Job Discussion Forums

[wildnfree]

[Theriel]

Shaman: kudos. Swedish is a really fun language to pronounce, particularly sk�nsk Svenska. There are rules to the k/sj thing but i don't recall exactly what they are. If you're curious I can look it up, but I think at least before i k is always a sj sound.

As for difficult languages.. as someone who has studied a fair amount of language typology, the languages which are most different from your native language are the languages which will cause the most problems. I'll give an opinion from my own (native-English) perspective.

I only speak one non-IE language, Finnish, but I do know German, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish as well, in addition to a smattering of Arabic, Chinese, and Japanese, and I know a fair bit about many other languages. Finnish is quite challenging in one respect because of its agglutinative nature (the word talossaankinko could mean "do you mean in his/her house too?") but the lack of exceptions in its rules make things easier at least. I've spent some time learning both Chinese and Japanese, and I don't find either particularly difficult beyond Japanese's insistence on 10 million politeness levels, which to me are particularly difficult because of the cultural relevance. Japanese has a somewhat similar grammatical structure to Finnish, except for the noun cases, and also is fairly regular in its grammar I've found.

I would say the languages I personally find most difficult are Caucasian langauges and then some Native American languages. Caucasian langauges have ridiculous amounts of fricatives and consonant clusters; saying words like gvbrdγvnis is beyond me They also encode huge amounts of information in the verb, often redudant, such as the gender of the object, the type of subject, etc.

Salish languages (Native American languages spoken in the Northwest USA and Southwest Canada) are even more interesting with words like xłp̓x̣ʷłtłpłłskʷc̓:. Say that one 5 times fast. They sometimes even have tone. The grammar tends to be either polysynthetic or agglutanative in Salish languages, also rather complicated. Native American languages in general are also arranged very very differently from most IE languages, so you really need to learn to think in a different way.

I don't think almost any language spoken in Europe is all that difficult. Estonian, S�mi, Finnish, Hungarian, and Basque are probably among the more difficult ones.

Random trivia question: anyone know (without googling) what the only Indo-European language is with tone?

[GambateBingBangBOOM]

You know before your post, the last post in this thread was back in February, eh!

[Theriel]

So???

[coffeedrinker]

Interesting thread.

I don't know about tones but as far as people saying it doesn't make sense to compare languages...I think the state department compares how long on average it takes a native English speaker to reach some standard level of competency in a given language.

Obviously there are individual differences, but I've studied a Slavic language and also French, Spanish and Italian and the last three do seem remarkably easier to me, and as others have said it is because of cognates and similar grammar.

But of course native speakers of one Slavic language can frequently understand other Slavic languages without ever even studying them (or quite a lot, anyway). So for them of course French would be more difficult than Russian...but as this ranking is for native English speakers, I'd put some stock in it.

[Mackthefinger]

Has anyone any experiance of learning Polish?

I ask because I'd like to teach TEFL in Poland after I complete my
Celta course and am thinking of doing a Polish beginners class
just to pick up the basics.

[coffeedrinker]

I haven't studied Polish but another Slavic language, and I started at my university for a year and then went to teach in a country where they spoke that language...

After that I had about 10 hours of (beginner) lessons free at the school, which was useful but maybe not really enough to get far with a Slavic language.

I'm sure you realize that asking in one of the Europe forums (I'm assuming Poland has its own) is likely to get you a better answer, but my guess would be: it would be very useful to get pronunciation down...it's my impression that a lot of Slavic language words seems long and look complex, but once you learn how to pronounce letters/combos of letters, it's a big step and you can at least pronounce and recognize words. I noticed that once I got more familiar with how to say words, it was easier to remember new ones, long street names, etc. And like in any language, there are phrases and other functional language you can learn.

It's probably a little bit ironic because most efl teachers including me teach in a communicative context, but I found that I did get a lot from my more traditional class in a US university. Granted it was a lot longer than my 10 hours of free lessons, and this just depends on your style, but it does take time to progress, so you might want to check out a few different types of classes and see what you like.

[fraup]

Learning Polish: in 1990 I went to Poland with a U.S. Peace Corps group. We spent 3 months in training trying to learn Polish. It was not easy, because a) our average age was 42 and older brains don't pick up new languages easily, b) our teachers had little or no experience with "Polish as a Foreign Language", c) when we got out to our sites, we found attitudes of "I need to learn English more than you need to learn Polish" and were happy to accommodate. We could order in restaurants, go shopping, travel etc. but only those who acquired Polish "significant others" were able to learn the language well.

[misteradventure]

Polish has been my most difficult language to date. After over a year of classes, I came to the realization that a few concepts seem to have escaped the pedagogy experts:

-an overview of all of the parts of speech would have been helpful
-teaching BOTH the Polish and English terms for grammar would have facilitated discussions about grammar in Polish with native speakers
-a crash course in past/future structures and prepositions is necessary
-the alphabet was inspired by the French, while the grammar is related to Russian

Had I received the above. I think I would have learned much faster. One cannot follow a curriculum designed for students in Chicago and be expected to easily survive alone on the streets of Rybnik, for example. (We were doing food and rooms in a house at six months!)

Add to it the obsession with gender and the attitude among many that foreigners are 'tourists' regardless of their dedication to becoming part of the society and you have the ingredients for a very challenging experience.

Sk�nska is easy- simply speak standard Swedish with a mouthful of porridge. All kidding aside, I found the Svensk Ordlista very handy when writing. NOt that I have used it in ten years, save talking on the phone to Iceland...

I'm rather fond of the "Xyyyyy in 10 MInutes a Day" series of survival level language books.

[malu]

In my very limited dealings with the language, I would rate Scots Gaelic as being pretty difficult to learn.

[Isisgato]

Probably to speak any language WELL will require the same amount of effort, and present the same difficulties. Obviously some languages have easier "introductions".........Spanish, for example looks easy at first sight, and also, most people know at least SOME words from Western movies, holidays in a Spanish-speaking country, etc but to acquire real fluency, hmmmm, well that's a different thing.
Languages with different scripts present other problems of course, but I am convinced if you put in the same effort, then you'll learn it !
I have taught other languages in addition to TEFL, and in my experience a few people are language geniuses; they can learn almost any language in a short space of time. A tiny number can't learn at all........nothing to do with intelligence, by the way, in many cases. My Polish uncle lived forty years in the UK and never got the hang of English, but could diagnose faults in, and repair anything electric or electronic. A Saudi Air Force Captain I knew had a high degree in maths, but just couldn't figure out English. Most people can acqure reasonable fluency with reasonable effort
in other words, what you put in, you get out !

[coffeedrinker]