Every language has difficulties.So, based on your opinion what are the difficulties of your own language?

Question

It can be the language you learn!

Answer 1

My first language is Thai.
It is very difficult for most westerners to learn because each word has 5 tones. The tones must be sung properly or the word meaning changes entirely.
Take this sentence for example...
"Mai mai mai mai, mai?" (pronounced "my") It is the same word spoken in different tones.
If the sentence was spoken with proper tones, it would mean
"We wood burns, doesn't it?"
The five tones are
normal - low - high - falling - and rising.

The Thai alphabet has 44 consonants and 28 vowels with 4 tone marks. We have a vowel that sound like "ee-ughh-oo". It is similar to the sound you might make if you stepped on a spider with bare feet. Some of our words begin with an "ng" sound which is difficult for westerners. Say the word "sing" and hold the ng sound. Now imagine beginning a word with it. It is hard for you but normal for us.

Thai people have difficulty with some English words.
Combinations like s & t in "stop" are hard for many of us to pronounce.
Some Thai people might say "sa-top" instead of "stop" or "Fa-ren" instead of "French". We roll our R's.
A lot of Thai people say "Metty Kreet-su-mat" instead of Merry Christmas.

I found English difficult to learn. There are many strange variations.
Look at these words for example...
Thorough, through, thought, tough, dough. The all have "ough" but are pronounced differently. They are pronounced tho-row, throo, thawt, tuff, doe.
I think "goggles" is a funny word.
I also think the name of the girl below me, "Nathalie" is beautiful.

La gorn ka!
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Answer 2

I speak two languages fluently.

My native English is difficult because of it's inconsistencies, more than just about any other language on earth. Don't get me wrong, I don't hate English. Until a few years ago it was the only language I knew so I didn't know there were any alternatives. But when I began learning languages, I found how inconsistent English is and now they are very glaring when I see them. I also find English beautifully rich.

My second language is Esperanto, and I find it also to be beautifully rich, with words taken from many other languages. When I read Shakespear in Esperanto, I finally understood it (or at least what the translator understood from it). What was the most difficult thing about Esperanto? The accusative case (taken from German). The accusative case in Esperanto is when the nouns (and adjectives) change form when they are used as the object of a sentence.

Answer 3

English is a mess. It's a horrible mix of contradictions and exceptions, with very few rules. The only strength of English is its greatest weakness: it's ability to absorb new words to say new ideas.

Old English (circa 10th century) was hardly anything like modern English; it had only two parts of speech, nouns and verbs, and was an agglutinative language (adding prefixes and suffixes) much like Finnish. The Norsemen invaded and brought parts of speech (adjectives, etc.) and new words; the Saxons hire Anglo (German) mercenaries to fight the Norsement and brought new words (mostly verbs); the English took part in the crusades and brought back muslim influences; the Normans (old French) invaded England; Gutenberg invented the printing press and literacy bloomed, etc. etc. etc.

With each conflict and contact, English absorbed more and more words until it came to be what it is, a hybrid of many languages: Greek, Latin, French, Spanish, Italian, Arabic, and who knows what else, with words from all over the world: taboo (Samoan), molotov (Russian), Simba (Swahili for "lion") and many others.

Linguists who have thoroughly studied English agree that of English's 800,000 words there are only _200_ which are uniquely English, such as "dog" or "cat", and all of them describe mundane things which existed more than a millennium ago. (English's word count is still growing in number, mostly due to science and popular culture, and is already more than twice the size of the next largest language.)

"The English language not only borrows words from other languages; it has on occasion chased other languages down dark alley-ways, clubbed them unconscious and rifled their pockets for new vocabulary."
- James Nicoll

And in personal opinion, the *easiest* languages to learn (despite their appearances) are Korean and Japanese. Their word orders and grammars are consistent, as are their vocabulary (you can rearrange the phrases in a sentence and it will still make sense). Both languages are phonetic (if you don't use the Chinese characters) and can be written with the Latin alphabet, and neither language has _tone_ or _inflection_ (accent). In fact, the only difficulty in learning them is changing vocabulary for different levels of politeness (you use different verb forms for superiors, inferiors and equals).


Additional:

"Tao Barbie", Thai _is_ difficult for "farangs" to learn, though at least the alphabet is phonetic. Chinese has the same tones, and then try dealing with their script...!

Thai is great for music though, it sounds beautiful (plus it has a European influence, rather than US). I bought only five CDs when I was there a few years ago (Leo Put, China Dolls, Bodyslam, Zaza and Mint), and I constantly wish I had bought more. (I'm Canadiain and teach English in Asian countries, by the by.)

And I hope you weren't affected by the bombs that just hit Bangkok. :-(


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Answer 4

Well I speak two languages, Arabic ( my native) and English.
What I find hard in Arabic is the many different dialects... Some of them seem like different langauges... other than that its pretty easy I think its a great language.
While in English language, I think Arabic is more accurate than English, where in Arabic for each thing there is a word for it...Do u know what Imean??
So, when I want to translate specially religious things it gets pretty hard for me to do so.
And another thing, it has to do with some words and they way they are spelled and pronounced ... like there are a lot of words that are pronounced differently it could get confusing..
Salam!

Answer 5

In my native langauge, I find difficulties with honorifics and words from han-mun. I grew up in America, so I wasn't ever immersed into a setting where I HAD to speak in Korean. As a result, I don't know when to use what. I have a general idea, but when I want to change an informal sentence to a formal one, I sometimes have problems.

Aditionally, I have an American accent when I speak Korean. My mom told me that I usually slip on the words that have Chinese roots.

A westerner, like me (Korean-American), would have trouble understanding honorifics, and thus culture, fully, and also have trouble with the Chinese roots.

Answer 6

Well,my language is Armenian.It is also pretty difficult.Just because our letters are not Latin.Only letter O matches the English letter O.And our vocabulary is also difficult,as one word has more than 2 meanings.Sometimes even 10-15.

Answer 7

My first language is Japanese.

Its pronunciation and basic grammar is easy. But in its writing, it has 3 symbols, which are hiragana, katakana and kanji. You must memorize at least 2,000 kanjis in order to read it. The honorific system is also hard to learn.

If you only want an ability to speak and listen to it, it's not so hard to get. I think.

Answer 8

My native language is Chinese, and I speak Cantonese. I think difficult to learn my language is writing. The standard writing system is Standard Written which is based on Standard Mandarin in education. when speaking Cantonese, you can't write Cantonese which people said in your composition. that's incorrect.

Answer 9

My language is French. In French, there are a lot of exceptions, and even worse, there are exceptions of exceptions. So you learn a rule, then you are told that in this case this rule doesn't work, in that case the rule doesn't work either. It's really awful. And sometimes, the rules are illogic. Even French teachers still do mistakes in French, because it's so hard.

Answer 10

the symbols for the scripts and translating it into images and recreating it in ur own language for reproducing it in a realistic way... by the way i encoutered these in learning some oriental languages...