Whenever I tell people how many languages I am learning, people often ask me "Well then, what language is harder?" and in the end I am never really able to give them a straight answer.
If we were to look at statistics and fact, there are numerous reports and studies that have argued one way or another. Check out this article HERE or even on Wikipedia.
Personally, although I could understand why these languages have been ordered like this, I still think they can't be 100% trusted. People are different and therefore, they learn and understand things differently, I might find learning vocabulary really easy but find grammar rules difficult but then for another person it could be completely different.
I did find it was easier to learn german than french. In fact, I have studied french for a year longer than german but my french and german proficiency are roughly the same. Therefore, another factor to consider, could be whether this is your first foreign language. Although, I can understand why korean is considered hard, at the moment, I find basic korean quite easy as although korean grammar is different than english grammar, I am used to the 'language of languages' so things like 'past tense' 'cases' 'suffix' 'qualifier', I'm used to learning about the building blocks of languages so when I learn a new language, it's just a case of modifying the rules. (I'm sorry if I'm confusing anyone. ^^) I hear people who speak 6 or 8 languages saying "it does get... easier!"
What about you, what do you think is the hardest language in the world?
Wooow this was pretty interesting ! :O
ReplyDeleteAs for myself, I'm a Finnish girl and so far I've studied 6 languages: English 8 years, Swedish 4 years, German 5 years, Japanese 3 years, and Chinese and Korean both around one year.
English ofc is awesome. There's no reason to hate it since it pretty much comes from everywhere and is super useful (who doubts that anyway?).
I actually gave up studying German year ago. All those grammar points and so on were so damn hard for me. Also I had no motivation for that language and neither have I really heard it anywhere except occasionally in TV. So yeah. It was pretty much lack of motivation which made me stop learning it.
All the Finnish students have to learn Swedish since it's also our "official language" in Finland, although it's not really that much used. And the fact that it's a language that I don't like, I'm bad at and is mandatory in Finnish school system makes me pretty much... unmotivated in studying it :------D Yeah. I suck in it too.
Then there are Japanese, Korean and Chinese, which were stated to be the hardest languages. Yeah. I think they're pretty hard. There is actually no words that could relate into western vocabulary so I find learning new words pretty slow. Especially in Chinese, I think that all the words are so alike haha. Japanese and Chinese are good to study together of course since they have (almost) the same characters. Oh and those kanjis/hanzis. Gosh I hate learning them :---------D And those tones or whatever they're called. Hard but fun ! Also since there are some words in Korean that are pretty much alike with chinese ones so ... maybe it makes it a bit easier ?
Anyway. My main point is that I think it doesn't matter that much whether the language is hard or not. I think it's all about having motivation ! I find all the asian languages interesting so of course I have motivation in studying them since I'm all excited about the culture over-all. Then again I've no interest in Europe especially in northern europe so.. I think it's not surprise that I've no motivation on learning those languages.
Wooops this became a damn long comment, but you get my point (; In motivation we trust lolwhat.
Hi!
ReplyDeletethanks for your comment- yeah, I totally understand what you mean. You definitely have an impressive list of languages. Motivation is certainly key, it's a shame you gave up German- I love it ;)
Thanks for taking the time to read and post on this blog and look forward to more to come from your's truly ^^