The Lemon Fool

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AiY(D)

Aside from the weird formatting putting the German 30 weeks above the rest of Europe 24 weeks, there is no chance it is as easy to learn Portuguese as it is Spanish.

AF62 wrote:Aside from the weird formatting putting the German 30 weeks above the rest of Europe 24 weeks, there is no chance it is as easy to learn Portuguese as it is Spanish.

I know it's really naughty of me to take this opportunity, but the devil in me couldn't help it ... it's a really useless map

Gets coat

AiY(D)

Shouldn't Dundee be in green?

--kiloran

AF62 wrote:Aside from the weird formatting putting the German 30 weeks above the rest of Europe 24 weeks, there is no chance it is as easy to learn Portuguese as it is Spanish.

Hmmm ... I've never learned Portuguese but I have learned some Spanish and some Italian and I've found that, with only the occasional dictionary lookup, I can kinda read Portuguese. Understanding spoken Portuguese (let alone speaking it) is another matter, the pronunciations are quite something!

How long does it take who? To learn to what level? Is this aimed at Americans?

I’m astounded English is considered so easy. It is full of hideous irregularities.
“It can be understood through tough thorough thought, though.”

No such nasties in German. Once you know the pronunciation rules German dictation was a breeze.

Gryff

gryffron wrote:’m astounded English is considered so easy. It is full of hideous irregularities.
“It can be understood through tough thorough thought, though.”
Gryff

I like the irregularities it makes us special

gryffron wrote:How long does it take who? To learn to what level? Is this aimed at Americans?

I’m astounded English is considered so easy. It is full of hideous irregularities.
“It can be understood through tough thorough thought, though.”

No such nasties in German. Once you know the pronunciation rules German dictation was a breeze.

English might be easier to learn because it is so commonly used. Almost everyone has some basic exposure to it.

German has gender for nouns that needlessly adds complication.

Lootman wrote:

gryffron wrote:How long does it take who? To learn to what level? Is this aimed at Americans?

I’m astounded English is considered so easy. It is full of hideous irregularities.
“It can be understood through tough thorough thought, though.”

No such nasties in German. Once you know the pronunciation rules German dictation was a breeze.

English might be easier to learn because it is so commonly used. Almost everyone has some basic exposure to it.

German has gender for nouns that needlessly adds complication.

I always assumed English was easy to learn (to a sufficient level so that where the person could understand and be understood), because words are straightforward (no genders) and word order is what matters (no complicated endings etc). I agree there are many irregularities, particularly in spelling, but I don't think they hinder communication in any way. Most foreigners I have this conversation with say that it is the English idioms which are most difficult to follow, but then that is one of the things which makes it such a wonderful expressive language.

There is a theory that English developed the way it did during the late Saxon period, with the need to accommodate Scandinavian immigrants, so that it transformed from a reflexive language of its Anglo-Saxon Germanic roots, into a sort of simple pidgin language which differnt peoples could understand.

Nimrod103 wrote: I always assumed English was easy to learn (to a sufficient level so that where the person could understand and be understood), because words are straightforward (no genders) and word order is what matters (no complicated endings etc). I agree there are many irregularities, particularly in spelling, but I don't think they hinder communication in any way. Most foreigners I have this conversation with say that it is the English idioms which are most difficult to follow, but then that is one of the things which makes it such a wonderful expressive language.

There is a theory that English developed the way it did during the late Saxon period, with the need to accommodate Scandinavian immigrants, so that it transformed from a reflexive language of its Anglo-Saxon Germanic roots, into a sort of simple pidgin language which differnt peoples could understand.

Getting a gender wrong is hardly a barrier to understanding. Indeed, it's not really even a cause of hilarity. Though it can be momentarily confusing when gender attaches in an unfamiliar manner. So if you're brought up on English:
He [verb]s his wife (masculine pronoun).
She [verb]s her husband (feminine pronoun).
you might take a moment to get your head around a language where the pronoun's gender is that of the object.

Idioms can get interesting, but that applies to any language. You can have great fun as a foreigner stumbling (deliberately or otherwise) into idioms, double-entendres, and the like.

If I had a comment on that map, it might be to suggest that those languages that use an unfamiliar alphabet (e.g. within Europe we have кирилица) are going to be harder.

UncleEbenezer wrote:Getting a gender wrong is hardly a barrier to understanding. Indeed, it's not really even a cause of hilarity.

Yeah but you can't just mumble your way through le/la or ein/eine, etc; there is the small matter of agreement with gender and number for just about every other word in the sentence! (Well, almost... ). And then for some there's cases and declinations...

If I had a comment on that map, it might be to suggest that those languages that use an unfamiliar alphabet (e.g. within Europe we have кирилица) are going to be harder.

(Except for Greek of course.) But not to mention that the Slavic languages have no less than seven cases.

"I speak every language except Greek"
"But they're speaking arabic"
"Well it's Greek to me"

Morcambe & Wise(??)

I'm not particularly good at languages but in Greece recently I did enjoy deciphering the Greek alphabet. Perhaps that comes from enjoying algebra at school!

mc2fool wrote: (Except for Greek of course.) But not to mention that the Slavic languages have no less than seven cases.

I think you meant "no fewer than"

Useless it might be, but nevertheless an interesting map. As someone has pointed out, it all depends on the language from which one starts.
Interestingly, my one time French agent hooked an Italian girlfriend, so naturally wanted to impress her by learning Italian. Being languages with at least some common roots he thought it would be easy, but not so. In the end, he gave up and they used English!

I did like German, most of which I have forgotten. I love their homespun adding together words to make new ones. However, there always the problem that you can understand all the words in a sentence but not what they mean, or who is doing what and to whom!

All the right words, but not necessarily in the right order!

As regards the 12 different forms of the definite article, if you learn "organically" most of those come naturally, so one learns that the definite article is part of the noun and the various cases come linked to the phrase oe expression.

But - that's all a bit primitive -why is it necessary at all?

The other problem about learning German, and why I let it lapse, is - as a German once said to me - "Why would anyone bother? Everyone in science or business speaks English".

Arb.

Arborbridge wrote: All the right words, but not necessarily in the right order!
Arb.

Nice one Mr Morecambe

Arborbridge wrote:

mc2fool wrote: (Except for Greek of course.) But not to mention that the Slavic languages have no less than seven cases.

I think you meant "no fewer than"

Four and twenty virgins came down from Inverness to Kerrymuir ... https://www.lemonfool.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=25084

Arborbridge wrote:Useless it might be, but nevertheless an interesting map. As someone has pointed out, it all depends on the language from which one starts.
Interestingly, my one time French agent hooked an Italian girlfriend, so naturally wanted to impress her by learning Italian. Being languages with at least some common roots he thought it would be easy, but not so. In the end, he gave up and they used English!

That half surprises me and half not. The bit that doesn't surprise me is -- assuming it was the language they met in -- that they conversed in English. I've known a few mixed-language couples over the years and it seems to be absolutely normal that, even if they learn each other's languages, their primary language between them is the one they met in.

I worked with an English guy in France who'd married a French girl he'd met at Uni in England, and they then moved to France where they'd been for some twenty years. They were both perfectly bilingual but their primary language was always English -- however, their primary language to their two daughters, who were brought up in France but were also perfectly bilingual, was French! Whenever I went over their place it was a ping-pong of the two languages.

I'm also reminded of a German-Italian couple I met in Verona, where they'd lived for many years and he (the German) was then quite fluent in Italian ... but they'd met while both living in Switzerland and their (then) only common language was French, which stayed as their primary language, forever.

The bit that surprises me is that your French agent gave up on learning Italian, as Italian is like the more straightforward version of the two. I recall one Italian telling me that, although he'd never studied it, he had no problem reading French, but the trouble with hearing/speaking it was that, as he put it, they throw away half the word!

mc2fool wrote: The bit that surprises me is that your French agent gave up on learning Italian, as Italian is like the more straightforward version of the two. I recall one Italian telling me that, although he'd never studied it, he had no problem reading French, but the trouble with hearing/speaking it was that, as he put it, they throw away half the word!

I had a similar problem learning Spanish, as reading it was OK, but listening to a native Spanish speaker it was just too fast. They pronounced every syllable so rapidly I just could not follow.

Of course the largest English speaking nation is India. I shared an office with half a dozen Indians from different parts of India, and listening to them talk to each other was always interesting. They might start in Hindi, until they reached a concept or word better expressed in English, when they would carry on without a break in English. Until of course they reached a word in Hindi they preferred, and so on. They could all converse in their own state language as well, so pairs might carry on in Rajasthani or Bengali. And then there were two of the most senior who had studied together in Russia - you can imagine the rest.

Spoken Spanish seems to lose the consonants as far as an English ear is concerned. All the vowel sounds are emphasised, whereas in English we tend to concentrate on the consonant sounds.