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It's interesting, because through my readings in linguistics, I got the sense that no language is "objectively" harder than any other, that everything is relati
by causi 4y ago
It's interesting, because through my readings in linguistics, I got the sense that no language is "objectively" harder than any other, that everything is relative to the other languages you know.
Not really. A language's difficulty is often proportional to how much contact it has with outsiders, i.e., how many people are learning to speak it as adults instead of as children. Isolated groups can develop truly esoteric and labyrinthine languages. When a language is being learned a lot by adults the hard parts tend to get polished off.
- citrin_ru 4y agoSimplification of languages learned by adults happened mostly before written text become widespread (with the invention of the printing press). Written languages resist to change more than spoken only.
- causi 4y agoAnd? How is that relevant to whether or not some languages are harder to learn than others?
- mannerheim 4y agoSpoken languages have still changed after widespread written languages. Mandarin is substantially different from the Classical Chinese used in writing until the 20th century. Modern spoken Finnish (puhekieli) is substantially different from written Finnish (kirjakieli).
- chewxy 4y agoH and L languages. The divergence between H and L languages (often called disglossia) is a continual process ever since the invention of writing.