The hardest languages to learn for an English speaker.

[destrekor]

???

I'm Chinese and I joke around with my Chinese family in China all the time. They definitely understand sarcasm and probably more so than people in the U.S.

I've found that the native Chinese love to joke and sarcasm is deeply rooted in the culture. Out of all the countries that I've visited, I actually found Americans the least fun. Other cultures like to have fun, openly dance, sing, festivals, gather with strangers, etc. Americans are bit more closed off - probably because you can get shot entering another person's property. In China, many people keep their doors open all day - literally opened and not just unlocked.

I don't know why you made such a stupid and general statement.

There's the suspicion/danger angle, but more than anything, the White American has a "space" thing, and a decency/modesty that is sometimes too far out there.

There's also the history of the Puritans and other nutcases who have really caused America to be quite set back compared to the rest of the "Western" nations, and of course other civilizations here and there.
Thanks, Europe. Bunch of assholes, the lot of ya.

 

[JEDIYoda]

. I hate it when I hear "You're in America. Speak English!" That's rude and it shows ignorance. When you learn a new language you need to have an open attitude to learning.

Why? I speak 6 different languages fluently and understand another 3 more all Arab dialects......
When I travel in the middle east or even Europe they do not go out of their way to speak English to me when I am asking directions or ordering food.

Even though people other countries all like to try to speak English......I cannot take a driving test in English...menus are printed in the language of the country as are road signs...etc.....

Only in American can you be from Ziare and take your written drivers exam in the language you speak....when in fact all tests should be in English -- learn the damn language!! No it is not rude!! It is the truth!!

In order to learn anything be it science, history or even languages you have an open mind....duh....

 

[MongGrel]

Uh, I think if you're listening to Colbert or Black, you pretty much know that 50% of it is sarcasm. That's kind of their job.

Apparently a lot of people inviting them to do gigs don't was my point.

 

[MongGrel]

learn sanskrit, the language of the Gods.

Sumerian.

Looks it would be a PITA to learn it he he.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLyKZGEAc3s&hd=1

 

[tommo123]

Why? I speak 6 different languages fluently and understand another 3 more all Arab dialects......
When I travel in the middle east or even Europe they do not go out of their way to speak English to me when I am asking directions or ordering food.

Even though people other countries all like to try to speak English......I cannot take a driving test in English...menus are printed in the language of the country as are road signs...etc.....

Only in American can you be from Ziare and take your written drivers exam in the language you speak....when in fact all tests should be in English -- learn the damn language!! No it is not rude!! It is the truth!!

In order to learn anything be it science, history or even languages you have an open mind....duh....

Britan is like that too. it's because we have no official language and any moves in both countrys to make english the national language causes a lot of strife amongst some people. canada on the other hand just went for 2 official languages.

if you went english and spanish officially then you could put a stop to that crap

 

[ForumMaster]

while basic english is not difficult, it has many quirks.

and this one:

 

[MongGrel]

English is highly flexible is one of it's strongest points.

 

[Franz316]

Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo <------ grammatically correct sentence

 

[norseamd]

hamburger is named after the city of hamburg in germany

 

[TROLLERCAUST]

Where is Hungarian on that list? Ridiculously hard language for any non native speaker to learn.

Szia,

Category II. Same as Finnish, which is no surprise as they are related languages with similar grammar.
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Language_Learning_Difficulty_for_English_Speakers

Both are agglutinative languages. Agglutination is fun and easy , examples in Finnish:

• istua "to sit down" (istun "I sit down")
• istahtaa "to sit down for a while"
• istahdan "I'll sit down for a while"
• istahtaisin "I would sit down for a while"
• istahtaisinko "should I sit down for a while?"
• istahtaisinkohan "I wonder if I should sit down for a while"

 

[brianmanahan]

easy

not a good chart for the difficulty of languages

german is harder to learn than spanish

du welkommen

any language that randomly assigns genders to every inanimate object in the universe = not a language i am excited to learn

unless people are just cool with me using "das" for everything

 

[Triumph]

Where does German rank?

Dutch, Swedish, and Norwegian are Germanic languages so I guess German itself would be of similar difficulty.

 

[destrekor]

any language that randomly assigns genders to every inanimate object in the universe = not a language i am excited to learn

unless people are just cool with me using "das" for everything

That's actually almost every language.

That's one of the many reasons why English is actually a highly difficult language to learn for anyone not born into it (not that it is easy to master for those born into it).

We don't have a consistent structure to the language, which means sentence structure must take its place. Many languages actually allow some wiggle room because the individual words have shifted spelling or whatnot to indicate its purpose in a sentence, as opposed to relying entirely upon the full sentence structure and location of all other words, as if often the case in English.

Genders, and grammatical cases, are two things that English has pretty much dropped or turned into a convoluted mess. We have grammatical cases, but the way words mutate (or don't) due to the purpose of said word in relation to other words, makes it more difficult to grasp than the standard approach shared by most other languages.

 

[Juncar]

Mandarin and Japanese do not have genders as well. This is why I found French very hard to learn with all the le and la additive to words (there is no iron clad rules for which words are which genders).

 

[mikelish]

I don't see German on the chart. I assume it's easy?

 

[monkeydelmagico]

Spanish seemed easiest for me. German was not too difficult. I tried Arabic and Tagalog but just gave up. When it starts getting into characters instead of letters my brain fries.

 

[Imp]

Britan is like that too. it's because we have no official language and any moves in both countrys to make english the national language causes a lot of strife amongst some people. canada on the other hand just went for 2 official languages.

if you went english and spanish officially then you could put a stop to that crap

That's true on paper, but not really.

In Quebec ("state" in Canada), they have a language police that "polices" businesses that use more English than "necessary".

The rest of Canada mainly speaks English with American accents. Schools (across the country?) teach French, but most people can barely get by on it. Knowing French is great for working in the government, for the government, and visiting Quebec.

And did I mention that Quebec keeps wanting to secede? The governing party in the province called an early election (it's today) and ran on a secessionist platform.

Make your own conclusions on why French is an "official" language of Canada...

 

[norseamd]

Dutch, Swedish, and Norwegian are Germanic languages so I guess German itself would be of similar difficulty.

dutch and german and english are west germanic languages

norwegian and swedish are north germanic languages

 

[poofyhairguy]

Written-wise Japanese. Three writing systems one of them thousands of characters. It's a bitch.

It is honestly not that bad. With Japanese it is hard to master, but easy to get to a point where you can write and read at a basic level.

That is because two of those writing systems (Hiragana and Katakana) each have only 46 characters with overlapping sounds between the two. So you learn 90 something characters and you can have enough to sound out basic Japanese and write in a way Japanese people understand.

Unfortunately, once you get past that level (like you want to play a Japanese video game) and you get into that third set of characters that was stolen from China - Kanji. THAT is when you hit the thousands of little pictures that you have no clue what they are without memorization. Then you are sunk. But even then, at least Japanese is flexible when it comes to word order and has clear sounds so you could learn to speak Japanese pretty easily. Heck, many words are almost exactly like they are in English.

The hard languages are the ones where inflection changes the meaning. Jeez I can't handle that.

 

[dbk]

Korean's alright.. learned it early as a baby... hehehe

 

[Triumph]

dutch and german and english are west germanic languages

norwegian and swedish are north germanic languages

let me guess, you didn't bother to look at the GIANT TREE OF LANGUAGES directly below my text you are quoting?

dutch, german, english, norwegian, and swedish are germanic languages.

 

[norseamd]

let me guess, you didn't bother to look at the GIANT TREE OF LANGUAGES directly below my text you are quoting? dutch, german, english, norwegian, and swedish are germanic languages.

yes i know that

all i am saying is that there are somewhat significant differences between west germanic and north germanic languages

actually modern english is possibly a west norse language grammatically with many old english words along with major contributions from latin, old norse, and celtic languages

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Middle_English#Early_Middle_English