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What makes a foreign language difficult to learn?

de robinast, 5 iulie 2009

Contribuții/Mesaje: 32

Limbă: English

ceigered (Arată profil) 17 iulie 2009, 18:51:21

skeptikulo:The greatest difficult to me is how to find material to study another language. So I think what makes a language easy to learn or not is its accessibility.

For example, for years I've been looking for a dictionary Finnish-Portuguese / Portuguese-Finnish. They simply don't exist. It is terrible study Finnish thru the eyes of a Finnish Grammar written in English and no printed dictionary (I can use only those English-Finnish / Finnish-English from Internet, they sucks).
Too true okulumo.gif
Resources for Finnish are truly lacking.

ceigered (Arată profil) 17 iulie 2009, 18:54:48

super-griek:Some things that can be very annoying:
1) An alien writing system, or complicated spelling
2) Difficult pronounciation
3) Frequent complicated/irregular changes in the morphemes (as described for Finnish and Estonian) or in general: complex basic morphology

These things can really discourage language learners (or at least, they tend to discourage me). If I am not able to build a simple sentence after my first studying session, I feel like I can't do anything at all.

I found Esperanto an encouraging language, and Spanish and Italian, too. My attitude while learning Latin was complex: Latin wasn't very "encouraging", but I didn't lose my patience, I always felt like I was really making progress (and apparently I did).

(and I agree with skeptikulo: finding studying material can be quite hard)
I agree. My problem is though, that with languages like Finnish, the troublesome part is pushing through that first bit of getting a feel for the language. It makes the initiation very tense and tiring. However, with spanish and good old Italian, the problem lies more in how complex the grammar will get later on malgajo.gif
German to me looks hard, but comparing it to romance grammar is like comparing toki pona to volapük as far as I'm concerned.

Plus, I suck at 'tr' sounds in languages with forward rolling 'r's, and german has a leniency with the pronunciation with the R that italian and spanish don't have rido.gif

jsewell94 (Arată profil) 22 iulie 2009, 06:15:50

Well for me personally it's idioms and irregulars. I like following patterns and when I stumble upon an irregular it really..irks me lol.

Esperanto...*sigh* What isn't easy about Esperanto? There are NO irregulars, there are only 6 main conjugations to memorize, there is flexibility when constructing sentences...In heaven (assuming one exists), I bet everyone will speak Esperanto because it's perfect lol.

Pharoah (Arată profil) 22 iulie 2009, 17:06:31

Well, I would have to agree with what I read somewhere, that the major difficulties in learning a new language depend on whether you have to make distinctions you're not used to making. For example, when learning Chinese, I have no problem with not conjugating verbs. But I do have trouble with the tones and measure words, because English doesn't really have either of these things.

The biggest, most time-consuming task in learning any language is learning the vocabulary. However, with each new word, you have another tool to express yourself right away, so learning vocab is instantly gratifying.

EDIT:

As for what isn't (as) easy about esperanto:

- The accusative
- Adjective noun agreement, although this is trivial
- Weird pronunciations (Scias, knabo, etc) that make me think of Czech
- Memorizing the correlatives. It would be nice to have just one question word.

Of course, I'm just a beginner, so maybe these things will seem easier later on.

jsewell94 (Arată profil) 22 iulie 2009, 18:16:44

Ah yes Correlatives are a little annoying. I personally am just trying to learn the words as I go. Like if I come across a question word I'm not familiar with, I just look it up in the dictionary and see what it means. I have found this is easier than memorizing each part. It almost feels like a puzzle that way. That's just me though.

darkweasel (Arată profil) 22 iulie 2009, 20:00:14

The correlatives are actually easy! Well, compared to other languages!
Try to remember these Esperanto words for "always, never, everybody, nobody":
ĉiam, neniam, ĉiu, neniu
Now try to remember the same words in German:
immer, nie, jeder, niemand

I bet that you found the Esperanto words easier to memorize because having the "every" words with ĉi-, the negative words with neni-, the time words with -am - all that's easier than remembering a series of differently looking irregular words.

BTW, what's so difficult about pronouncing "knabo"? Maybe it's just that this word comes from German, but somehow I can't see anything difficult about it ...

Pharoah (Arată profil) 22 iulie 2009, 20:30:52

I wouldn't say correlatives or the word knabo are particularly difficult, but it would be easier to just have a word for what, and a word for this. Then, you could make how with what way, when with what time, etc... You're right, though, that I prefer regularity to the relative craziness of some natural langauges (my own included) ridulo.gif.

Knabo just seems strange to me because it begins with kn. English words don't do that (kinfe and knight are pronounced najf and najt). But, even English has some sounds that are difficult for many people to pronounce. I just think it would be nice to not have so many weird consonant clusters.

robinast (Arată profil) 22 iulie 2009, 21:06:03

Pharoah: But, even English has some sounds that are difficult for many people to pronounce. I just think it would be nice to not have so many weird consonant clusters.
Oh yes, I remember very well, how strange and difficult was the English pronunciation for me at first as my native language -Estonian- lacks a good amount of English phonemes (f.e "sh" in "fish", "th" in the "with" and "fifth", "j" in "joy" and "journal", "ch" in "chase", and schwa; k, p and t are never aspirated in Estonian - and this is far from being a complete list of differences in phonetics). In the other hand, we have 9 different vocals and Estonians can easily pronounce words like "hauaööõud" (so that every individual vocal can be clearly heard and identified in the flow) or "transtsendentne" (which, actually, is a bit difficult indeed for some people).

EDIT: I think the most difficult phoneme combination for me has been "младщий сержант" ("mladŝtŝij serĵant") in the Soviet Army. It took a couple of months from me before I finally was able to pronounce the phrase quickly and properly!

Amike,
Harri.

Pharoah (Arată profil) 23 iulie 2009, 00:48:39

When I was learning Czech, I had some serious trouble with their words. For example, čtvrtek (their word for Thursday) is pronounced ĉtvrtek (notice how similar Czech spelling is to Esperanto). Also, they have:
čtyři - "ĉtyrĵi"
k, v (yes, just single consonant words)
potřebovat - "potrĵebovat"

Some of these sounds are fun to say, but it took me ages to learn to pronounce ř in a way I was happy with.

russ (Arată profil) 23 iulie 2009, 04:59:54

Pharoah:The accusative
You later mention that you learned Czech, and you're complaining about the accusative in Esperanto?! ridulo.gif

Slavic languages have FAR harder declination, with multiple cases (7 in Polish, and I assume Czech is similar); many diverse endings depending on gender, case, root, etc; changes in the roots of the words, not just the end; inconsistent complex rules about which case to use; etc etc...

Esperanto's accusative "-n" is trivial in comparison...
I wouldn't say correlatives or the word knabo are particularly difficult, but it would be easier to just have a word for what, and a word for this. Then, you could make how with what way, when with what time, etc...
You effectively have that in Esperanto. Think of the correlatives as a pseudoprefix + a pseudosuffix.

"what" = "ki-"
"this/that" = "ti-"
"every" = "ĉi-"
"none" = "neni-"
"some" = "i-"

"way" = "-el"
"time" = "-am"
"reason" = "-al"
"general thing indicated" = "-o"
"one of a set indicated" = "-u"
"amount" = "om"

etc. Combine them at will, e.g.:

"how" = "kiel"
"when" = "kiam"
"this/that way" = "tiel"
"this/that time, then" = "tiam"
"at no time, never" = "neniam"
"some amount" = "iom"

etc.
Knabo just seems strange to me because it begins with kn. English words don't do that (kinfe and knight are pronounced najf and najt). But, even English has some sounds that are difficult for many people to pronounce. I just think it would be nice to not have so many weird consonant clusters.
"even English"... you say that as if you think English is mostly easy to pronounce for non-native speakers. ridulo.gif In fact English is one of the harder languages to pronounce, in terms of having sounds that don't occur in most other languages. E.g. the English "r", and "th" (voiced and unvoiced), and "u" as in "russ". Depending on dialect, English has about 20 distinct vowel sounds, far more than many languages. And pronouncing English is made harder and more confusing by the unusually terrible lack of correspondence between the sound of a word and its spelling in English.

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