Question:
Is English the hardest language to learn ?
I'm not talking about languages that require incredible vocal gymnastics
such as Kalahari bushmen's language, just difficult languages to learn.
Is English the worst?
Answer:
This varies with the learner and to a great extent with the learner's
native language. It is much easier for English speakers to learn the
Romance languages and German than to learn East and South Asian
languages. Probably Dutch is harder to learn than English because it
has very difficult pronunciation for non-native speakers. That doesn't
fall into the phonological gymnastics categories of African languages
with clicks.
There are many dialects of Chinese with far more tones than Mandarin (5
tones--4 plus the neutral tone), and those are difficult to learn,
especially as some of them are not written languages, eg Taiwanese, and
when it is presented in romanized form, it looks so ridiculous and
impossible to pronounce, but when it is presented in Chinese
characters, they are there for the sound only, so one must be
proficient in Mandarin Chinese to learn it that way. And Taiwanese has
at least 8 tones.
For those who find Chinese characters daunting, learning Chinese and
Japanese can be a real task because it's so difficult looking
characters up in dictionaries.
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