What's the Most Difficult Romance Language?

Question

It's a toss-up between French and Romanian, but I'd have to go with Romanian. So many weird conjugations like Latin was.

Answer 1

Romanian pronunciation will not give you as much trouble as French pronunciation. It is still pretty close to that of Italian an Church Latin except for the cicumflexed a and i (â , î) which sounds much like the oo in the English words "book" and "look."

The difficulty will be mainly in the grammar which is still more synthetic and inflected than that of French as in Calul vecinului "The neighbor's horse" (French: Le cheveau du voisin), bunului frate "to the good brother'" (French: au bon frère) , unui băiat sărac "of / to a poor boy" (French d'un un garçon pauvre ; à un garçon pauvre etc.

Because of it's isolation. Romanian has retained many archaic Latin and Proto-Romance traits. It is probably closer to the Vulgar Latin that was spoken in Gaul (France) and Italy in in the 4th century A.D. in some respects, than Modern French and Italian are. For example, a Roman inscription from Paris reads Monimentum Domitillae or Domatilla's tomb. It is Le tombeau de Domitilla in French but Mormîntul Domitillei in Romanian. Now which is closer to the original Latin inscription?

Answer 2

Here's a comparative table of different languages:
http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/e/languages/index.html

So, according to it, Romanian is most difficult.

Cheers!

Answer 3

As a person who learned both of them, I'd say both of 'em have difficulties, but probably romanian it's on the top..

Answer 4

I'd say romanian. French is easy in my opinion.

Answer 5

Most of you haven't counted Fruilian, Ladin, Romansch, Sardinian, or Istro-Romanian. I would have to say that these are more difficult to learn because the materials available out there to learn are so difficult (if not close to impossible) to find. "Difficulty" means more than just conjugational problems.

Answer 6

i hate nihongo!