As a native English speaker, I hear things like “this” language is hard/easy to learn. Does this mean it is only hard/easy to learn coming from an English background, or would someone who speaks Spanish also find it similarly harder/easier to learn as well?
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french is a mess.
there are so many exceptions to almost every rule, some rules are pointless.
there is even a letter (ù) that was created to be used in a single word in the entire french language. (given is a commonly used word but still)
its gotten so bad, most french people speak a broken version of the french language.
It will be WAY easier to learn Dutch as an English speaker than say Mandarin Chinese. Very broadly languages within the same sprachbund (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprachbund#:~:text=A%20sprachbund%20(%2F%CB%88sp,geographical%20proximity%20and%20language%20contact.) will be a similar difficulty between them. The challenges for an English speaker will be similar to a Spanish speaker trying to learn Mandarin, with the minor difference being Chinese uses a similar syntax to English (SVO construction) which would make it moderately more simple for an English speaker to understand Chinese grammar. I say that because most Spanish speakers know enough English to understand SVO/non-gendered language, to isn’t a huge lift. Both speakers will be challenged by the massive number of Chinese characters and Chinese tonality. Similarly, since Chinese doesn’t utilize tenses (Chinese is grammatically simple even compared to English), Chinese speakers face years of challenge matching tenses and plurality in a sentence, they simply aren’t necessary in Chinese and it is a major obstacle for Mandarin speakers learning any standard average European language.
The more you know the easier it gets. I speak polish and english, my fiance speaks english. We went to denmark recently and although I think danish seems like a very hard language to learn there have been a few words which were similar to polish words so I was able to understand them.
I was had a few lessons of welsh (long story short needed it for a job I wanted to do as I live in wales), I have never had any welsh lessons prior to this and every time I heard people speak welsh I thought it was a very difficult language to understand and learn but somehow when I was learning it for those few days it appeared a lot easier. It was only the basics of welsh but it did seem a lot easier than it did at first.
Yes, the more it differs from your mother tongue the harder it will be for you to learn it.
Yes, there is something that makes a language harder or easier to learn: how different it is from your native language in terms of sentence structure and rules.
Think of it like learning to operate different vehicles. If you already know how to drive a car, it won’t be too hard to learn to drive a semi-truck. There will still be challenges, but your brain already knows some basic things – steering wheel, brakes, gas, turn signal, speedometer.
Learning how to operate a helicopter would be a lot harder. All the buttons are in different places and your prior knowledge of driving cars is not as helpful.
So for you, the car is English, the semitruck is Spanish or French, while the helicopter is Japanese.
A language having a lot of slang can make it difficult
For example one of the things I’ve noticed about people learning English is they learn the sort of technically correct way to say things but oftentimes this is not the way an average civilian typically communicates as we tend to use a lot of slang words and even adopt words from pop culture
Such as how a video of a girl throwing a water bottle down a hallway shouting yeet years ago has throughout the years now been adapted to basically be a word synonymous with throwing something with the intention of throwing it very far. And is even accepted into certain dictionaries now for all intents and purposes it’s become a real word and a lot of people who use it don’t even really remember where it came from anymore. It’s just another word to them
yet most people who are learning to speak English are not going to be taught about this. They’re never going to tell the guy to say that he yeeted The ball down the hallway and instead they would likely teach him to say I have thrown the ball down the hallway with great force. Which is technically true but not really how anyone who’s actually a native would say that
Similarity to the language you speak and whether you get exposure to it when you aren’t actively learning
Yes. I’ve found that consistency (fewer verb tenses, fewer exceptions to rules) makes languages less complex. Languages with smaller vocabularies are also a bit easier. Finally, if the sounds of phonemes in the language approximate those in my native language, speaking it well is simpler.
Languages have long histories and traditional ways of communicating. Someone invents a word and everyone likes it. Then it gets added to the language. Tradition keeps the word in the language “We always said it this way”.
If the traditions are a lot different, it becomes difficult for the new language learner. If there are similar traditions of adding similar words, the language feels easier to learn.
Imagine being a traveler. You are accustomed to driving a car. You feel comfortable traveling in other countries that use cars. You will feel less comfortable in countries that travel by animal (horses, camels, elephants). That is why languages can be harder or easier for people. It depends on what you are accustomed to using.
Learning when young. If you are over 15 the neurons used for tonal languages die off if unused. You literally can’t hear the sound. I’m learning Chinese writing but as a 75 year old spoken mandarin is out of the question. Interesting side note, if you wait too long to get hearing aids you can’t hear some sounds you used to know.
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