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There's a variety of factors that make language easier or harder to learn. Broadly speaking, you can divide them into writing, grammar, vocabulary, and phonolog

There's a variety of factors that make language easier or harder to learn. Broadly speaking, you can divide them into writing, grammar, vocabulary, and phonology. So there's languages that are hard to read and write. People love to talk about how poor English is when it comes to correspondence between written letters and sounds, but honestly, it's not close to the head of the pact. There are some Southeast Asian languages today where the gap between written word and speech is very much akin to writing Latin but speaking French. Japanese kanji is a moderately different level of burden, as every kanji has multiple different pronunciations, and it's at the point where--even for native speakers--it's not particularly expected that you can read someone's name and know how to pronounce it. Of course, for those of who use Latin scripts, any language that also uses Latin script is going to be easier to learn than one that doesn't. Phonology can be a challenging aspect, because several languages don't have the same phonotactics as English does (or insert whatever native language here). There are multiple Slavic or Chinese sounds that my ears would process as "sh" and yet would be considered different consonants. Some phonemes are legitimately more difficult to pronounce--pronouncing click consonants literally scars your vocal tract. Some languages demand that you pay attention to tones, creakiness, breathiness, or aspiration, none of which is phonologically relevant to English or most Indo-European language. Grammar and vocabulary are, as you imply, pretty mild concerns at the end of the day. They're not difficult enough to impede language acquisition, but there is actually some evidence to suggest that a language that becomes a major second language in the process goes through stronger grammatical simplification than their closest linguistic relatives--consider how much simpler English, Swahili, Malay, or Persian are compared to "normal" languages in their respective families.

dheera 5y ago
So yes, I'm aware of analysis like this. I think my point is, even "polluting" your brain with analysis like this of a language will make it actually hard. For example > Japanese kanji is a moderately different level of burden If you didn't read this, you wouldn't actually go into it thinking of it as a burden, and it would turn out to not actually be a burden. The fact that "even" native speakers from time to time have to ask how to pronounce something is just a fact of life, and not a difficulty of the language, but observers have come to think of it as a burden for some reason. But now that you've read that it is a burden, it will be a burden to you. I have pretty firm conviction that "hard" is very much influenced within some range by how hard you a priori think it is, and that logic is not the way to approach this. Rather, being blissfully unaware of any logical or linguistic experts' arguments around how hard others think something is will actually help you learn the language much faster and more efficiently. > going to be easier to learn than one that doesn't. > There are multiple Slavic or Chinese sounds > Some phonemes are legitimately more difficult to pronounce > literally scars your vocal tract > demand that you pay attention to Without any intent to personally attack you, because a LOT of people have logical arguments such as the above, it's quite literally even hearing such logical descriptions of languages which may make something extremely hard. We aren't fully logical creatures, the languages we invented aren't designed to be logically analyzed.
- pezezin 5y ago
  I live in Japan, and every single Japanese person that I know, and a few Chinese coworkers too, have told me how kanji/hanzi is so ridiculously difficult to learn. I mean, native Chinese and Japanese speakers require at least 12 years of education to learn how to read and write their languages at a basic level. They are the most difficult writing systems in the world by far, saying otherwise is totally disingenious.
  - dheera 5y ago
    Difficult is subjective. > at least 12 years of education to learn how to read and write their languages at a basic level The idea of a "basic level" is fundamentally flawed. Can a 10-year-old child in Japan function to a similar level in their society as a 10-year-old child in England? If asked to water the plants can they do so? Can they catch the correct school bus? Can they read a children's book for their age level? Yes? If so language has served its purpose, and there isn't really a fundamental difference in difficulty level. Yeah, native speakers will tell you their language is hard, but they too are influenced by the media that all says it's hard. You might be right that it takes 12 years for the average kid to learn a particular set of Kanji but that's a very arbitrary standard applied to a language that does not demand you know all of those Kanji to be functional in society. There is context, there is the simple act of asking, there is so much more to it. Likewise, English speakers don't demand that they know the entire Oxford English Dictionary to be considered literate. I mean, yeah, if you asked the 10-year-old to "irrigate the agricultural enclosure" instead of "water the plants" you might stump them, sure. If we had those kind of expectations, English would be considered "hard" -- look at that thick book of the OED! It's thicker than the Kangxi dictionary and Xinhua dictionary combined, and therefore it must be harder! (My point is -- logic isn't the way to analyze this.)
    - jcranmer 5y ago
      > Difficult is subjective. You're not responding to the evidence presented in this thread that there is evidence that some aspects of language learning is objectively harder. Specifically: * There's pretty strong evidence (comparison between literacy rates of children with different native languages) that some languages have writing systems that are harder to learn than others. (I feel obliged to point out that writing is the least important part of language acquisition--after all, writing dates to only ~6,000 years ago, whereas spoken language dates at least 100,000 years ago, possibly earlier. Of course, for most major modern languages, a language learner is equally expected to read/write in it as they are to listen/speak in it) * There is some evidence, albeit more controversial, that there is a critical age range in which it is far easier to acquire pronunciation of phonemes than learning subsequently. * Again, there is evidence that some phonemes are physically easier to pronounce than others, discovered in part by the order in which toddlers acquire various speech sounds. If you've got a toddler learning to speak, listen to the sounds he/she can pronounce and also the ones that aren't properly pronounced. I wouldn't attempt to chart out a full objective scale on which phoneme is harder than the other one, but I would be moderately confident in asserting that an Arabic ayin is objectively more difficult to pronounce than an `m' sound. * I also mentioned evidence that some grammatical features may be more complicated: the developments of lingua francas, or additionally creoles, does suggest that languages used heavily as second language acquisition tend to drop several grammatical features. (Now I should also addend that just because something is objectively more difficult doesn't necessarily mean that is specifically "hard." It is clearly objectively more difficult to lift a box 2 meters than to do so 1 meter... but that doesn't mean that it's hard to do so.)

dheera 5y ago

So yes, I'm aware of analysis like this. I think my point is, even "polluting" your brain with analysis like this of a language will make it actually hard. For example > Japanese kanji is a moderately different level of burden If you didn't read this, you wouldn't actually go into it thinking of it as a burden, and it would turn out to not actually be a burden. The fact that "even" native speakers from time to time have to ask how to pronounce something is just a fact of life, and not a difficulty of the language, but observers have come to think of it as a burden for some reason. But now that you've read that it is a burden, it will be a burden to you. I have pretty firm conviction that "hard" is very much influenced within some range by how hard you a priori think it is, and that logic is not the way to approach this. Rather, being blissfully unaware of any logical or linguistic experts' arguments around how hard others think something is will actually help you learn the language much faster and more efficiently. > going to be easier to learn than one that doesn't. > There are multiple Slavic or Chinese sounds > Some phonemes are legitimately more difficult to pronounce > literally scars your vocal tract > demand that you pay attention to Without any intent to personally attack you, because a LOT of people have logical arguments such as the above, it's quite literally even hearing such logical descriptions of languages which may make something extremely hard. We aren't fully logical creatures, the languages we invented aren't designed to be logically analyzed.

pezezin 5y ago
I live in Japan, and every single Japanese person that I know, and a few Chinese coworkers too, have told me how kanji/hanzi is so ridiculously difficult to learn. I mean, native Chinese and Japanese speakers require at least 12 years of education to learn how to read and write their languages at a basic level. They are the most difficult writing systems in the world by far, saying otherwise is totally disingenious.
- dheera 5y ago
  Difficult is subjective. > at least 12 years of education to learn how to read and write their languages at a basic level The idea of a "basic level" is fundamentally flawed. Can a 10-year-old child in Japan function to a similar level in their society as a 10-year-old child in England? If asked to water the plants can they do so? Can they catch the correct school bus? Can they read a children's book for their age level? Yes? If so language has served its purpose, and there isn't really a fundamental difference in difficulty level. Yeah, native speakers will tell you their language is hard, but they too are influenced by the media that all says it's hard. You might be right that it takes 12 years for the average kid to learn a particular set of Kanji but that's a very arbitrary standard applied to a language that does not demand you know all of those Kanji to be functional in society. There is context, there is the simple act of asking, there is so much more to it. Likewise, English speakers don't demand that they know the entire Oxford English Dictionary to be considered literate. I mean, yeah, if you asked the 10-year-old to "irrigate the agricultural enclosure" instead of "water the plants" you might stump them, sure. If we had those kind of expectations, English would be considered "hard" -- look at that thick book of the OED! It's thicker than the Kangxi dictionary and Xinhua dictionary combined, and therefore it must be harder! (My point is -- logic isn't the way to analyze this.)
  - jcranmer 5y ago
    > Difficult is subjective. You're not responding to the evidence presented in this thread that there is evidence that some aspects of language learning is objectively harder. Specifically: * There's pretty strong evidence (comparison between literacy rates of children with different native languages) that some languages have writing systems that are harder to learn than others. (I feel obliged to point out that writing is the least important part of language acquisition--after all, writing dates to only ~6,000 years ago, whereas spoken language dates at least 100,000 years ago, possibly earlier. Of course, for most major modern languages, a language learner is equally expected to read/write in it as they are to listen/speak in it) * There is some evidence, albeit more controversial, that there is a critical age range in which it is far easier to acquire pronunciation of phonemes than learning subsequently. * Again, there is evidence that some phonemes are physically easier to pronounce than others, discovered in part by the order in which toddlers acquire various speech sounds. If you've got a toddler learning to speak, listen to the sounds he/she can pronounce and also the ones that aren't properly pronounced. I wouldn't attempt to chart out a full objective scale on which phoneme is harder than the other one, but I would be moderately confident in asserting that an Arabic ayin is objectively more difficult to pronounce than an `m' sound. * I also mentioned evidence that some grammatical features may be more complicated: the developments of lingua francas, or additionally creoles, does suggest that languages used heavily as second language acquisition tend to drop several grammatical features. (Now I should also addend that just because something is objectively more difficult doesn't necessarily mean that is specifically "hard." It is clearly objectively more difficult to lift a box 2 meters than to do so 1 meter... but that doesn't mean that it's hard to do so.)