Hi there, Steve Kaufmann here today.
And today I want to talk about what is the hardest language to learn.
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Uh, what's the hardest language to learn?
First of all, before I start, you may notice there's some gaps in my library.
I've been going through culling some of the books that I no
longer want to keep around.
So I've donated three boxes of books to a local thrift store.
Anyway, that's why it looks a bit messy back there.
Uh, the hardest language to learn, you know, I think that's a very
difficult question because there are so many factors that enter into that.
Um, you know, what do you want to do with the language?
Uh, do you want to pass a test?
Uh, do you want to just enjoy the language?
Do you want to enjoy movies, books in the language?
Do you want to just be able to communicate in the language.
And different languages are, you know, they have different degrees of difficulty
depending on what you want to achieve.
But I would say that the biggest factor in determining how difficult the
language is for you is how motivated you are to learn that language.
If you find your motivation flagging, if you find that you don't like the
language, that's going to make that language very difficult to learn.
If on the other hand, you love the language you want to...
learn the language,
you either you have a friend or a loved one or a relative, or you enjoy aspects
of their culture and you're very motivated that language will be easier to learn
because any objective difficulties only make the language more interesting.
So you'll be, you know, pushing yourself to overcome these difficulties.
So the number one consideration in my mind is, you know, your
relationship to the language.
Second thing is how easy is it to find content of interest?
Content that's comprehensible maybe, but potentially even if it's not yet
comprehensible, if it's attractive to you, and this is very subjective.
So here again, the, some people are attracted by say anime for Japanese,
which doesn't appeal to me at all.
Uh, it can be anything.
I happen to be attracted to history.
So, uh, and, and right now I'm very interested in the sort of central Asia,
uh, Iran and, you know, Turkish, Arabic, even, uh, just finished reading a book
about, uh Genghis Khan and the Mongols and the amazing impact they had on history,
both in a negative and a positive way.
Yeah.
So those kinds of things that, that, um, you know, make it a, you know, in terms
of something you can sink your teeth into: literature, history, music, whatever.
That's got to be there.
Uh, where you can't find that, then it's more difficult.
And this can depend, this can vary from, you know, time to time, you
may be trying to learn a language and not find anything of interest.
And then later on, because you meet a friend or because you discover a movie
or something, all of a sudden that interest, then, you know, you're, you're
fired up again to learn the language.
And that's why it's so useful now that in addition to whatever, you
know, beginner content you use.
You know, Assimil or Teach Yourself or mini-stories at LingQ, uh, that,
that then you move on to things that you can find on the internet and
which you can bring in to LingQ.
For example, whether it be off, uh, you know, from YouTube or, or, or, uh,
eBooks, which I have often used, or, uh, you know, a Netflix, uh, you have
to, you know, make it, you know, make yourself, put yourself in a position
where you can access things that might really, you know, turn your crank.
And there's the expression in French...
give yourself a chance to get carried away by the language.
Don't go in with too many prejudices.
Saying this language is no good.
I don't like the sound of the language.
I find it boring.
Get in there, start to discover things and pretty soon you may find that, uh, you
know, you will get attracted, uh, by it.
You know, I'm, I'm now going after Persian and Arabic and Turkish, which
I wasn't particularly interested in before and now I'm very interested in.
So that element of motivation is very important.
Of course, you know, if we look at objective considerations, Um, the more,
the language is similar to a language you know, the easier it's going to be.
The more the vocabulary is similar, particularly the vocabulary, so that you
don't have to struggle to remember words.
And I always say that the number of words you know, uh, your, the size
of your vocabulary will determine your ability to understand.
If you can understand well, you'll eventually learn to speak well,
uh, or at least to communicate.
So, uh, how similar the language is to a language you already know is a big factor.
This can have pluses and minuses.
Now I'm finding, for example, in Portuguese, that I know Spanish, therefore
Portuguese, uh, from one perspective is easier because the vocabulary
is like more than 90%, the same.
And the grammatical structure is more than 90% the same, but because
they're so similar, it's difficult to totally throw myself into
sort of a Portuguese environment.
The Spanish control center in my brain is kind of holding on and preventing
me from, you know, totally starting a fresh in this other language.
On the other hand, if I go into Arabic or Persian, there is no other language
that is influencing my Persian or Arabic.
So to some degree, that is a difficulty with languages that are very similar,
but that's a minor consideration.
Overwhelmingly the more similar the languages are, the easier
it's going to be to learn them.
Another consideration of course, is the writing system.
Uh, I've grown up reading, using the Latin alphabet.
So even though I can read the Cyrillic alphabet, I can read Chinese
characters, hangul, kanna, even Greek, Arabic with some difficulty,
you know, it's so difficult.
I find to get used to comfortably reading in another script it's one thing to
decipher it, figure out this is, these are the symbols, this is what they, you
know, the sounds that they represent.
But to actually get there where you can just comfortably read in another
script, I find that's a big step.
Like for me, Polish and Czech are much easier than Russian and Ukrainian
because it's so much easier for me.
There's no resistance when I read in the Latin alphabet.
Whereas reading in Cyrillic, even though I have read so much in Cyrillic, like
it's just that little bit more difficult.
So it's always a challenge.
And when I learn another language with another script, I put a lot of effort
into just, just making sure I spend enough time reading in that script because
that's going to improve my comprehension.
And that's why I, for the time being, I've put Turkish on the back burner
and I'm focusing on Persian and Arabic in order to get my brain more and more
used to reading in this other script.
And I know from experience that everything in language learning, including reading
in another script is just a question of time and enough exposure so that your
brain will gradually develop new habits.
But the emphasis is on gradually and slowly.
There's no instant Eureka!
So a different writing system obviously is an element of difficulty, in
particular a writing system like Chinese characters where it's not phonetic.
It's not a matter of learning a finite number of symbols, 20, 30, 40, 50 symbols.
You have to learn thousands of pictograms.
So that makes Chinese more difficult.
I've said before that there is a compensation because so many of what
we would term words in English are combinations of these pictograms.
So once you have them, you can then easily, more easily, remember new words
that are combinations of these characters that you have already learned, but
still it does make it more difficult.
Pronunciation can be an issue.
Uh, but to me, that's also a question of time and, uh, you know, the
solution to many of these difficulties is simply exposing yourself to the
language, listening enough, getting the intonation of the language.
Speaking, without feeling self-conscious about it.
Uh, and of course, grammar, I find that, uh, you know, objectively speaking,
uh, Chinese and even Japanese and Korean grammar are less complicated.
There are fewer little bits of detail that you can easily get
wrong than say in Russian, Slavic languages, German and so forth.
So the more details there are in the language, the more things that change
like case endings change or conjugations, the verb endings change, the more
of these things that are not so much a question of logic of the language
- but I mean, there is that logic, but a logic that is hidden behind
a bunch of rules and tables - the more of these things you have in a
language, the more difficult it is.
Especially to speak correctly.
Now, if your objective is to understand the language, to be able
to communicate, connect with people as is the case with me and most of
my languages, I'm not tremendously concerned about how accurately I speak.
Of course, I want to speak more accurately, but, but I can't
speak accurately in all of these languages that I'm learning.
Uh, I want to speak more accurately if I make a video in Arabic.
And I, you know, I, I say, uh, that I, you know, ... instead
of ... like you've got to change the beginning, the suffix, depending
on the person and stuff like that.
And I get it wrong some of the time, right some of the time.
And I hear that and I notice it and slowly, hopefully I improve, but
it doesn't, uh, in any way, detract from my enjoyment of the language.
On the other hand, if your goal, if you're working uh in Arabic or Russian
or whatever, and you're, uh, putting out business correspondence or you're
at formal meetings and there's obviously a, or you're going to write a test,
then there is a greater need to be accurate.
So difficulty in terms of understanding it is one thing, difficulty in terms of
being able to read it and listen to it and enjoy movies is one thing, difficulty
in terms of being accurate and creating a very positive impression because you
are essentially making very few mistakes,
that's another level of difficulty.
I think, uh, honestly, uh, you know, in French, some people find French
difficult to understand because of the way the words flow into each
other with the sort of liaison.
Uh, but another big obstacle in French is the gender.
Gender is more obvious in Spanish.
Uh, you know, most words that end in "o" masculine and most words
that end in "a" are feminine.
Spanish, fairly straightforward...
Italian.
French, not so.
And when I listen to our Canadian politicians, uh, English-speaking
politicians who speak French and some of them speak quite well.
And yet the gender is the thing that trips them up because it's not
something that we have in English.
It's very difficult to develop new habits.
New grammatical habits.
It doesn't prevent them from communicating.
And the similarity with people learning English, uh, I often mention
that we have a colleague Russian who speaks absolutely perfect English.
There isn't anything he can't express or explain in English.
And yet to him, the articles remain a problem because obviously it's not
something that is part of the sort of language habits of Russian speakers, or
for that matter speakers of many other languages that don't have articles.
Uh, there are languages with no articles, languages with no gender, languages with
no, uh, with, uh, no singular or plural.
Um, yeah.
Um, languages, uh, have a different, uh, different ways of expressing
essentially the same thoughts.
And we have to get used to them.
And, uh, some of them are a little harder to, you know, develop
these new habits than in others.
So there you have it.
So I don't want to say that any particular language is harder to learn, but I
rather want it to set out what I think are some of the factors that determine
how difficult a language may be for you.
Okay.
That's all I want him to say on that subject.
Bye for now.