Re: Are some languages easier to learn?

Arek Bellagio wrote:
> Yes, I believe there are criteria that determines the difficultness of a
> language.
But why should some languages be harder *inherently* to learn?  All
children learn languages in about the same time, suggesting that there's
no inherent differences in difficulty, and that ease and difficulty
depend purely on your L1, and previous second languages.

> I think that
> Ergative is also a type of language (scholars use the 4 main groups.. I
> think), but Ergative is commonly for conlangs and fewer natlangs, right? Or
> am I wrong?
Well, about a quarter of the world's languages are classified as
ergative, so it's not all that rare.  Ergative isn't one of the basic
types, it's more a continuum with accusative on the opposite end.  The
four (or three) main types are: isolating, agglutinating, fusional (AKA
(in)flectional), and polyagglutinative; altho the last is sometimes
considered a subtype of agglutinating.

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