It seems that you're using an outdated browser. Some things may not work as they should (or don't work at all).
We suggest you upgrade newer and better browser like: Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer or Opera

×
Community
General discussion (archive)Most difficult language to learn?(118 posts)(118 posts)
(118 posts)
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
This is my favourite topic
Posted May 21, 2010
avatar
michaelleung: Did you learn English first or Chinese first?

Both. I speak Engreesh at home, and Chinese to 70% of my friends.
Posted May 21, 2010
avatar
michaelleung: Did you learn English first or Chinese first?
avatar
lowyhong: Both. I speak Engreesh at home, and Chinese to 70% of my friends.

One thing I've always wondered is if you speak in that stereotypical Singaporean English.
Posted May 21, 2010
Chinese - 4 votes
Polish - 2
French - 2
Norwegian - 1
Frisian - 1
Czech - 1
German - 1
Hungarian - 1
Finnish - 1
English - 1
Arabic - 1
Post edited May 21, 2010 by Hussar
Posted May 21, 2010
avatar
michaelleung: Did you learn English first or Chinese first?
avatar
lowyhong: Both. I speak Engreesh at home, and Chinese to 70% of my friends.

Speak Chinese to most of my friends and most of the time too. But my Chinese language command both written and reading is horrible.
If can speak Hokkien to some friends or colleagues. Sometimes prefer to speak dialect.
Posted May 21, 2010
avatar
michaelleung: One thing I've always wondered is if you speak in that stereotypical Singaporean English.

Skype me up and you'll see ;)
Posted May 21, 2010
Polish is just complicated. Even some native TV presenters can't speak it properly.
Anyway, my vote goes for Hungarian.
Post edited May 21, 2010 by Summit
Posted May 21, 2010
avatar
cw8: If can speak Hokkien to some friends or colleagues. Sometimes prefer to speak dialect.

Ha, my gf is from Fujian and has taught me some Hokkien. Because that dialect preserves so many ancient Chinese pronunciations, a lot of words are almost the exact same as their Korean counter-parts. I'm hoping that I can learn more Hokkien when I return to China later this year.
Posted May 21, 2010
avatar
michaelleung: One thing I've always wondered is if you speak in that stereotypical Singaporean English.
avatar
lowyhong: Skype me up and you'll see ;)

USERNAME NOW
Posted May 21, 2010
avatar
Zjeraar: Frisian (and I'm from Friesland).

Fryslân boppe!
Frisian is easy, although I don't speak it I do understand it.
I think it does have quite a few dialects for what's basically a "small language".
My parent had to move away from there to the middle of the country or my father would have been unemployed.
They raised us in Dutch (also not an easy language with all it's irregularities) so we never learned to speak Frisian.
As they always talk Frisian amongst each other we learned to understand it.
Btw to close the circle, I moved to Heerenveen for my work.
Frisian is the 2nd official language in The Netherlands, but only in the northern province Fryslân.
The province has it's own flag and anthem.
I've been to both Czech and Hungary.
To me Czech sounded harded and seeing the writing of both languages it also looks harder.
German wasn't that hard for me as we had a good share of German tv during our childhood. I have to say that writing it nowadays is hard, speaking and understanding is easier.
For most people, including a lot of Dutch people, Dutch is a hard language due to irregularities and the d/t/dt with verbs in the present, past and present/pluperfect times and the different writings of some nouns.
English has always been relatively easy for me, although it's hard to learn the common sayings like "it's raining cats and dogs".
French was a language I never managed to master.
I did 1 year of Latin, which was hard, but not too hard.
Posted May 21, 2010
I've read somewhere that our, Slovak language is the hardest to learn. While it might be (and probably is) exaggerated, our language is can be pretty hard.
Posted May 21, 2010
Hungarian i guess. Funny thing is, it's from the same language family as Finnish. Chinese is hard, but mostly because it's different, i have a friend, who's into learning asian languages, and once You get the general idea it goes way faster, while Hungarian was full of exceptions and weird stuff. I like the way they pronounce "s" and "sz", in Polish it's "s" and "sh", while Hungarians have it the other way around. Imagine all "sh" in english being pronounced as "s" and all "s" being "sh"s. ;)
Posted May 21, 2010
avatar
Zjeraar: Frisian (and I'm from Friesland).
avatar
HertogJan: Frysl�n boppe!
Frisian is easy, although I don't speak it I do understand it.
I think it does have quite a few dialects for what's basically a "small language".
My parent had to move away from there to the middle of the country or my father would have been unemployed.
They raised us in Dutch (also not an easy language with all it's irregularities) so we never learned to speak Frisian.
As they always talk Frisian amongst each other we learned to understand it.
Btw to close the circle, I moved to Heerenveen for my work.
Frisian is the 2nd official language in The Netherlands, but only in the northern province Frysl�n.
The province has it's own flag and anthem.
I've been to both Czech and Hungary.
To me Czech sounded harded and seeing the writing of both languages it also looks harder.
German wasn't that hard for me as we had a good share of German tv during our childhood. I have to say that writing it nowadays is hard, speaking and understanding is easier.
For most people, including a lot of Dutch people, Dutch is a hard language due to irregularities and the d/t/dt with verbs in the present, past and present/pluperfect times and the different writings of some nouns.
English has always been relatively easy for me, although it's hard to learn the common sayings like "it's raining cats and dogs".
French was a language I never managed to master.
I did 1 year of Latin, which was hard, but not too hard.

Frisian is indeed not that hard to understand if you already speak Dutch. Actually, even English shares similarities with the language (which is not all that odd if you know its history). Understanding it is relatively easy. What makes Frisian difficult is when you try to write it. Almost every word involves pairing of consonants you'd never expect to combine and there's constant question which diacritic you have to place on certain vowels. There are certainly rules, but I'm bad at remembering them I guess. In that regard, it's completely different from Dutch.
I agree with Dutch being a much more difficult and irregular language, due to it having lots of rules and exceptions. But although I'm born in Friesland and my parents have always spoken Frisian, I have very few problems with Dutch idiom, grammar and spelling while I have considerably more issues with those of the Frisian language.
By the way, my brother lives in Heerenveen. I live about 12 kilometers away.
Posted May 21, 2010
English is easy. You just have to know the history of the British Isles and the British colonies, what language a word was borrowed from, when it was borrowed, and where it was originally borrowed. It also helps to know how pronunciation has changed since a word's spelling was standardized. Basically, 1066 wrecked things. English is difficult because it has always been so omnivorous, but that has also made it very flexible.
avatar
Arteveld: Hungarian i guess. Funny thing is, it's from the same language family as Finnish. Chinese is hard, but mostly because it's different, i have a friend, who's into learning asian languages, and once You get the general idea it goes way faster, while Hungarian was full of exceptions and weird stuff. I like the way they pronounce "s" and "sz", in Polish it's "s" and "sh", while Hungarians have it the other way around. Imagine all "sh" in english being pronounced as "s" and all "s" being "sh"s. ;)

Last year, the community chorus in which I sing did a program of music in Romanian, Czech, and Slovakian. It was really hard to keep the pronunciations all straight. Fortunately we did the Hungarian pieces in English translation. We told the director never to do that to us again.
Post edited May 21, 2010 by Syme
Posted May 21, 2010
avatar
Syme: Last year, the community chorus in which I sing did a program of music in Romanian, Czech, and Slovakian. It was really hard to keep the pronunciations all straight. Fortunately we did the Hungarian pieces in English translation. We told the director never to do that to us again.

Well, those are slavic languages, apart from Romanian which is italic. But yeah, they're kinda tongue bending for "western" people. But Hungarian is hard for most Poles, due to the extra twisting.;)
Polish is also hard for Japanese people i guess, on my Casio keyboard [shitty sounds, but it serves as a midi controller] the song "Szła Dzieweczka" is spelled as "Szta Dzie Weczka".;P
Posted May 21, 2010
*off*
maybe english ? :)
Post edited May 21, 2010 by lackoo1111
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussion (archive)Most difficult language to learn?(118 posts)(118 posts)
(118 posts)