I thought Finn was a difficult language, based derived from Magyar (!).
Most if not all languages on the planet share the same basic structure though : subject, action, object. Or in more common terms, subject, verb, object.
Selwink wrote:
Believe it or not, but Dutch is one of the hardest languages to learn. In comparison with other languages it has very odd rules, if there is a clear rule. For some reason, Dutchies have very few problems learning other languages though.
even I know dutch
your argument is invalid
iirc Hungaric was the hardest language to learn, at least that's what I remember of SpiderTech - Cervelo Part 2
@baseballlover312
my deepest condolences
learn faroese, it's way harder! Dutch is also very similar to german
TheManxMissile wrote:
The ability to learn languages depends upon your personal base. A lot of languages share bases, and hence learning similar languages is a lot easier. Languages with different bases are harder. Languages with different alphabets are the hardest.
German and Dutch are very similar, thanks to the Germanic base. English is about 1/3rd Germanic base, so it's not too tough for English people to learn Dutch/German. It can be harder to learn English because it is a broad mix of bases, with some Romantic and some Scandinavian... and just some wtf
Italian, or more specifically Latin, is a common base set up. French, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian all share the Romantic base. So it's quite easy for a French person to learn Italian, but not so much if they were to learn German.
Danish, Swedish and Norwegian all share bases, which link in with Germanic ideas as well. And some English is taken from here as well.
Suomi (Finnish) is different, but is just a pretty simple language anyway.
There are some oddities around Western Europe, such as Basque and other old local dialects.
Central and Eastern Europe of course has different bases. Polish, Czech, and former Yugo states use a fairly normalized alphabet set up, but the bases are different, on the whole, from those in Western Europe. That said they are not overly radical but do pose unique challenges.
Hungarian... just mental.
Further east and there is a switch to Cyrillic. The new alphabet creates unique challenges and is hence much harder to learn. But once the alphabet is learned it opens up a wide variety of languages and variations, mostly stemming out from Russian.
Much further east and Asia is unique again, obviously. Different languages, but each one is unique. Cantonese is different to Mandarin, is different to Japanese.
And of course Arabic is different, but is widely spoken set up with local variability rather than differing languages.
Africa... yep that's just totally different, with incredible numbers of differing languages.
So basically, what I said in more (and better words). However this is not all entirely true, as almost all languages come from a variety of sources, you explained Britain, but there are others too. So Russian will have bits from Scandinavia, and from Turkey, which will in turn have bits from hundreds of languages, like Russia, Scandinavia, Arabia, Little nomadic tribal languages, Greek, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Romanian, all other Balkan. Then there's the languages for, former colonies, which are normally tribal languages, often melded with their former ruler's tongue. So the groups system is a bit invalid, as everything is merged together.
The Hobbit wrote:
So basically, what I said in more (and better words). However this is not all entirely true, as almost all languages come from a variety of sources, you explained Britain, but there are others too. So Russian will have bits from Scandinavia, and from Turkey, which will in turn have bits from hundreds of languages, like Russia, Scandinavia, Arabia, Little nomadic tribal languages, Greek, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Romanian, all other Balkan. Then there's the languages for, former colonies, which are normally tribal languages, often melded with their former ruler's tongue. So the groups system is a bit invalid, as everything is merged together.
Depends how detailed and far back you want to go. Overall it's nice and easy and general.
But lets go a step further than you did, back to the first true languages such as Sanskrit. Everything in the 'Western World' evolved from this basic language. Same thing happens in Asia, all stemming from one or two incredibly basic and ancient languages.
And let's go even further backwards. All man stems from Africa, and our only communications were basic pictorial paintings, which is the true origins of conventional languages. So Cantonese has the same base as Russian as British as Swahili if you go far enough.
Or do we go even further and say the basis was "oogga ooga grunt".
So, it comes full cycle, if you go out and hear half the kids on the street now! I think that you're right, which is good for us, but imagine if we encountered aliens, it would be nigh on impossible, unless they had voice boxes. Should this not now be in the difficult topics thread, at first it was, find the longest word, now it's the roots of all languages, for a gaming forum, this is remarkably high brow, everything must become a philosophical debate!
A discussion on religion or politics doesn't have to be controversial, it just normally ends up being like that. When does it become difficult, that is the question?
The Hobbit wrote:
A discussion on religion or politics doesn't have to be controversial, it just normally ends up being like that. When does it become difficult, that is the question?
Difficult =/= Controversial
And neither is the evolution of language philosophical. It's well known and proven. You could discuss what 'is' language if you like, but i doubt anyone would join in
Speaking of languages (pun intended) just realized i also speak some Ancient Egyptian. As in i can, and have, translated several passages, tablets etc. before and still can write hieroglyphics... which is pretty awesome
Funny that you wrote "realize", being an English person.
If I've gotten my facts right : the -se form is more common in Britain, except for scientific publications, but the -ze form is closer to its Greek root.
Aquarius wrote:
Funny that you wrote "realize", being an English person.
If I've gotten my facts right : the -se form is more common in Britain, except for scientific publications, but the -ze form is closer to its Greek root.
The z comes from Firefox, an American program. It underlines all s things like realise, organise etc. That said i do use Americanizations fairly often such as color instead of colour, and favorite instead of favourite.
And yes the -ze could be seen as closer to traditional Greek set up, but equally the Greeks took it from certain Egyptian roots. In fact the Greek language is one of the most interesting in the world, because of it's unique alphabet in relation to it's geographic and historical locations.
Selwink wrote:
Believe it or not, but Dutch is one of the hardest languages to learn. In comparison with other languages it has very odd rules, if there is a clear rule. For some reason, Dutchies have very few problems learning other languages though.
even I know dutch
your argument is invalid
iirc Hungaric was the hardest language to learn, at least that's what I remember of SpiderTech - Cervelo Part 2
@baseballlover312
my deepest condolences
Apparently the hardest languages to learn world wide are Euskara (Basque Country) and Hungarian, as they dont have any relation to any language or any relation to any root/branch/origin (choose whatever word you want ) of any other language.
(Believe it or not, but while studying geography I actually had the time to learn some linguistics.. Well, i did have a 2nd subject up to last year which was a language...)
Oh and Selwink:
Dutch is a germanic Language! It is derived from the same origin as German and even ENGLISH (yes my dear Anglo-Saxons!) so it surely isnt the hardest language to learn!
Hell, I speak German and Luxembourgian and I get by just fine... Dutch is piss easy (excuse my french)!
And for those who wonder, other germanic languages are all of the scandinavian ones, Scots and even your selwinks regional language: frisian
Hungarian is part of Uralic languages (like Finnish and Estonian) but somewhat isolated as Hungarians traveled away to Central Europe. Still, its not nearly as isolated as Euskara, and Celtic should be worse too.
Aquarius wrote:
Funny that you wrote "realize", being an English person.
If I've gotten my facts right : the -se form is more common in Britain, except for scientific publications, but the -ze form is closer to its Greek root.
The z comes from Firefox, an American program. It underlines all s things like realise, organise etc. That said i do use Americanizations fairly often such as color instead of colour, and favorite instead of favourite.
And yes the -ze could be seen as closer to traditional Greek set up, but equally the Greeks took it from certain Egyptian roots. In fact the Greek language is one of the most interesting in the world, because of it's unique alphabet in relation to it's geographic and historical locations.
baseballlover312, 06-03-14 : "Nuke Moscow...Don't worry Russia, we've got plenty of love to go around your cities"
Sarah Palin, 08-03-14 (CPAC, on Russian aggression) : "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a nuke is a good guy with a nuke"
Big thanks to jdog for making this AMAZING userbar!
Finland is part of extended Scandinavia. It can refer to either just Norway, Denmark, Sweeden, or it can refer to other countries, normally Faroe Islands, Iceland and Finland. My definition is the latter, but I guess it depends on the speaker as I do not believe there is a defined boundary.
The Hobbit wrote:
Finland is part of extended Scandinavia. It can refer to either just Norway, Denmark, Sweeden, or it can refer to other countries, normally Faroe Islands, Iceland and Finland. My definition is the latter, but I guess it depends on the speaker as I do not believe there is a defined boundary.
Extended Scandinavia... also known as Nordic. This discussion comes up here fairly often it seems. For this, just use Google for the full story, or forum search
Bosskardo wrote:
Hungarian is part of Uralic languages (like Finnish and Estonian) but somewhat isolated as Hungarians traveled away to Central Europe. Still, its not nearly as isolated as Euskara, and Celtic should be worse too.
Finland is in Scandinavia and an Uralic language
isn't it good to correct people?
What do you mean by Celtic? Cause it is just a language group which has also been derived from the indo-european languages, like all the germanic ones!
If you are associating Celtic with Irish, then that is just a result that Irish is the most spoken language (Not as a native/everyday language) of the Celtic family! Others are Scottish Gaelic (surprisingly very similar to Irish), Welsh, Manx, Breton and Cornish...
Plus, when looking at similarities between Irish, English, and other various forms of germanic languages (like gothic), you can find a huge number of similar words...
Bosskardo wrote:
Hungarian is part of Uralic languages (like Finnish and Estonian) but somewhat isolated as Hungarians traveled away to Central Europe. Still, its not nearly as isolated as Euskara, and Celtic should be worse too.
Finland is in Scandinavia and an Uralic language
isn't it good to correct people?
What do you mean by Celtic? Cause it is just a language group which has also been derived from the indo-european languages, like all the germanic ones!
If you are associating Celtic with Irish, then that is just a result that Irish is the most spoken language (Not as a native/everyday language) of the Celtic family! Others are Scottish Gaelic (surprisingly very similar to Irish), Welsh, Manx, Breton and Cornish...
Plus, when looking at similarities between Irish, English, and other various forms of germanic languages (like gothic), you can find a huge number of similar words...
My memory might be a little vague about it but as I remember: Celtic (by this I mean all the Gaelic group) started in Britush isles and because it was isolated from the continent, it is quite different (isolated>no relation with other languages for a long time). Then anglo-saxons came and their language became dominant. I may be wrong but I don't think Gaelic had a lot of influence over developing English.
But as I say, I might be wrong. High (or middle) school (it was that long ago that I don't even remember when it was taugth) was al ong way back.
CrueTrue wrote:
Strictly speaking, Finland is not a part of Scandinavia.
It actually depends on how you look at it. Culturally (and language wise) it is Sweden, Norway and Denmark (although some very large regions of Swe and Nor still speak Uralic languages). Geographically it is mostly the same, only sometimes Denmark is not included. Historically, Finland has always been close to Scandinavia and thougth as part of it. Economically and politically, Fin is a part of Scandinavia.
And we can actually argue quite long, as it is all relative.Edited by Bosskardo on 16-11-2013 15:34
![imgur.com/KlJUqDx.jpg[/img[img]]https://imgur.com/yUygrQ.jpg](https://imgur.com/KlJUqDx.jpg[/img[img]]https://imgur.com/yUygrQ.jpg)
