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Key to Learning Difficult Languages
#1

Key to Learning Difficult Languages

It's very simple actually.

Learn an easier language first.

Not only does it give you an upper hand at understanding grammatical differences and nuances at a deeper level, it allows you to broaden your understanding of certain phrases and words.

In my own personal experience, learning Swedish was quite difficult because of the abundance of nuances. It also was my first language. But here's the trap I was getting into; only comparing it to English. After I finished most of my studies in Swedish (conversational, not very far from fluent), I switched to French because I was absolutely smitten with French girls from my exchange.

It came so easily, because I grasped it in a different way. With multiple languages under your belt, you're able to understand more and more because you understand how to conceptualize words and phrases (along with grammar) in ways that you couldn't have in the past.

Another quick suggestion is to not do the same linguistics work in one place, as it will only get you confused. One would be astonished at how much an environment can impact your language preferences. I was once studying French via duolingo at my Swedish location and I put in "Jag tycker om ca" of "J'aime ca" and it was my last heart [Image: confused.gif].

But going back to my point, the difficulty level of learning a language well is reduced exponentially after learning another, perhaps easier one. Now I'm thinking that French was probably much easier than Swedish but hell, who knows. Good luck out there gents, just my two cents.
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#2

Key to Learning Difficult Languages

I agree 100%.

Learning French at a young age helped me with my German - and in turn - getting drilled in German grammar helped me understand my English grammar better than before.

Now - going onto Russian - German is helping me a lot - especially with grammatical concepts and the 6 cases!

Wald
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#3

Key to Learning Difficult Languages

It's also true that learning a language through another foreign language will give you a better grasp of that language. For example, when I moved to Germany from the U.S. as a kid I had forgotten the German I'd spoken as a kid, but having to learn Latin (unfortunately, I don't remember a scrap of Latin or French OR Spanish) in school made me rely much more heavily on German. Also, my Japanese was only conversational upon coming to Japan (still is), but since practically no one at my university speaks English, I was very reliant on the thousand or so Chinese exchange students to translate and explain everything to me in Mandarin, which again, made me rely more than ever on Mandarin to get around in the first few months, thereby improving it. Don't understand a particular Japanese word of phrase? The only translation or explanation you're going to get is in Chinese. Tough luck. Better get used to it.

Also the more different a new language is from the languages you previously learned, the more similar those languages will seem in comparisson. For example, if the only language you know is English, German, Spanish or French may seem quite alien, but learn Chinese or Japanese, or any non-Indo-European language, and English, German, and many other European languages will all seem practically the same to an extent in terms of grammar and vocabulary. For example,
- they all use definite and indefinite articles (the/a[n]; der/die/das/ein[e/r]; el/la/un[a] - le/la/un[e]),
- they all mark verbs for person to some degree (i.e. you have to say "I am/you are", "Ich bin, du bist", etc.; you can't just say "I be", "you be", etc. -- not languages are like this),
- they all randomly assign gender to every noun, even if that noun is completely inanimate and can't possibly have an actual gender (even English used to do this),
- they all make a clear distinction between singular and plural (unlike Chinese, for example)
- they all use prepositions as opposed of postpositions (i.e. they say *in* the kitchen, *from* the airport instead of kitchen-*in* and airport-*from* as is the case with Altaic languages)
- They all attach verbs to auxiliary verbs like "can"/"want"/"should" instead of changing the inflection of the verb (e.g. Japanese: 食べる taberu "to eat" -> 食べたい tabetai "to want to eat", 読むyomu "to read" --> 読めるyomeru "can read").
- they all have a shit load of words either derived directly or borrowed from Latin and Greek, making their vocabulary easier to learn,
- They all put relative clauses at the end of a noun and a relative pronoun (who/which) as opposed to Japanese, where relative clauses are placed before a noun with no relative pronoun,
- they all negate sentences with a separate word (not/no/don't; nicht/kein; no, ne...pas; non) instead of negating through an inflection or ending,
- of course, they all use some variant of the Roman Alphabet.
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#4

Key to Learning Difficult Languages

Quote: (11-26-2013 11:50 AM)Aer Wrote:  

and it was my last heart [Image: confused.gif].


Heh. I get dyslexia when doing Spanish work.

"I want to do this."
"Yo creo hacer este."

English was my second language. I can recall how strange it was going from a verb-subject-object language to the SVO of English. After learning its inconsistent pronunciation and grammar rules (e.g. chaos, chafe, knife) Spanish is a cakewalk.

"The whole point of being alpha, is doing what the fuck you want.
That's why you see real life alphas without chicks. He's doing him.

Real alphas don't tend to have game. They don't tend to care about the emotional lives of the people around them."

-WIA
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#5

Key to Learning Difficult Languages

The key to learning any language is comprehensible input.
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#6

Key to Learning Difficult Languages

Quote: (11-26-2013 01:20 PM)Sargon of Akkad Wrote:  

Also the more different a new language is from the languages you previously learned, the more similar those languages will seem in comparisson. For example, if the only language you know is English, German, Spanish or French may seem quite alien, but learn Chinese or Japanese, or any non-Indo-European language, and English, German, and many other European languages will all seem practically the same to an extent in terms of grammar and vocabulary.

For a more comprehensive list of this:

Quote:Quote:

Standard Average European as a Sprachbund[edit]

According to Martin Haspelmath (2001), the SAE languages form a Sprachbund characterized by the following features, sometimes called "euroversals" by analogy with linguistic universals:[3]
1.definite and indefinite articles (e.g. English the vs. a);
2.postnominal relative clauses with inflected, resumptive relative pronouns (e.g. English who vs. whose);
3.a periphrastic perfect formed with 'have' plus a passive participle (e.g. English I have said);
4.a preponderance of generalizing predicates to encode experiencers, i.e. experiencers appear as surface subjects in nominative case, e.g. English I like music instead of Music pleases me);
5.a passive construction formed with a passive participle plus an intransitive copula-like verb (e.g. English I am known);
6.a prominence of anticausative verbs in inchoative-causative pairs (e.g. in the pair The snow melts vs. The flame melts the ice, the intransitive verb is derived from the transitive);
7.dative external possessors (e.g. German Die Mutter wusch dem Kind die Haare = The mother washed the child's hair (lit. The mother washed the hair to the child, Portuguese Ela lavou-lhe o cabelo = She washed his hair);
8.verbal negation with a negative indefinite (e.g. English Nobody listened);
9.particle comparatives in comparisons of inequality (e.g. English bigger than an elephant);
10.equative constructions based on adverbial-relative clause structures (e.g. French grand comme un élephant);
11.subject person affixes as strict agreement markers, i.e. the verb is inflected for person and number of the subject, but subject pronouns may not be dropped even when this would be unambiguous (only in some languages, such as German, French and Spoken Finnish, e.g. mä oon, "I am" and sä oot, "you are"[4][5]); this feature is called null subject – pro-drop is sometimes mentioned in this context, but is technically a term for a more general phenomenon;
12.differentiation between intensifiers and reflexive pronouns (e.g. German intensifier selbst vs. reflexive sich).

Besides these features, which are uncommon outside Europe and thus useful for defining the SAE area, Haspelmath (2001) lists further features characteristic of European languages (but also found elsewhere):
1.verb-initial order in yes/no questions;
2.comparative inflection of adjectives (e.g. English bigger);
3.conjunction A, B and C;
4.syncretism of comitative and instrumental cases (e.g. English with my friends vs. with a knife);
5.suppletivism in second vs. two;
6.no distinction between alienable (e.g. legal property) and inalienable (e.g. body part) possession;
7.no distinction between inclusive and exclusive first-person plural pronouns ("we and you" vs."we and not you");
8.no productive usage of reduplication;
9.topic and focus expressed by intonation and word order;
10.word order subject–verb–object;
11.only one gerund, preference for finite subordinate clauses;
12.specific "neither-nor" construction;
13.phrasal adverbs (e.g. English already, still, not yet);
14.tendency towards replacement of past tense by the perfect.

There is also a broad agreement in the following parameters (not listed in Haspelmath 2001):
absence of phonemic opposition velar/uvular;
phonemic voicing oppositions (/p/ vs. /b/ etc.);
initial consonant clusters of the type "stop+sonorant" allowed;
only pulmonic consonants;
at least three degrees of vowel height (minimum inventory i e a o u);
lack of lateral fricatives and affricates;
predominantly suffixing morphology;
moderately synthetic fusional morphological typology;
nominative–accusative morphosyntactic alignment.
[/quote]
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#7

Key to Learning Difficult Languages

I have learned both German and Mandarin, in addition to the two languages I acquired as a child. In my opinion, there is no such thing as a "difficult" or "easy" language. It's a very simple matter that comes down to a few things.

1. Learn grammar. You can't learn a language by memorizing, "Where is the bathroom." You need to know the parts of speech; what tenses are and why you need them; what noun cases are, etc. Basic things.

2. Use flashcards for vocabulary.

3. Go to a place where the language is spoken. Sorry, but unless you're a highly gifted polyglot, it doesn't matter how many home study programs you buy. Language is a living thing and you can't learn it in a vacuum.

That's all there is to it. The more languages you learn, the easier it becomes to learn new ones. They're all going to have verbs and nouns and the equivalent of, "How much for one hour, miss?"

I should add that some people are just naturally deficient in pronouncing sounds alien to their native tongue. The best method I have there is repetition. Constant, incessant, dogheaded repetition. It's a waste to study German if you sound like a silly tourist the moment you open your mouth. It's understood you may never sound 100% convincing, but blatant, careless errors are unforgivable. I once heard this American girl in Germany who was a student there and obviously spoke German well... yet she pronounced everything with the retroflex English 'r.' My skin crawls just thinking of her all these years later.

AB ANTIQUO, AB AETERNO
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#8

Key to Learning Difficult Languages

Quote: (11-29-2013 12:09 AM)Fathom Wrote:  

I have learned both German and Mandarin, in addition to the two languages I acquired as a child. In my opinion, there is no such thing as a "difficult" or "easy" language. It's a very simple matter that comes down to a few things.

It is true that much of the so-called difficulty of a language is subjective, and often words like "difficult", "exotic" or "strange" are just substitutes for "whatever my dumb ass is not familiar with". However, there are elements of a language and/or script that can be counted as objectively more difficult or at least more complex than others.
These can include grammar complexity: for example, an inflected language with 12 cases and 3 grammatical numbers (let's say instead of just singular and plural, they also add a dual number) will objectively require more time to learn and more potential mistakes to be made than a language with an isolating grammar, no inflections, and no strict distinction between singular/plural. Irregularity can also make a language "objectively" more difficult. If each verb conjunction you learn, for example, has hundreds of irregular verbs where the rules you've just spent hours cramming into your head suddenly don't apply, then you're going to need a lot more time to get things right than you will with a language with a much more regular structure, or, again, a language with no inflections at all.

Similar can be said with regard to a script, where generally, the more characters there are to learn the more time it'll take you. Generally, I think the following types of scripts can be listed in the following order in terms of most difficult/complex to the easiest/simplest types of script.

Semantic/logographic: these are scripts where each character usually represents a whole word or part of a word rather than a sound. Compound words not withstanding, this typically means you'll often have to learn a new character with each new word (again, not counting compound words e.g. 交 jiao1 "to intersect", 通 tong1 "to pass", 交通 jiao1tong1 "traffic/communication"); often semantic scripts started as abstractions of crude image representations. Often they're also semanto-phonetic, meaning some characters will let you off easy by giving little hints as to their pronunciation e.g. Chinese 馬 "ma3" (horse), 罵 "ma4" (to scold, to curse at smn.), 媽 "ma1" ("mommy", "mama"), each with the "馬" ma/horse component, or 土 "tu3" (earth) and 吐 tu4 ("to vomit", again with the earth/tu character to the right), providing the pronunciation. Most of the time, however, you just have to learn the damn things (Japanese is even more of a dick, as it randomly changes the pronunciation of each Chinese character like a dozen times). These scripts usually take many years to gain any sort of proficiency or literacy in. As far as I know, the only semantic script used today is Chinese script (or "Kanji" and "Hanja" as the Japanese and Koreans call it, respectively). Cuneiform and Egyptian hierglyphs are probably older examples.

Syllabaries: scripts where every character represents a single syllable (no shit, you'd never guess that from the name, would you). These types of scripts usually emerge later from the semantic types mentioned above. Obviously they're much easier, as learning 50 to a couple hundred syllables you need to write a language is a hell of a lot easier than spending years upon years memorising thousands upon thousands of symbols. Well known examples of these are the two Japanese scripts hiragana/ひらがな and katakana/カタカナ (still used alongside a Japanese variant of Chinese characters -- so much for simplification, then). As far as I know, the Inuit language uses one of these as well, as did Ancient Persian, to name a few. Problem with these is that you've often got to find a way of getting around words with a lot of consonants mashed up together. How do you write a word like "Herbst" or "twelfths" using a script where syllables only end with "a/ka/ta/...", "i/ki/chi/...", "u/ku/tsu/...", "e/ke/te/..." and "o/ko/to/..."?

Alphabets By far the easiest and simplest. Any script where each character (in theory) represents one single sound. Instead of 50 to 200 syllables, you generally only need a couple dozen letters. Some scripts are more phonetic than others, with some spelling their words completely different from the way they pronounce them, while others write each word more or less exactly how it is pronounced (most scripts don't write every word exactly the way they pronounce them, though). Some of the simpler scripts, like Korean Hangeul/한글 (about 24 letters) and Chinese Zhuyin Fuhao ㄓㄨˋ ㄧㄣ ㄈㄨˊ ㄏㄠˋ (37 letters, not to be confused with actual Chinese characters, used mainly on Taiwanese keyboards to type Chinese characters) are so simple you can learn them by yourself in less than a week or so; with others, like English-Roman letters (whose spelling makes no goddamn sense, whatsoever), you may have to spend years learning the individual spelling combination for each word (knight, night, now, know, no, though, cough, through, debt, comb, tomb, bomb...sorry, but what the fuck?).

Some types of scripts overlap here or use all three of these types in one. Point is, it's generally safe to say the more characters/rules you have to learn in a script/language the more time consuming and more "objectively" difficult it will be. The only real way around it is to be exposed to it and use it as much as possible. Sitting at a table and looking at flashcards is fine, but eventually you'll have to use it to get any good at it.
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