blingualism...

[kirottu]

Chinese, Japanese, Gaelic, and Welsh just to name a few.

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No. There are no universal easy or hard languages to learn. The more different the language happens to be from your language the harder it is to learn.

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That isn't strictly true. Languages vary a lot in complexity. Japanese, for example is much more complex than any western language.

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No, not really. Some parts of it are more complex than western languages but some parts of western languages are more complex than in japanese. It pretty much evens it out at the end.

[kirottu]

But wouldn't it be based on the root language?  Such as it would be easier for a German to learn English because they share the same root language, or a French native speaker learning Spansih.  It would be relative to the root language your first language is in.  It probably be easier for a native Chinese speaker to learn Japanese than it would be for him to learn English.

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Japanese and chinese have no root language since they aren

[Judge Hades]

Oh, I didn't know that. Well, you get what I mean, don't you?

Edited August 27, 2006 by Judge Hades

[Pidesco]

But wouldn't it be based on the root language?  Such as it would be easier for a German to learn English because they share the same root language, or a French native speaker learning Spansih.  It would be relative to the root language your first language is in.  It probably be easier for a native Chinese speaker to learn Japanese than it would be for him to learn English.

 

Yes, of course. I'm not saying that isn't true. But that doesn't mean that languages are all equally hard to learn. It's just that, for example, a Portuguese native speaker learns a lot about speaking Spanish while learning how to speak Portuguese, even if he isn't aware of it at first.

 

As an example of what I'm trying to say, Portuguese is grammatically much more complex than English. Furthermore, Portuguese has a much larger vocabulary than English.

[Pidesco]

No, not really. Some parts of it are more complex than western languages but some parts of western languages are more complex than in japanese. It pretty much evens it out at the end.

 

 

Which parts of Japanese are less complex than western languages?

[Judge Hades]

Not if the speaker's native tongue is French which shares the same root language, Latin, but it would be more difficult for a English Speaker to learn instead of German.

 

Its all relative. Isn't it?

[Pidesco]

Yes, but that doesn't mean that all languages are equal in terms of complexity. There's just more stuff to learn about Portuguese before you can become proficient than there is to learn about English.

[Craigboy2]

Yes, but that doesn't mean that all languages are equal in terms of complexity. There's just more stuff to learn about Portuguese before you can become proficient than there is to learn about English.

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Well in English you can get around with just using basic English but that doesn't mean that's all there is to the English language because there's plenty of words out there like costermonger and fortissimo.

[Pidesco]

I'm talking about proficiency, not just being able to speak basic English.

 

Perhaps you need to widen your English vocabulary.

[Judge Hades]

Basic sophmore high school level for reading/writing/speaking comprehension level should suffice.

[Petay]

fortissimo.

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Italian/Latin, I'm sure.

 

I'm such a pedantic pete.

Edited August 27, 2006 by Petay

[SteveThaiBinh]

Which parts of Japanese are less complex than western languages?

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Japanese is a fairly regular language, with only three irregular verbs and two tenses, the past and non-past. The writing system can be fiendishly difficult, especially where some characters have two or more possible readings, but spoken Japanese is quite easy to pick up to a level where you can chat to people.

 

Spanish is easier than some languages because it's written the same way it's pronounced, so fewer spelling headaches and no need to learn a special phonetic script like many foreign students of English do.

 

Every language I've studied has had its peculiar difficulties, but I'd say Spanish was probably the easiest, even though I started it at school.

[Blarghagh]

No. There are no universal easy or hard languages to learn. The more different the language happens to be from your language the harder it is to learn.

 

Bulldingo. I'm Dutch, but I've tried to learn German and I failed at that so badly, yet I learned English without even trying by simply watching a lot of cartoons and movies undubbed without subtitles.

 

(And to the person who said english was difficult; I'm sorry, but I have to say that just makes you stupid. I'm dyslexic in my mother tongue, but look at my english.)

Edited August 27, 2006 by TrueNeutral

[Craigboy2]

I'm talking about proficiency, not just being able to speak basic English.

 

Perhaps you need to widen your English vocabulary.

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But I know what fortissimo means, isn't that enough Anywho I'm in GT/AP so they make us learn all these stem words, like truculent.

 

fortissimo.

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Italian/Latin, I'm sure.

 

I'm such a pedantic pete.

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Latin, it means to speak loudly.

Edited August 27, 2006 by Craigboy2

[Judge Hades]

Bulldingo. I'm Dutch, but I've tried to learn German and I failed at that so badly, yet I learned English without even trying by simply watching a lot of cartoons and movies undubbed without subtitles.

 

(And to the person who said english was difficult; I'm sorry, but I have to say that just makes you stupid. I'm dyslexic in my mother tongue, but look at my english.)

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That is immersion learning and it can be very effective. Try doing the same thing with German televsion.

[Blarghagh]

I did. Didn't work.

[Petay]

I can see what Hades means, I've tried a similar kind of thing on just a simple 2 week holiday in Austria before. You watch enough of a certain language on teevee, you can pick up certain things about it without all the hassle of knowing exactly what it means, etc. Sure it may not be the best of all that language but if you watch enough i'm sure it would give you a certain basis of that language, as irrelevant as this is to the original idea of the thread.

[Hurlshort]

  I expect those who come to the US to live and work to learn the English language on a proficient level before coming to this country.

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Well, that's all well and good for some folks, but immigrants that come from 3rd world countries don't have the same opportunity to learn a language that you do. Have you ever been to a shanty town? It's not very conducive to education. Most of these immigrant are more concerned with getting their families to a place where they can actually have a decent standard of living. And that's a fantastic thing about our country, because this happens every day.

 

My wife's grandmother brought her sons to the US. She couldn't speak English, but her sons learned and now they are all doing very well for themselves. One went back to Mexico with the mother and became a professor at a college, and the others are raising families in America.

 

Surprisingly, my wife never even learned Spanish, despite her father's fluency. He didn't think it was important.

[SteveThaiBinh]

Well, that's all well and good for some folks, but immigrants that come from 3rd world countries don't have the same opportunity to learn a language that you do.  Have you ever been to a shanty town?  It's not very conducive to education.  Most of these immigrant are more concerned with getting their families to a place where they can actually have a decent standard of living.  And that's a fantastic thing about our country, because this happens every day. 

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That's very true. Also, from the point of learning efficiency, I'd suggest that those with a will to learn often do so better and faster in a country where the target language is widely spoken than in their own country where access to target language resources may be very restricted. Plenty of students go to the US or UK wanting to study English, and they often learn very successfully. Why struggle in classes three times a week for two years when you can achieve the same progress after six months in the US?

[Blarghagh]

They want a better standard of living and they go to America?

 

(w00t)

 

EDIT: Man, every time I read this topic title my brain gets confused trying to figure out what word it is and settles on 'botulism'.

Edited August 27, 2006 by TrueNeutral

[Calax]

Steve I wasn't saying that we shouldn't learn a second language... I meant that (from what I can tell anyway) 90% of languages taught are either French, Spanish, or Latin.

 

My high school had 1 teacher able to speak japanese so we also had a japanese class, and a german class but that was ultimatly it. For the japanese and german classes you really only had 30 spots out of probably 2-3k students.

 

So your choices in my school was A) learn a language you might have to use at your hourly highschool job because there are so many latino's about. B) Learn a language you will probably never use because everyone who speaks it also speaks english around here. C) a language that you will only pick up enough to know a single sentance out of a thirty minute tv show from it's home country. or D) Learn a language of a country that tried to take over the world twice.

 

We didn't have latin.

[Hurlshort]

Is D referring to Germany? They didn't try to take over the world twice. World War 1 was a war between France and Germany that blossomed into something bigger. The German goals were the same as they were in 1879, when Germany beat France. It was a border dispute.

 

Also, Napoleon was closer to taking over the world than Hitler, and he was French.

[Calax]

Is D referring to Germany?  They didn't try to take over the world twice.  World War 1 was a war between France and Germany that blossomed into something bigger.  The German goals were the same as they were in 1879, when Germany beat France.  It was a border dispute.

 

Also, Napoleon was closer to taking over the world than Hitler, and he was French.

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ok so once... (it's never really touched on in history other than Trenches=evil creations of the devil, and that the allies royally screwed over the central powers at the end.)

[alanschu]

Is D referring to Germany?  They didn't try to take over the world twice.  World War 1 was a war between France and Germany that blossomed into something bigger.  The German goals were the same as they were in 1879, when Germany beat France.  It was a border dispute.

 

Also, Napoleon was closer to taking over the world than Hitler, and he was French.

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Wasn't the war more between Austria-Hungary and Serbia, with allies chiming into the mix?

[SteveThaiBinh]

Wasn't the war more between Austria-Hungary and Serbia, with allies chiming into the mix?

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It was all because of the train timetables. That's why I never touch them, and only check train times on-line. :ph34r: