Ray Brown wrote:
> On Tuesday, May 25, 2004, at 05:31 PM, Mark J. Reed wrote:
>
>> On Tue, May 25, 2004 at 04:43:21PM +0100, Joe wrote:
>>
>>> Easy:
>>> (roughly in order, probably)
>>> Dutch(possibly the easiest major world language to learn)/Afrikaans
>>
>>
>> This is all horribly subjective,
>
>
> Well, yeah - it can't be otherwise.
>
> [snip]
>
>>> French
>>
>>
>> Er. French? Easier than the other Romance languages - for
>> Anglophones? Are you feeling okay? Temperature, perhaps? :)
>
>
> Gosh - yes, must be.
>
I can't see anything harder than Spanish. It's the non-Germanic
language with the closest connections to English, after all.
>> Having studied both Spanish and French I found Spanish much, much easier
>> -
>
>
> Agreed.
>
I found Spanish easier in parts. But I find French easier in general.
>> even
>> though I learned it first and therefore had its Romanceness on the brain
>> to
>> help me with French. And Italian is only slightly harder than Spanish,
>> while still easier than French.
>
>
> What? I agree, easier than French - But harder than Spanish? Nah - but
> then I guess Italian seems easy 'cos I've been pretty well acquainted
> with Latin for more than 50 years ;)
>
I don't know, Italian and Spanish both seem similar enough that it's
hard to seperate them, difficulty-wise. But Italian is easier to pronounce.
>>> German
>>
>>
>> I would say German is harder than any of the Romance languages, despite
>> the familial relationship with English. It's those darn cases.
>
>
> Certainly to read - those tortuous sentences :=(
>
Really? I find German quite simple. Shared common vocabulary is always
a boost, and the word-order doesn't bother me.
>> I would
>> put German on par with Russian, actually; I think the only thing that
>> makes
>> Russian more difficult than German is the extra hurdle of learning a new
>> alphabet.
>
>
> No that I didn't find a hurdle. I guess knowing the Greek alphabet made
> Cyrillic come very easily.
>
> but, hey, you guys, Welsh is pretty easy - and interesting too ;-)
>
You're right. Welsh is pretty simple. And it has a really cool sound.
I love /K/.
> As for _interesting_ languages - where do I start? All the native
> American
> ones - I'd be very interested to get hold of stuff on native Australian
> langs - quite a lot in Africa - I guess, anything unusual or that I've
> had
> little chance to get acquainted with.
>
> Ray
> ===============================================
>
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
> ray.brown@freeuk.com (home)
> raymond.brown@kingston-college.ac.uk (work)
> ===============================================
> "A mind which thinks at its own expense will always
> interfere with language." J.G. Hamann, 1760
>
>