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Austrian Election 2017
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<blockquote data-quote="marty" data-source="post: 972375" data-attributes="member: 8934"><p><strong>RE: Austria may elect Europe's only far-right president</strong></p><p></p><p></p><p>It doesn't make sense. No language is "tougher to learn" than any other. It is tougher for some and easier for others. See below</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>You said "<strong>languages greatly differ in the amount of time needed to master, due to the specific language's complexity and distinction from one's native language.</strong>".</p><p></p><p>That is basically what I said previously here:</p><p></p><p>I even brought up a good example which I will further clarify below. Sure, the complexity of the language comes into play as well, e.g. Esperanto was constructed to be much simpler than any natural language. I don't think these differences are as important as people who want to find excuses not to learn a foreign language make it out to be.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Sigh... I don't know why you have to be so condescending and resort to insulting me. I have no idea what professor you're talking about and I don't want to brag but I can assure you I have learned my fair share of languages as an adult.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Who cares they are of different language families? English is a West Germanic language, whereas Spanish or French are Romance languages. Yet they have a lot in common. Based on your argument Spanish shouldn't be easy for a native English speaker to learn.</p><p></p><p><a href="https://www.quora.com/How-similar-are-Korean-and-Japanese-languages" target="_blank">https://www.quora.com/How-similar-are-Korean-and-Japanese-languages</a></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I think this easily proves how Japanese is closer to Korean than Spanish, thus learning it would be easier for a Korean native speaker. Hence you can't say Spanish is easier than Japanese because people have different native languages. This proves that saying in general that a language is easy or hard doesn't really make sense. How could you measure it?</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>My other factors are actually a lot more important than the "difficulty" of a language. We're not talking about exponential differences, i.e. it's not like Spanish takes let's say 1 year to learn, Polish 10 years and Hungarian 100 years. The differences are much smaller and motivation and passion play a huge part. You won't be able to spend hundreds or thousands of hours learning a language which you hate or don't give a shit about. That's why I'm saying difficulty isn't really an important issue, it shouldn't be the deciding factor.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Sure, the biggest problem is the absurd methods the vast majority of people use. I'm glad you brought up Antimoon, his example shows how you can learn a language that is quite different from your native one using the right methods.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I speak Hungarian, so I'm very well aware of that. It was a bit misleading, I meant it's been spoken in Europe for a thousand years and there are a lot of words coming from other European languages, whereas Thai or Chinese would have much less. I know, it's not anything like Spanish or French but still more than nothing.</p><p></p><p>The case system is quite blown out of proportion though. Written like that it makes it seem much worse. It's a bit like saying English has 22 verb tenses. Hungarian has one present, one future and one past. Now you could freak out how much more complex verb tenses are in English.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>This is the biggest joke of all. In English there's a strict word order which you have to learn, in Hungarian a certain word can emphasised by changing its position. It really isn't anything special. I could bring up much harder aspects of easy languages like English or Spanish. I wouldn't highlight parts that look complex enough to prove your point without knowing anything about it.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I said "much harder", I doubt there is a huge difference. I read that Japanese students really struggle with English because it works quite differently than their native language. If the only variable was the complexity of one of the languages, then English wouldn't be a problem for them.</p><p></p><p></p><p><strong>Bottom line is:</strong> saying a language is hard gives people the best excuse not to learn it. That is one of the prime reasons why expats in China, Japan or in most countries abroad don't even attempt to learn the local language.</p><p></p><p>Also what I wanted to emphasise is how stupid choosing a language based on its difficulty is, especially if you want to move to said country. You don't choose a sport or hobby based on how easy it is. Or do you? Would you choose between surfing and origami based on how hard they are?</p><p></p><p>Also if Spanish is that easy, why can't American kids who learn it for years even speak properly? It's because their methods are tragically bad and they lack motivation. With the right tools and passion you can learn any language much faster than an American learning Spanish in a Spanish course (well, with the exception of languages that barely have any native materials - but with the internet these basically don't exist unless you want to learn Cherokee or something).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="marty, post: 972375, member: 8934"] [b]RE: Austria may elect Europe's only far-right president[/b] It doesn't make sense. No language is "tougher to learn" than any other. It is tougher for some and easier for others. See below You said "[b]languages greatly differ in the amount of time needed to master, due to the specific language's complexity and distinction from one's native language.[/b]". That is basically what I said previously here: I even brought up a good example which I will further clarify below. Sure, the complexity of the language comes into play as well, e.g. Esperanto was constructed to be much simpler than any natural language. I don't think these differences are as important as people who want to find excuses not to learn a foreign language make it out to be. Sigh... I don't know why you have to be so condescending and resort to insulting me. I have no idea what professor you're talking about and I don't want to brag but I can assure you I have learned my fair share of languages as an adult. Who cares they are of different language families? English is a West Germanic language, whereas Spanish or French are Romance languages. Yet they have a lot in common. Based on your argument Spanish shouldn't be easy for a native English speaker to learn. [URL]https://www.quora.com/How-similar-are-Korean-and-Japanese-languages[/URL] I think this easily proves how Japanese is closer to Korean than Spanish, thus learning it would be easier for a Korean native speaker. Hence you can't say Spanish is easier than Japanese because people have different native languages. This proves that saying in general that a language is easy or hard doesn't really make sense. How could you measure it? My other factors are actually a lot more important than the "difficulty" of a language. We're not talking about exponential differences, i.e. it's not like Spanish takes let's say 1 year to learn, Polish 10 years and Hungarian 100 years. The differences are much smaller and motivation and passion play a huge part. You won't be able to spend hundreds or thousands of hours learning a language which you hate or don't give a shit about. That's why I'm saying difficulty isn't really an important issue, it shouldn't be the deciding factor. Sure, the biggest problem is the absurd methods the vast majority of people use. I'm glad you brought up Antimoon, his example shows how you can learn a language that is quite different from your native one using the right methods. I speak Hungarian, so I'm very well aware of that. It was a bit misleading, I meant it's been spoken in Europe for a thousand years and there are a lot of words coming from other European languages, whereas Thai or Chinese would have much less. I know, it's not anything like Spanish or French but still more than nothing. The case system is quite blown out of proportion though. Written like that it makes it seem much worse. It's a bit like saying English has 22 verb tenses. Hungarian has one present, one future and one past. Now you could freak out how much more complex verb tenses are in English. This is the biggest joke of all. In English there's a strict word order which you have to learn, in Hungarian a certain word can emphasised by changing its position. It really isn't anything special. I could bring up much harder aspects of easy languages like English or Spanish. I wouldn't highlight parts that look complex enough to prove your point without knowing anything about it. I said "much harder", I doubt there is a huge difference. I read that Japanese students really struggle with English because it works quite differently than their native language. If the only variable was the complexity of one of the languages, then English wouldn't be a problem for them. [b]Bottom line is:[/b] saying a language is hard gives people the best excuse not to learn it. That is one of the prime reasons why expats in China, Japan or in most countries abroad don't even attempt to learn the local language. Also what I wanted to emphasise is how stupid choosing a language based on its difficulty is, especially if you want to move to said country. You don't choose a sport or hobby based on how easy it is. Or do you? Would you choose between surfing and origami based on how hard they are? Also if Spanish is that easy, why can't American kids who learn it for years even speak properly? It's because their methods are tragically bad and they lack motivation. With the right tools and passion you can learn any language much faster than an American learning Spanish in a Spanish course (well, with the exception of languages that barely have any native materials - but with the internet these basically don't exist unless you want to learn Cherokee or something). [/QUOTE]
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