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<blockquote data-quote="CrazyMage" data-source="post: 832561" data-attributes="member: 565">Different languages present their own challenges.&nbsp; Once you've learned one language using the Roman alphabet, you can more easily pick up others just because you don't need to relearn how to write, save for a few special symbols here or there.&nbsp; Japanese or Chinese are &quot;harder&quot; because they have many more symbols to learn in order to read and write (though one could still speak those languages just fine).How about the sounds a language uses?&nbsp; Ones that use sounds closer to what we are used to are going to be &quot;easier&quot;, especially if there's a close match between symbol and sound.&nbsp; How about tonal languages?&nbsp; Usually considered &quot;hard&quot; just because we're not used to it.English has trimmed away most of the endings on verbs and nouns; a language like Russian or Sanskrit preserves those elements and so is &quot;harder.&quot;Some of it depends on what one wants to do with the language as well--just converse in German or read a paper vs. picking up a copy of Der Zauberberg by Thomas Mann to read for fun.&nbsp; We recognize that even native English speakers pass on certain books or magazines because they are &quot;hard&quot; because of vocabulary or presentation or the knowledge that they assume.In short, the majority of whether a language is &quot;easy&quot; or &quot;hard&quot; to learn comes down to &quot;what do you already know?&quot;, though there are still some languages at the edges of the spectrum (e.g. more people will find Apache &quot;hard&quot; rather than &quot;easy&quot;)Also sprach CrazyMage</blockquote>

[QUOTE="CrazyMage, post: 832561, member: 565"] Different languages present their own challenges. Once you've learned one language using the Roman alphabet, you can more easily pick up others just because you don't need to relearn how to write, save for a few special symbols here or there. Japanese or Chinese are "harder" because they have many more symbols to learn in order to read and write (though one could still speak those languages just fine). How about the sounds a language uses? Ones that use sounds closer to what we are used to are going to be "easier", especially if there's a close match between symbol and sound. How about tonal languages? Usually considered "hard" just because we're not used to it. English has trimmed away most of the endings on verbs and nouns; a language like Russian or Sanskrit preserves those elements and so is "harder." Some of it depends on what one wants to do with the language as well--just converse in German or read a paper vs. picking up a copy of Der Zauberberg by Thomas Mann to read for fun. We recognize that even native English speakers pass on certain books or magazines because they are "hard" because of vocabulary or presentation or the knowledge that they assume. In short, the majority of whether a language is "easy" or "hard" to learn comes down to "what do you already know?", though there are still some languages at the edges of the spectrum (e.g. more people will find Apache "hard" rather than "easy") Also sprach CrazyMage [/QUOTE]

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