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For me it would be French, although I find it to be such a beautiful language. In high school, everyone was taking up Spanish as their foreign language subject, but I've always been fascinated with French culture so I took up French. But I found it too hard, so I quickly dropped it and took up Spanish with the rest of my friends and thats a decision I regret to this day as I can't remember one thing about Spanish (well may how to count).
lal, no. Old English maybe. Modern English is super easy. The hard part is pronunciation and spelling since it's not phonetic, but that's the case for all non-phonetic languages...
From Wiki:
The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) of the US Department of State has compiled approximate learning expectations for a number of languages. Of the 63 languages analyzed, the five most difficult languages to reach proficiency in speaking and proficiency in reading (for native English speakers who already know other languages), requiring 88 weeks, are "Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean". The Foreign Service Institute considers Japanese to be the most difficult of this group
I took 2 semesters of French in college and didn't do very well and remember very little.
I took 6 semesters of Arabic and had straight A's and remember nearly everything.
I think learning languages has a lot to do with desire and interest, obviously. Arabic is obviously tougher than French, but for me, it took a sincere interest and immersion that I didn't dedicate to French.
English is supposed to be pretty difficult. For one thing it's not phonetic, you can't tell how a word is pronounced just by seeing it written out like Spanish.
Yes, English spelling is even more illogical and frustratingly difficult than French (which also has a great many "silent" letters). Did you know that using the illogical rules of English, "GHOTI" spells "FISH" ?
"GH" = "F" sound, as in tough, cough, enough, rough.
"O" = "I" sound, as in "women."
"TI" = "SH" sound, as in nation, ration, haitian, vacation, etc.
Therefore, "GHOTI" = "FISH"
On the other hand, Spanish takes up more space to write than English does. Many single-syllable English words, are several syllables in Spanish. So books and other publications have to be thicker = more trees cut down.
Last edited by slowlane2; 01-20-2011 at 07:15 PM..
I once read that Chinese was the most difficult language to learn with English second!!
English? dude....
Chinese is hardest I would say.
Finnish comes second, should be in the list actually.
For a matter of fact I did study both of them. Actually starting with Chinese 2 next month.
Next year I'll do an exchange most probably in Finland and I'll continue that one, as for now I only have some basics.
I would say if it wouldn't be for the charactars I think Finnish is even harder as the Chinese one isn't that hard.
For Finnish, the pronounciation is not that hard (for me as a Dutch guy), however, some words can get over 15letters, then it will become hard. And also the fact that you have to pronounce each letter. Even if it says twice a L, or M after each other. Meille vai Teille, for example. Doesn't matter what it means. the double l will both be pronounced.
However, it does depend on your mother tongue, which is for me a dialect which is more like a mixture of German, English, Dutch and some made up stuff. On school I was taught Dutch.
Because of the dialect it was easy to pick up German, and also English which also had to do because we hear it every where.
French Italian and Latin were a bit harder but if I would have studied a bit more vocabulary on secundary school I would have even spoken it.
Swedish I taught myself, and for someone who's fluent in both Dutch, English and German this one is easy to pick up. However, also for this language there are some pronounciation difficulties I'd say, especially if you're not speaking any German/Franco/Latin (whatever they're called) language.
German is hard, because of the ''nahmfalle'' (der/des/dem/den/die/der/der etc etc), but for me that's about it.
English does have some weird pronounciations like the word 'developement', where I know a lot of people do not know at all where to put the tone. Grammar is easy, except for the time usage in verbs.
Dutch, as I'm on an international school I know from a lot of people it's easy to understand, but to speak/write it decently it's rather hard, which is due to Sooo much rules, with even more/unlimited exceptions.
Interesting topic, will be following and write more in case I can.
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