Hardest language to learn?

[Oniw17]

In your opinion, of course.

[Fraggle Rocker]

Not getting much action, I see. You've picked a pretty esoteric assortment. How many of our members know enough about Finnish or Basque to be able to rate them?

I think you'll get a different consensus from each language community. Of the languages that are commonly studied in America, I suspect most Americans would vote for Russian as the hardest to learn. But Germans would probably not feel that way and Czechs of course think it's fairly easy.

[Genji]

Of course I don't know which is hardest to learn because I've never tried learning any of them. I have read Finnish, Icelandic, Turk and Asian tongues are most difficult for English speakers. But learning Arabic would be most challenging imo. A completely different language world in every way. So much emphasis on inflection. Mandarin would be my 2nd choice.

[Oli]

When I started to learn Russian at age 13 we were told that we'd picked the correct course (a 3rd language was compulsory for the stream I was in, everyone did French) and that the German students had picked the harder choice.
Supposedly Russian started off difficult and got easier, whereas, we were told, German started easy and got progressively more difficult.
Strangely enough the guys who'd picked German had been told exactly the same, but reversed...
I took German a few years later and didn't find either particularly difficult, and then found that I had few problems picking up snippets of Italian, Czech, Portuguese, Polish or Spanish (which my then-wife spoke as a second language) or Japanese, which a couple of friends took courses in.
I've since started (on and off) learning Arabic (but only written).

[Starthane Xyzth]

Of the few I've tried to learn, Greek has to be the toughest. Its extreme inflective nature means that, for a single verb in English, there can be effectively 15 different words in Greek.

Voted for Mandarin actually, because I know nothing about the others listed - except that Arabic and Japanese are the quintessential agglutinative languages.

BTW: just how many languages do you speak, Oli? You seem to have had a varied history of linguistic learning.

[Oli]

Few of them well but I read (sufficient for my purposes) most of the European languages, and enough to get my head kicked in in most countries round the world... :-)
French is my second best (after English of course), then German. Russian is nearly good enough to get through the day - but most of my languages I learnt for military technology purposes, so it's specialised, not conversational.

[EmptyForceOfChi]

Not getting much action, I see. You've picked a pretty esoteric assortment. How many of our members know enough about Finnish or Basque to be able to rate them?

I think you'll get a different consensus from each language community. Of the languages that are commonly studied in America, I suspect most Americans would vote for Russian as the hardest to learn. But Germans would probably not feel that way and Czechs of course think it's fairly easy.

i know finnish looks like elvish from lord of the rings and is a very pretty language.


peace.

[Chatha]

Most African languages are the hardest to learn, I've tried to learn some of them to no avail. Arabic seem impossibly hard too

[ashpwner]

english becusase so many word mean the same thing

[spuriousmonkey]

Not getting much action, I see. You've picked a pretty esoteric assortment. How many of our members know enough about Finnish or Basque to be able to rate them?

I think you'll get a different consensus from each language community. Of the languages that are commonly studied in America, I suspect most Americans would vote for Russian as the hardest to learn. But Germans would probably not feel that way and Czechs of course think it's fairly easy.

Finnish is difficult to learn because the words have no relationship to other European languages. There is no way you can guess the meaning of words like you can for English or French if you happen to be Dutch or Spanish.

That means you will have to learn the meaning of every single word!

The easy thing about Finnish is that the language is pronounced exactly as it is written. That's also the most difficult part, because you have to pronounce every word accurately. Otherwise the meaning changes. And you might think Fins will compensate for this when they hear a foreigner talk, but they don't. They look like you are nuts.

Grammar is predictable. It's all rather regular. No propositions though. The structure of the language is different than most European countries. No difference between him and her.

It's probably an easy language to learn if you are very young, but every language is easy to learn when you are young.

[Starthane Xyzth]

Most African languages are the hardest to learn, I've tried to learn some of them to no avail.

Ulifanya kujifunza Kiswahili? (Have you tried Swahili?) That's not too difficult.:)

[dreammen]

Really? I am willing to study Swahili.

[Fraggle Rocker]

Finnish is difficult to learn because the words have no relationship to other European languages. There is no way you can guess the meaning of words like you can for English or French if you happen to be Dutch or Spanish. That means you will have to learn the meaning of every single word!Being able to guess the meaning of words is only one aspect of "ease of learning." Grammar and syntax can be daunting. Many Greek and Latin words are instantly recognizable but their grammar is so complex that it's bewildering for anglophones.

Phonetics can make a difference too. Chinese grammar is even simpler than English, but the sounds are hard for us to master.The easy thing about Finnish is that the language is pronounced exactly as it is written.Everyone says that, but I would like to know how you determine which syllable in a word gets the accent? Is it always on the first syllable as in Czech, or always on the next-to-last syllable, as in Polish? Or is it just not very important, as in Chinese and Japanese?Grammar is predictable. It's all rather regular. No prepositions though. The structure of the language is different than most European countries.Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian and Turkish are the only major languages spoken in Europe that are not members of the Indo-European language family. Finnish and Estonian (as well as Sami and several languages spoken in Russia) are related to each other and, more distantly, to Hungarian. Turkish is related to Mongolian.It's probably an easy language to learn if you are very young, but every language is easy to learn when you are young.Yes, foreign languages should be taught in elementary schools when they're easy. It's a catastrophe that this is not done in American schools.

[iceaura]

Which of these languages finds its native speakers having the most trouble learning English?

[Tyler]

As a native English speaker who can manage French and speaks Chinese about a step above conversational level, I picked Finnish. It just looks damn near impossible to me.

But as an English teacher I would say the Chinese have the most difficult time adjusting to English. Chinese is a tonal language and has very few sounds if you take away the tones. There are so many dozens (or more) of English sounds that the Chinese find almost impossible to pronounce. Moreover, because the Chinese come from a language with no similar filler words (to, that, which, etc.), do not differentiate between he and she (which even high-level students have difficulty with in their speaking), and think of 'grammar' in a completely different way, English is particularly difficult. Chinese does not conjugate verbs, verbs do not affect nouns or subjects or anything. So the idea of 'grammar' in Chinese is much more centered around specifically strange vocabulary that changes the structure of a sentence. When learning French - or most languages - your grammar nuisances will be learning how to conjugate, how to form a certain tense, etc. Chinese students don't have any of these concepts in their head.

[cosmictraveler]

I would think speaking whale or dolphin would be very difficult! :D

[Orleander]

I always thought Enlish was hard.

read and read (Read this book that I read)
polish and polish (I will polish the polish furniture)

and then all of these
their, there, they're
wore, war
one, won
pear, pair, pare

[lucifers angel]

in my opinion its got to be WELSH!! it was hard to learn, and i am welsh, but now i am fluent and love it

the sounds are nothing like i have heard anywhere else

[Enmos]

Why is there no 'Dutch' in the poll ?

[Fraggle Rocker]

I would think speaking whale or dolphin would be very difficult!When you learn to speak someone else's language, to a great extent you learn how they think. Imagine what it would be like to learn the language of another species!

At least two species of apes (gorilla and chimpanzee) have learned American Sign Language. That must have been an amazing experience for them. Not only did they learn to communicate at a much more advanced level than their own species had ever developed, but they also learned how humans think.I always thought Enlish was hard.Well I guess so! :)read and read (Read this book that I read) -- polish and Polish (I will polish the Polish furniture) -- and then all of these: their, there, they're -- wore, war -- one, won -- pear, pair, pareWell you're just talking about the written language. Humans got along without those for tens of thousands of years. That's not a true measure of the difficulty of learning the language.

In my experience with non-native speakers, I'd say the most difficult things for them are:A. Prepositions. What's the difference between arriving at your destination on time and in time? Am I at my house or in my house? We'll have a party in December, during the fourth week, on Thursday, at two o'clock, in the afternoon. B. Syntax. It's not too hard to express oneself clearly, but it's really hard to put the words together the way we do. There aren't really any good rules for syntax, and if there were they would be a myriad micro-rules, each one applying only to about six situations. I have the same problem in Spanish. Everybody understands me but I make them giggle. C. Articles. Most of the European languages have them, but no two use them the same way. And many other languages don't have them, including major ones like Russian, Chinese and Japanese. I breathe air, but birds fly in the air. I love rice, but when I went to a Chinese restaurant last night I didn't eat the rice. I feel happiness, but where is the happiness in your family life? D. Pronunciation. English has more phonemes (individual sounds) than most languages. Many of them sound alike to foreigners: least and list, caught and coat, would and wooed, hot and hat. Some of our phoneme combinations are impossible for them: disks, world, hatched. TH is a very uncommon phoneme and we have two versions of it. In America we flap our intervocalic T and D like a Spanish R: waiting and wading are homonyms.in my opinion its got to be WELSH!! it was hard to learn, and i am welsh, but now i am fluent and love it. the sounds are nothing like i have heard anywhere elseYou're not the first person who's told me that. That sound they write as LL is sort of like THL, right? I think all the Celtic languages are difficult for anglophones.Why is there no 'Dutch' in the poll ?German isn't there, and to an anglophone Dutch is similar to German only easier. No umlauts, a greatly simplified grammar. It's like half English and half German. Now if you want to talk about a difficult Germanic language, try wrapping your tongue around Danish! Not the pastry, that's real easy.:)

[iceaura]

In my experience with non-native speakers, I'd say the most difficult things for them are: So in your opinion, is difficulty reflexive - if English speakers find a language difficult to some degree, speakers of that language would find English proportionately difficult, and vice versa?

This seems reasonable to me, on a mutual alienation scale, but I have been told that some language (the example was Farsi) are actually fairly easy to pick up - and I don't think Farsi speakers find English all that easy. So - - -

[Enmos]

German isn't there, and to an anglophone Dutch is similar to German only easier. No umlauts, a greatly simplified grammar. It's like half English and half German. Now if you want to talk about a difficult Germanic language, try wrapping your tongue around Danish! Not the pastry, that's real easy.:)

Dutch is completely illogical :p

[Fraggle Rocker]

So in your opinion, is difficulty reflexive - if English speakers find a language difficult to some degree, speakers of that language would find English proportionately difficult, and vice versa?That's hard for me to say, living in America. So few Americans study foreign languages when they're young, that by the time they get around to it, if at all, it's really difficult. Americans actually have trouble mastering Spanish phonetics.This seems reasonable to me, on a mutual alienation scale, but I have been told that some languagea (the example was Farsi) are actually fairly easy to pick up - and I don't think Farsi speakers find English all that easy.I've known several immigrants from Iran and they spoke English extremely well. As perfect a grasp of the grammar and syntax as you'd expect from a German, and their pronunciation was even better.

[ThaWalrus]

I must agree with Orleander. To a speaker of a Uralic, or even a Romance language, English has got to be one of the most difficult languages out there. Almost up there with Arabic, in fact.
Since it's my native tongue, it doesn't seem that difficult to me, but the conjunctions (doesn't, hasn't, etc.) won't make sense to some. Along with Polish and polish, lead (Pb) and lead, the list goes on. Our never-ending list of everyday idioms that have adapted themselves into our language, the complete difference between "to" the infinitive and "to" the prepositional, not to mention how hard it must be to read if you don't have a clear understanding of context clues!

[Fraggle Rocker]

. . . . but the conjunctions (doesn't, hasn't, etc.) won't make sense to some.You mean contractions, and they're not so unusual. Spanish usted is a contraction of vuestra merced, "your grace," and Portuguese você was derived the same way from vossa mercê. Spanish and Italian both use del as well as other contractions. German has a large set: vom, im, zur etc. Even Chinese combines hai and er into her, "young son," a syllable that can't be written. The -el in many Hebrew names is a contraction of Eloh, "God." Corporate naming has made contraction a common technique in many languages. Nissan and Nikon are contractions from Nihon, "Japan." And who can forget the Italian power company, apparently run by people who don't speak English: GenItalia.

[draqon]

Which language would be most required in the business world in future 20-30 years? I know english will be the first, but which languages go than?

I know Spanish is very much used, but I hate that language, really dont like how it sounds...so what is the third most used language in engineering/business world?

[ThaWalrus]

You mean contractions, and they're not so unusual. Spanish usted is a contraction of vuestra merced, "your grace," and Portuguese você was derived the same way from vossa mercê. Spanish and Italian both use del as well as other contractions. German has a large set: vom, im, zur etc. Even Chinese combines hai and er into her, "young son," a syllable that can't be written. The -el in many Hebrew names is a contraction of Eloh, "God." Corporate naming has made contraction a common technique in many languages. Nissan and Nikon are contractions from Nihon, "Japan." And who can forget the Italian power company, apparently run by people who don't speak English: GenItalia.

Yeah, contractions, got those two words mixed up for a second. I laughed at "GenItalia" btw. I'm sure they didn't do that on purpose. I wasn't aware other languages had contractions, thank you for clearing that up for me.

[Syzygys]

... English has got to be one of the most difficult languages out there.

Really? Check this out:

I could be able to show you : megmutathatna'm

Now you can cry about English being hard. :)

[draqon]

megmutathatna'm



what is that?

[Syzygys]

... English has got to be one of the most difficult languages out there.

Really? Check this out:

I could be able to show you : megmutathatna'm

Now you can cry about English being hard. :)

Here is a better one:

His sons' of something (more) : fiaie'i

[Fraggle Rocker]

Which language would be most required in the business world in future 20-30 years? I know english will be the first, but which languages go than?When you're living through a Paradigm Shift, the one thing you know for certain is that you don't know anything for certain. I'm reading a sci-fi book written by a renowned author (Gordon R. Dickson) a mere 25 years ago, when the Paradigm Shift into the Post-Industrial Era was well underway. His depiction of the technology of this century is just pitiful. No cell phones, no magnetic stripe readers, no internet, etc. Even he couldn't see what the world would be like in a mere 25 years. I'm always amazed when I read books of that vintage that assumed the Cold War will still be going on in 2050 or 2100.

So don't expect anybody to know what the world will be like in another 25 years. I make absolutely NO prediction that English will still be the world's leading language. Mandarin has twice as many speakers and until last year China's economy was growing much faster than ours. If there's a war and we lose, your children could be speaking Arabic, Farsi or Urdu.I know Spanish is very much used, but I hate that language, really dont like how it sounds...so what is the third most used language in engineering/business world?Even without a war the world will still change enormously, in ways we can't imagine, because the information-based economy will rewrite the rules. Spanish does seem like a good bet and if you're serious about planning your life then I suggest you just suck it up and get over your prejudice toward Spanish. At least it's fairly easy to learn. When I was a kid people wanted us to learn Russian, which is almost impossible.

There's currently a huge need for people who know the major languages of the Middle East: Arabic, Farsi, Pashto, Kazakh, Georgian, etc. Of course that's in government work, not in the business world. You'd probably be set up nicely for the next 10-20 years if you become fluent in one of those languages so you can translate documents, radio broadcasts and phone calls.

The CIA only recently caught up with its backlog of intercepted documents from the 20th century. Until now, they were biting their nails, wondering if a full-color PowerPoint presentation laying out all the details of 9/11 had been sitting in the bottom of some overworked translator's in-box since 1997.

The Army just fired a bunch of translators because they were gay. I'm so glad they're protecting us from evil.

[Betrayer0fHope]

I always thought the 25 tenses in Spanish were difficult, but I realized we only have like 3 tenses in English. English does seem pretty damn confusing; even the writing we do is confusing.

[Xylene]

I heard somewwhere that there were only 22 or 23 white people, mostly missionaries, who were fluent in the Navajo language because it is so complex. That's why they were used as the wind talkers during the war, because their language was and is a closed book to outsiders.

[w1z4rd]

I found Russian easy.. but Swedish very hard :(

[Naturelles]

Try Hindi, or any one of those Indian languages, they have like 450 letters in the alphabet.

[fedr808]

Hebrew is kinda complicated, confuzes lots of people between, new, old, and yiddish.

Also, did you guys know that more people speak fluent Klingon than Navajo indian?

[Xylene]

Hebrew is kinda complicated, confuzes lots of people between, new, old, and yiddish.

Also, did you guys know that more people speak fluent Klingon than Navajo indian?

Somehow that latter sentence doesn't surprise me--there must be millions of Star Trek addicts out there, just hanging out for their next fix...;) How many Navajo are there, given that their language is confined to their tribe?

[Fraggle Rocker]

Somehow that latter sentence doesn't surprise me--there must be millions of Star Trek addicts out there, just hanging out for their next fix...;) How many Navajo are there, given that their language is confined to their tribe?There are about 300,000 Navajo, of whom more than half speak the language. The Navajo nation has the largest land area ("reservation") in the United States, with territory in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. They are able to maintain their culture and live in their own way, although that way has been inevitably modified by long-term contact with outsiders.

The Hopi are another tribe in a similar situation, although much smaller with only about 3,000 members. Their land is completely surrounded by Navajo land, which gives them the mixed blessing of being somewhat more effectively isolated from the U.S. mainstream culture and population.

The Cherokee reservation in Oklahoma is the second largest, although the Cherokee people are the largest tribe, numbering about three-fourths of a million. They were forcibly relocated from their homeland in Florida on a march known as The Trail of Tears, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_Tears) but they got a measure of justice when oil was discovered on their reservation and they are now the most prosperous of all the Native Americans. Their funds help keep their culture alive, even though many of their people have assimilated into the American mainstream. Chief Sequoia developed an alphabet (a syllabary to be precise and a rather fanciful one at that) after contact with European and American scholars, so Cherokee is the only Native American language north of the Rio Grande that has its own writing system. (The Aztecs had entire libraries but they were burned by the European conquerors and their writing system is no longer in use.)

The chief was born George Guess, but he renamed himself Sequoia, the Cherokee word for "large tree." He was honored by having the world's tallest species of tree named after him, although sequoia forests are only found in California and Oregon.

[Orleander]

what's that clicking language in Africa?

[Fraggle Rocker]

what's that clicking language in Africa?There are a number of them, but the one that's most commonly discussed in America is Xhosa, a Bantu language. (And no, I have no idea how that name is pronounced, my browser can't play Wikipedia's sound file.) It has fifteen click phonemes. Comparative linguistic evidence indicates that clicks were once somewhat more common in human languages than they are today, especially in Africa, which has the greatest variety of language families. (Because the rest of us are all descended from a single tribe, the San, whose more adventurous members walked out looking for food during an ice age.)

Clicks are one type of sound that hunters make to communicate without giving themselves away. So one hypothesis is that Paleolithic hunters built their first language around these sounds, which they had already created out of necessity. Another is quite the opposite, that they already had a language but after they developed skill at producing these hunting signals it was natural to assimilate them as words.

In any case, I'd say that their scarcity puts them in a class with Czech Ř, Greek PT, Spanish RR and Hindi BH: Sounds that can be formed with the human speech organs, but not easily in certain positions in a word.

[Michael]

It seems like Xhosa would be difficult because it's tonal and has clicking sounds!

Speaking Xhosa (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPaC4ErPpDY)

[Xylene]

Finnish is difficult to learn because the words have no relationship to other European languages. There is no way you can guess the meaning of words like you can for English or French if you happen to be Dutch or Spanish.

That means you will have to learn the meaning of every single word!

The easy thing about Finnish is that the language is pronounced exactly as it is written. That's also the most difficult part, because you have to pronounce every word accurately. Otherwise the meaning changes. And you might think Fins will compensate for this when they hear a foreigner talk, but they don't. They look like you are nuts.

Grammar is predictable. It's all rather regular. No propositions though. The structure of the language is different than most European countries. No difference between him and her.

It's probably an easy language to learn if you are very young, but every language is easy to learn when you are young.

The reason Europeans have trouble learning Finnish is that it has a completely different language structure. The ancestors of the Finns were a Turkic tribe who are related to the ancient people of the Urals. Finnish therefore truly belongs to the Ural-Altaic language family.

[Xylene]

As far as Amerindian languages go, I have heard that Comanche is considered the most complex.

[Fraggle Rocker]

The ancestors of the Finns were a Turkic tribe who are related to the ancient people of the Urals. Finnish therefore truly belongs to the Ural-Altaic language family.That hypothesis was widely accepted well into the 20th century, but it has since fallen into almost universal disfavor. The telltales that suggested kinship between the Uralic and Altaic language groups are now regarded with suspicion, more likely the effect of a Sprachbund. Not just vocabulary, but phonetic and grammatical paradigms have been found to cross the boundaries between languages that are unrelated, but are spoken in close proximity by people with a strong cultural exchange.

In any case the identity of the Finnic peoples (including the Estonians and the Sami or "Lapps") seems to have been well established in their current homeland as far back as 10KYA, too long ago for them to be classified as a Turkic tribe. However, from what I've seen of the ongoing DNA research into human migration patterns, the Finns and Magyars are Mongolic peoples like the Turks and their Turkic/Ottoman relatives from Azerbaijan to Xinjiang.

Their languages may be related, but we're pushing the ten-thousand-year boundary that makes tracing relationships impossible due to the complete turnover of vocabulary, phonetics and grammar. In fact the Nostratic hypothesis (that the technology of language was invented only once and all human languages have a single common ancestor) is quite reasonable, but we have no good way to test it, and perhaps never will.

[Orleander]

There are a number of them, but the one that's most commonly discussed in America is Xhosa, a Bantu language...

Thank you Fraggle! :thankyou:

[superstring01]

I hear that Basque is next to impossible for a foreigner to learn. I've tried a few words and phrases and they are utterly alien.

~String

[superstring01]

That's hard for me to say, living in America. So few Americans study foreign languages when they're young, that by the time they get around to it, if at all, it's really difficult. Americans actually have trouble mastering Spanish phonetics.

I would agree totally. I'm of Anglo-Saxon extraction and I had absolutely NO contact with the Hispanic world when I was young. I took French the first year of high school. But in the summer of 1992 I went to the Barcelona games and from that point on I was hooked on Spanish.

A year later I moved to Spain, ostensibly for six months, but ended up being 18 months. While the Spanish vocabulary presented me with very little difficulty, the grammar, especially the complexities of the subjunctive mood, I found iritatingly elusive for about the first year. After that point in time--having heard it over and over--I began to understand the difficult variables.

I've known several immigrants from Iran and they spoke English extremely well. As perfect a grasp of the grammar and syntax as you'd expect from a German, and their pronunciation was even better.

I found German impossible to grasp--oddly enough--and dropped it quickly. Latin I found immensely easy.

~String

[Fraggle Rocker]

I found German impossible to grasp--oddly enough--and dropped it quickly.I'm sure English is much easier for Germans than German is for anglophones. For them, English is basically Ancient German with a streamlined grammar and a lot of foreign words. But for us, German is some bizarre version of Old English with bewildering paradigms of inflections for verbs, nouns, articles and even adjectives, not to mention Schachtelsätzen, "box clauses" nested one inside the other like Ukrainian dolls. But I think we each find the other language's phonetics fairly difficult.Latin I found immensely easy.That's a surprise and now I'm baffled wondering what aspect of German thwarted you. Latin grammar is even more complex than German grammar, and since we're invariably taught the formal Classical Latin of the great writers, it comes across as rather stilted. German is amusingly earthy... Kraftwagen (power wagon), Fernsprecher, (distant speaker), Kohlenstoff (coal element) for "automobile," "telephone," "carbon."

[superstring01]

That's a surprise and now I'm baffled wondering what aspect of German thwarted you. Latin grammar is even more complex than German grammar, and since we're invariably taught the formal Classical Latin of the great writers, it comes across as rather stilted. German is amusingly earthy... Kraftwagen (power wagon), Fernsprecher, (distant speaker), Kohlenstoff (coal element) for "automobile," "telephone," "carbon."

Honestly, I think the biggest turn-off about German was the language itself. The only reason I felt even remotely inclined to learn it is because of my German grandmother and subsequent heritage.

Latin I was required to study while living in Spain and during my brief stint in France. Nothing motivates a person to learn like loving the subject matter. By no stretch of the imagination am I even remotely proficient in Latin, but I just found that it "stuck" better. Despite Spanish's divergences with it, I do believe that my understanding of Castillian helped me in my understanding of Latin.

~String

[Facial]

I am surprised at the poll.

Mandarin is not hard to learn!

[Facial]

In fact the Nostratic hypothesis (that the technology of language was invented only once and all human languages have a single common ancestor) is quite reasonable, but we have no good way to test it, and perhaps never will.

It appears to be reasonable because evidence suggests most humans came from one place, that is, Ethiopia. However, if some completely illiterate people separated off from the main nomadic groups, couldn't they easily start their own language?

Toba erupted 50,000 years ago and reduced the world human population to the order of thousands of people. Couldn't it be likely that some languages started from scratch then?

[Fraggle Rocker]

Despite Spanish's divergences with it, I do believe that my understanding of Castillian helped me in my understanding of Latin.Fer sure. For starters, the majority of the vocabulary of Spanish is of Latin origin, so many of the words are recognizable and easier to remember. And the grammatical paradigms have not diverged too greatly from Latin. Spanish lost the neuter gender and the five-case declension of nouns, but still it retains masculine and feminine, and adjectives have to agree in gender and number with the noun they modify. Its verb paradigm is even truer to Latin, with inflection of the verb by person, number and tense, three conjugations (-ar, -er, -ir), and that bizarre subjunctive mode (with two tenses) that only survives in English in the stilted construction "If I were famous..."Mandarin is not hard to learn!I agree and have said so many times. Once you get past the phonetics, which are not nearly as daunting as they seem at first encounter, I think Mandarin is one of the easiest languages for English speakers. (But not some of the other Chinese languages like Fujian with its truly daunting phonetics.) Both English and Chinese have streamlined their grammar (Chinese more so), both have a robust word-building facility, and both have a syntax that relies heavily on word order to convey meaning.It appears to be reasonable because evidence suggests most humans came from one place, that is, Ethiopia.Indeed, but there's no strong evidence that they invented the technology of language at that time. If they did not, there remain two other reasonable hypotheses:1. After the diaspora one tribe invented language. Like many paradigm-shifting innovations (such as metallurgy, city-building, agriculture and the creation of a multi-species community with dogs, working from recent to ancient), language may have given its inventors such a tremendous advantage that they automatically became the cultural leaders of their region and their language spread with their influence. Most technologies are 99% knowledge and therefore spread rapidly, actually faster than populations can migrate. 2. After the diaspora language was invented in multiple places and times. This was what happened with three of the four paradigm shifts I listed above; only with dogs did the idea spread throughout the world from a single origin (in what is now China around 15KYA). Civilization and metallurgy were invented independently six times, and agriculture arose so prolificly that it's difficult to isolate the places of origin.So depending on which of these two entirely reasonable possibilities is the truth, all languages could have a single ancestor. Or they could not.Toba erupted 50,000 years ago and reduced the world human population to the order of thousands of people. Couldn't it be likely that some languages started from scratch then?Wikipedia says it happened 75KYA, which puts it well before the first migration out of Africa. It's possible that the first language was invented while we all still lived in Africa; if it was the first and only, this supports the Nostratus hypothesis. But we have no way of dismissing the possibility that language was invented later, in multiple locations, once the human population had spread to other continents. And we can't even say for sure that it didn't arise independently in multiple locations in Africa. We have no ability to trace relationships among language families convincingly back beyond a few thousand years because they change too much and lose the traces.

All we can say with reasonable certainty is that the technology of language is at least roughly ten thousand years old, and even that hypothesis is based on a fair amount of circumstantial evidence.

[superstring01]

Spanish lost the... five-case declension of nouns.

Expound, if you please.

I find philology to be the second most enthralling subject on Earth (after genetics). Are there any good reads on the history of language for the slightly-more-advanced than casual reader?

~String

[Fraggle Rocker]

Spanish lost the... five-case declension of nouns.Expound, if you please.Cases are to nouns as tenses are to verbs. Latin had five cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative and vocative.

To decline a noun is to inflect it to express its case, number or other properties, just as to conjugate a verb is to inflect it to express its tense, mode, person, number or other properties.

I don't know Latin well enough to give you the complete paradigm of declension of any noun. But the nominative singular form of many masculine-gender nouns ends in -us and the genitive singular in -i, so "the bull's horn" would be cornus tauri. (And I may have screwed that up completely but even so it's a good illustration of the concept.)

Note that we have a genitive case in English: "bull's" is the genitive singular of "bull." However, our paradigm of noun declension has collapsed to the point of silliness, since the nominative plural "bulls," the genitive singular "bull's" and the genitive plural "bulls' " all sound alike even if we write them differently.

We retain a more complete paradigm for the pronouns.Nominative singular: I, thou, he, she, it Genitive singular: my, thy, his, her its Accusative singular: me, thee, him, her, it Nominative plural: we, you, they Genitive plural: our, your, their Accusative plural: us, you, them.Note the advanced state of collapse of even this paradigm: there are many duplicates and the second person singular is only used in religious language and by Quakers.

I know German better than Latin and can do a better job with it. However it only has four cases, and their declension is carried by the accompanying article more than the paradim for nouns, which is also in a state of collapse.Nominative singular: der Haus Genitive singular: des Hauses Dative singular: dem Hause Accusative singular: den Haus Nominative plural: die Häuse Genitive plural: der Häusen Dative plural: den Häusen Accusative plural: die Häuse. I may have screwed that up too, I'm a little weak on the plural declensions, but I hope this gives you an idea of what declension is.

As for the meaning expressed by noun cases: the nominative is the subject of a sentence, the accusative is the direct object of a verb, the dative is the indirect object, and the genitive is the possessive form.

"The leader of the group gives the boy a dog." Der Führer (nominative) der Gruppe (genitive) gibt dem knabe (dative) einen Hund (accusative). Declensions look silly in a simple sentence because the word order makes the meanings clear, but in a more complex sentence you have the luxury of rearranging the words for emphasis or poetry, and you also get to omit a few prepositions.

To us anglophones, verb conjugations look just as silly. Our language is relatively free of inflections compared to most Indo-European languages. What they accomplish with inflections we do with more prepositions and a less flexible word order.

Inflections make a language difficult to learn for people whose native language doesn't use a lot of them. We just don't think in terms of having to adjust the ending of every noun and/or verb and/or adjective for grammatical purposes. In Spanish, every verb has 43 forms (not all of which are unique):Infinitive: amar Present: amo, amas, ama, amamos, amáis, aman Preterit past: amé, amaste, amó, amamos, amasteis, amaron Imperfect past: amaba, amabas, amaba, amábamos, amabais, amaban Future: amaré, amarás, amará, amaremos, amaréis, amarán Conditional: amaría, amarías, amaría, amaríamos, amaríais, amarían Present subjunctive: ame, ames, ame, amemos, améis, amen Past subjunctive: amara, amaras, amara, amáramos, amarais, amaranThis is one of the reasons English speakers think Spanish is really hard to learn.:)

[superstring01]

In Spanish, every verb has 43 forms (not all of which are unique):Infinitive: amar Present: amo, amas, ama, amamos, amáis, aman Preterit past: amé, amaste, amó, amamos, amasteis, amaron Imperfect past: amaba, amabas, amaba, amábamos, amabais, amaban Future: amaré, amarás, amará, amaremos, amaréis, amarán Conditional: amaría, amarías, amaría, amaríamos, amaríais, amarían Present subjunctive: ame, ames, ame, amemos, améis, amen Past subjunctive: amara, amaras, amara, amáramos, amarais, amaranThis is one of the reasons English speakers think Spanish is really hard to learn.:)

An interesting little nugget about Spanish is the dual past subjunctive options.

For example "Amar" as you presented has the past subjunctive options of:
amara, amaras, amara, amáramos, amarais, amaran
But there is a second option:
amase, amases, amase, amásemos, amasais, amasan

Neither is "better", "more used" or "preferable" to the other. It's up to the individual speaker. Countries where I've been (Spain, Venezuela, Costa Rica & Mexico to name a few) have no sociological preference. It's an individual choice, though I do tend to here the "ara" ending more than the "ase" ending.

[For the un-initiated the subjunctive mood (to quote Wiki) "is typically used in dependent clauses to express wishes, commands, emotion, possibility, judgment, opinion, necessity, or statements that are contrary to fact at present". It's highly complex and daunting (for an anglophone) on a scale that reaches the unimaginable. I have spent HOURS studying Spanish verbs, especially in the subjunctive mood. Even to this day I keep my copy of "501 Spanish Verbs (http://www.amazon.com/501-Spanish-Verbs-Barrons-Language/dp/0764179845/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1236743785&sr=1-1)" on my desk for regular reference and study.]

For "ir" and "er" verbs (always conjugated using the same pattern, except for irregulars which are refreshingly rare), the options for past subjunctive are equally complex:
dirigir : to direct
dirigiera, dirigieras, dirigieras, dirigiéramos, dirigierais, dirigieran
OR
dirigiese, dirigieses, dirigiese, dirigiésemos, dirigiesais, dirigiesen

And I haven't even gotten started on the presense of "vos" in Central and South America! Do you know that it's a GROWING trend? It's becoming more and more popular to the point where in Central America, Columbia & Chile where it's actually beginning to be used in the press and TV. In Argentina, Urugray and Paraguay it's been the common form of 2nd person singular several centuries. While living in the Canary Islands, where it began as slang that came from the island El Hierro which had a huge Argentine influx just before the 20th century.

~String

[mikenostic]

Klingon!

[superstring01]

Hey, Fraggle: Any chance you know the history of how two different subjunctive options evolved in Spanish? My friends in Spain just shrug and say, "Eeeeh... yo que sé."

~String

[Fraggle Rocker]

Any chance you know the history of how two different [past] subjunctive options evolved in Spanish?No, I've never been able to figure that out. I too have never met a Spanish-speaker (or anyone else for that matter) who knows the history of the language very well. In Portuguese they only have the -asse, -asses, -esse, -esses form, so even though I don't know Latin I would assume that this series was derived from the Latin inflections. Maybe the -ara, -aras, -iera, -ieras series was some other subjunctive tense (perfect? pluperfect? preterit? )that became an alternative imperfect subjunctive as the complex Latin paradigms collapsed. So the Spaniards kept it and the Portuguese didn't.

I don't know enough of the other Romance languages to even know whether they have a subjunctive mode we could use for comparison. French grammar is pretty streamlined, especially with the elision of final syllables, so they probably don't have one. Romanian on the other hand is very conservative (it retains noun declensions), so they might. I picked up a little Catalan when I was in Valencia, but not enough to delve that deeply into the grammar.

Maybe a web search will turn up something. Edit... so far I've learned that Italian has an imperfect subjunctive, I'll report back. Second edit: it's the -assi, -asse, -essi, -esse, -issi, -isse series. Consistent with Portuguese.

[HelloKSue]

Well, Japanese is way easier for me than any of the others. Japanese is fun to learn! I mean, it was for me, because it involved friends, travel, romance, learning about cultures, making money, having fun, living abroad, changing as a person...Of course if I had done all of these things is Spanish, I would have become fluent much more quickly. As it is, I still bumble along and trip in Spanish and can't make heads or tails out of most of what they are saying on the telenovelas.

You need to modify your question. "Which language has the most linguistic differences from the point of view of the language learner--in this case, a native English speaker?" Furthermore, you need to break down the various parts of the language such as grammar and pronunciation and vocabulary. For example, a high percentage of loan words or words of common ancestry may aid the learner. Also, tone or sound reduction (or lack thereof) would pose a whole different set of problems. Finally, ease and difficulty of a language has a lot to do with how you learn it. If you are in an environment of native speakers and have significant social relationships with a number of them, the language is going to be a lot easier to learn. Age (child, teenager, young adult, middle-aged adult, older adult) and cultural background are also important. These factors, I believe, far outweigh the absolute ease or difficulty of a language, if that could actually be determined.

Now, perhaps if we asked a polyglot of all these languages who learned all of them with the same approach at the same age with the same number of helpful and fun friends and teachers in the same kinds of environments, well, then, that person could perhaps tell us the answer.

[Oli]

Well, Japanese is way easier for me than any of the others. Japanese is fun to learn! I mean, it was for me, because it involved friends, travel, romance, learning about cultures, making money, having fun, living abroad, changing as a person...
Shikata ga nai....

[firdroirich]

Swedish is hard, but like Fraggle said, I now realise a lot about how Swedes think by learning the lingo

[superstring01]

Swedish is hard, but like Fraggle said, I now realise a lot about how Swedes think by learning the lingo

I'd think that it was difficult. Icelandic--one of the world's most unchanged languages--is believed to be one of the hardest. Maybe Basque as well. Aside from some African languages that use clicks and such.

~String

[Tyler]

A white South African colleague of mine speaks two clicks language; Zulu and Xhosa. It's fascinating to hear him speak them and I've probably asked so many questions about it that he hates me.