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@MattSpeller said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
@thwr I enjoy German, should spend some time to learn it (more than swearing). Good solid chunky language and you can combine words together in delightful way.
Reminds me of physics professors naming things. Blackhole -> hole that is black.
Yepp, but quite hard. It's said to be one of the hardest languages at all, only topped by Chinese, Japanese and other Asian and some African languages.
Try to read a bit about Genitiv and Dativ. We got a learning boardgame here, titled "Der Genitiv ist dem Dativ sein Tod". PITA even for some native speakers.
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@MattSpeller BTW, that's called "Zusammengesetzte Hauptwörter". Example: Office chair (Office=Büro, Chair=Stuhl) -> Bürostuhl. But as with everything, there are exceptions. Blackhole is "schwarzes Loch" here.
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@thwr said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
Yepp, but quite hard. It's said to be one of the hardest languages at all, only topped by Chinese, Japanese and other Asian and some African languages.
US State Department still ranks German in the "easy" language category for English speakers. Only the Nordic and Romantic languages are easier. It's got a special category for "not the easiest, but almost". The Nordics and Romantics are Cat 1 (easiest) and German is alone in Cat 2 (nearly as easy.) Then come the Slavic and other languages. Japanese is listed as the hardest.
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@scottalanmiller Uhm, in this case, I will tell all our foreign students that it is quite easy from now on
It's easier to learn for an Englisch speaking person, true. That's because both languages are so-called Germanic languages. But for others, this is quite hard and way harder than to learn English. Just for example my trainee is from Macedonia. He's trying hard, really, but... -
@thwr said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
@scottalanmiller Uhm, in this case, I will tell all our foreign students that it is quite easy from now on
It's easier to learn for an Englisch speaking person, true. That's because both languages are so-called Germanic languages. But for others, this is quite hard and way harder than to learn English. Just for example my trainee is from Macedonia. He's trying hard, really, but...Yes, Macedonian is a slavic language (I was there a few weeks ago to see their revolution.) So they find German hard in the same way that both of us find Macedonian hard.
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@scottalanmiller Agree
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@scottalanmiller said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
@thwr said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
Yepp, but quite hard. It's said to be one of the hardest languages at all, only topped by Chinese, Japanese and other Asian and some African languages.
US State Department still ranks German in the "easy" language category for English speakers. Only the Nordic and Romantic languages are easier. It's got a special category for "not the easiest, but almost". The Nordics and Romantics are Cat 1 (easiest) and German is alone in Cat 2 (nearly as easy.) Then come the Slavic and other languages. Japanese is listed as the hardest.
Where is Chinese on that list?
Japanese is a very phonetic language. This makes it very easy to pickup the sounds. This also makes it very easy to learn to pronounce things once you learn the Hiragana (and the sound for each one). Getting into sentence structure sucks balls though. I have yet to make it to this stage and i hear Japanese daily.
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@JaredBusch said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
@scottalanmiller said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
@thwr said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
Yepp, but quite hard. It's said to be one of the hardest languages at all, only topped by Chinese, Japanese and other Asian and some African languages.
US State Department still ranks German in the "easy" language category for English speakers. Only the Nordic and Romantic languages are easier. It's got a special category for "not the easiest, but almost". The Nordics and Romantics are Cat 1 (easiest) and German is alone in Cat 2 (nearly as easy.) Then come the Slavic and other languages. Japanese is listed as the hardest.
Where is Chinese on that list?
Japanese is a very phonetic language. This makes it very easy to pickup the sounds. This also makes it very easy to learn to pronounce things once you learn the Hiragana (and the sound for each one). Getting into sentence structure sucks balls though. I have yet to make it to this stage and i hear Japanese daily.
If I remember correctly, Chinese and Korean and Vietnamese were all one step above Japanese. Japanese was alone as the hardest language and German was alone as the "one step harder than the easiest group" but most other "levels" were full of similar languages.
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Rumour was that if you broke up the first group, that Norwegian came out as the easiest language for English speakers to learn. But the margin between it and, say, Spanish was trivial so all in one group of "super easy."
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Microsoft calling outside of the time window... wonderfully there goes my everything...
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@scottalanmiller said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
@JaredBusch said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
@scottalanmiller said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
@thwr said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
Yepp, but quite hard. It's said to be one of the hardest languages at all, only topped by Chinese, Japanese and other Asian and some African languages.
US State Department still ranks German in the "easy" language category for English speakers. Only the Nordic and Romantic languages are easier. It's got a special category for "not the easiest, but almost". The Nordics and Romantics are Cat 1 (easiest) and German is alone in Cat 2 (nearly as easy.) Then come the Slavic and other languages. Japanese is listed as the hardest.
Where is Chinese on that list?
Japanese is a very phonetic language. This makes it very easy to pickup the sounds. This also makes it very easy to learn to pronounce things once you learn the Hiragana (and the sound for each one). Getting into sentence structure sucks balls though. I have yet to make it to this stage and i hear Japanese daily.
If I remember correctly, Chinese and Korean and Vietnamese were all one step above Japanese. Japanese was alone as the hardest language and German was alone as the "one step harder than the easiest group" but most other "levels" were full of similar languages.
It seems strange to me that Japanese would be the hardest. I didn't study it a great deal, but I found it much easier than Chinese.
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@Kelly said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
@scottalanmiller said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
@JaredBusch said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
@scottalanmiller said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
@thwr said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
Yepp, but quite hard. It's said to be one of the hardest languages at all, only topped by Chinese, Japanese and other Asian and some African languages.
US State Department still ranks German in the "easy" language category for English speakers. Only the Nordic and Romantic languages are easier. It's got a special category for "not the easiest, but almost". The Nordics and Romantics are Cat 1 (easiest) and German is alone in Cat 2 (nearly as easy.) Then come the Slavic and other languages. Japanese is listed as the hardest.
Where is Chinese on that list?
Japanese is a very phonetic language. This makes it very easy to pickup the sounds. This also makes it very easy to learn to pronounce things once you learn the Hiragana (and the sound for each one). Getting into sentence structure sucks balls though. I have yet to make it to this stage and i hear Japanese daily.
If I remember correctly, Chinese and Korean and Vietnamese were all one step above Japanese. Japanese was alone as the hardest language and German was alone as the "one step harder than the easiest group" but most other "levels" were full of similar languages.
It seems strange to me that Japanese would be the hardest. I didn't study it a great deal, but I found it much easier than Chinese.
Should have done simplified chinese
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yeah that was a joke
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@MattSpeller said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
@Kelly said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
@scottalanmiller said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
@JaredBusch said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
@scottalanmiller said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
@thwr said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
Yepp, but quite hard. It's said to be one of the hardest languages at all, only topped by Chinese, Japanese and other Asian and some African languages.
US State Department still ranks German in the "easy" language category for English speakers. Only the Nordic and Romantic languages are easier. It's got a special category for "not the easiest, but almost". The Nordics and Romantics are Cat 1 (easiest) and German is alone in Cat 2 (nearly as easy.) Then come the Slavic and other languages. Japanese is listed as the hardest.
Where is Chinese on that list?
Japanese is a very phonetic language. This makes it very easy to pickup the sounds. This also makes it very easy to learn to pronounce things once you learn the Hiragana (and the sound for each one). Getting into sentence structure sucks balls though. I have yet to make it to this stage and i hear Japanese daily.
If I remember correctly, Chinese and Korean and Vietnamese were all one step above Japanese. Japanese was alone as the hardest language and German was alone as the "one step harder than the easiest group" but most other "levels" were full of similar languages.
It seems strange to me that Japanese would be the hardest. I didn't study it a great deal, but I found it much easier than Chinese.
Should have done simplified chinese
.
.
.
.
yeah that was a joke
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I thought Icelandic was the hardest language to learn... ah well, it's good to learn another language regardless of how hard it is. Give the grey matter something else to do
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@nadnerB said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
I thought Icelandic was the hardest language to learn... ah well, it's good to learn another language regardless of how hard it is. Give the grey matter something else to do
Icelandic is supposed to be nearly the easiest and is the closest to old English.
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I should have said "to master" and not "to learn" earlier. Learning the basics of a language seems to be quite easy in most cases. Mastering on the other hand is a whole different story.
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@thwr said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
I should have said "to master" and not "to learn" earlier. Learning the basics of a language seems to be quite easy in most cases. Mastering on the other hand is a whole different story.
Few things compare to English, then. The rules are complex and deep and the vocabulary is enormous.
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@scottalanmiller said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
@thwr said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
I should have said "to master" and not "to learn" earlier. Learning the basics of a language seems to be quite easy in most cases. Mastering on the other hand is a whole different story.
Few things compare to English, then. The rules are complex and deep and the vocabulary is enormous.
Every ESL speaker I know tells me that English is stupid damned hard as a second language
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@scottalanmiller said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
@thwr said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
I should have said "to master" and not "to learn" earlier. Learning the basics of a language seems to be quite easy in most cases. Mastering on the other hand is a whole different story.
Few things compare to English, then. The rules are complex and deep and the vocabulary is enormous.
And that was my point about the German language. It's easy enough to learn the (very) basics, but we got language constructs the English language doesn't have, like the accusative case.
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@JaredBusch said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
@scottalanmiller said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
@thwr said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
I should have said "to master" and not "to learn" earlier. Learning the basics of a language seems to be quite easy in most cases. Mastering on the other hand is a whole different story.
Few things compare to English, then. The rules are complex and deep and the vocabulary is enormous.
Every ESL speaker I know tells me that English is stupid damned hard as a second language
Definitely. The only big benefits that it has to ESL speakers is the huge volume and easy access to television, movies, YouTube, forums and more in English. Pretty much anyone can easily find English language material to watch, listen to and read almost anywhere. Finding Romanian television, even in Romania, is hard, for example.
