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What is the most difficult language?

sheepyman

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I would pick Chinese or Russian, if this was a poll of some kind. Actually, Japanese is very strict and easy, so it's really not all that hard. Chinese has a lot to memorize, and Russian is very inconsistent.
 

Mugquomp

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English.

It's generally agreed upon that English has the largest standard vocabulary of any major language. Also, it has inconsistent rules of grammar due to the multiple languages which have influenced it over the years (Celtic, Germanic, Romance), and the relation between spelling and pronunciation is also very arbitrary due to the same factors. (ex: "ghoti" can be pronounced like "fish".)

I'd say that English is the most difficult language. Especially if one is coming from a language that does not use Latin letters.
 

GoldShadow

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Mugquomp is right, I'd say. For a native speaker, English is fairly easy. For anybody else to learn, it's terrible. There are so many exceptions and inconsistencies, that memorizing them all can be quite difficult.
 

Matt

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English 207 (English Grammar, required by English/Communication majors) is one of the most dreaded courses at my University. English sucks. No doubt about it.

But having taken two years of Italian grammar, English grammar is so easy to me in comparison. They're fundamentally the same, but English bastardizes Latin even more. However, I've been working with the language long enough to recognize the rules; I've just needed a name for those rules.

For whatever reason, pretty much all public schools in the nation only cover grammar (and do a very poor job of it) around fourth and fifth grade and then move right on into essay writing. What they should focus on, for as many years as possible, are phonetics and morphemes and framing and tense and aspect and marked language and IPA and other linguistical things never covered until college--and only if you're an English major. For something so important to everyday life as speaking and working with a lanugage, it's sad that it gets such a poor treatment.

People dread it and despise it because it's not taught properly. Public schools really need some reforming, don't you think?
 

Bahamut

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English, definitely, is the most difficult. It's like there's no real set of rules to it. There are about four million exceptions to every rule.

Example: "I before E, except after C", right? Well, guess what: WEIRD doesn't have a C in it.

Also, consider all of the following different-sounding words:

bough
through
rough
cough
ought
light
ghost

Every one of those uses different combinations of sounds with 'gh'. There aren't any set rules to it; it's just memorization.

You want to know why there're no spelling bees in Spanish? Because every word sounds like it's spelled. If you say 'sicologia,' it's spelled 'sicologia.' In English, what sounds like 'sikahlogee' is really 'psychology.' It's frustrating even to native speakers. English is ********.

I'd have to agree with Chinese and Russian, though. Chinese's alphabet is massive, and I hear Russian has weird rules as well.
 

Scav

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1. The bandage was wound around the wound.
2. The farm was used to produce produce.
3. The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4. We must polish the Polish furniture.
5. He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6. The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7. Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
8. A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
9. When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10. I did not object to the object.
11. The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12. There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
13. They were too close to the door to close it.
14. The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15. A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16. To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17. The wind was too strong to wind the sail
18. After a number of injections my jaw got number.
19. Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
20. I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
21. How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple.

English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France.

Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat.

Quicksand works slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. Why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham?

If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth beeth?
One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? You can make amends but not one amend.

If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it? Is it an odd, or an end?

If teachers taught, why don't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital?
Ship by truck and send cargo by ship?
Have noses that run and feet that smell?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.

The human race is not a race at all.
When the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.

Why doesn't “Buick” rhyme with “quick”?



We’ll begin with box, and the plural is boxes;
But the plural of ox should be oxen, not oxes.
Then one fowl is goose, but two are called geese,
Yet the plural of moose should never be meese.
You may find a lone mouse or a whole lot of mice,
But the plural of house is houses, not hice.
If the plural of man is always called men,
Why shouldn’t the plural of pan be called pen?
The cow in the plural may be cows or kine,
But the plural of vow is vows, not vine.
And I speak of a foot, and you show me your feet,
But I give a boot -- would a pair be called beet?
If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth,
Why shouldn’t the plural of booth be called beeth?
Then one may be that, and three may be those,
Yet the plural of hat would never be hose.
We speak of a brother, and also of brethren,
But though we say mother, we never say methren.
The masculine pronouns are he, his and him,
But imagine the feminine she, shis, and shim!
So our English, I think you will all agree,
Is the trickiest language you ever did see.


When the English tongue we speak
Why is break not rhymed with freak?
We say sew but likewise few;
And the maker of a verse
Cannot cap his horse with worse?
Beard sounds not the same as heard;
Cord is different from word.
Cow is cow, but low is low;
Shoe is never rhymed with foe.
Think of hose and dose and lose;
And of goose and yet of choose.
Think of tomb and comb and bomb,
Doll and roll and home and some,
And since pay is rhymed with say,
Why not paid with said, I pray?
We have blood and food and good,
Mould is not rhymed with could,
Wherefore done but gone and lone.
Is there any reason known?
So in short it seems to me
Sounds and letters disagree.
 

commonyoshi

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English. Just because the stupid teachers are so strict about it. I'm also curious as to wether other countries study literature like us stupid Americans. Or at least in the same degree. Ten page essay on a twelve line poem? Carp.
 

Lefticle

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The hardest one to learn as a second language? Well, it depends what language you know before hand. Someone who speaks only cantonese will have a harder time learning english than someone who speaks only german.
 

gnosis

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English is pretty annoying, especially here in Meridian, ID. There's great inconsistencies in teaching grammar through elementary to high school here. One learns what a subject, a verb, other basic stuff is in elementary, never really hears much of anything about grammar through middle, then one gets to high school and is expected to know and be comfortable with a plethora of grammar terms that a teacher had yet to utter. *shrug* Maybe the fault of the teachers, but still. It was aggravating.
 

dr.luigi

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You're all nuts. The African tribal language with the clicks (!) must take the cake on that.
 

Flamestar666

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i would have to go with english.
englishing being my second language, i would think it's alot harder then spanish(my first).
why? because too many words are the same... and t sound like you are chewing gum most of the time.

I LIKED IT

to many end sounding words.
 

Matt

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Bahamut, your mastery of the English language is astounding. I can find no faults in your writing whatsoever.
 

Bahamut

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Thanks, Matt. You're so nice, but you shouldn't lie. In truth, my grammatical abilities are not flawless. I bow to your grammatical greatness, oh Holy One. Please, accept Bahamutess as a token of my reverence for you.
 

agentli

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I'd have to say so far, spanish and latin are PREEEETy easy compared when I learned english. But that's only beacuse i know english already. It depends. Asian languages and romance languages are hard to learn if you come from a different backround. English because of all the rule excpetions. Chinese because of all the different meanings for the same sound and accents and character pairings. I'd say if you were surrounded by Africans, it's all the same as if you were surrounded by english speaksers. It's just as easy to learn one and just as hard. It all depends on your backround.
 

Azukki

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English.

The grammer (so many rules, wrongs, and rights)

The vocabulary (It's ample, booming, broad, bulky, capacious, colossal, comprehensive, considerable, copious, doozer, enormous, excessive, exorbitant, extensive, extravagant, full, generous, giant, gigantic, goodly, grand, grandiose, great, gross, hefty, huge, immeasurable, immense, jumbo, king-size, massive, monumental, mountainous, mungo, plentiful, populous, sizable, spacious, stupendous, substantial, vast, voluminous, whopping... YOU GET MY POINT, IT'S FRIGGEN BIG)

Just those two reasons make it the hardest language; and there are certainly other reasons too, but these alone I'd imagine would be enough to make it the hardest.
 

Damax

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French has much more rules than English and also has genders. Many who try to learn it never get it right. they always end up using "la" for a male and "le" for a female while it is completly wrong.

French has more letters (try saying my location), verb tense than english. English isn't the hardest language to learn. everybody can manage it, while most people can't even manage french which I think is pretty simple.

IMO Japanese and Chinese are the hardest cause the sounds they do seems all alike to me.

Russian isn't so bad you can easily manage to sing a Rammstein song.. while I doubt you could do the same for *** or Chin
 

sheepyman

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Damax: French is a mutant form of Spanish, and it's easy. The same is not true for English. Chinese is mainly memorization, and Russian is inconsistent. Their difficulty depends on what you have trouble with, although it is likely that neither will be easy.
 

Damax

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french is easy french is easy I swear that no one of you can master it. You can't comment something you didn't even try to learn correctly. French's writing rules > English's rules. English isn't hard stop saying like it is. I learned english at school and till now I cannot remember being serious while "learning" english. Unlike maths or frenchs classe

pigé tronche de mouton? XD

oh yeah german... I was thinking about russia and I wrote this my bad. thats what you get for doing multiple things at a time
 

Zefyrinus

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I don't think English is the hardest one. I mean, I've learned it (or what do you think about my writing? :ohwell: ).

Chinese seems to be pretty hard, there's not just the chinese characters one have to learn, all the tones and accents seem to be hard. I can't hear any difference at all between different accents.

I've studied Japanese, it wasn't so hard. The grammars are quite simple, although the writing is quite complicated.

Finnish might be quite hard. There are so much grammars, and the word suffixes may look different depending on what letters the word you attach them to include.
 

McFox

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I took Spanish for four and a half years. The only reason I can't speak it is because I never memorized the vocabulary longer than I needed it for a specific test. I can primitively communicate ideas in Spanish, but I couldn't have a conversation.

I'd love to learn Japanese, although there's not really an outlet for that here in southern Louisiana. There isn't much of what you would call a "Japanese community," and thus, it's not offered at schools here (or at least not my school).
 

Mic_128

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Bahamut said:
Example: "I before E, except after C", right? Well, guess what: WEIRD doesn't have a C in it.
That's not English, that's American-English. Anywhere else it's speld Wierd.
 

McFox

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Sheik doesn't have a C either. And I'm pretty sure she's still Sheik everywhere else (when spelled in English, anyway).
 

TelpeFion

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I've heard a saying that says that Italian is the most beautiful language, and Finnish is 2nd, and that Chinese is the hardest language and Finnish is 2nd. This is sort of true in my opinion.

French should be harder than English. I've studied both, and French pronunciation is more complicated than English (although there may not be as many exceptions). Also genders and verb forms that English doesn't have make French harder.

Finnish is obviously hard to learn if you speak an Indo-European language as a 1st language, since there are very few things that you can recognize.
 

Varuna

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I have heard that English is the hardest to learn but Gaelic is the hardest to learn to speak.
 

Flamestar666

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over at our highschools, they teach the big 3
Spanish, french, and italian.

why not like... american signlanguage!?
it really pisses me off, that at the end of the year, everyone is speaking a new language
 

bornfidelity.com

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english is hard. but if you live in countries where theres no overdub on tv shows you pick up english soooo easily because you hear and read english every day.
dutch is very hard as well, because it has more irregularities than rules, and well, no-one can pronounce it. For some things in dutch there even are NO rules, you just have to know. that annoys the crap out of foreigners.
 

falcoX

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Flamestar666 said:
over at our highschools, they teach the big 3
Spanish, french, and italian.

why not like... american signlanguage!?
it really pisses me off, that at the end of the year, everyone is speaking a new language
really? in my school, noone knows any of the language when the year is done. Well okay, maybe back in 7th and 8th grade we got a kick out of saying Tu as stupide, but now, noone even knows what that means!

Its liek Mcfox said, people just learn the language to pass the tests. Then boom, its all thrown out the window.
 

bornfidelity.com

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Yep. Like I even had two years of Old Greek, and I recall nothing but one sentence that means 'Heracles is a slave'. Altho I did pass tests on authentic Old Greek passages so apparently I must've knows stuff once...
 

Flamestar666

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falcoX said:
really? in my school, noone knows any of the language when the year is done. Well okay, maybe back in 7th and 8th grade we got a kick out of saying Tu as stupide, but now, noone even knows what that means!

Its liek Mcfox said, people just learn the language to pass the tests. Then boom, its all thrown out the window.
or used to get foreign hookers.
 

Matt

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Bahamut said:
Thanks, Matt. You're so nice, but you shouldn't lie. In truth, my grammatical abilities are not flawless. I bow to your grammatical greatness, oh Holy One. Please, accept Bahamutess as a token of my reverence for you.
Well, okay, if you insist. =D
 
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