New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
Comments
I'm 21.
@kalam Every time someone calls our langauge American, it actually hurts us
21
only 21
From my experience (i'm a native german speaker) english is waaaay easier to learn than french. I've had french 4 years in school and the only thing i can say is "voulez-vous couchez avec moi ce soir?"
Russian is a nightmare.
Multiple declensions, conjugations, gender. For an English speaker, very few cognates (unlike a Romance or Germanic language).
For an English speaker, it's a Category II language:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Language_Learning_Difficulty_for_English_Speakers
...but from personal experience, I think it's difficulty is underrated.
I learned some Russian and can carry on brief conversations with Russians, but it is all rote phrases. Thanks to my first wife, I can also curse fluently in it :-)
Virtually every major language has far more complex grammar than English. English has no genders, no conjugations, no declensions (other than a few pronouns). It's easier to learn the word order concept than to constantly compute stem variations (unless you've been doing them since birth). What makes English a pain is the insane vocabulary, a galaxy of idioms, and endless special case words, as well as few weird things like the word "do". However, getting to the point where you can stumble through an imperfect conversation where you have high passive understanding and speak with a lot of mistakes is not that hard...compared to, say, Arabic or Japanese.
Actually, I suspect that of the Category III languages, Arabic is the easiest. No cognates, but the vocab is aided by the tri-literal roots, and the alphabet is quite consistent (if complex for a newcomer).
But anyway...everyone should speak English. That would make things easiest for me personally. In many places I've traveled, everyone does. Particularly if you are a tourist with dollars to spend.
Or we could all learn Esperanto.
In Esperanto, the word you're looking for is "poneo".
Just be glad you don't speak Canadian.
That isn't a language either.
I'm 23,From CHN!
16
I have to agree, Russian is a bear to learn! (no pun intended!)
6 different cases, perfective/imperfective verbs and all the conjugations make it very hard for native English speakers to wrap their minds around.
However, that being said, it is a very precise language -- what is said is very specific and often there is no question. A simple sentence, "I went to the store" is clarified in Russian in so many ways!
I've had many Russian say to me, it's very easy to read too! Not the case! Мне надо писать -- can mean two completely different things depending on where the accent is!
But then in English "read" is both past and future tense. Im going to read a book or I've read a book, but their pronounced differently.
But then "read" pronounced /reed/ may also mean past tense, as in "their read on binomial expansion was wrong."
Which is probably hard for new speakers to learn.
i thought that the most difficult language to learn is greek
Not to mention most of the Anglosphere is mostly monolingual, I think its rather sad that our countries actions in the past is now killing cultures at their heart, their language.
@Daniel, you haven't even touched on the ways of pronouncing 'ough'
though
through
cough
rough
plough
ought
borough
All pronounced differently. English is a silly language.
I did study German to GCSE level, and genuinely enjoyed it. There's something strangely poetic about the odd grammar.
@ElliotJ Even Worse.
We
Wee
Weeeeeeee
All mean separate things.
ROFL
English English & American English is perhaps the easiest transition to make.
I once saw something that said Icelandic is the hardest language to learn that is still in common usage.
Icelandic? Hell yeah... can you pronounce that volcano name?
@rds100 Eyjatheonethatpissedofftheaviatonindustrylotsandmadepeopleangry
Have you guys ever looked at Greenland on a map? Not sure how they pronounce those city/town names without coughing something up.
I'm 19, almost 20.
That sound you heard was the joke whooshing over your head.
I'm 32.
I'm 30
So who's the oldest member?
@miTgiB
26/m/phx
he, she...
Aye, that he is....
heshe?
Nah he's a young fella