Re: Easy and Interesting Languages -- Website

Hi!

Joe <joe@...> writes:
> Easy:
...
> German
> Icelandic/Faroese
What??  You think Icelandic is easy for people speaking English?  I
would be very surprised!  Icelandic makes my brain explode although my
mother tongue is German, which has a lot of grammar that is very
similar to Icelandic (e.g. case system, adjective declension, etc.).
So I should be used to Icelandic grammar, but the vast amount of
things to remember makes it a very hard language to learn.

Just some examples: Does the dative sg. of a noun end in -i, or does
it not?  What if it is definite (-i or not)?  Is there u-umlaut
anywhere?  And i-umlaut?  What's the gender?  What's the plural?  Does
the -r in -ur belong to the stem (this is easier if there is a German
cognate)?  Which ablauts does the verb use?  Is that word irregular?
...

You should note that because of the complexity, Icelandic noun
declension is usually classified seperately for singular and plural,
so you have to learn two declension classes + gender for singular and
plural for each noun.  (Plus irregular nouns, which are numerous.)

I definitely find Mandarin much easier to speak than Icelandic.

In general, I would agree that similar language => easier to learn.
But that is only true if the grammar isn't too complex or complex in
the same way and if the irregularities are very similar so you need no
additional effort learning them.

Or was this thread about *understanding*?  That is, of course, a
different thing.  Icelandic is very easy to understand with knowledge
of German and some additional knowledge about some Scandinavian bells
and whistles.

**Henrik