The Hardest Language

[alexander]

LJP, its no less flawed then polls like "Is there life on Mars" or "Which Next Gen console is better", its a poll, it asks for people's oppinions, Irish is not on the list because compared to icelandic it is not as hard to speak, compared to Russian it has a lot less rules and different meanings for words in different contexts, compared to japanese and chinese it is nowhere near as hard to write and to arabic, it is not as difficult to express modern day life, compared to Hebrew, once again, it is not as hard to read...

 

Basically if you are upset that your first or second or third spoken language didn't make it to the list, it is because in order to satisfy all the languages i would need hundreds of listings and i simply did not feel like listing hundreds of languages, people have hard enough time choosing from 15! Notice i didnt put any dead languages and their dialects on the list, that is why, if i said ancient egyptian or berber or gothic, now that wouldn't make the choice any easier, because there are only handful of people who can comprehend either of those and it is a lot harder to research a dead language then it is to research chinese(mandarinian) or icelandic. The only tricky one is Numee :lol:

[KerryK]

Well, I voted for Chinese, having tried to learn it a couple of times, but, I'm afraid, for me, any language but English, and I understand the rest of the world thinks it's difficult and I can believe it. It's so consistently inconsistent.

 

German really isn't that difficult to learn (IMHO), but I've got to admit that some words are longer than many English sentences.

[Tormod]

English has always come quite easy to me, but I started it in third grade so I guess I got a head start compared to you English-speaking folks' Norwegian. :doh:

[Chacmool]

I'm trying to learn Hebrew, so for now it's the most difficult language for me personally. At this point it seems impossible to just master the writing system, which includes different endings of certain letters. Maybe the letters will look better written with my left hand since they are written from right to left.

 

And then there is the confusing gender system, where different verb forms are used depending on whether you are male or female and on whether you are talking to a male or female.

 

Also, there is no way of relating the grammar, pronunciation or vocabulary to the languages I already know (Afrikaans, English, Spanish, French).

[sciencegirl94]

I think that English is a pretty easy language, in my opinion. Although I DO have an accent...

You should've put Hungarian in the list.

It is a very difficult language to learn.

 

It has suffixes, accent's and many more things.

And the pronounciation is hard too. At least, when I told one of my friends to try to say a sound (gy) in Hungarian she couldn't. I asked many people and none of them could pronounce it properly.

 

And Hungarian is related to Finnish, and Estonian.

 

Have a good day!

Jó napot kivánok mindenkinek!

 

 

p.s.: If you count ancient languages Hieroglyphics is a hard one!! Once I tried to teach it to myself. Now I know some, but I had to return the book to the library. I have to get it out again!

[tarak]

My choice: the language of life coded in those triplet codons of DNA.

 

The measurement of hardest language for a non-native/foreign speaker should also account the purpose of the learning such a language.Obviously this refers to the effort an individual puts in acquiring a sufficeint skills(read,write,seak) to be on par with the native speaker.On those terms it should also be seen that among a family of languages which one is relatively tougher to communicate even for the native speakers..I don't know much about linguistics..Please suggest me any article on different language classifications(traditional) with reference to lingusitics of the high and low level languages for computer programming.

[somebody]

Every single one of them is hard :D

[hamihaha]

Well, the response of this poll depends on ones own native language.

For a French, learning English is much more easier than learning Japanese.

For a Japanese learning Chinese is much more easier than learning French...

 

When learning a language there are two main work:

- remembering the vocabulary

- understanding the syntax

 

For every language the vocabulary take as much time to remember. Maybe at the beginning it will take more time to remember Chinese characters for an European, but then it's as easy (I've learned Chinese for 5 years).

 

So the grammar is the real point.

And Chinese grammar is very simple...

 

But Chinese is Chinese, this non-alphabetic language is so intrigating for us...

Not that difficult!

Good luck!

[C1ay]

But Chinese is Chinese....

 

Yes and no. There are many chinese dialects that are spoken differently but written the same way. Because of this chinese people from different regions that cannot have a verbal conversation can communicate with written communication.

[hamihaha]

Tey cannot have a verbal conversation can communicate with written communication.

 

Well this is a myth...

All Chinese able to read and write know the basic of Mandarin. That's the language used in school.

[C1ay]

Well this is a myth...

All Chinese able to read and write know the basic of Mandarin. That's the language used in school.

 

A show rcently aired on National Geographic channel, Kung Fu Monk, detailed the events of Shi Yan Ming defecting to the U.S. in 1992. It was reported that they had to drive him to chinese restaurant in order to find someone that could communicate with him. Even then they could find no one person that spoke Mandarin, only Cantonese so all of the communication had to be written. This is as claimed by Shi Yan Ming himself.

 

It is my claim again that chinese is not chinese in all cases and I've supported my claim. Cantonese speakers that do not know Mandarin cannot communicate verbally via Mandarin but they can comminicate via written communication. Can you support your claim that ALL chinese know Mandarin? Can you show that my support, that the history National Geographic has reported behind Shi Yan Ming is false or that Shi Yan Ming misrepresented the facts of his experience on the night he defected?

[hamihaha]

Even then they could find no one person that spoke Mandarin, only Cantonese so all of the communication had to be written.

 

I'm in China now, I only speak mandarin, and even if communication is hard sometime, I've been able to speak to people in every City, from a luggage carrier in Canton (Guangzhou) to a teacher in Shanghai...

 

Maybe the monk was old, never watched TV, from a small village in the mountain...

[alexander]

lol, National Geographic always has ways of finding people that stand out from the bunch, the one person who got bit by a black mamba and survived, one person who was attacked by a hippo and lived, the one person who does not speak Mandarin in China... Its NGEO that is what they do, and when i made the poll, i did mean Mandarin, i think i even said that before, so please don't get offended, I'm just generalizing (and i did post on other dialects of Chinese) Besides, any dialect spoken in China will do, they are all hard to learn, maybe not equally, but hard nonetheless!

[Jet2]

What do you think is the hardest language to learn, spealk (fluently), understand, pronounce and all that fun stuff :)

 

Martian language of course. So far I think nobody knows it on Earth...:)

[alexander]

All right, Mr. Smarty Pants, two can play this one..., so *Pong* back at you :)

 

 

Where's Martia? And how did you confirm that there is macroscopic life capable of vocal or other form of lingual communication on Martia? You could not have meant Mars, because there is no evidence that supports any amount macroscopic life forms able to communicate through a tongue-like organ or even any form of communication with a defined set of rules and patterning language-like verbal structure on Mars...? Remember this is science forum, and you have to present solid evidence if you are asked for it, otherwise your point is void. :)

[Jet2]

Sorry Alexander, but we don't have evidence to support that there is no

amount macroscopic life forms able to communicate through a tongue-like organ or even any form of communication with a defined set of rules and patterning language-like verbal structure on Mars

neither...

[alexander]

oh sure we do, we've had rov's on the surface for years now, and have yet to see any sign of even a microscopic life forms on there. Mars is a planet with a thin atmosphere with an atmospheric pressure less then 1% of that on earth, it is 95% CO2, 3% nitrogen, 1.6% argon, there are only traces of oxygen and water in the atmosphere making it kind of hard for any oxygen-dependent life-form to survive. Most macroscopic life forms to our current knowledge, need oxygen to survive, or at least they need to be able to get oxygen out of other bonds (and CO2 is not an impossibility). it gets so cold in the martian winter that 25-30% of the atmosphere condenses into Dry Ice. Temperature reports anywhere from -140 C in the winter to almost 20 in the summer, it makes it less then comfortable for human-like life forms to survive there, but not completely impossible. Traces of water have been found on the planet, indicating that the majority of the planet was once under water, and more current eruptions of geysers have been confirmed. But the planet will fail to sustain water in a liquid state, this is a problem with life, due to our current understanding of life the planet needs to have a noticeable magnetosphere, and liquid water as well as sun light to sustain life. Mars however is much too cold to sustain water in its liquid state, it's thin atmosphere and lack of magnetoshpere make the effects of solar wind that much more felt (worse). Also mars is volnurable to meteorites, and not to say Earth is not, but due to the thickness of the atmosphere, most meteorites that enter earth's atmosphere burn up, not the case with mars though, there is evidence of comets impacting or at least entering Mars atmosphere in the pretty near past. Traces of methane in the atmosphere show that such an impact did happen, and gathering that methane gets broken up by the UV radiation, it had to be within the past 340 or so years.

 

So in short, no there is no 100% proof that there is no life on mars, but i can give you a good 99.98% probability that there is no life on Mars capable of lingual communication, at least not on today's Mars, perhaps not the case some few hundreds of thousands of years ago...