Why is it that people think that?

Question

Their language is the hardest to learn. Sometimes I browse questions of other languages such as Spanish and whenever people ask what the hardest language is a lot of people there say Spanish. And a lot of people say English on here too when that question is asked. Do people just want to say it is the most difficult so they can boast that they are able to speak such a hard language? I don't really get it. I laugh when I see people saying Spanish in the Spanish section because Spanish is not even close to the hardest language to learn in my opinion. I find it pretty easy. Of course everyone is different but that has nothing to do with it, I still see a trend that people say their native tongue is the hardest to learn.

Answer 1

I agree with you, and Spanish is so not hard, why do you think many non-hispanics speak it. But I think English IS the hardest to learn, and that's not even my first language.

Answer 2

If you listen to foreigners speaking English, you'll probably think that most of them are pretty bad at it - therefore English MUST be a very difficult language to learn!

In my opinion, people who 'think' they are fluent in another language (not their first, I mean their second or third etc.,) always assume that they know everything ... therefore the language in question, French for example, can't be too difficult..! However, the French people that they actually TALK to think differently!

Let's say that they hear English 'Mr. A' talking this garbled nonsense that can barely be understood, and they think "French must be a VERY hard language to learn, because these foreigners make such a pig's ear of it...!!" At the same time, Mr. A is congratulating himself on how unbelievably GOOD he is at French, and when he goes home he'll boast to everyone about it...!
; )

Answer 3

I don't know if I agree with you ...I am a native english speaker..I'm canadian so I had the required high school french and opted for 1 year of spanish..they weren't too bad.....not that I speak either romantic language..but I can understaned written french...but I have been learning mandarin chinese for about 6 years and it is the most difficult thing that I have ever tried to learn...I was never brought up around a language that uses tones to differentiate meaning or characters (hanzi) that are used to be syllables.....It's completely foreign to me and very diffi cult ..if you don't believe me --give it a try and see if you can figure out whether someone is talking about a horse, hemp, or cursing at you, asking a question of you or talking about their mother when they use the syllable ma...which is a different tone in each of the above cases and a different character as well..

Answer 4

I speak both English and Spanish and since they are both my native tongues I can't really say that they are hard. I've heard a lot of nonEnglish speaking people say that English is a hard language to learn, mostly because of pronunciation. I think Chinese would probably be one of the hardest languages to learn, but it can be done.

Answer 5

I would say the hardest language to learn would be chinese and japanise because they have the characters plus learning how to say it. People say english but of all the double meanings of words and all the grammer content. But most people do just want to boast to make themselves feel better on here.

Answer 6

I think that a lot of people only really know the nuances in theor own language, and they notice that not everyone else catches those nuances. Whereas in a language they're just learning, they are content to just get by.

I speak enough French to know that there are a lot of things I am missing--I can make myself understood but I am not, for example, as funny in French as I am in English.

Answer 7

I just say English because there are several words that are spelled the same but can have 3 different meanings. Or how there can be two words that sound the same but are spelled differently. I do think this makes English difficult, not because I speak English.

Answer 8

It seems that most of the Romance languages (derived from Latin) are relatively easy to learn. I've heard that English is difficult because it has a large number of exceptions to the "rules."

Answer 9

Because they want to think they've got the brain (indeed) to learn a new lenguage that they WANT to believe it is easier than theirs. The problem is that they seldom dare to attempt at a new language. Maybe they are off by simply saying that as theirs is so hard, they'd be able to learn any other IF THEY WANTED. Rerality is that.. they never want.. being afraid to see that their original idea was not true.

Answer 10

well, as i experience i do it sometimes especially theres a people visit my place and i know that they are not native of my place i speak a very hard dialects for them to think even the meaning is the same. you are right just to boast only and to let them know that i was in that place