The head of the School of African and Asian Studies in London was asked this question several years ago (I heard the interview on the radio). He was discussing Asian languages only, but his answer was interesting. He reckoned that all foreign languages are equally hard to learn perfectly, but the hurdles are at different heights at different stages in the learning process.
EG, (he said) it is easy to learn Malay (Bahasa) to a conversational level in 6 months, but difficult to do the same with Chinese. On the other hand, once you’ve studied and struggled with Chinese enough to master the pronunciation and other basics, the rest comes relatively easily. With Malay, on the other hand, the subtleties start to kick in later in the process.
From an English-speaker’s point of view, I would definitely go with Spanish (or Esperanto if it counts and if you like Slavic word roots). The idea that German is easier is wrong - its grammar is tough (try the cases), and remember that more than half our vocab is Latin rather than Germanic based.
I don’t know where I heard Mannish, if I did at all. Seems like I read it though. Maybe just confused it with Cornish.
Anyway, the Brythonic languages and the Gaelic languages are definitely NOT the same? Correct?
No, it is not.
They are two recognized different forms of Dutch. Whenever you follow in Flanders an academic education for translator/interpreter (whihc in Flanders teaches at least two foreign languages and up to four) the extensive courses on the Dutch language include the study of all the differences between Flanders and The Netherlands.
Of course, just like you post here denigrating that Flemish is for you a “dialect”, you can hear in Flanders the popular saying that whenever a Flemish child would start to pronounce Dutch the way it is done in the Netherlands, urgent help of a speech therapist is required in order to remedy the child’s speech impediment.
(And of course we don’t even speak here about the various local dialects in both nations.)
I guess that is why Dutch TV programs are often subtitled in Flanders and vice versa
Myself I simply adore South African Dutch.
I think however that it is correct to state that neither Dutch or German are easy languages for someone with no background in them. Although I would think that this is less a problem for English speakers.
Salaam. A
From, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flemish_language:
Flemish (in Dutch, Vlaams) is
any of the dialects of Dutch spoken in Belgium; see Dutch language.
the language spoken in Flanders is not a separate language, but there are some distinct differences in vocabulary and pronunciation, similar to that between British and American English. On the other hand, the Flemings use exactly the same grammar and orthography as the Dutch. The term is thus usually used to distinguish the Dutch spoken in Flanders from that of the Netherlands
I didn’t say they are different languages. I say they are different forms of the same language. So if you insist on talking about “dialect” this makes the Dutch of the Netherlands as much a dialect of Dutch as you when say Flemish is a dialect of Dutch.
By the way: Wikipedia seems to be a popular online item many people use for consulting on no matter what, yet it is certainly foolish to consider such a standard work or to give it any authority.
Van Dale Groot Woordenboek van de Nederlandse Taal on the other hand is largely considered to be the standard work. (I disagree on that particular emphasis on Van Dale, but that has other reasons then what we discuss here). You find in Van Dale clearly the distinction made between both forms and this both in spelling and explanation of meaning and/or use.
As for grammar, syntax and even spelling of certain words: They are most certainly not always the same. Which is why there is such a great emphasis on the many differences between both if you do a language study like the one I described in my post.(And if we would start writing in Dutch, I would only need one second to prove this to you and you could take Van Dale to see if what you make of it and what I make of it is both correct Dutch or not.)
Of course there is since many decades the strive of De Nederlandse Taalunie (which has Dutch and Belgian members and interests) to establish The Standard, yet still you see in that standard the differences noticed. (Again take Van Dale as an excellent example. )
There is a language called Dutch. Different speakers speak it different ways. These are dialects. The Flemish speak it one way, The Netherlanders speak it another, the Surinamese still another, Arubans still another, and I speak it yet another way (horribly).
I submit that Dutch is the easiest language for native English speakers to learn. It has common words dating back to Middle English and Middle German, and moreso than Swedish, Danish or even German.
Frisian is said to be the closest language to English, but I find it much stranger than Dutch.
I think Dutch is easy to learn to read, but leaning to speak it well can be difficult because of some of the pronunciation.
German is similar to English too, but as I recall (perhaps wrongly) has more tense and gender problems than Dutch (relative to English).
As an American living in California, Spanish seems quite easy to understand even though I’ve never studied it. But I think this is just because I am exposed to it all the time without even realizing it sometimes. The same is true of French. French was once (and still is to some extent) the “international language” and I think people underestimate the amount of French that even the Average Joe is exposed to in everyday life (books, movies etc., and even the English language).
If you took an native English speaking child, and locked him away from all influences, I believe Dutch would be the easiest language to learn. It just doesn’t seem that way to most because we native English speakers are hardly ever exposed to Dutch on an everyday basis.
I found a bunch of language CD’s on sale in a bargain bin once, and so bought a number of them just as a hoot. I didn’t ever fully-remember any of them, but did try a bit of each.
The European languages are fairly easy to follow, because the individual letters actually represent sounds, and this helps drastically in remembering them and how to pronounce them. Also–while some words are totally different for various languages across Europe, many words sound fairly similar in all of them.
The Chinese and Japanese CD’s are baffling. The way the “words” are written bears no relation to how they are to be pronounced, and I found remembering them to be drastically more difficult. The CD’s did not get into what the different parts of each ideogram were supposed to represent–perhaps that would have made some difference, but without knowing that, they were much more difficult to remember what they represented, and seemed just about impossible to remember how to write.
~
I Love Me, Vol. I How perfectly cool to hear that you speak Dutch.
Would you say Dutch is harder to pronounce than German? [what with our hard ‘G’ and all]
From http://www.fact-index.com/d/du/dutch_language.html:
Algemeen Beschaafd Nederlands (meaning ‘general civilized Dutch’, abbreviated to ABN) is the official Dutch language, the standard language as taught in schools and used by authorities in the Netherlands, Flanders (Belgium), Suriname and the Netherlands Antilles. The Taalunie (Language Union), an association established by Dutch government and the government of Flanders, defines what is ABN and what is not, e.g. in terms of orthography and spelling.
For reasons of political correctness, the terms Algemeen Nederlands (general Dutch) and Standaardnederlands (standard Dutch) are also used; Algemeen Beschaafd Nederlands could be interpreted as ‘the Dutch that is spoken by civilized people’, which would suggest that people speaking variants of the standard language are not civilized.
**Dialects
Flemish is the collective term used for the Dutch dialects spoken in Belgium. **It is not a separate language, though the term is often used to distinguish the Dutch spoken in Flanders from that of the Netherlands. It should not be confused with West Flemish, which is a separate, although related language also spoken in parts of Flanders.
ILM: *I submit that Dutch is the easiest language for native English speakers to learn. *
I (an American native English speaker) just started learning Dutch when I moved to the Netherlands last month, and I agree. It startles me sometimes to realize how much Dutch I can understand even before I “know” it: “Dat is goed. Waar is dat? Wat is je naam?” and things like that.
However, I studied a lot of other languages before coming to Dutch, including German, so that may make it easier. I’m not sure if I’d say that Dutch would really be the easiest to learn as one’s first foreign language.
Two other caveats about Dutch, nice language though it is:
The pronunciation is challenging—think a combination of German consonants and French vowels :)—and Dutch people often have a hard time understanding badly accented Dutch (like mine), probably because most people who can’t speak Dutch well don’t bother to try speaking it at all.
What use is it? If you’re living in the Netherlands or have a particular deep interest in Dutch or Dutch-colonial history or literature, that’s one thing. But just in terms of general language usage, you don’t really need to speak it for tourism purposes, since most Dutch people speak English; and you don’t really need to read it, since most of the major Dutch contributions to world literature have been translated into English and it’s a fairly small corpus anyway. If you want a second language that you might actually need to know for some reason, I’d say go with Spanish.
Just like the form used in the Netherlands of what is (incorrectly) called “Dutch” in English translation of the language name, Flemish is a recognized form of what is (incorrectly) named Dutch in English.
As such Flemish has - just like the form that is used in The Netherlands - a recognizable and recognized amount of particular vocabulary and syntax and a distinguished spelling of certain words that are used in both variants (yet even not always mean the same, depending use and context).
West-Vlaams an other language? Who… You make a whole new set of languages here, don’t you?
West Flemish (West-Vlaams) is simply one of the many dialects of Flemish.
That you don’t understand a word of it does not make a dialect a separate language.
I understand West-Vlaams very well. It is not as alien as it sounds once you get used to it. It is even far less alien to me then what I hear as pronounciation by the average citizen of the Netherlands.
To Kimstu:
My guess is that for someone who speaks English, the pronounciation of Flemish is far much easier to learn and to pronounce correctly. (just a hint:)… )
Kimstu, wow. Another Dutch speaker. Hats off.
I agree, Dutch isn’t of much use. Unless you plan a vacation in Aruba, Bonaire or Curaçao and want to impress the heck out of the local people.
Have fun in the Netherlands. And since my links are all incorrect and Aldebaran knows better than any encyclopidia: Have fun in Belgium too.
I would say not German. English, while classified as a Germanic language, seems to share more affinities with the Romance languages. I find French and Spanish much easier and intuitive to the English speaker than German. French and Spanish sentence structure and word order more resembles our own. Even vocabulary-wise, I find many more cognates in the Romance languages than in the Germanic languages.
My pick would be Spanish, definitely. With its straightforward pronunciation (only perhaps the trilled ‘r’ can give an English speaker trouble), its relatively easy grammar (no noun cases and declensions to deal with here), and intuitive sentence structures for an English speaker, I’m sure it’s one of the easiest language to learn.
To add to Ruadhs answer, the two are also called P-Celtic and Q-Celtic, respectively. So, whereas in (old) Gaelic you might have Maq Donel (son of Donal - modern M(a)cDonald), in (old) Brythonic youd have something like Map Howell (son of Howell - modern Powell).
Like he said, they arent mutally intelligible, and there are more differences than just this, but they are still pretty closely related. Ive always wondered if Welsh and Breton were mutually understandable, or Cornish and Breton.
An old linguistics text of mine had a decades-old photo of a Breton farmer on a bicycle in Wales (the caption asserted this in any event) selling onions, apparently proving that the languages were intelligible enough for bulb commerce. I swear I’m not making this up, and that I haven’t smoked anything goofy.
How this was economically feasible is beyond me, but there you have it.
WTF?! Here’s a link. London with your onions and shallots… well, the French bulb market must be saturated! All the way to Wales on a bike to sell 'em…?!
