Basque noun declensions mop the floor with the declensions of Finno-Ugric languages like Finnish, Estonian & Hungarian. The reason why is the consistency principle I brought up earlier:
Finnish cases are VERY consistent. To bowdlerize further, Finnish case structure is really just tacking on “prepositions” to the ends of their nouns. Now, learning to use the correct “case” in the correct situation is still difficult, but at least in Finnish, there is a good deal of consistency to buoy the learner along.
In Basque – forget it. You are not using the same word endings to produce semantically-related nouns over and over as you would when learning Finnish “cases”. Imagine if in English, you had to say “toe-MAH-toe” when referring to the vegetable, but “tuh-MAY-toe” when referring to “tomato soup”, and then “TOE-muh-doe” when referring to a tomato plant. Then apply that across many thousands of nouns, toss in a heaping teaspoon of semantically inconsistent endings that may be used variously even in the most similar of situations. After all that, you begin to understand the difficulties that the classroom Basque-language learner faces.
On top of that, Basque yokes learners with the inconsistently-used ergative contruction I outlined above – and pulls WAY ahead of Finnish, Hungarian, and Estonian in the difficulty race.
Navaho and Caucasian languages like Georgian are also way up high on the difficulty scale. Navaho verb conjugations are a nightmare on the order of Basque noun declensions, PLUS it’s a tone language PLUS it has many non-English sounds in it’s inventory. Georgian is a bear mainly because of it’s famous consonant clusters (eg. mcvrtveli, meaning ‘trainer’) and the way that the verbs conjugate to agree with both the subject AND the object of the verb.
There is no objective “most difficult” language. Something about the requirements of human language requires a high degree of complexity; it seems, to me at least, that all languages approach the greatest level of complexity that the average person can handle. The trick is that this complexity isn’t always apparent.
English speakers, for instance, will tend to regard languages that rely heavily on grammatical cases as complicated. This is because they are used to the relatively simple case system of English. But speakers of a language like Finnish, with cases out the wazoo, will have similar problems with the strict and unforgiving word order English has been forced to adopt to deal with its sparse case system.
If we look at first-language learners, that is to say small children, we find that language acquisition follows about the same pattern regardless of the language the child is learning.
Everything you posted is true once all the factual chips are down. However, as you know, linguistics junkies tend to possess and share completely baseless opinions on this very question all the time.
I believe you’re incorrect on this statement, although there is a grain of truth to it. The declension endings are different depending on whether the noun in question is considered animate or inanimate (in addition to the usual singular/plural dichotomy) but they don’t change with the shades of meaning, as you assert. It’s more consistent than you give it credit for. I have what is considered the best grammar book on the subject; I’ll consult it and throw in what I find back here, or in a new thread if it’s too far off the subject. Mod’s and OP’s call.
Actually the use of the ergative is quite consistent. There are two actual verbs in Basque: izan and udin, which are conjugated, while the actual descriptor of the action remains uninflected. (Roughly, izan translates as ‘to be’, while udin could be considered as semantically equivalent to ‘to do’.) Izan does not use the ergative, while udin requires it. Conjugating udin, on the other hand, can be a bear - ‘I would have given it to them’ uses only three words in Basque, roughly coming across as ‘I give it-to them-would have’.
The consistency is there, I would argue; it’s just a more complex system than most.
I’m digging WAY back in my personal memory files here; so please attribute any errors, over-simplifications or general inaccuracies to me and me only.
From what I recall of this topic in my college lingusitics classes (I was a history of language nut; so I didn’t pay as much attention in the living languages sections as I should have) it seems the hardest popular language for native English speakers was Finnish, followed by Gaelic (which status as a “living” language is, unfortunately open to debate). After that, I think, was one of the SE Asian dialects (Cambodian maybe?)
Hands down, according to my prof, the easiest language for a native English speaker to learn was Fanagalo - the trade language of Eastern Africa, due to its small vocabulary and simple tenses. This one sticks particularly clearly because I was interested in a safari at the time and had already picked up a few words of fanagalo in my reading.
The prof didn’t include Esperanto and its ilk in the chart because they were “invented”, rather than naturally evolving, languages.
In another thread (gracefully titled “Those Crazy Orientals and Their Funny Writing”) I commented how after buying some cheap teach-yourself-language CD’s in German, Spanish, Italian, French, Russian, Japanese and Chinese I commented that even just beginning, I noticed that (for me) the Japanese and Chinese were considerably more difficult to pick up on than the others. With the last two, the written form of the word has no bearing on how it is pronounced. In the types of language drills used, in the case of any of the other languages I would tend to remember [how a word sounded] and also remember [what letters represented what sounds], and so be able to make a match between the two. Not so with Japanese and Chinese. -And others I have yet to insult. - MC
? -I thought that “how to link to another thread” was in the FAQ?
Olentzero, yeah, I KNOW I’m incorrect on the specifics – that’s why I had to warn that I was bowdlerizing considerably in everything I wrote about Basque. How can you explain the difficulties of Basque language learners to non-linguists without basically making up your own examples if you don’t speak the language?
I don’t speak the language – but I have read second-hand accounts of various person’s attempts at learning the Basque language. I’m basing a lot of my opinions on this subject on the reputations of various languages among noted polyglots and linguists – the works of whom I have read.
As for consistency – within Basque, I’m sure the rules are consistent. But an English-speaking Basque student is going to attempt to map Basque words and inflections onto English “thought patterns”. That won’t work very well at all – and will SEEM inconsistent when viewed through the eyes of the student. From what little I know, the impression of such inconsistency would be an especially strong one when learning Basque, IMHO, as opposed to Spanish or Chinese. It’s that impression of inconsistency – a mental difficulty in picking up the patterns of a language – that makes a language seem difficult to learn.
[mini hijack] I really did not want to start a new thread for this, so here goes. I was in the California, and visited the Jelly Belly factory (those things are amazing). They have the flavor description packets in a lot of differentlanguages. One of them happened to be Queen’s English. It looked like a combo of Spanish, Portuguese, and a little English. Does anyone know where they speak that language natively?
Ugh, I just remembered something else. How does the clicking languages, please excuse my political incorrectness, rank on the scale. It would seem close to impossible for me to replicate on of the sounds.
Interesting responses…I heard that Finnish and Basque were difficult for English speakers. I spoke some Finn as a kid, but have forgotten most 'cept a couple of cuss words and basic food needs.
This thread reminded me of the time I was being hired by the British Council [in an Arab speaking country] to computerize their English language training materials [I’m American]. They clearly noted that altho they were glad to have me on board, they really wanted to have an English native speaker do the work. A few weeks later I was congratulated for correctly spelling words such as colour consistently…I didn’t have the heart to let them in on spellcheck.
the “clicking languages” are grouped in the Khoisan language family, which is the smallest of the five main African language families. it is most common in southern Africa (like in South Africa). for example, the Xhosa speak a “clicking language,” and the ‘X’ stands for a certain click. People who cant make the clicks (like me) generally pronounce it ‘Khosa,’ but if you can it is ‘click-osa.’ and it sounds REALLY neat when you can, because it blends in just like another letter.
but also - if it is impossible for you to replicate a sound, it is just because the language is unfamiliar to you, and your tongue and ears are not used to it. I’ve studied German and Russian and in both cases, the teacher would stand two very similar words up as an example - I would not be able to tell the difference between the two words because my ears werent primed to the details of the language, but to a person who was a fluent speaker, the difference was clearly obvious.
Apparently, when you are born, you are able to distinguish and replicate and recognize all the language sounds, but after awhile you ‘lose’ all but the ones you encounter on a daily basis. Or something like that.
Anyway, long story short - Khoisan. The clicks are hard for standard English speakers the way the ‘v’ sound might be hard for people who have no ‘v’ sound in their native language.
And like i said, I have no idea how hard Khoisan languages are to learn, but I study Kiswahili (spoken in east Africa), and while it is set up differently from any other language I’ve studied, it is no harder or easier. it is a lot more fun, but only because my professor kicks so much ass it is not even funny.
Kwa heri,
Actually, Chinese characters are made up of radicals or components. Some characters contain a “pronunciation” radical (I can’t remember the correct term for this). So, some of the time, a Chinese speaker can pronounce a character they have never seen before. That said, romanization of Chinese characters will allow you to pronounce Chinese. However, because so many different words have the same exact pronunciation, it could be difficult to impossible to understand the meaning.
Japanese have 3 different writing forms. Kanji (Chinese characters that may be pronounced based on Chinese or be a purely Japanese pronunciation), Hiragana (an alphabet type system) and Katakana (an alphabet system used primarily for foreign/non-Chinese words). With Hiragana and Katakana, one can easily pronounce the Japanese words. Kanji often has a hiragana subscript so even if you don’t recognize the character you can pronounce it. Finally, understanding Japanese is substantially less dependant on understanding the character than Chinese is.
Back to the OP. I would certainly say that written Chinese is the most difficult written language still in general use.