Languages - writing of them etc.

[Skidzer]

Are there some languages which are more complex than others?

And if yes, does that stimulate a child's brain when learning them, or is the reverse and is it a reflection of the society that uses it?

If anyone replies I'll explain some of my rather jumbled brain processes which lead to me asking the question.

I found Italian so easy to learn. Grammatically it's exactly the same as French in terms of tenses, but the spelling is easy as it's all phonetic.
Other nerd fact. Montessori was an Italian who invented the format of the now famous Montessori pre-school teaching...

I'm actually not sure whether Montessori was a man or a woman. Must google!

lazylinguist That’s so true about Japanese - the grammar is so straightforward and logical, the spelling & pronunciation system is straightforward and logical. It didn’t ions like a designed language, even though it’s natural. I became fluent pretty quickly when I was living there, but still wrote like a 3 year old

It was a woman

Maria Montessori
Maria Montessori was an Italian physician, educator, and innovator, acclaimed for her educational method that builds on the way children learn naturally. She opened the first Montessori school—the Casa dei Bambini, or Children's House—in Rome on January 6, 1907.

Wait, my phone is bonkers.
“it didn’t ions” should say “it functions like”

Can anyone comment on the structure of Russian grammar if I was to attempt to learn it?
Could be my mission for the new year!

Giraffe - your phone doesn't like you speaking about other languages. It's jealous, so decided to play havoc with you.

Italian caveman looking at a dog and coming up with the sound 'perro'. Old English caveman looks at a dog and comes up with the sound 'dog' I don't want to seem mean but you keep saying you're fluent in Italian but Italian for dog is cane!

Languages developed over centuries so in any case, whatever language cavemen spoke it would be unrecognizable today.

Shit, mixing up Spanish and Italian! Si, lo parlo correntemente! Normalmente!!!

There's something here about how the US grades languages for Foreign Service, based on how many hours it takes the average English native speaker to gain proficiency www.mustgo.com/worldlanguages/language-difficulty/

I have seen other tables (but can't find right now) based on a more universal level (ie second language acquisition for all mother tongues) but it's roughly congruent.

I think for English native speakers, tonal languages are especially difficult, though--more so than just those where it's necessary to learn different letters or to write right/left.

If I was to look at a dog and had no language, I'd probably grunt. Like 'uh'. Then again, I'd probably have the same sound for a man pmsl.

Haha Skidzer that could be it!
Hmm, Russian! I’m pretty good with languages. Can’t understand maths, but pick up languages quite quickly. Russian was the only one, so far, that I found absolutely impossible. The alphabet was fine, but trying to learn the grammar is like being stuck inside one of those magic mirror funhouse things where everything changes ALL the time for NO apparent reason

It does sound beautiful though!

What are tonal languages?

No way Giraffe? Maths was my worst subject too, so perhaps I might go for Japanese. Or Mandarin.
Russian sounds sexy. Or like someone is about to kill you (too many Bond movies).

Learning more than one language has been proved to develop brain power and even help put off the onset of Alzheimers. Languages that use ideograms rather than alphabets also rely a lot more on memory. It is extremely difficult although not impossible to learn to speak and write a language fluently as an adult but even trying to improves cognitive abilities.

Do Japanese! honestly, the grammar is really logical, no weird case endings, and while the writing system is difficult, it’s I also really interesting.

Mandarin is also an interesting one to learn. It’s a tonal language (those are the languages where the meaning of a word changes depending on whether you use a rising, falling or neutral tone. Basically you have to be really careful if your voice goes up or down when saying a word.) Harder to learn than Japanese, which isn’t tonal, as you have to remember the tones to speak, and learn a complicated writing system! However, the grammar/word order is the same as English, whereas Japanese is different.

Er, good luck

@smemorata I might offset the effect of alcohol on my brain while studying a new language in that case! 'Hey Spanish teacher - is that a margarita you have? Why thank you very much!'

As PP mentioned, it's where the "music" of the word changes the meaning - sometimes quite dramatically, from what I've read

Oh Giraffe, given my tendency to get excited, I'd probably tonally offend everyone in China then! That said, I use a lot of profanities which the British are utterly disgusted by, but is normal everyday parlance in Ireland! If I had a penny for every time someone on the phone (call centres) tell me that they are going to hang up the phone when I use the word fuck, I'd be a fucking millionaire!

I guess the tonal thing is a little like Ciao in Italian then? Ciao (happy face)! = Hello. Ciao (sad face) = Goodbye.

No. Ciao doesn't change meaning. A tonal language means the falling or rising tone produces different words.

I did Chinese and then Japanese for a year each. Both interesting, but very difficult, with Chinese slightly harder IMO. They make European languages look easy!

Chinese has easier grammar, but is harder to write (3000 characters to learn) and harder to speak (tones - 'buy' becomes 'sell' if you get it wrong, for example).

Japanese is at least partly phonetic (it has two syllabic scripts), but the grammar and vocabulary change depending on who you're talking to and who you're talking about (respect language). They also conjugate adjectives, which is an alien concept in the west!

lazylinguist That’s so true about Japanese - the grammar is so straightforward and logical, the spelling & pronunciation system is straightforward and logical.

Exactly! I found it utterly fascinating. I gave it up because I was only doing it as a hobby, precisely because I had always wanted to learn a language with a different alphabet. But I soon realised how long it was going to take me to get any good at it. Plus Spanish is going to be genuinely useful to me, so it was silly to go for Japanese really. I'm doing an A Level in Spanish this summer (doing the two year course in one year - gulp!). I may take up Japanese again when I'm old, to help stave off the memory loss!

@Skidzer Russian is heavily inflected, there are six cases with masculine, feminine and neuter, but no articles, and most of the time the word ending lets you know the gender. The adjectives also have to agree but they often resemble the word ending so it’s not as bad as it sounds. All verbs conjugate, but there are only three basic tenses. The killer is that verbs can have perfective or imperfective aspect. Took me two years to understand that, and I still can’t use it properly. But once you have learned one Slavic language, the others come more easily as they are so closely related in general structure and vocabulary.

Russian is the coolest because even reciting a shopping list makes you sound like a mysterious Cold War spy. 😎