Easiest European language to learn, (grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary)

[SwedishViking]

The 2 methods of speaking Danish;
A)
* whenever there is a vowel you think scr€w it and push in all of them at once,
* whenever there is a consonant you swallow it whole,
pronunciation-school A complete.

B)
Shove a hot potato in your mouth and speak any other nordic language.
pronunciation-school B complete.

(yes I am kidding, this is how danish sounds to a swede :P )

[Yanagisawa]

Thanks for your explanations, yabanci! Should it be yabancı, right? hehe...

As you mentioned, I am a native speaker of Japanese which is categorized as the hardest language for English speakers, according to the list you post above.

I don't think any of your examples are difficult. Actually,Turkish and Japanese have many aspects in common. And I think that's why I feel Turkish is easy to learn.

Originally Posted by yabanci

1. Vowel harmony/consonant shifts. This is simply a matter of memorization and practice. If I were to try to explain the difficulty in comparison to the other languages I'd learned, I would say that it is harder to learn than gender in French and easier to learn than gender and declensions in German.

After comparing Turkish with Uigur, I felt Turkish was much easier than Uigur. To my eyes, Turkish is more in order in this regard. I'm not sure if this metaphor is suitable but Turkish is a modern city and Uigur a rural village.

Originally Posted by yabanci

Arka(back)

Arkamdan, arkandan, arkasından

From my back, from your back, from his/her/its back

Pretty straightforward for me. It had taken me for half an hour at most to memorize -m, -n and - sı and basic harmony rules. Memorize once and done.

Linguistic gender is not like that. You have to memorize its gender for every single word.

Originally Posted by yabanci

4. Gerunds, participles and verbal nouns can be a headache. Most foreigners don't even bother trying some of the relative clause constructions, preferring to use ki, which was imported from Farsi. While their intent can be understood, it causes their speech to sound stilted.

I forgot almost everything I had learned, but what you are referring is, say geldiğim? If that's the case, it is easy for me too.

Originally Posted by yabanci

6. Agglutination. It is much harder to understand something when grammatical elements which would be represented as separate words in your language have been shoved together to form a single word. Even once you have completely learned all the elements, the act of using them or even understanding them is a hassle.
Here's an example using basic vocabulary words and intermediate level grammatical elements:

Tanıştıramayabileceğimiz devrimciler

Tanıştırmayabileceğiniz devrimciler

I wonder which is harder, Turkish or German in this regard? There are tons of those examples in Japaneses and Chinese, especially with Kanji or Chinese characters as well.

[yabanci]

Originally Posted by Yanagisawa

Thanks for your explanations, yabanci! Should it be yabancı, right? hehe...

As you mentioned, I am a native speaker of Japanese which is categorized as the hardest language for English speakers, according to the list you post above.

I don't think any of your examples are difficult. Actually,Turkish and Japanese have many aspects in common. And I think that's why I feel Turkish is easy to learn.

Yes, it should be yabancı.

As a native speaker of Japanese, I think you would have a huge advantage over most other students of Turkish. The problematic aspects of Turkish I listed are based on my perspective as a native English speaker who has studied French and German. And I can say with confidence that Turkish is far more difficult than either of them.

One thing I've heard from people who know Japanese at an intermediate level is that the grammar isn't hard, but the ones who speak it at a higher level think that it's difficult. If this is true, then Japanese is rather like Turkish.

After comparing Turkish with Uigur, I felt Turkish was much easier than Uigur. To my eyes, Turkish is more in order in this regard. I'm not sure if this metaphor is suitable but Turkish is a modern city and Uigur a rural village.

I really couldn't personally comment on the difference in difficulty between Uyghur and Turkish, but I've never heard that Uyghur is harder than Turkish(except for the alphabet). But I think your metaphor works on at least one level; Central Asian Turkic languages always sound coarse to me, whereas İstanbul Turkish is softer and much easier on the ears.

Pretty straightforward for me. It had taken me for half an hour at most to memorize -m, -n and - sı and basic harmony rules. Memorize once and done.

Linguistic gender is not like that. You have to memorize its gender for every single word.

Those elements are easy enough to learn, and applying the -m -n -si -miniz -niz -leri to nouns isn't a problem. The issue with vowel harmony, based on my experience, isn't about the rules themselves, which are straightforward, but about actually applying them. It's easy to learn to shoot a free throw, but it isn't so easy to be able to reliably hit them.

Gender is much easier than you make it out to be. As any teacher worth his salt will tell you, when you learn a new word you must learn the gender at the same time. Is learning 'le poisson' harder than learning 'poisson'? I think that the reason people have a problem with gender is that they convince themselves that it is difficult and then turn that belief into a self-fulfilling prophesy by not learning the gender of the word when they learn the word. When I first started with German, I made this mistake, but I never had any problem with it after I learned the error of my ways.

I forgot almost everything I had learned, but what you are referring is, say geldiğim? If that's the case, it is easy for me too.

That's one of many. The only difficulty with words like geldiğim is dealing with the backwards construction--in the context of an entire sentence, such a construction isn't problematic, but when it's inserted in the middle or beginning of the sentence

I wonder which is harder, Turkish or German in this regard? There are tons of those examples in Japaneses and Chinese, especially with Kanji or Chinese characters as well.

When you mention German, I assume you mean words like Geschwindigkeitsbeschränkungen? Words like those are nouns. Tanıştıramayabileceğimiz and tanıştırmayabileceğiniz are relatıve clauses meaning 'whom we may not be able to introduce' and 'whom you cannot introduce' respectively. One letter will shift the meaning, often considerably. And these letters can easily be missed, especially when listening, thus potentially leading to large misunderstandings.

[Yanagisawa]

Originally Posted by yabanci

Yes, it should be yabancı.

Originally Posted by yabanci

Those elements are easy enough to learn, and applying the -m -n -si -miniz -niz -leri to nouns isn't a problem. The issue with vowel harmony, based on my experience, isn't about the rules themselves, which are straightforward, but about actually applying them. It's easy to learn to shoot a free throw, but it isn't so easy to be able to reliably hit them.

There are some vowel harmony phenomena left in Japanese too. For example,

ame (rain) + kasa (umbrella) = amagasa: e becomes a because of assimilation.

Actually k becomes g as well. I remember I had learned similar phenomenon in Turkish too

Originally Posted by yabanci

Gender is much easier than you make it out to be. As any teacher worth his salt will tell you, when you learn a new word you must learn the gender at the same time. Is learning 'le poisson' harder than learning 'poisson'? I think that the reason people have a problem with gender is that they convince themselves that it is difficult and then turn that belief into a self-fulfilling prophesy by not learning the gender of the word when they learn the word. When I first started with German, I made this mistake, but I never had any problem with it after I learned the error of my ways.

Although remembering a word with its corresponding article is not difficult at all, but, changing verbs, adjectives and nouns according to its gender is challenging for me

Originally Posted by yabanci

When you mention German, I assume you mean words like Geschwindigkeitsbeschränkungen? Words like those are nouns. Tanıştıramayabileceğimiz and tanıştırmayabileceğiniz are relatıve clauses meaning 'whom we may not be able to introduce' and 'whom you cannot introduce' respectively. One letter will shift the meaning, often considerably. And these letters can easily be missed, especially when listening, thus potentially leading to large misunderstandings.

Oh, I know what you mean now, and I think many, if not all, languages have those situations.

For example, I've heard a Japanese narrative while driving today:

Watashiwa uchiwo deta. Chichini nanimo iwazuni. Chichimo nanimo iwazuni. (I left home. I said nothing to my father. My father said nothing to me either.)

Compare Chichini nanimo iwazuni. with Chichimo nanimo iwazuni.

[Wario Toad 32]

As a native English speaker. Dutch is the easiest followed by German.