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Tongue in cheek, my English teacher used to say, "It's only hard the first 5 languages."
I speak Russian and English, Russian being my native. When I find time, will keep pressing with Italian and French - Italian because the sound system is so much closer to Russian. La Bella Lingua! All three are Roman and I do notice similarities, - and surprisingly, since historically Russians were enamored with French, some words were assimilated (penoir, chanson, maraudeur, garde-robe etc) so it's fun to discover.
The hardest personally for me would be some Asian/South Asian and African languages. Excluding Japanese, its sound system is not that hard I think.
Nuala, really?! I had no idea Italian and Russian had any similarity!
When you say sound system, do you mean phonetically?! Would you mind mentioning a few examples, please?!
I do not have any knowledge of Russian whatsoever, and would never guess it has any similarities with Italian! I also did not know some French words were assimilated into Russian.
Yes, I mean phonetically it is easier for me to speak Italian, - not that the languages are similar. The rolling RRRR, the *harder* sounds as opposite to English/French, very defined vowels (O means Oh always, versus different sounds as in "box" and "pony").
How about yourself, how many languages do you know?
I am sorry, but I would like to ask a lot of short questions on the same post, all related to the same topic, of course.
How many languages do you speak, when/why have you learned them?
What is/are your first language/languages and which of the languages you learned you believe is the most interesting? Why?
Which is the hardest/easiest to learn, in your opinion?
I am italian and I speak fluently 4 languages (and in the process of brushing up some French too): Italian (of course), Spanish, English and Sardo (one of the several variety of Sardo we have in Sardinia, the island of Italy I am from). I have always had a passion for foreign languages and it all started when I read a spanish poem written by Pablo Neruda. Then, I decided that I was going to study languages and now I hold a B.A. in Linguistics and keep looking for jobs as italian or spanish teacher or something in the field of languages (I live in Oklahoma now but I studied in Italy and I spent a year and a half in Spain too). My first language are Sardo and Italian: we learn Italian at school but in Sardinia, in particular in small towns, people still speak Sardo, even if, tecnically, we do not have a 'standard' for the written language (it has always been a difficult matter for our regional government). That means, for instance, that my parents speak Sardo between them and I was born and raised speaking Sardo at home and with many people in my town. The most interesting language? I like them all and really I find all of them very interesting with their own peculiarities. Easiest? English, I think. Easy grammar and very easy sintactic structure (in general, of course) compared to romance languages as italian or spanish. Probably pronunciation might be hard at the beginning but it is all a matter of practice!
Nuala, I speak English, Italian (actually, more southern Italian dialects - because of dh - than what one would call "traditional" Italian), Portuguese and French. You mentioned after the 5th language it somehow becomes easier, and I am not there yet, I guess when one reaches the 5th language there are times one might actually doubt one can speak any of them!
I do understand some Spanish (similarity between Romance languages). Also, Catalan is another language relatively easy to understand once you are somehow familiar with the former languages I mentioned, so I would say I could pretty much understand it when I tried to. But that does not make me a Spanish or a Catalan speaker!
As for other languages with "stronger" sounds, maybe another interesting choice would be Japanese?! Of course it might be tremendously difficult to learn hiragana, katakana and kanji, however it seems to me in Japanese sounds are very clear (an "oh" always sounds like an "oh") and pronunciation itself is not so difficult. Maybe any Japanese speakers here could clarify that for me?
I like languages; I am what people call a "language person"... I am not an expert but started practicing foreign languages when I was young and try to learn more whenever I can.
I am bilingual - English & Hebrew. English is my first/native language. Hebrew I learned first as a child in the USA and then I grew up in Israel from age 12. I also speak some French having lived in France for a year as a child and after that also taking French in high school. I also speak some Spanish having lived as an adult for a year in Ecuador and renting during that time a room with a local family that spoke no English. I also know a few words in Arabic, Greek, German, Italian & Russian having picked up those from either traveling, a friend or starting self-instructing language courses that I didn't finish.
I speak several languages, and feel the need to point out that what I have noticed as a difficulty for people to learn a new language isn't always necessarily the sounds and pronunciation required (many immigrants from nations all over the globe come to the US and speak their own variety of English, and for the most part we understand them regardless of their mangled pronunciations). I think syntax, or sentence structuring, is a better indicator of the ease with which we can learn a language. I noticed with my English-speaking friends that pronouncing Croatian words were somewhat difficult but putting the sentences together was fairly simple. With Hungarian they were able to pronounce things relatively well, but since it is an agglutinative language (like Japanese and Korean), they realized that it would be very challenging to ever learn to speak the language.
As a French speaker, I find learning Spanish and Italian to be no real task at all. While the words aren't always similar, the rules are the same and there are plently of similarities (Fr pouvoir, Sp poder) to improve understanding with not necessarily being fluent. So for an individual to learn to speak all of the Romance languages, or various Slavic ones (Russian, Croatian, Polish, etc), is really not as much of a feat as it would be to learn to speak several languages that are not related.
IMO, the more languages one knows, the more knowledge one acquires. I am not learning (or interested in learning) languages as a "task" or a "feat", I just do it bc I like it. I have always seen it this way.
This is a matter of perspective; to me, while one does not really acquire serious pronunciation skills, one has poor knowledge regarding a language overall.
Obviously all 4 basic skills (r/w/l/s) are important, but in addition to grammar/syntax, correct pronunciation is key. I don't really consider one who speaks a language with a "mangled pronunciation" can truly speak it, since there is a lot of room for improvement in that specific area. But that is just my opinion.
In addition to that, as you learn languages you also learn cultural aspects of a certain group of people, and the fact that they speak somehow similar languages does not place them in a similar position at all, culturally speaking.
So I do admire people who enjoy learning languages as an overall experience. My 2 cents here.
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