Re: Rating Languages

On Monday, September 24, 2001, at 05:52 PM, Herman Miller wrote:

> It'd be interesting to put together a list of the features of various
> languages that are considered difficult (at least to English speakers).
> Here's a few examples I can think of (not all of these are languages I've
> actually tried to learn, but at least ones I know something about -- and
> it's nowhere near a complete list of "difficult" features, just a few that
> come to mind).
>
> Ancient Greek: verb conjugations.
> Arabic: tricky alphabet, short vowels unwritten, emphatic consonants.
> Chinese: writing system, tones.
> Finnish: noun declension, consonant gradation.
> Georgian: consonant clusters.
> Irish: spelling, initial consonant mutation.
> Japanese: writing system, levels of politeness, syntax.
> Korean: "tense" consonants.
> Russian: palatalized consonants, perfective vs. imperfective verb stems.
> Thai: no spaces between words, complicated spelling of tones.
> Tibetan: spelling.
> Vietnamese: unfamiliar vowels, tones.
> Zulu: clicks.
Hmm.  My sister found all the case declensions in Latin quite painful, so:
Arabic: the laryngeals and pharyngeals (?)--I can't distinguish between
them.
English: for many I've known, the spelling.
Japanese: writing system.  The syntax looks reasonable to me, but I have a
biased Korean perspective...
Korean: The damn vowels, which I tend to read in rotation or reflection.
   It is *not* an alphabet for people who have trouble with left, right, up
   and down.
Latin: case declensions.  (My sister's unwitting contribution.)

French: the fact that the r's give me a sore throat after about an hour.
German: the fact that the r's give me a sore throat after about an hour.
   (Ditto for [x], though I like the sound.)
Spanish: the fact that my trilled r's come out stuttery even after a lot of
   practice and Dan Sulani's advice, though I think I've been making them
too
   far forward, because when I moved my tongue back a bit it became somewhat
   easier.  But then it starts sounding like I'm inserting [h] before the
   trill.  I know, I know, practice...
Do we sense a trend here?  :-/

I confess I haven't encountered such a rich variety of languages closely
as others have...

YHL

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