four categories<\/a> To reach the same level of proficiency, you would have to study a Category I language (such as Spanish) for 26 weeks, a Category II language (think German) for 34 weeks, a Category III language (something like Thai) for 48 weeks, and a Category IV language (I\u2019m looking at you, Arabic and Mandarin) for 64 weeks. That\u2019s all well and good for DLI, considering that the majority of their students are native English speakers. But on the most basic level, it tells us nothing about how hard<\/i> each language is to learn.<\/p>\nAfter all, what makes a language easy<\/i> or hard<\/i><\/b>?<\/i> \u00a0Is it the writing system? Grammar rules like adjective agreement? The arbitrary use of genders for nouns? Don\u2019t even get me started on cases and declension! I would argue that it is none of those things (or perhaps all of those things!) More important than any one facet of a language is the perspective from which you look at the language. What is your native language? How many languages have you learned? How old are you? In what environment are you learning the language? All of these factors play a role in how challenging we may find a specific language.<\/p>\n
An infant learns Chinese in roughly 2-3 years with seemingly no effort at all (so unfair), whereas I studied French formally for nearly 10 years before I felt any sense of proficiency in the language. Does that make Chinese easier to learn than French? I think most of us would argue certainly not.<\/i> It depends on the learner. A native Arabic speaker attempting to learn Portuguese on their own in the Egypt will face an entirely different set of challenges than a native Spanish speaker who has moved to Brazil to learn Portuguese, don\u2019t you think?<\/p>\n
So what actually makes a language hard to learn?<\/b> Certainly having no prior experience with learning languages will make the journey a tad more difficult for you. Learning a language in your home country without native speaker assistance presents difficulties in comparison to immersion learning, of course. Having no motivation or desire to learn a language will also put a damper on your progress\u2014I\u2019m looking at you, high school tweeters of \u201cOh Em Gee why do I have to suffer through Spanish class #mylifeishard\u201d.<\/p>\n
So, my advice to those wondering how difficult it will be to learn a language: don\u2019t worry about the language choice, worry about yourself and your own plans to learn. Don\u2019t get caught up in the \u201cArabic is the hardest language EVAR\u201d nonsense, and do not be discouraged by anyone who says \u201clearning Italian was so freakin\u2019 easy.\u201d Set your own language goals, work at a comfortable pace, find resources you enjoy learning from, find someone to help you through the difficult parts, and stick with it. The truth is every language is only as tough to learn as you make it out to be!<\/b><\/p>\n
What do you think about the difficulty of various languages? Are some languages truly more difficult than others?<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"hardest](\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/28\/2014\/03\/globe-indonesia-equator-80467-350x232.jpeg\")
What\u2019s the easiest language to learn? Why is Chinese harder to learn than Spanish?\u00a0 How hard would it be to learn Icelandic? Considering that I spend most of my day lurking through the depths of the language-learning communities on various social media networks, I see a lot of questions about the relative difficulty of learning…<\/p>\n
Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":100,"featured_media":5220,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[542801],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1842","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archived-posts"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/100"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1842"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1842\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7009,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1842\/revisions\/7009"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"hardest](\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/language-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/28\/2014\/03\/globe-indonesia-equator-80467.jpeg\")
What\u2019s the easiest language to learn? Why is Chinese harder to learn than Spanish?\u00a0 How hard would it be to learn Icelandic? Considering that I spend most of my day lurking through the depths of the language-learning communities on various social media networks, I see a lot<\/i> of questions about the relative difficulty of learning different languages. My answer to every single one of them: it\u2019s not about the language, it\u2019s about the learner.<\/b><\/p>\n