Re: Rating Languages

En réponse à Colin Halverson <CHalvrson@...>:

Among the languages I've tried to learn, until now the most difficult was
Arabic, because of it throat-cutting phonology. Nevertheless, I found the
grammar and the syntax quite easy. Even the so-called "broken" plurals were not
much more difficult than the irregular preterites of English.

Next to it comes German, again because of its nearly unpronounceable nature (at
least for me poor French man), but also because of the difficulty of its
grammar (I never could remember the declension of the articles, let alone the
declension of adjectives. When do we use this or that declension, and what is
it composed of? What a nightmare). Well, I was learning by myself and without
anyone to speak to, so maybe that didn't help either.

On the other hand, I found Japanese quite easy. Simple phonology, simple
grammar, just a little problem with the vocabulary. If I had kept on more
regularly I would probably be able to utter simple sentences. The writing
system is hell to learn though (but I still can decipher hiragana and katakana
without much trouble and can sometimes understand simple sentences, whether
written or pronounced).

Until now, the only language that resisted even an approach from me was Hindi,
and it's the alphabet that put me off. Devanagari is beautiful, but I cannot
recognize a single letter out of it, how hard I try to. Even the Arabic script
is simpler for me (and I'm not talking about the Armenian alphabet which looks
to me like a single letter repeated X times). Maybe if I could learn it in
transcription I would discover that it's not that difficult.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

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