Seriously thoughtful Learning a new language

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by nekokami

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.

[Daithi]

In Gaeilge (the Irish language) the words are difficult to pronounce. They use a Latin alphabet but the letters are not always pronounced the same as they are in English. They have a lot of dipthongs and tripthongs (like aei in Gaeilge). They use the letter 'h' to indicate the preceding consonant has a different sound than normal. Many of their vowels have accent marks (this makes pronunciation easier but it looks strange). Different dialects have different pronunciations. This all results in something spelled like -- Tiochfaidh -- sounding like -- chucky.

Grammar is fairly different as well. Nouns have different genders and declensions which need to be taken into account when creating a plural or possessive form of the noun -- it's not as simple as adding an 's' or apostrophe 's' to the end of a word. However, the worst part is that the beginnings of words also change. So the word for boat can be bád, bhád, or mbád depending on the situation and all of them are pronounced differently. It's not just nouns either. For example, things like adjectives need to agree with the noun so they too have different rules depending on the situation.

I enjoyed trying to learn Irish, but I think it probably would have been a lot more fun if I had lived in Ireland instead of the Rhode Island. I'd love to try the immersion thing.

Side note: I grew up in California, which has a lot of Spanish speakers, so now I can say "kiss my arse" in three languages.

[astra]

Originally Posted by Daithi

This all results in something spelled like -- Tiochfaidh -- sounding like -- chucky.

Ha-ha! English speaking people now know what I feel about English....
When something as simple as daughter sounds as complicated as dô'tər.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Daithi

Side note: I grew up in California, which has a lot of Spanish speakers, so now I can say "kiss my arse" in three languages.

The Irish version of which are one of my all-time favourite groups .

[nekokami]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

For example in Mandarin first tone "ma" means mother, second tone "ma" means hemp, third tone "ma" is a word that is placed at the end of a sentence to indicate a question, and fourth tone "ma" means to insult (among other additional meanings).

Slight correction: third tone ma (mǎ) means "horse" (among other things). The "ma" used to form a question is "fifth tone".

Originally Posted by HansTWN

Japanese isn't that difficult, I also studied it for 6 months. The main problem is that Japanese people are too polite and that is reflected in the language and the way people express themselves.

Complications to learning Japanese (which I studied formally for 2 years in college and on-and-off informally for 20 years since):

1 - It is not closely related to any other human language. (There are some structural similarities to Finnish, of all things, but those are assumed to be coincidental.) This affects vocabulary as well as grammar.

2 - It has three separate writing systems (katakana, hirigana, and kanji), and literacy requires using all three correctly, often within the same document. Only kanji bears any resemblance to any other writing system (Chinese), but is not identical to either traditional nor simplified characters. Each kanji may have several possible phonetic readings, depending on whether it is representing part of a native Japanese word or a borrowed Chinese word.

3 - Speech registers are driven by social politeness rules. For example, women use a different term when referring to themselves ("watashi") than men, who are more likely to use "boku"-- except in formal situations. Relative status of two speakers dictates which grammatical forms need to be used by each. Pronouns are usually left out completely. The Japanese culture is highly contextual and a lot of things are left unsaid.

4 - Grammar is in Topic-Comment form, which is not used in most Indo-European languages, rather than some variant of "Subject-Verb-Object." Verb tenses do not correspond to those used in Indo-European languages. For example, there is a "completed" tense, but not really a "past" tense.

5 - There is a tone system, but it is not like the tone system in Chinese, or even Bantu languages, acting more like a stress marker rather than a phonetic component.

Originally Posted by HarryT

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

I misunderstood you. I thought you were saying that Gaelic is considered very difficult for all non-speakers to learn. I completely agree that one's prior experience with languages will affect how easily one will be able to learn a new language, based on how similar or different it is to the ones one already knows.

Do you know if speakers of the Brythonic Celtic languages (Cornish, Breton, and Welsh) have an easier time learning Irish Gaelic (or other Goidelic languages) than English speakers (who do not also speak one of those languages)?

[HarryT]

I learned Welsh in school, so if I ever get around to having a go at Gaelic, I'll let you know .

[GraceKrispy]

Originally Posted by ficbot

Verencat, interesting what you said about knowing others who took the same classes as you and did not come out fluent ..

My husband took the same class as me to start learning Hawaiian. It was a very laid back class, granted, but we alternated sessions (so one could stay home with the kids) and so we basically each got about 2x/month in this class. We had a book to study with as well. I came out being able to have junvenile conversations with people (mostly about placement of objects and characteristics of objects and other simple concepts ) and he was able to say and respond to "How are you" and "What is your name" with equally horrid pronunciation. He then took the beginning class again the next year (about 3x/month) and came out... with pretty much the same information. Flash forward 4 years of living with increasingly fluent wife and children... and he is still at the same level. But, he said, interestingly enough, that going to those classes helped bring back his knowledge of Navajo (which he grew up speaking, in a minimal sort of way, to communicate with non-English speaking family members). He is one that is very smart with things like technology and the language of computers, and has a lot of trouble with learning new languages, or even communicating in English at times.

Originally Posted by HarryT

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.

Being quite proficient in English , at first I found learning Hawaiian to be very disconcerting. Unlike most other languages I had learned, Hawaiian's structure was totally different. Many sentences didn't even have anything like a "verb." They don't have a classification that fits the English idea of "noun." I had to stop my analytical mind from trying to pigeonhole the types of Hawaiian words into English concepts.

The phonics are very easy, however, so the reading/writing wasn't difficult for the most part, it was the sentence structure that was tricky. Newer speakers (I.E. the Kindergarten students in the Immersion school) tend to use English structure and put Hawaiian words in it. Those who grew up speaking Pidgin often have a bit of a head start, since the structure is much more similar to Hawaiian structure. From my very brief peek into the Japanese language, it seemed like Hawaiian had more in common with Japanese than English. Not sure if that totally holds true or not.

I would love to "relearn" the languages I had learned before (and seem to have mostly forgotten), and learn new languages, but I find it difficult. I'm not sure if it's because my first "second" language exposure was really as a high school student (German), or if I'm a bilingual (only) kind of chick. I do tend to pick up accents and languages fairly quickly, so I'm not sure what my hangup with trying to add a third language would be, unless it's that lack of opportunity to be immersed. I truly stand in awe of people who can work in three of more languages on a daily basis, with little or no hesitation.

[HansTWN]

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Neokami: Slight correction: third tone ma (mǎ) means "horse" (among other things). The "ma" used to form a question is "fifth tone".


Complications to learning Japanese (which I studied formally for 2 years in college and on-and-off informally for 20 years since):

1 - It is not closely related to any other human language. (There are some structural similarities to Finnish, of all things, but those are assumed to be coincidental.) This affects vocabulary as well as grammar.

2 - It has three separate writing systems (katakana, hirigana, and kanji), and literacy requires using all three correctly, often within the same document. Only kanji bears any resemblance to any other writing system (Chinese), but is not identical to either traditional nor simplified characters. Each kanji may have several possible phonetic readings, depending on whether it is representing part of a native Japanese word or a borrowed Chinese word.

3 - Speech registers are driven by social politeness rules. For example, women use a different term when referring to themselves ("watashi") than men, who are more likely to use "boku"-- except in formal situations. Relative status of two speakers dictates which grammatical forms need to be used by each. Pronouns are usually left out completely. The Japanese culture is highly contextual and a lot of things are left unsaid.

5 - There is a tone system, but it is not like the tone system in Chinese, or even Bantu languages, acting more like a stress marker rather than a phonetic component."

----

Yes, third tone ma also mean horse 馬 (depending on which Kanji is used). But the the question indicator 嗎 ma is also third tone. There is no real "fifth" tone in Mandarin -- though some people say there is a toneless sound, the so called "ping sheng", which only exists for a few sounds. An example would be "de" 的, the Chinese equivalent of the Japanese "no", indicating possession.

Hiragana and Katakana are alphabets of (if I remember correctly, around 50 characters each). So that is no problem to learn and you could, theoretically, correspond with a Japanese on the basis of these two, only. Of course, each Kanji can have a number of different pronounciations and meanings. Same in Chinese, almost every character has numerous meanings, and some have several pronounciations. Like 行 which can be "xing" and "hang".

The social politeness rules were exactly what I was referring to.

Every language has some sort of tones (for stress). Even English.Teak and tick would are really just tonal variations of the same syllable, but teak would be 2nd or 3rd tone and tick would be 4th tone. That alone doesn't make it a tonal language.

I agree with you that it would be difficult to achieve perfection in Japanese, but conversational and writing ability is not that much of a problem. That was my point.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

1 - It is not closely related to any other human language. (There are some structural similarities to Finnish, of all things, but those are assumed to be coincidental.) This affects vocabulary as well as grammar.

It is generally accepted (according to my copy of the "Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language") that Japanese is closely related to Korean, with Korean believed to be the older language.

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Japanese is closely related to Korean (Korean is believed to be the older language).

That is a theory many Koreans put forth. Japanese claim it is not true. Of course, nationalistic passions ride high between these two nations! I have no knowledge of Korean, I only know it is not related to Chinese, even though they have picked up a lot of Chinese words and Kanji. And Finnish and Hungarian are Asian in origin. So some minor similarities with Japanese, as commented on by Nekokami, would not be unheard off; but probably are just coincidental as mentioned.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

That is a theory many Koreans put forth.

It's also stated as the "generally accepted" theory by the "Cambridge Encylopedia of Language", which I regard as a reliable source of information.

[nekokami]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

Yes, third tone ma also mean horse 馬 (depending on which Kanji is used). But the the question indicator 嗎 ma is also third tone. There is no real "fifth" tone in Mandarin -- though some people say there is a toneless sound, the so called "ping sheng", which only exists for a few sounds. An example would be "de" 的, the Chinese equivalent of the Japanese "no", indicating possession.

Apparently the neutral tone is less common in the Taiwanese dialect of Mandarin (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standar...n#Neutral_tone for more info). The mainland speakers I know do, in fact, use it for the question symbol at the end of sentences. Note that many Chinese dictionaries (including the one at http://mandarintools.com/ ) explicitly list the question symbol as neutral tone.

Originally Posted by HansTWN

Hiragana and Katakana are alphabets of (if I remember correctly, around 50 characters each). So that is no problem to learn and you could, theoretically, correspond with a Japanese on the basis of these two, only.

Hiragana and katakana are syllabaries, not alphabets, which often take alphabet users some getting used to. But while one could write a message using only the syllabaries, it would be rare (outside of texts for very young children) to read such a message written by a native speaker. One needs reading fluency of about 3000 characters to handle a newspaper.

Originally Posted by HansTWN

Of course, each Kanji can have a number of different pronounciations and meanings. Same in Chinese, almost every character has numerous meanings, and some have several pronounciations. Like 行 which can be "xing" and "hang".

Different meanings (especially when being defined in another language) are common for words in all languages. Different pronunciations for the same written word are more unusual. Yes, Chinese has some, but Japanese has more-- nearly every character has multiple pronunciations for the same meaning depending on whether the "On" or "Kun" reading is being used.

Originally Posted by HansTWN

Every language has some sort of tones (for stress). Even English.Teak and tick would are really just tonal variations of the same syllable, but teak would be 2nd or 3rd tone and tick would be 4th tone. That alone doesn't make it a tonal language.

My point was not that Japanese is a tonal language in the sense that Mandarin or Zulu are tonal languages, but that rather than using loudness to indicate stress (as is common in many Indo-European languages), Japanese uses tone for this purpose. At least, according to the analysis of linguist Rochell Lieber, whom I studied with as an undergraduate.

[Daithi]

What's the difference between a syllabary and an alphabet?

[nekokami]

In an alphabet, each symbol stands for one sound, either a vowel or a consonant. In a syllabary, each symbol stands for a whole syllable, usually a consonant-vowel pair. So, in Japanese, there is no separate letter for "M." There are 5 symbols, ma, mi, mu, me, mo. (in Hiragana,　まみむめも。) Korean also uses a syllabary, Hangul, but the Korean syllabary was designed to be remarkably consistent and logical, based on phonetic sub-symbols known as Jamo.

[Lo Zeno]

Apart from my native language (Italian), I speak somewhat fluently English and Ancient Latin (learnt in High School, it's still commonly taught here), and lately I've started learning (and speaking too) Esperanto and Ido. Probably because I am an engineer, Esperanto and Ido are very easy for me, and almost natural.