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The comment by cool_dude85 was a bit impolite but I agree that this is a low quality article. E.g., almost any linguist will tell you that you can't objectivel

The comment by cool_dude85 was a bit impolite but I agree that this is a low quality article. E.g., almost any linguist will tell you that you can't objectively measure a language's difficulty, because it always depends on what's the native language of the person asking the question. Also, of course, comparing the number of sounds to the number of English alphabets makes absolutely zero sense.

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sinkasapa 2y ago
Right, these are exactly the types of claims we try to debunk in Linguistics 101. It is a horribly misleading article. If one wants to see if something about a language is difficult for human beings, I suppose one can look at the point in development that children master the concept. But even that can be misleading, since there are language internal factors that can lead children to pick up a particular aspect of grammar faster in one language than another. In English, noun-verb agreement comprehension is relatively late, but the same concept is comprehended relatively early in French, though according to one article, not necessarily in Spanish [1]. One can't simply look at a language in isolation and say it seems hard to me, so it must be universally difficult. Navajo may seem relatively easy to pick up if one already speaks an Athabaskan language. 1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0024384113001277 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00243...
philwelch 2y ago
> E.g., almost any linguist will tell you that you can't objectively measure a language's difficulty, because it always depends on what's the native language of the person asking the question. Eh, I’m not sure. There are probably ways to infer whether or not e.g. Mandarin Chinese is harder for Chinese children to learn than English is for American children to learn. In fact I’ve seen a fairly convincing argument that this is the case!

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sinkasapa 2y ago

Right, these are exactly the types of claims we try to debunk in Linguistics 101. It is a horribly misleading article. If one wants to see if something about a language is difficult for human beings, I suppose one can look at the point in development that children master the concept. But even that can be misleading, since there are language internal factors that can lead children to pick up a particular aspect of grammar faster in one language than another. In English, noun-verb agreement comprehension is relatively late, but the same concept is comprehended relatively early in French, though according to one article, not necessarily in Spanish [1]. One can't simply look at a language in isolation and say it seems hard to me, so it must be universally difficult. Navajo may seem relatively easy to pick up if one already speaks an Athabaskan language. 1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0024384113001277 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00243...

philwelch 2y ago

> E.g., almost any linguist will tell you that you can't objectively measure a language's difficulty, because it always depends on what's the native language of the person asking the question. Eh, I’m not sure. There are probably ways to infer whether or not e.g. Mandarin Chinese is harder for Chinese children to learn than English is for American children to learn. In fact I’ve seen a fairly convincing argument that this is the case!