Re: Rating Languages

However, I think my situation is interesting too. My first language is
Hungarian, though I grew up in Canada. But still, I only spoke Hungarian
until the end of grade one. And though Hungarian is FInno-Ugric, I had
quite a difficult time with learning other FU languages, especially
difficult was Sami and Estonian. On the flip side, I learned passable
Swedish in a month while staying with my cousin in Lund, and learned
Icelandic in about 6 months, and German I don't remember learning (though
Germans swear I'm a Volxdeutscher!).

So what does this mean? Would this shoot Boudewijn's theory down, or am I
just odd?

----ferko

"Nature and Nature's Law lay hid in night; God said, "Let Tesla be" and
all was light." - B.A. Behrend at AIEE Conference, May 18, 1917

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On Sat, 22 Sep 2001, Boudewijn Rempt wrote:

> On Sat, 22 Sep 2001, Thomas R. Wier wrote:
>
> (I think it must be my new email app, kmail,
> that makes people answer to me personally, instead
> of the list - this is the second time, so I've
> cc'd the conlang list.)
>
> > This is certainly true, but to put it another way:
> > it depends on the kind of language background that
> > a given speaker has.  Difficulty is a matter of
> > exposure and acculturation, given that babies are
> > known to be able to articulate virtually any kind
> > of sound that occurs in human languages, and only
> > start finding them "hard" when they've stopped using
> > those that are not present in the input language
> > environment.
>
> Not only that, but also some other kind of aptitude.
> I mean, I've studied a lot of unfamiliar languages, and
> some came quite easily, others were more difficult, even
> though they were just as far apart from Dutch.
>
> >
> > > But (Mandarin) Chinese has a very simple grammatical structure
> >
> > Eh? Mandarin has a relatively simple *morphology*, inasmuch
> > as there's not much there.  Mandarin syntax is quite complex,
> > however.
> >
>
> I'd almost say 'au contraire' - from a historical point of view Chinese
> morphology is extremely interesting. But the syntax of Mandarin is just
> as complex as the syntax of English.  Perhaps even less so - once you
> get the few constructs with things like yinwei and ruoshi clear, and
> have grasped the essence of le, you're done. At least, that was
> my experience when I learned Mandarin and wenyan, ten years ago.
>
> > Having studied languages from both regions, I'm not sure I'd
> > agree with that statement.  Korowai (spoken in Irian Jaya,
> > just next door to PNG) has a rather normally complex phonology and
> > morphosyntax more complicated than English but nothing spectacular.
>
> Of course, Irian Jaya has the greatest number of language families per
> square decimeter in the world - and consequently a great variety.
> (Though it is a moot point whether the number of language families
> wouldn't be reduced greatly if better descriptions were available.) My
> source, by the way, is just Foley's The Papuan Languages of New Guinea.
>
> > It is true that many languages in the Americas, though, have complex
> > morphologies.  Of the three that I've looked at -- Onondaga, Atkan
> > Aleut, and Mam -- the first two tend toward polysynthesis, but
> > compensate by having syntax that's relatively less complex than,
> > say, English.  Mam is a fairly thoroughly ergative language, with
> > ergative syntax and all, but then about 1/4 of the world's languages
> > (at least) show some ergative properties, so it's difficult to see
> > how you could call that "hard" from a neutral perspective.  This
> > again shows how  important background is in forming our notions
> > of "difficulty" in language acquisition.
> >
>
> That's true of course - if your native tongue is Tibetan, you probably
> would find English pretty hard. And I've read enough Japanese, and even
> Indian English (am reviewing a book on pronominal systems of Indian
> languages for Language just now) that I realize that English isn't the
> epithome of natural easiness. So, hard is always relative to some
> point, and for most people on this list that point will be an
> Indo-European language.
>
> Boudewijn Rempt  | http://www.valdyas.org
>

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