A Map Showing How Much Time It Takes English-Speakers to Learn Foreign Languages

Re:A Map Showing How Much Time It Takes English-Speakers to ... by stevekemp on Friday December 01, 2017 @12:33AM (#15822150)

Although they're "unique" I'm not sure that necessarily makes them harder to learn.

Compare Finnish to a language such as Polish with many cases, and Polish always comes out "harder".

I'm biased as I have moved to Finland, and am (slowly) trying to learn the language. It is hard, but at the same time I'm not sure that learning grammar/words would have been easier if it had been related to another language that I also didn't speak!

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:A Map Showing How Much Time It Takes English-Speakers to ... by tpeo on Friday December 01, 2017 @01:40AM (#15822372)

I think the variance among grammars is smaller than variance among vocabularies. Just take any two romance languages. Their grammars will be much more similar than their vocabularies are. This, I think, suggests that a large part of the difficulty involved in learning a new language is actually due to changes in vocabulary. Trying to learn a language with completely different words seems like a Stroop task on steroids.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:A Map Showing How Much Time It Takes English-Speakers to ... by learc83 on Friday December 01, 2017 @12:58AM (#15822237)

The FSI rates Finnish as harder than Polish for native English speakers.

[ Parent | on HN ]