are more complex in both languages, just in different ways.

Dialects don't make languages hard, just normal. If you look at it that way, English or Spanish are the hardest languages.

And languages like Mandarin Chinese has no gender or verb agreement.

Turkish, Finnish and Hungarian all have vowel harmony, which I think is cool, but not easy for non-phoneticians to understand.

[inciska]

As a Turkish native speaker, I'd say Turkish is one of the most difficult languages if u want to learn it completely. That's mostly because word formation. There are lots of suffixes and lots of cases! A sentence that can be made with 3 or 4 words can be made with just one word in Turkish!! And u can guess that it will be a very long word, hard to pronounce and spell!

Apart from Turkish, I think Russian is difficult. The alphabet is easy but the grammar is complex.

[Blackkdark]

As a Turkish native speaker, I'd say Turkish is one of the most difficult languages if u wanna learn it completely. That's mostly because word formation. There are lots of suffixes and lots of cases! A sentence that can be made with 3 or 4 words can be made with just one word in Turkish!!! And u can guess that it will be a very long word, hard to pronounce and spell!

Apart from Turkish, I think Russian is difficult. The alphabet is easy but the grammer is complex.

Yeah, but that's because Turkish is an Agglutinative language, but it also follows rules of vowel harmony. It might sound complicated, but I think 'tis relatively simple. Other agglutinative languages like Mayan or Aztec are so much more complicated and difficult, especially to a Western speaker, I would say they surpass Turkish by far.

[dolly210]

I think a lot of languages can be looked at as easy or hard. It depends on what you have trouble on. French is my second language and the grammar is easy but the listening can be hard to get used to because a lot of words are pronounced the same but spelled differently with a different meaning. It all depends on the context.

Some people have trouble with pronunciation depending on their native language and the language they are learning now.

One thing I like about Turkish and russian and other eastern languages is that the words are distinct. Same goes for English. The difference in the words can be rather clear.

Now, I do not know much about arabic but from what I have looked into it it seems extremily hard

[Otazky]

I think Czech is the hardes language to learn - at least the hardest European language to learn. There are seven cases and many, many exeptions.

Esperanto is probably to easiest language to learn :)