Thread: Seriousness Learning a new language
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Old 06-30-2009, 02:43 AM   #106
HarryT
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Quote:
Originally Posted by nekokami View Post
Interesting -- most linguists I know seem of the general opinion that no human language is intrinsically more difficult than any other, though going from specific first languages to specific second (or later) languages can vary in difficulty.
It certainly appears that no language is inherently more "difficult" to learn for children - eg studies have shown that all 6 year olds have pretty much the same level of "fluency" in their own language, no matter what it is.

However, it is unquestionably true, I think, that certain languages are very difficult to learn for adult learners if they differ radically from your own language in the way they "work". Most Europeans find "tonal" languages such as, say, Mandarin, difficult to learn, because their own languages are not tone-based. On the other hand, English speakers generally find Italian pretty easy to learn, because it is highly regular grammatically, entirely phonetic in its pronunciation, and has very few "traps" to fool the learner.

Gaelic, as I said, has the reputation of being very difficult to learn for an English speaker.
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