Easiest Language [real world, not code]

[djr33]

A bit off topic for the board, but I know that a number of users are interested in the subject and I think it warrants discussion.

I'm very interested in world languages. I know a good bit of Spanish, and I'm taking classes for Italian, Latin, German and Arabic (see signature) currently, as well as being natively fluent in English. I've also come across a good bit of info on other languages in general, from a couple classes and random experience. (Just a bit of background.)

I've been thinking about it, and I think this is a very interesting question.

What's the easiest language to learn?


Please remember to think of this in terms of a baby learning a first language, or in terms of teaching ANYONE the language, rather than just picking it up for the first time. If we look at it from personal experience (and which language we LIKE the most-- subjectively, not based on ease), it will not result in the real easiest language, just the easiest language to pick up in relation to a native language-- very easy to pick up Italian if you know Spanish.

A note for those who do not know:
Romance languages are those derived from Latin-- "Rom[e]-", not anything to do with romantic poetry/sound/etc.



Here's my analysis:

Result: Spanish.

Why?

First, the languages I know:

English--
what a mess. It's spoken all around the world, but it's terrible. It comes from some strange collision of old German and Latin (via French mostly), and acts like it. Pronunciation is especially a mess, and very hard to define. Vowels, unlike most languages, can take any number of sounds. Consonants also differ for strange reasons, though rules can be defined, but it would be a LOT of rules. It also has a strange mix of patterns from both background languages.
The up side to it is lack of conjugation (for the most part, except 3rd person singular, which does tend to confuse speakers of languages that totally lack conjugation anyway), and lack of declension (except in a few cases, like personal pronouns). There is also no masculine/feminine issue-- that's the biggest plus.
English also has the greatest number of words which adds to the difficult in remembering them all, but also helps with expression.

German-- It's ok, but I have been taking the class for over a month now and I am having a lot of trouble remembering which nouns are masculine/feminine because the patterns, though I've been told are present, are too complex to explain (and my teacher, who speaks it from experience, not from a systematic educational understanding) doesn't really know all of the rules.
The pronunciation is generally consistent, though tends to have variation in strange places, but mostly following patterns (eg, a G sounds like an english G, except at the end of a word, after I, where it sounds like "sh").
There are a lot of rules to remember, and a neuter case in addition to masc/fem.
It isn't the hardest, certainly, but not easy as easy to pick up from my Romance language experience.
Declensions add to the difficult as well (see Latin below for a more thorough explanation).
German also has a few quirks that are in English that make it a bit weird.
And there is the issue of compound words, making it a bit hard to adjust to.

Arabic--
Well, first, it's so completely different that it is very difficult/slow for me. However, this clearly isn't relevant in relation to learning a first language.
The writing seems confusing, and it sounds like, from my professor, it can be confusing at times even to Arabic speakers. The style is a [right to left] script with nearly all the letters connected; then dots and lines are added to differentiate single letters. The shape that resembles a cursive "i" in english actually has 4 meanings in arabic, based on these dots, for example.
In speaking, the sounds are very different from Western languages, and also, according to my professor, can be confusing to native speakers as well. There are about 6 sounds that are deep in the throat (related to K, H and G) that we don't use in English, and they, along with a few others, can be a bit ambiguous. However, with experience, this becomes clear, and I'm already getting used to hearing these sounds. A few, though, are very hard to distinguish, in general.
In grammar, though I know very little as of yet, it seems methodical, with a base as the center of words and various prefixes or suffixes determining the specific word, such as plurals or gender.
There is also a dual case, between "one" and "many", which adds another layer to learning it (but not hugely different as it is just one more page to the same book, not a new book all together, so to speak).
In conclusion, very different, and fairly complex. I can't really give a specific judgment, but I don't think it is necessarily the easiest, at least.

Latin--
Well, it's hard to even compare it because it's not used any more, but might as well look at it a bit.
Latin grammar is incredibly hard. In addition to masc/fem/neuter and plurals, as well as standard conjugation, cases (declensions) add a huge concept to the language.
Basically, every noun has 10 forms (plural/singular, 5 each) to have the parts of speech represented by "he" [nominative], "him" [accusative], "his" [genitive], "to him" [dative], "with him" [ablative], plus the vocative which directly addresses a noun, like "Oh, Jim...".
The word base is very small for Latin, though, so that makes it a bit easier.
It is also incredibly logical, but very complex.
Once you memorize all of the rules-- and there are a LOT-- then it all goes as you would expect, with few irregular conjugations, etc.
It's say it's complex and somewhat difficult, but also void from the discussion.

Italian--
Very similar to Spanish, but with a few more things that make it hard. Articles and some adjectives become merged with nouns in contractions and the articles themselves are harder, with 7 forms of just the definite article, based on the starting letter of the noun.
Conjugations are slightly more complex than Spanish, but not too difficult.
No declensions here, and just masc/fem (no neuter).
Pronunciation is generally easy, though several letters (G and C) have varied pronunciation based on the following letters (I or E changes it), and this is then canceled with an H, if needed, so that can be a few too many rules to remember at times.
I'm certainly picking this one up the easiest, knowing Spanish and English already.
Basically, it's very similar to Spanish, but a bit more difficult, from what I can tell.

Now, Spanish--
Spanish has a few difficulties-- conjugation, masc/fem and plurals.
Pretty basic use of that, though, and beyond that easy.
I'm certainly biased because I learned it first, but it's completely regular aside from a handful of exceptions, most of which follow a modified pattern (adding something to the root word, for example), not some random new pattern.
Without declensions, neuter gender and other issues, it's already up there, then the consistency helps.
Also, in speaking, the letters ALL are pronounced the exact same way every single time with only 4 or 5 exceptions which are all standard based on simple rules (Gi and Ge become Hi and He; ll becomes y; rr is rolled; e can be "ay" or "eh", depending on stress; etc.).
Though I'm not yet fluent, I can read anything with nearly flawless pronunciation (still working on accent) just based on the letters.
I'm confident that this is one of the easiest.


Ok, so, now, in general:

French--
Similar to Italian and Spanish, but the pronunciation is weird [lacking pronunciation on the endings of most words], and the grammar is a bit more complex than spanish (negatives, for example, like Italian using non).

Portuguese--
Close runner up to Spanish, I think, though the pronunciation has a few more rules, I believe.

Romanian--
Surprisingly, I found, with just slight experience, this to be fairly simple. It's a Romance language (didn't expect that at first), and didn't look too complex, but I didn't explore it enough to have a real opinion. From its eastern european influence, I must assume it's somewhat harder than Spanish.


Welsh, Dutch, Norwegian and Swedish, etc.:
Related to German, so they probably are just about the same in terms of difficulty.
Norwegian and Swedish don't seem that too hard, after seeing just a bit. They also weren't simple, though
I would consider looking into Swedish as possibly an easy language, but I can't comment yet.

Finnish:
I don't know it myself, but from what I have heard, it's a completely separate class of language and very complex in its grammar, with, for example, about 17 different articles.

[CONTINUED IN NEXT POST]

[Twey]

English and German have roughly the same level of grammatical complexity, in my experience. German's pronunciation is easier though. Welsh is the same, grammatically complex but phonetically simple.

Japanese has a fairly simple grammar that doesn't do anything horribly unexpected: there are only two irregular verbs. I suppose there are a lot of characters to learn, though.

Chinese has to be the hands-down winner for grammatical simplicity. Nothing conjugates at all, all modifications usually reserved for conjugations of verbs are accomplished with adverbs. Again, though, the characters are numerous (even more so than Japanese) and it has much more complex phonetics than Japanese.

Korean is a bit of a mix between the two, with Japanese-esque grammar but complex sounds (although they're somewhat different from Chinese sounds). It also has the advantage of not using ideographical characters in common writing, I suppose, but its phonetics are very complex and there are a lot of rules about how various jamo change their sounds when in certain positions relating to other jamo.

Welsh, Dutch, Norwegian and Swedish:
Related to German, so they probably are just about the same in terms of difficulty.

Dutch yes, Welsh, Norwegian and Swedish no. Those latter two are Scandinavian languages, I believe, and bear a passing resemblance to one another (as English and French, for example), and Welsh is a Celtic language. Only Dutch has anything to do with German.

[French] grammar is a bit more complex than spanish

Only at lower levels. When you learn a bit more of each you'll rapidly find that French prefers to use auxillary verbs rather than huge combined inflections like Spanish does (and the combinations of the inflections often bear no resemblence to the original inflections, as well), which greatly simplifies the grammar in the long run.

I am having a lot of trouble remembering which [German] nouns are masculine/feminine because the patterns

I suggest you give up on the patterns. I quote:

Male persons or animals, the seasons, months, and days are all masculine, as are nouns ending in -ant, -ast, -ich, -ig, -ismus, -ling, -or and -us. Female persons or animals, and numerals are all feminine, as are nouns ending in -a, -anz, -ei, -enz, -heit, -ie, -ik, -in, -keit, -schaft, -sion, -sis, -tät, -tion, -ung and -ur. Young persons or animals, metals, chemical elements, letters of the alphabet, hotels, restaurants, cinemas, continents, countries and provinces are all neuter, as are nouns that end in -chen, -icht, -il, -it, -lein, -ma, -ment, -tel, -tum, and -um. Nouns referring to things that end in -al, -an, -ar, -ät, -ent, -ett, -ier, -iv, -o and -on, as well as most words with the prefix ge- and most nouns ending in -nis and -sal are also neuter.

In other words, Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here. I'd just do it word-by-word if I were you -- it was easier for me anyway.

[djr33]

Hungarian, Turkish, etc:
Not sure what to comment on here. I have only heard a bit. I think they are sorta related to Russian and German, or something like that. I wouldn't expect them to be the easiest.

Russian:
Different alphabet, though may or may not be difficult in itself.
I have heard from those who speak or learn the language, though, that it is complex.

Middle Eastern Languages:
I don't know anything more about these than just what I learned from Arabic, so I'd assume that, overall, the general comments apply. I know that pronunciation differs (even by region in Arabic). One thing to consider, then, is that there are formal versions of these languages and also colloquial local dialects, so one would need to learn both to communicate properly, overall.
These include Hindi/Urdu, Farsi, Hebrew, etc.

Asian languages:
Chinese languages: Mandarin, Cantonese: Very different, but also hard because 1) the intonation is critical to understanding; 2) rather than individual symbols per sound [phonetic], it's representational with characters that mean concepts. There are around 500 characters, I think.
Japanese: Actually not that hard, from what I understand, with pretty basic grammar, and all of it can be written [officially] in a version of English characters based on about 50 pairs of letters that make up the sounds. However, there are 5 forms of writing- Traditional Kanji, Chinese characters, this English representation, some formal version and some other character set. That's a lot to remember.

Punjabi, Tagalog, Telugu, etc.:
Worth including in the list because they are spoken by many people, but I don't know enough to comment. If anything, similar to Arabic, etc., so refer to that for some basic understanding, perhaps.

Native/Tribal languages:
With the example of the Navajo language in use as code for WWII, it's clear that these have a lot of variation.
I have no idea how to go into any detail, but I think we can conclude that in some sense, many of these languages are not too valuable for two reasons: 1. some of these languages simply have no representation of parts of the modern world, like computers, for example. The word base in them is also generally much smaller due to less outside influence and expansion; 2. To effectively communicate, most of speakers of these languages know another as well, for an overall language in the region, where their specific dialect may be only used in that small village.



Anyway, something for discussion.

[djr33]

Thanks for the reply, Twey.
I added a bit to that, and a second post to finish, after you posted.

As for the corrections, thanks. I am going on what I've experienced, so please feel free to correct any of this.

I do think, though, that Swedish, etc., are similar to some extent to German because a friend of mine speaks Swedish and it sounded like it was somewhat easy for him to learn German. They aren't the same family, no, but they are somewhat similar overall in the grand picture. ...I think.

Your description of the Asian languages makes a lot of sense. I want to look into learning one (probably Japanese) soon.


I completely agree about the patterns in German, and that was my point.
Whereas in Spanish and Italian an A ending means feminine and O masculine, German is much much more complex, making a lot harder to learn, except with just repetition.

[boogyman]

you should become like the pope and be fluent in 101 languages :-O YIKES WOW thats alot to memorize

I also think that age is a factor here. It is scientific fact that children can absorb more information and data then a full adult, so if someone were to learn a new language, on average, it would be easier for them if they were younger.

[djr33]

Age is absolutely a factor, though I'm not sure it would change which languages are more difficult, but that could be something to look into.
I'd venture a guess that the more logical languages would be easier at an older age (looking at logic) [vs. other languages, not vs. learning earlier], and the languages with more memorization at an earlier age.

[Twey]

you should become like the pope and be fluent in 101 languages

I doubt anybody is fluent in 101 languages. I do know a person who claims to hold passable conversation in around thirty, but even he doesn't claim fluency in all of them.

I'd instinctively agree with your theory there, Daniel. It might be worth doing an experiment on if you have the time.

[djr33]

Well, that experiment is difficult, but a poll could answer the same question.
Just consider repetition at a young age, with the parents speaking the language. Seems easier than the baby learning rules. In fact, so few people really understand language in terms of rules anyway.
However, learning a new language, it is easy to understand why it works, and that's how textbooks teach.

As for your friend, he sounds fun
What languages? (Then again, long list)

Hmm... I now feel like looking up the pope's fluency.

[Twey]

What languages? (Then again, long list)

Long list indeed, and I can't remember it entirely. I do recall that a significant portion of it is composed of different variants of Arabic, however.

[djr33]

Ah, colloquial dialects? Makes sense.

http://www.boston.com/news/world/eur...for_next_pope/
Well, there we go. German, English, Latin and Romance languages, it seems.