# As an American English speaker, what would be the easiest and hardest language to pick up? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [August 28, 2015, 6:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/as-an-american-english-speaker-what-would-be-the-easiest-and-hardest-language-to-pick-up/729145 "2015-08-28T06:04:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2015, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/as-an-american-english-speaker-what-would-be-the-easiest-and-hardest-language-to-pick-up/729145/41 "2015-09-01T00:53:01Z")
> [@April\_R](#): > > I’m starting Korean class next week. Pretty sure that is going to be extremely difficult. If you’ve convinced yourself in advance that it’s going to be difficult, then it will be. > [@](#): > > I’ve taken Latin, German, and Spanish. > > I haven’t become fluent in any of them, but Spanish was the most intuitive for myself to pick up. Bonus! All three of those are in the Indo-European family of languages, while Korean is a language isolate. ---
**Author:** ![Ranger\_Jeff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranger_jeff/32/2065_2.png) [@Ranger\_Jeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranger_Jeff)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2015, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/as-an-american-english-speaker-what-would-be-the-easiest-and-hardest-language-to-pick-up/729145/42 "2015-09-01T01:20:27Z")
I was terrible at Hebrew school. I had to repeat the first grade (Aleph). Did okay in Latin and German. I didn’t consider G.I. Vietnamese even in the neighborhood of a real language. So, I’d say the harder languages are ones that use different alphabets. The Hebrew characters you’d see printed in a book bear hardly any resemblance to the Hebrew characters you’d write with a pencil. Put a dot here and it’s one letter. Forget the dot or move it to the other side and you’ve got a different letter with a different sound. And some letters are very slightly different than other letters. Some vowels are characters and some vowels are dots or dashes below a character or dots to the upper right of the character. And that’s if they bother to put the vowels in. Reading from right to left is the least of your problems, and you’ll always end up opening the back of the book first. Oh yeah, there aren’t any numbers, they use the letters of the Aleph-bet for those. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2015, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/as-an-american-english-speaker-what-would-be-the-easiest-and-hardest-language-to-pick-up/729145/43 "2015-09-01T01:57:21Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > Navajo has all these strange sounds that don’t appear anywhere else. That’s why Navajo were used as code talkers in WWII. The Japanese never could break the code even though the “code” was just Navajo. The Japanese were all like, “What the fuck?!?” > > And that makes me think of the Bushmen of the Kalahari. Lots of clicking noises in their language. > [@Johanna](#): > > It was more than just Navajo. It was coded words spoken in Navajo. That’s true, but the Japanese couldn’t even tell what the coded words were. > [@thelurkinghorror](#): > > I’d like to hear more about this. The phonemes don’t seem that hard to me, except for the distinction between e.g. /tʃ/ (ch as in “Cheetos”), /tʃʰ/, and /tʃʼ/. Do these cause a lot of word confusions? Because otherwise, I thought the main problem was that the language was so alien to Japanese standards. There’s [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navajo_language), which includes: **“The language has a fairly large phoneme inventory; it includes several uncommon consonants that are not found in English. Its four basic vowels are distinguished for nasality, length, and tone.”** and **“In World War II, the United States government hired speakers of Navajo to be code talkers – to transmit top-secret military messages over telephone and radio in a code based on Navajo. The language was considered ideal because of its grammar, which differs strongly from that of German and Japanese, and because no published Navajo dictionaries existed at the time.”** ---
**Author:** ![April\_R](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3da27b/32.png) [@April\_R](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/April_R)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2015, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/as-an-american-english-speaker-what-would-be-the-easiest-and-hardest-language-to-pick-up/729145/44 "2015-09-01T02:01:30Z")
> [@Monty](#): > > If you’ve convinced yourself in advance that it’s going to be difficult, then it will be. > > Bonus! All three of those are in the Indo-European family of languages, while Korean is a language isolate. Im I’m stoked, don’t get me wrong, I’ve been wanting to learn Korean for almost a decade, but I have no illusions as to my ability to learn languages. Strangely enough, I understand what a foreign language speaker is conveying pretty easily, even if the language isn’t familiar to me. I’ve freaked a few friends out, laughing at a joke or being offended at an insult when they’ve spoken in a foreign tongue. Picking up on context has always come easily, but being fluent in any language I’ve studied has eluded me. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2015, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/as-an-american-english-speaker-what-would-be-the-easiest-and-hardest-language-to-pick-up/729145/45 "2015-09-01T02:02:32Z")
> [@Balthisar](#): > > I wonder just how useful Afrikaans would be to learn these days? Probably more useful than Frisian, anyway.😉 ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2015, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/as-an-american-english-speaker-what-would-be-the-easiest-and-hardest-language-to-pick-up/729145/46 "2015-09-02T03:05:53Z")
> [@China\_Guy](#): > > In my esperience, Chinese requires brute force memorization and hardcore studying. I know only a handful of peoplethat “picked up” a reasonable level of conversational Chinese. And, you really can’t get very good unless you leave at least a few thousand characters. Chinese characters are kinda like lego’s, you need to just memorize a shitload, and then it kinda falls into place. Plus tones are a pain in the pass. > > On the flipside, grammar is laughably logical and simple Yes, all that, but actually I was specifically meaning that listening comprehension is particularly hard compared to other languages I have (and haven’t) studied. I actually have a decent vocabulary in Chinese and can express myself fairly comfortably. I’ve answered a few language questions on Mandarin here on the Dope. But yet I still find listening extremely difficult. To my ears, it’s not clearly enunciated. I know that’s true of pretty much all fluent speech, but there’s some critical difference to a native English-speaker’s ears I think. I only studied German a little in high school but I could happily take down German speech and later look up words I was not familiar with. I still find that extremely difficult to do with Chinese. So yeah that, plus the things you mentioned make it pretty formidable to learn, even if, like you say, much of the grammar is nice and neat. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2015, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/as-an-american-english-speaker-what-would-be-the-easiest-and-hardest-language-to-pick-up/729145/47 "2015-09-03T02:50:04Z")
No love for “pig Latin”? ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2015, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/as-an-american-english-speaker-what-would-be-the-easiest-and-hardest-language-to-pick-up/729145/48 "2015-09-03T04:38:27Z")
> [@April\_R](#): > > Strangely enough, I understand what a foreign language speaker is conveying pretty easily, even if the language isn’t familiar to me. I’ve freaked a few friends out, laughing at a joke or being offended at an insult when they’ve spoken in a foreign tongue. Picking up on context has always come easily, but being fluent in any language I’ve studied has eluded me. Nothing strange about that, comprehension and expression are two distinct abilities and get evaluated separatedly. Comprehension is always a lot easier. Think of a child: they get the gist of what people are saying (more of it as they grow) long before being able to form complete sentences. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2015, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/as-an-american-english-speaker-what-would-be-the-easiest-and-hardest-language-to-pick-up/729145/49 "2015-09-03T04:50:23Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > No love for “pig Latin”? That’s not a language; it’s a [language game](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_game). ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2015, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/as-an-american-english-speaker-what-would-be-the-easiest-and-hardest-language-to-pick-up/729145/50 "2015-09-03T04:57:41Z")
> [@russian\_heel](#): > > Monty Im very jealous of your degree, as while I am far from bi-lingual, I find other languages cool, and love learning at the very least basic phrases from them. Its almost a semi hobby for me. > > Have to ask this of you, and please don’t take this as any sort of insult to your degree, which like I said, I kinda wish I had: how far away are we from a true “Babel Fish” app where you can stick an earphone in and hear a foreign language speaker, and the app translates what they said, and gives you the response? I don’t think we’ll ever have a very effective one. What we have now is a handful of sites and apps which provide a sometimes too literal translation, resulting in nonsense too often. > [@](#): > > In other words, is learning major foreign languages going to be a thing of the past due to electronic translators? Nope. No matter how prevalent electronics get, there will still be occasions where one is away from a useful power source. > [@](#): > > Even if so, what benefits does being a Linguistics degree holder afford you even if this happens? Im guessing many but please tell us, again not being a smart ass but an admirer of your massive scholarly accomplishments. Last one first. My “massive scholarly accomplishment” is nor more nor less than anyone else who got a legitimate bachelor’s degree. I do intend to further my education; however, the costs for that are prohibitive to me. What benefits? Well, one learns to understand the phenomenon of language and how languages work. That can be applied in a number of fields. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2015, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/as-an-american-english-speaker-what-would-be-the-easiest-and-hardest-language-to-pick-up/729145/51 "2015-09-03T14:16:49Z")
> [@Monty](#): > > That’s not a language; it’s a [language game](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_game). Good thing I didn’t try to major in it then. ---
**Author:** ![Knowed\_Out](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/knowed_out/32/7380_2.png) [@Knowed\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knowed_Out)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2015, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/as-an-american-english-speaker-what-would-be-the-easiest-and-hardest-language-to-pick-up/729145/52 "2015-09-04T14:28:49Z")
Speaking from my own miniscule experience in foreign languages, I took 2 years of Spanish in high school and 1 year of French, and I remember more French. I think it’s because the French teacher had us concentrate more on the spoken language, and had us do interactive skits and exercises where each of us would add a line to a story. What’s more, the French language is kind of like a musical performance. Even if a lot of letters are silent and the spoken version doesn’t exactly match the written version, it has a musical flow to it, alternating consonant and vowel sounds. It doesn’t have much in the way of “brutal” sounds like hard Ps and Ts. It involves a lot of light contact between teeth and lips, and the tongue is used more to shape sounds than to separate them. Once I understood that, the rest just seemed to click. I remember meeting a French guy at a gathering, and told him I remembered some lines from a French poem. I asked him if I remembered it right and said a few lines. He was astonished, telling me I was the first American he ever met who spoke French, and yes, I did say it right. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2015, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/as-an-american-english-speaker-what-would-be-the-easiest-and-hardest-language-to-pick-up/729145/53 "2015-09-04T23:54:54Z")
> [@Knowed\_Out](#): > > Speaking from my own miniscule experience in foreign languages, I took 2 years of Spanish in high school and 1 year of French, and I remember more French. I think it’s because the French teacher had us concentrate more on the spoken language, and had us do interactive skits and exercises where each of us would add a line to a story. That’s possibly a result of geography rather than ease or difficulty. If you were in Texas or the Southwest, you’d be exposed to more Spanish and might remember it more. There might even have been more incentive for the Spanish teacher to be more active. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2015, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/as-an-american-english-speaker-what-would-be-the-easiest-and-hardest-language-to-pick-up/729145/54 "2015-09-05T00:44:41Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Nothing strange about that, comprehension and expression are two distinct abilities and get evaluated separatedly. Comprehension is always a lot easier. Think of a child: they get the gist of what people are saying (more of it as they grow) long before being able to form complete sentences. She wasn’t talking about languages she knew a little about. See below. > [@April\_R](#): > > Im I’m stoked, don’t get me wrong, I’ve been wanting to learn Korean for almost a decade, but I have no illusions as to my ability to learn languages. It seems you very well may have. > [@](#): > > Strangely enough, I understand what a foreign language speaker is conveying pretty easily, even if the language isn’t familiar to me. That’s simply not possible if it’s a language unfamiliar to you. If you don’t know anything at all that’s being said, you’re just misinterpreting the visual cues you’re seeing. There’s also the issue of _false cognates_, words which sound the same or very similar in two languages but have quite different meanings in those languages. > [@](#): > > I’ve freaked a few friends out, laughing at a joke or being offended at an insult when they’ve spoken in a foreign tongue. Picking up on context has always come easily, but being fluent in any language I’ve studied has eluded me. You don’t know what you were laughing at or why you were offended. You were most likely following the crowd, the others present who actually did understand that language. Maybe you believe you’re great at “reading” people this way, but it’s simply nonsense. Disabuse yourself of the notion and you just might get better at learning the foreign language. For your edification, here are a few “visual cues” that do not usually mean the same thing in Korean as they do for most Americans. [ul][li]pointing with your index finger[/li][li]pointing with your middle finger[/li][li]smiling (sometimes it’s the same as for Americans, sometimes not)[/li][li]giving the thumbs up sign[/ul][/li] Screw it. I’m not going to list them all. The point is that your idea of being able to tell what someone’s talking about in a language you know nothing of to the extent that you can be insulted is balderdash. Just for fun, let me give you a very possible scenario. It’s Sunday afternoon. You’re on the subway in Seoul. The din of conversations around you is pretty loud owing to the number of people on the subway. Although it’s crowded, you can see one person sitting on the other side of the car. It looks like she’s caught your eye and she’s making “the finger/the bird” sign with both hands, raising the right hand and lowering the left hand, then changing the positions of the hands–twice–while maintaining “the birds”. Should you be insulted? ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2015, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/as-an-american-english-speaker-what-would-be-the-easiest-and-hardest-language-to-pick-up/729145/55 "2015-09-05T00:47:19Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > Good thing I didn’t try to major in it then. Actually, it’s possible to specialize in that and other language games. The major, of course, would likely be linguistics (I guess sociology and even cultural anthropology could be contenders). My students here have tried to teach me one Chinese language game but I’m completely lost on it. Same goes for me with ubba-dubba, or even any language game other than the pig latin you mentioned. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/as-an-american-english-speaker-what-would-be-the-easiest-and-hardest-language-to-pick-up/729145.md?page=2)