Which language is easier to learn? (1 Viewer)

[only_me]

For my course, one of the compulsory units is a language. I'm a bit worried about this, because the only language I have learnt (other than english) is Japanese, at school, in year 7, and I sucked at it! So, I'm just wondering which language you guys think would be easier for me to learn. I can choose from Italian, French, Spanish, German, or good old Japanese. I considered Japanese, but I was hopeless at it in year 7... in fact, I'm sure I will be hopeless at them all! Has anybody taken these languages? Which did you find easier?

 

[mr_brightside]

Japanese would require you learning the three alphabets.

Id go with French, just for the fact that it has more common usage
and cause I like it.

bonjour. mon nom est dan

 

[Dreamerish*~]

If you can write Chinese, then Japanese writing will be easy to interpret.

If you can't write, then Japanese characters will be difficult to learn.

If you don't want to memorise 16 different ways of saying "the", and nominative, accusative, dative and genetive cases, and when to use which on what adjectives, then German isn't for you.

That's all the advice I can give.

I found German enjoyable though.

 

[only_me]

My friend told me Italian is pretty easy to learn, so I was considering doing that, but French and Spanish also sound ok...

 

[Dreamerish*~]

My friend told me Italian is pretty easy to learn, so I was considering doing that, but French and Spanish also sound ok...

French and Spanish sound sexy.

Sexy is important. I didn't think of that when I did German.

 

[melsc]

European languages are easy to learn as they use the same letters etc...

I originally learnt Italian and thats v easy, and then I picked up French, they are very similar and use the same structures etc. Both are commonly spoken and easy to pick up esp if you havent learnt a language before.

French is harder in the area of pronounciation and spelling mainly coz French people are lazy and don't pronounce many letters. Italian is pheonetic and is said basically how it is written.

Either is good and I hear Spanish is pretty similar as well. I'd say the only thing that people find difficult to grasp with European languages (this goes for most languages, English is really the odd one out) is the syntax.
e.g 'I love you'
Italian: Ti amo (You, I love)
French: Je t'adore (I, you love)
Italian and French people say car red, where as we say 'red car'
as someone meantioned number of 'the's'
French (la, le, les) 3
Italian (il, la, i, gli, le, lo) 6

European languages also have a masculine and feminine i.e everything is either male or female...

As you can see the stuff is pretty simple, hope I didnt scare you, just trying to show you what they are like...most of it is pretty easy to grasp and European languages are much easier for beginners.

 

[The_Apprentice]

German is the closest language to english. I found it really easy.

 

[~sora~]

I did one year of German, three years of French at high school and I've done one year of Japanese and one semester of Indonesian. Out of those languages I would have to say I found Indonesian the easiest language. Since it uses the alphabet and grammar in the beginning levels at least was the easiest and spelling is phonetic.

However, I recommend that you learn the language that interests you the most or the culture that appeals to you the most. From my experience I found language learning to be quite difficult without any interest in the culture/language. I did Japanese and Indonesian at the same time and I had zero interest in Indonesian culture and alot of interest in Japanese culture, and even though Indonesian was easier in 'theory' I found Japanese alot easier to study for.

Also if language is compulsory, I am assuming that you most probably have to do it for more that one year. If this is the case, no matter how 'easy' the language will be in the beginning it will become tougher as years go by. So, with just the motivation of 'I chose it because it's easy' will proably be not enough motivation later on.

But people work differently and can study something for sake of studying something. Still learning a language at university can be difficult because they teach at a faster rate than high school. Also, if you fall behind it's very hard to get on top of things again. So I feel that you need some kind of motivation to study a language. Anyhow something else for you to consider , hope it helps you! Good luck

 

[sxcnerdgirl]

Well I've done Japanese since year 8 and have had a keen interest in it ever since i went to Japan. However it is pretty hard considering it has 3 alphabets, one of which (Kanji) is more like drawing pictures than letters. Bah! You have no idea how bad i am at writing Kanji. Oh well.. And for year 11, i picked up Italian and it has been so easy in comparison.. I am looking forward to doing more languages at uni. Like spanish and french.

 

[kami]

It depends what your background in languages are - for a native english speaker, one of the germanic languages(german, dutch etc.) is likely easiest since english is a germanic language. Next easiest are romance languages(french, spanish, italian etc.) due to a lot of french influence over the years. The greek, cyrillic and asian languages would be hardest as they are a new alphabet altogether. So unless you have a family background in asian languages or whatever, I'd reccomend German or French.

 

[stazi]

German is near impossible for a native English speaker to master.

Learn Spanish - the language of loooove.

Ill teach you!

ummm wtf? there's a lot of similarities.

Learn esperanto as you can - apparently the easiest and fastest language you can do.

 

[Peartie]

Ill be biased and say german but spanish and italian are also good...i wasnt that good at french but it was still fairly easy... Japanese is definatley the hardest one as there are three alphabets etc.

 

[iamsickofyear12]

I did Japanese every year for about 5 years and could never say more than 2 sentences. That was a long time ago though and if I tired to learn it now I'm sure I'd do better.

I'd probably say Spanish is easiest to learn. If I wasn't so lazy I'd probably give it a go myself.

 

[xeuyrawp]

Go for German, then French.

German is the most straight-forward to learn of all those languages, and it's the most useful.

Japanese would require you learning the three alphabets.

At uni, katakana and hiragana are learnt in under a month, so it's not a real issue.

The good thing about doing Japanese is that it's different (and fun), and that it'll improve your English so much. The Romance and Germanic languages are so like our own that you end up learning English, but with different words.

Japanese is so foreign that it forces you to evaluate how you construct sentences in English, which is a damned good thing. I'm finding that, after learning Japanese and now Egyptian, that my understanding of how language works has hugely increased.

ummm wtf? there's a lot of similarities.

Learn esperanto as you can - apparently the easiest and fastest language you can do.

What a waste of time.

 

[fleepbasding]

Go for German, then French.

German is the most straight-forward to learn of all those languages, and it's the most useful.



At uni, katakana and hiragana are learnt in under a month, so it's not a real issue.

The good thing about doing Japanese is that it's different (and fun), and that it'll improve your English so much. The Romance and Germanic languages are so like our own that you end up learning English, but with different words.

Japanese is so foreign that it forces you to evaluate how you construct sentences in English, which is a damned good thing. I'm finding that, after learning Japanese and now Egyptian, that my understanding of how language works has hugely increased.



What a waste of time.

hmmm, I'm having a dillema here... french or german. I think I'll go with french because I know a teacher whos expressed that she'd be happy to tutor it. But I want to learn german to. Is learning two languages simultaneously a bad idea?

 

[notnownotever]

I did one year of German, three years of French at high school and I've done one year of Japanese and one semester of Indonesian. Out of those languages I would have to say I found Indonesian the easiest language. Since it uses the alphabet and grammar in the beginning levels at least was the easiest and spelling is phonetic.

However, I recommend that you learn the language that interests you the most or the culture that appeals to you the most. From my experience I found language learning to be quite difficult without any interest in the culture/language. I did Japanese and Indonesian at the same time and I had zero interest in Indonesian culture and alot of interest in Japanese culture, and even though Indonesian was easier in 'theory' I found Japanese alot easier to study for.

Also if language is compulsory, I am assuming that you most probably have to do it for more that one year. If this is the case, no matter how 'easy' the language will be in the beginning it will become tougher as years go by. So, with just the motivation of 'I chose it because it's easy' will proably be not enough motivation later on.

But people work differently and can study something for sake of studying something. Still learning a language at university can be difficult because they teach at a faster rate than high school. Also, if you fall behind it's very hard to get on top of things again. So I feel that you need some kind of motivation to study a language. Anyhow something else for you to consider , hope it helps you! Good luck

on that note i would do german, cause in germany are sexy...
to all the people wanting to study a language read this short fuck of a guide
OK KIDDIES
EUROPEAN LANGUAGES SPLIT INTO DIFFERENT CATEGORIES.
FRENCH, SPANISH, ITALIAN, PORTOGUES ARE BASED UPON LATIN.
GERMAN, DUTCH (HIGH GERMAN) DANISH SWEEDISH ARE BYZTANIAN BASED
CZECH, SLOVAK, CROAT AND THE BALKIN LANGUAGES ARE SLAVIC BASED.
RUSSIAN AND THE CIS COUNTRIES ARE RUSSIAN

SEE IF YOU LEARN GERMAN U CAN GO TO GERMANY, HOLLAND, DENMARK, SWEEDEN AND NORWAY AND SEE ALL THOSE SEXY CHICKS WHO LIVE THERE..

OH YEAH

 

[melsc]

hmmm, I'm having a dillema here... french or german. I think I'll go with french because I know a teacher whos expressed that she'd be happy to tutor it. But I want to learn german to. Is learning two languages simultaneously a bad idea?

I studied French and Italian for the HSC, in fact I even had both on the same day one period after the other and rarely had a problem bar the occasional throwing a french word into an Italian sentence as the languages are very similar e.g Mardi/Martedi, you wouldn't really have that problem as German isn't like French. Actually it was helpful when I couldn't think of the word in French, I remember one instant when I couldn't think of the word eraser and then I remember in italian its Gomma and that led me to the french word gom.

I found I had a better grasp of the structures etc as as I learnt it in one language I would see the similarities and make the links, thus picking it up much quicker than those doing one languages (I noticed the other dual-language students had a similar advantage)

If you have any more questions feel free to ask, only I dont know what my opinion means since I have done HSC level languages not uni level.