Re: Rating Languages

There is somewhat of a similarity between Mandarin and Cantonese.
Characters, obviously :)  But the pronunciation is sometimes close
(tian/tin, ni/ney) or sometimes not so much (wo/ngoh, bu/bat), and there's
no real way to predict it (as far as I know).  The grammar is very similar,
but there are a few significant differences (such as position of adverb).
Also a few two-character compounds have their order reversed between
the two languages.

To me, the real tongue twister in Mandarin isn't the tones (not to say
they don't take some getting used to), but the numerous odd affricates
to remember and be confused by.

There are two major language families in India, Indo-European and Dravidian.
They have no real similarity to one another, though they both use lots
of Sanskrit loan words, but the languages in those families are somewhat
similar.  Tamil and Malayalam are quite similar, Kannada a bit more removed,
and Telugu a bit more removed from that, or so I've been told.  Hindi and
Panjabi are pretty similar... I know a fair bit of Hindi and with this can
sometimes comprehend Panjabi, but I wouldn't go so far as to say they were
mutually intelligible.

Japanese is commonly thought of as a hard language, but I find it fairly
easy.  Obviously, the vocabulary is nothing like English, but that's not
really a big shock.  The grammar is all messed up, but after a while,
you get a feel for it.  It's trivial to pronounce :)