Why Are Some Languages Harder to Learn Than Others? 2 Polyglots Share Their Experience
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- čas přidán 16. 06. 2024
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CC subtitles available in multiple languages.
❓What is the most difficult language to learn?
The short answer? It depends!
The difficulty of a language depends on a number of critical factors, 6 of which I share in this video. I also explain why certain languages tend to be more difficult than others, and why ONE language has been particularly challenging for me.
Later in the video, I am joined by the Chinese polyglot Zoe from @zoe.languages. It turns out that she has ALSO found this same language to be the most difficult one out of the 6 she has learned, despite our different native languages...
⏲️ TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 - Why are some languages more difficult?
0:18 - Reason 1
0:35 - Reason 2
1:36 - Reason 3
1:52 - Reason 4
2:10 - Reason 5
2:30 - Reason 6
2:47 - Chinese Polyglot Zoe ranks her 6 foreign languages
4:41 - Elements of language difficulty
5:27 - Why ALL languages are equally difficult at a certain point
6:49 - The importance of good learning content
7:59 - How well do you want to speak a language?
8:27 - Steve's experience learning Mandarin Chinese
10:04 - What are the easiest languages to learn?
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Is Chinese Difficult? | 中文难学吗?
• Is Chinese Difficult? ...
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❓What foreign language have you found most difficult? Why?👇🏼
Hi Steve! I love your videos. The Lingq app is a very good idea, too bad that the most useful function it has, that of being able to import videos, has the limitation of only 5 in total in the free version. It would be interesting to be able to provide this function without limitations in the free version, so that the app can be used all over the world, since there are a lot of people who cannot pay for the Premium membership. It would be a good gesture on your part, and the App would be massively used by people, even without resources.
I had to learn English when I was immersed here as an immigrant suddenly, I had a hell of a time learning it, 5 years of hell. Now that I speak it fluently I find the romance languages a breath, specially Castillano and Italian.
Spanish and Portuguese are almost the same language. Italian is also very close to these. French is a different story. English is a distant relative of these, in fact English is a Creole of a Romance and Germanic roots.
Indonesian language is the easy in the world
Is Linq available in playstore?
So cute to see Zoey fangirling for Steve
both are amazing polyglots!
thank you for this video
And Steve not reacting at all lol
@@MrLiveGain Dude's a true stoic. Praise is nothing to him, and neither is detraction.
True😊😊😊
Indonesian language is the easy in the world
I completely agree with Zoey that once you get to about a B2 level all languages are equally difficult. It sort of levels out and you're in it for the long haul.
Yes, I thought that was an excellent point that she made! I don't know if I've ever heard anyone else say that before...
Haven't watched it yet, but that sentiment already resonates with me so much. Yeah, there is the personal aspect to acquisition, but once you're familiar with everyday phrases and conversation topics, it really stops mattering what language you came from and where you wanna end up - and before that point, you always could make up for tremendous difficulty by putting in the work. Hanzi aren't difficult... at least no more than, say, learning the regularities (or rather, irregularities) of English phonology. I will say that some languages are fantastically easy to grasp, all things considered, but that's a rarity and still depends on your proclivity towards it.
I definitely don't think much of the "oooh, this language is virtually impossible for speakers of regiolect"-argument getting repeated ad nauseum. I've seen people of all walks have a great time with what is supposed to be their mortal language enemy, while at the same time witnessing them thoroughly struggling with English, in so many regards the most accessible language in the world bar none. It's a matter of how you can motivate yourself, personal disposition, access and how interesting something is to you. For some people a given language won't click until their 50s, so yeah... there's a lot of nuance to this subject, more than most people have been taught.
I think the key is getting at least one other language in your head to decouple "you" from the language so that the way you the person interacts with the world so it's not through a single language filter. Once that decoupling happens so that your "self" is (more) independent from your main language, then acquisition of others is easier to slot into place.
@@lohphat that's a very interesting way of putting it! What is your native language and what other languages have you learned?
Zoey’s so nice, she seems carefree too. Congrats to her for being so accomplished at such a young age. Good connversation, thank you, Steve.
It’s nice to see these two conversing. I’ve subscribed to them both in the past and their content is very beneficial.
Thank you very much Steve and Zoe for your very inspiring conversation. It has been very useful.
Extremely interesting discussion - thank you both!
I would say another factor is cultural: Turkish is a hard language for an English speaker but very easy to practice: people will talk to you, compliment you frequently and hardly ever correct you When I learned Greek after Turkish, I got a culture shock when people corrected my case endings though you do then remember next time.
Another enormous issue for me (as someone who starts to learn a language by buying a book) is the distance between the written and spoken language. This is a factor In all languages, but a much bigger one in some than others. Arabic is really a bunch of spoken dialects united by a common written language. If you buy a teach yourself Arabic book, you really need to read the cover. If you buy "colloquial Egyptian Arabic" and then go to Morocco you'll get very confused. For example, if I wanted to say "how are you" in standard written Arabic, I might say "Kif Halek", in Egypt "izzayak?" and in Morocco "lebas?" It's the same if you watch a film. There are lots of Turkish TV series on Netflix. Some are better than others but they're all Turkish. The Arabic ones are all in different dialects.
Thank you Zoe and Steve for your insights.🙏
Great that you have made a video together!!! I am going to watch it now!!! I like both of you!!!!
Excellent to have such personalities togheter , I admire both Zoe and Steve
Thanks a lot 🤗🤗
My first foreign language is Spanish and I have about a B2 level. While I wouldn't call it easy, there's enough similarities with English that make it pretty unintimidating. I have also just started learning Polish on the side and it is on another level. I can already tell that it's going to take me a lot longer to reach the same level that I have in Spanish. But luckily I have more experience and confidence with language learning now, so I can be more efficient with my learning process. Even if it's a challenge, I'm so excited to learn Polish! It's a beautiful language.
I jak sobie radzisz z nauką polskiego? :)
Yeah, Polish is a b**ch to learn, pardon my French. I would never want to have to learn it as a foreign language. Obviously Poles have no trouble communicating in it but when it comes to using it CORRECTLY they actually fail miserably at it. I mean no one is ever 100% correct, even in the native language but most Poles aren't even close. That said, I'm not sure if it's similar with other languages or not.
But yeah, with the grammar and all the different forms of the words and whatnot... not to mention the pronunciation. It's not a pleasant language to learn.
I have a really similar language learning journey - Spanish at B2 and now learning Hungarian. I find that the hardest part is just getting your bearings with a new language, but once you have found all your tools and understand the grammar, you can go through the same process as you did with Spanish - learning vocab and trying to move it from passive to active through lots of practice. My initial period of getting my bearings in Hungarian took 3 years as opposed to a handful of months in Spanish haha
in brief:
The video with @Zoe.Languages features a discussion between the host and Zoe from @Zoe.Languages about the challenges of learning different languages. Here's a summarized breakdown of their conversation:
1. **Subjectivity of Difficulty**: The difficulty of learning a language is subjective and varies from person to person. Factors like one's native language, exposure to other languages, and personal interests can influence this perception.
2. *English Learning*: They discuss the ubiquity of English and how many people around the world are exposed to it from a young age, making it seem easier to learn. The availability of immersive environments and resources for English also contributes to this perception.
3. *Challenges of Other Languages*:
- *French*: Difficulties arise from its liaison, where it's hard to discern where one word ends and the next begins.
- *Japanese*: The indirect nature of communication in Japanese culture can be challenging. Many things are left unsaid and are implicitly understood.
- **Chinese**: The challenge lies in learning the characters. However, once you know the characters, vocabulary building becomes easier since many words are combinations of characters. The grammar in Chinese is relatively simple.
- *Arabic*: Zoe finds Arabic particularly challenging.
- *Slavic Languages*: They have complex grammar rules and many variations of words depending on their function in a sentence.
4. *Motivation Over Difficulty*: The biggest challenge in language learning is motivation. If one is highly motivated, the perceived difficulties diminish.
5. *Personal Experiences*: Zoe shares her experiences of learning 20 languages. While she doesn't always achieve the level she desires, the experience of learning is invaluable. She finds content immersion crucial, citing her lack of interest in K-Dramas and K-Pop as a challenge when learning Korean.
6. *Exploring Different Cultures*: Both speakers emphasize the joy of exploring different parts of the world through language. They encourage viewers to be driven by their interests, whether it's history, geography, anime for Japanese, K-pop for Korean, or any other cultural aspect.
7. *Closing*: The host thanks Zoe for her insights and mentions her CZcams channel @Zoe.Languages, where she explores different languages and shares her experiences, like her trip to Iran.
Overall, the video emphasizes that while some languages may have inherent complexities, the key to successful learning is personal motivation and interest.
As Latin american I say that it might be a little difficult to travel around the globe but learn English is something that I found too much enjoyable . Thanks Steve for give us motivation every week.
loved this video so much!!
I love the commebts about materials. I started learning Korean in 2013 right before the big Kpop boom. At that time, there was veeeeeeery little in terms of quality materials. I started with the FSI course, which I'm sure you know is not perfect. But by 2019, there were dozens of new materials, story learning guides, manuals, etc. I found more interesting. I also was never a fan of Kpop or Kdramas, so the boom in cultural imports didn't help me much (Kjazz is harder to find lol). I learned French to a fairly fluent level in about a year. It's been 10 years of Korean and I'm just feeling conversational
I just love when my fav people get together to make a video🤩
Steve! You’re a genius and an inspiration to those learning a new language!
I go to your channel to motivate me,thank you. I am fascinated with Japan, 2 years learning maybe lower intermediate. I am an airport worker and every time I think I can’t do this study anymore you inspire me to keep trying . ❤
What I find really difficult about English is the pronunciation and the vocabulary. The pronunciation is quite arbitrary and you have to learn it for every new word. The vocabulary, compared to my native language German, seems to consist of more original words. In German, we often just put two words together to make a word. If you know both of them, you can understand the meaning without knowing the word (for example, "Handschuh" consists of Hand (hand) and Schuh (shoe). In English, it's glove and you have no idea what it could mean if you don't know its meaning.
Handschuh ist eines meiner liebsten deutschen Wörter 😁 so ein süßes Wort.
I know German and Mandarin sound daunting to a lot of people but that explanation that you gave right there is the reason I love both languages, is like puzzling and everything makes sense!
We also get so many loanwords that it can be confusing. One third French, one third Latin, one third Germanic & Norse... and a whole bunch of scattered inclusions from other languages. And we ended up with a completely different grammar, too, I think it's probably closer to the Norse languages than any of the other ones. So English is great to start out with, because it gives you a huge vocabulary, but it's hard to learn the grammar of foreign languages -- and I can't imagine how hard it would be to tackle both at one time, coming the other way. English grammar is weird, with it's do-support and its question-inversions and all the rest. But the vocabulary is so enormous! We have a hundred words for one thing, and they all have slightly varied shades of meaning or degree.
That’s true but man grammatically English is way easier than German. The cases!
@@tomatom9666... and 3 genders!
I absolutely agree about Chinese. It's perhaps the most time consuming language but not inherently difficult (unless you are helplessly tone deaf lol)
@@venkovic learning the new characters is the most fun part of learning chinese.
The word you’re looking for is laborious, not difficult.
@@2fty nope not looking for any words. I think I worded it exactly as intended thanks
Hopelessly tone deaf is what I proved to be. But learning some of the characters was more up my alley.
...which is my case lol
Inspiring❤
My take on your insight is that unfortunately I've put me way behind in the grid - blah, blah, blah - and I've known Portuguese and English quite well. And a bit of French and German, French I've quit and German I've been studying so far.
A long... the longest way to go in order to avoid a long way down.
Love the interviews and videos!^_^
Very inspiring!! As a fellow polyglot, this keeps me going!
Zoey is my favorite CZcamsr. I love her :)
Zoe's channel is also amazing. She's not only beautiful herself but her intellectual/practical style of sharing learning principles is top level content - a form of beauty too.
I totally agree with you. She is my idol😊😊😊
Could you please share Zoe’s channel link?
@@MaiElizabeth @zoe.languages
Why do her looks matter exactly?
Judging by the stated order of your arguments, you suscribed to Zoe firstly to gaze at her, and only secondarily to hear whatever is there; admit it. On a careful glance, I would guess she has some Korean blood; cuttingly sharp like a fox. Can't subscribe to her, because of having so many subscriptions related to languages I'm learning, but if she would regularly do some non-English content, especially in Chinese or Arabic, I would definitely subscribe.
2 reasons i think some find some languages hard is 1) the want or will to want to learn a certain language and 2) a lack of exposure to a new language
Without any superlatives, exclamations marks, applaudissement, etc...
It was highly interesting to listen your dialogue as you have many things to say to those who love languages. Thank you very much both of you.
Thanks so much Steve! Shalom
I learned some languages with very few resources like the Berber language Tachelhit, Guaraní of Parguay, Fulfulde of West Africa or Ge'ez which is the dead language of Ethiopia like Latin in Europe. There are quite a few texts, no large good dictionaries, only some mostly small books about grammar and small text books. All this makes learning such languages a real challenge, without mentioning grammar, sound system, totally new vocabulary and sometimes an unusual writing system (Ge'ez).
Nice conversation!
Yes, I started Arabic a few times (but having learnt some Hebrew I understood some principles of Semitic languages...) but that sense of 'what is your motivation' is what makes me stop and just go back and enjoy my Koine Greek or French....Glad I am not the only one who finds Arabic a challenge but wow, what a cool language!
Hebrew is a walk in a park compared to Arabic. It´s nice that there are some similar things like the pronomial suffixes, but that´s about it.
I'd say that if you have access to comprehensible input in your target language it is not that difficult to acquire it. However, learning its grammatical strutures and patterns can be very difficult if we're talking about a language which is, in terms of vocabulary, totally different from our mother tongue. I've been struggling to find comprehensible content in Swahili, for example, and because of that it is being king of tough for me to get it going with it.
thank you both
Hello, am 'new subscriber'. Save first and then listen to. Thank you for sharing experience
I thought learning english was really easy because of lack of conjugation, but as I learn japanese I appreciate how tricky english pronounciation is! I took it for granted because I had access to native speakers.
Please don’t say English is easy…
@@rrzr212 It does have really simple grammar, but I can see how the written to spoken interface can be really challenging
@@evelioguaperas English lacks case, but uses prepositions extensively. It's grammar may be simple, but its flexibility actually makes it grammatically complex. Ex: to get in, to get out, to get up, to get down, to get with, to get away, to get on, to get off, to get for, to get around, to get through, to get across, to get by, to get next, to get over, all mean completely different things. Record, contract and other words like them are both verbs and nouns and their pronunciations changes completely depending upon which part of speech they are. English is actually pretty difficult in grammar, pronunciation, and writing. Ironically, English and Mandarin are difficult in the same ways!
@@Theo-oh3jk Well, I'm no language learning expert, I know spanish, english and I'm currently learning japanese. While I can see the complexity in english grammar it still felt way more natural to me than french ever did in school. Maybe is just my personal bias.
@@Theo-oh3jk ha, and our ridiculous, stupid writing system is basically the same, since you just have to memorize the pronunciation of hundreds of arbitrary words 🤣
The most interesting video I’ve seen about this topic, unluckily lost among plenty of others exposing without any argument arbitrary rankings. I am French and as I have another job (I am a lawyer) the only foreign language I have learnt with a more than decent result is English. But I’ve learnt Spanish, Corsican, Italian, a bit of Russian and Hebrew and now I’ve started learning Mandarin.
So I will agree about 3 things you both say :
1. It’s easier to learn a language which is close to a language you already know : knowing Corsican has helped me a lot for learning Italian. The languages are close (never exactly the same but similar by 50% at least).
2. Motivation is the most important factor of success : I was nothing more than a good student at English until I fell in love with an American woman, a few years ago and now I met a Chinese woman who (luckily for me) is an English teacher in China so yet we have a common language : but this time my personal motivation comes from the fact that I literally love picturing Chinese characters (the word picturing being used on purpose). There is an internal elegance in every character, and it’s so pleasant to write them.
So in conclusion of all this I would say : love (romantic love, but also personal interest which is out of our control) is the key opening every door.
0:47 I personally have reinforced my school English mostly through the internet & made excursions into Dutch and Yiddish as well. Listening and reading is rather easy (although missing the occasional word), but I'm rather insecure speaking on matters my proficiency seemingly doesn't allow me to. English is a different story as I've consumed so much content that I'm near-native in writing or after just holding conversations for a few dozen minutes at a time (although not feeling witty enough for non-regular vocabulary such as in mechatronics or advanced sciences). Having a Germanic base from my German mother-tongue really enriched my vocabulary in certain key subjects (also avoiding jumbling cognates or homophones such as: 'junk' [=traditional Asian ship] vs. 'junk' [=useless spares/leftovers] whereas the first has no widespread equivalent, but the latter one's 'Dschunke').
I'm a native English speaker and studied Latin and French for 10 years at school 40-50 years ago, with the result that I find Romance and Germanic languages much easier to learn than other languages. I would say that I'm a subfluent French speaker, and an intermediate speaker of Spanish and German, but can often understand Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Catalan etc, and would like to try reading a book in Dutch or Swedish. In addition, I spent some time in Malaysia and Indonesia 30 years ago, and picked up a lot of Malay, although I've forgotten most of it now. In recent months I've taught myself the Cyrillic alphabet, and can sometimes understand a little bit of Russian and Ukrainian. I also understand a very little bit of Japanese.
Hi , Im a Persian (Iranian) girls. It has been a while that i follow your magnificent videos and your wonderful advice.I try to motivate myself to learn German,
I speak
Kurdish, Persian, English, Italian .Arabic and a bit German
I will create some videos about teaching Persian ((you are right)) unfortunately ,persian which is a beautiful language has been abandoned.
Motivation is HUGE plus so many other factors especially opportunity to listen and talk in that language. I find most of the Category 4 languages (Japanese, Korean, Cantonese, Mandarin) very easy and can carry simple conversations, but I think it's because I'm was super-motivated when I first started learning them and I had opportunities to listen and talk. Arabic would be scary LOL French is super-easy but when you live in Canada, it's not a major surprise. If Dutch is in Category 1, I want to start learning that!
Da ich Arabisch als Muttersprache habe, kann ich verstehen, warum diese Sprache für die Menschen sehr schwierig ist, und es gibt viele verschiedene Dialekte.
Ich lerne Deutsch seit 2 Jahren, manchmal bin ich frustriert, aber Serien und Filme schauen macht mir Spaß! Deshalb werde ich weitermachen.
Ich lerne Deutsche nun und ich kann nicht interesantes Serien und Filme finden, was schaust du auf Deutsch?
@@vibe9120*Ich lerne Deutsch und kann keine interessanten Filme oder Serien finden.
Last sentence was correct.
Tbh, original German series are not that great.
I totally agree with you. I speak Bulgarian, English, Russian, Greek, French, little Icelandic, I also speak and read Chinese Mandarin, I understand Polish and Czech and few other Slavic languages, Dutch also rings familiar at many levels. By first convocation, I am a linguist.
I also find Arabic pretty difficult in general, especially if you want to be very fluent in classical Arabic and MSA as well. The dialects are a lot easier.
What difficulties are you experiencing?
@@Alaedious I would say that the vocabulary is the biggest challenge. There are so many words in Arabic which could mean the same thing (multiple words for one thing), and the vocabulary is very different as well, unless you speak a language which has a lot Arabic loanwords and it could make it easier. The grammar is obviously not the easiest either but I'm not much worried about it really.
Thanks so much for your response! If you don't mind, how are you going about learning it? Any methods or books to recommend?
@@Alaedious I listen to Arabic radio a lot, they have channels from different Arab countries around the Arab world. In the radio they have often some specific programs where they discuss all sorts of topics with some kind of experts of that field and they take also calls in from the listeners. That is very good for your listening skills and the vocabulary is different also depending on topic of discussion. You get exposed to different dialects like that as well and you will improve your MSA. Also TV is very good sometimes, you can watch many Arab channels via app or youtube. I like youtube also, there are many historical Arab series in fusha and I just started to watch a serie called fath al-Andalus. You can find many documentaries in Arabic too. Good way of immersion to the language. I also read when I find time, graded readers, social media posts, youtube comments under the video, some religious literature etc. I speak to Arabs sometimes in Arabic, but not so often just once in a while. You should just basically do what you like doing based on your interests😊. What is your current level in Arabic and for which reasons you would like to learn it? Is there some specific dialect which interests you or just the standard one? Maybe I could recommend more specific materials based on your interests and goals.
Thanks for the wonderful answer! For the moment I need to concentrate on fus-ha. I'd love to hear your suggestions for radio or for CZcams.
LingQ’s audio AI transcription feature and the CZcams import are two huge recent game changers.
I was born in Korea so my native language is Korean and studied Chinese writing and pronunciation in Korean way and learned Japanese when I was in High school so I know Japanese. After I graduated college majoring English literature, I couldn’t speak so I took a language class and made friends with my instructors who were from the US and we traveled together then I learned a lot. And married to an American that made me speak more English. We also lived in China and I picked up some accent and realized that Chinese I learned was not working in mainland China. Chinese use simplify so it was a bit confusing but I was able to read so it was not too difficult. When I traveled to Japan I was able to make conversation with locals. Now I am in the US and I teach ESL to Hispanics at the local community college so I am learning Spanish and met Turkish student and we became friends so I started to learn Turkish. At first, my brain was really confused and mixed up but now my brain understands the concept so trying to practice speaking every chance I have. I found out that Turkish is easier for me. The sentence structure is similar to Korean so understand but I find it more difficult for Spanish because of the conjugation. Also I am learning Columbian Spanish so using CZcams is not a good idea though. Immersion is the best way to learn the language.
I think MSA Arabic is not so difficult due to the fact their is so much great literature in both audio and video freely available. Arabic is spoken in many non Arabic nations, hence many tutors available etc. My experience and take, Take care.
hahah wow nice seeing Zoe here! what a good surprise!
I speak Tunisian AKA "Derja", and I find Arabic (Traditional/Standard, in our case) , unsurprisingly, difficult. I think that the problem with people trying to learn Arabic, (or be better at it) is: Immersion. More than any other reason. I don't want to use linguistic terms here, but "Dialects" or rather "Regional Dialects" (sociolinguistics) is important for Arabic. For example: if you listen to "Lebanese" Arabic and then try to continue your journey learning "Arabic", you'll find it hard. Why? because, there's a "loophole" in understanding the difference between Standard Arabic and Dialects (I'd rather use another,more accurate, term but let's stick to Dialects for a better understanding). When I say "Loophole" rather than a "hole" is because you can either use that to your advantange in the shor-term or turn it into a huge obstacle in the long run. I don't know about Mandarin, but think about its simplifier version all while adding a side-effect. I mean, for Translators, Standard Arabic is a must. (Literarture..etc) But for you as a learner, if you started with Lebanese Arabic, then stick to it. (Most of the Arab Countries would understand you, unless you learn Morrocan Arabic hahah it's pretty hard in terms of mutual comprehension). Now going back to why the main focus/reason is Immersion, just like Zoe said, Culture...History...etc AKA not only the origin of that language but its socio-geo-political context. A good example is the Tunisian Language: Derja. It is the amalgamation of different languages (meaning different culture&history) in one language. We would still undertand your Standard Arabic, or Lebanese Arabic but you most likely wouldn't understand our "Version" of Arabic since you need to at least have a decent level of comprehension in 6 languages including Italian...etc and most of all, French for it is our second language (History, aka. Colonialism).
In my case, to be honest, I find Morrocan Arabic to be the most difficult Arabic Dialect (speed-wise haha). The good part, however, is that I find all languages to be easy (Mandarin, tones-wise, it's still difficult). I don't know why (it may be because of Mediterranean Culture, Aka Carthage? I am certainly not Chomsky hahahah), but we or rather I think that learning languages mirrors our human capability of adapting and I think that all human have this imbedded in their souls: It is only a matter of "how" to react to it once you've unlocked/tapped onto it, and never a matter of readiness.
For Mr.Kaufmann, though, I wish that you would one day talk about the difference between Standard Arabic and its Dialects so that new learners could get a glimpse at the loophole that they may or may not use. (as of this comment, I haven't checked whether you did a video on such a subject or not-- I feel like you wouldn't have missed such a crucial detail and you probably did mention it in other videos, in that case, I humbly apologise for not checking it prior to this.)
Ps: I rarely comment, so I'm sorry if mine looks like I am emailing one of my professors hahaha For the language community:
Steve, I like that you compare language learning to exploring the world.
Steve and zoe the great in this Platform ❤️
Mandarin Chinese is my first foreign language. As an English native speaker it is so difficult.
Great video :)
I speak Portuguese (native language), Spanish and English.
I am learning English (B2/C1), German (B1), Swedish (A2) and French (A2).
I catch on to grammar pretty easy but i find the most difficult is just learning/remembering new vocabulary in general because i have memory loss. But the catch is that learning new languages is also very good for my brain health and memory retention 😅 i hope i can be a polyglot someday soon
Another comment I would put is that as a LingQ user (Japanese learner) is that it’s difficult to use in sentence mode because of how words are split (word splitting is my bit pet peeve of LingQ).
Sir you are great 👍 keep it up 💪💪
Both of you are so adorable 😊
I wish you 1M subscribers in this year.
I hope it is possible)
I'm a big fan of yours, Mr. Kauffmann. Currently, I'm learning Russian and French, you're a great inspiration for me. Greetings from Brazil :)
I'm also learning Russian, for how long have you been learning Russian?
@@thiagoferreira2138 That's great dude. I've been learning russian for about 2 weeks , what about you? u got instagram?
И как успехи? Получается?) Я русский, изучаю английский.
В русском языке, мне кажется, очень лёгкая письменность. Читать то, что написано- очень легко из-за строгих правил. Единственная сложность - ударение.
Хотя могу понять иностранцев, для которых сложно разобраться в падежах, склонениях, окончаниях и тд.
@@davifontana545 🤣😅😆
Watching this makes me very proud to be a native arabic speaker. I speak French, english with ease, a bit of German and know some expressions in Japanese. However, Arabic is and will always be my favorite language. ❤
I like your content as well as Zoe's ❤
Your native language is always your favorite language I would say. It's the language you are most familiar with.
@@jonathanlange1339 I understand what you say, however the case is different with the arabic language. Being an arab doesn't mean necessarly you master the standard Arabic or what we call "Fusha", and if someone doesn't know a language very well, he wouldn't enjoy reading and writing that language. Evey arab speaks its own dialect, and the Arab language as the "Fusha" is teached at school, and it is not easy. Reading arabic poetry is not for every one, neither enjoying a page written by "Mustafa Sadiq Ar-rafi'i" known as the genius of the literature.
Wow my two favorite polyglots!
I‘ve learned Turkish because Zoe inspired me to, and she learned it because Steve inspired her. 😅 I absolutely fell in love in love with Turkish. For a German it is not too hard because pronunciation is almost exactly the same and cases remind me of German, too.
Thanks for sharing, I want to learn German, that motivates me to one day pursue Turkish as well.
@@CrisOnTheInternetGood luck with German, it's actually pretty difficult and it has so many special cases but it's definitely possible
I would describe myself as a linguaphil. After 5 enjoyable years of Latin from age 13 ar University I found my 3 year Russian language etc course quite straightforward...the whole idea of case endings as in NT Greek and to a lesser extent in German.
I started teaching myself German and Portuguese at age 16 but only got back to Portuguese seriously a couple of years. Reading Portuguese Spanish and Italian just involves changing mental gears.Dutch I learned enough of to talk to the parents of two boys in my young class who knew no English. ....I was told I speak like a Flemish person. French....no problem. Mandarin I do enjoy...the simplicity of so much of the mechanics...tones one just has to learn. On We Chat I stick to English when writing
Arabic....life's too short.
Been learning Arabic for many years. Only now is my level getting academic, but the challenges keep growing!!!
My goal is to read ancient texts without assistance.
There is actually a really easy way to learn the Chinese characters: learn the etymology behind them and their construction.
A few examples:
悲 - The top half is two wings facing opposite of each other, suggesting opposition or flying contrary; The bottom half is the shape of a heart resembling one’s emotions. Putting the two together suggests sadness or regret - “flying contrary to one’s heart.”
読 - On the left is a forked tong like that of a snake. An extra line was added to indicate motion (like in modern day comics). This indicated the chatter of one’s mouth - How we move our tongue to form words. The right half is composed of three parts: (top) a foot stepping out of a cave eg ‘to go out’, (middle) a cloth or net like what a purse would be made of, and (bottom) cowry, which was an ancient form of Chinese currency (or money). All put together may represent the act of **reading** off the financial reports (the flow of cash from one’s purse).
The mnemonics are pretty much built-in.
the problem is trying to remember thousands of mnemonics for each of the characters, just makes it even harder because now you have to remember two things. I think its just better to memorize the characters and practice seeing them a lot so it gets stuck in your head. Over time you will recognize them and you will notice the characters being reused in other words
It is like 我. I didn't have to try to memorize it, I just automatically memorized it from seeing it so much
@@pear-zq1uj There are quite a few similarities though between characters since about 80% of them are phono-semantic. You don't need to remember 'everything,' just the details most relevant, and only long enough until the characters become second nature.
It's just like learning history. You don't need to know every word in the King's Speech, or the exact day and time of wars and innovations (unless you're a history buff), just the general message, time-period, sequence of events, etc.
Try Czech. Exception for writing y/i in nouns and at the end of verbs depending on the time tense, when to mě or mně or ě or je etc.
You are so youthful Steve! I wanna be Steve when I am his age!
I'm on my path to learn french and Japanese i was a big anime fan when I was in high-school and it helped alot with my vocabularies bank and im a native arabic speaker so looking forward to it
I find if you want to learn anything it's about will-power,if you open your mind you really can learn anything with enthusiasm and desire
i agree!!! i'm learning mandarin and my level is more proficient than some of my friends who speak mandarin at home/learned mandarin in chinese school and use another chinese dialect at home. the difference between our situations is that they don't have any real motivation to learn it, other than "i'm chinese and my parents make me," while i really and trulky enjoy learning 🫶🏼
@@xxxcxxcx my wife is a Hokkien speaker i understand a fair amount but Mandarin is the one i want to speak and read in
You hit the nail on the head. It’s all about motivation. I’m a senior citizen who decided to learn Italian nine months ago, and I am doing very well. Granted, I also speak Spanish, another romance language, so Italian shouldn’t be that difficult for me. My only problem is that I have nobody to practice with on a regular basis. But, more and more I am communicating in writing with fewer and fewer mistakes. It’d be wonderful if I could find a site that would match me up with an italian native willing to learn English or Spanish so we could become language buddies in support of our mutual endeavors. I don’t think such site exist to date, unless I’m mistaken. But, again, the bottom line is, when there’s a will there’s always a way.
I come from Poland. I think most difficult part in learning Polish are so-called compound sentences. These are connected simple sentences. There is hierarchy between them. Top level sentence, etc. They are not common in everyday spoken language but very common in official or written language. Also commonly used rhetoric questions can be problematic for foreigners.
So far, for me, the most difficult part is getting the sentence-structure right. I can write very well, but when it comes to speaking - I say things in the order they come in English and it's all wrong.
@@josephbrandenburg4373 Watching a lot of movies/series in Polish should help with that - the more practice you get, the more intuitive the sentence structure should become for you. Simply because your brain will remember all the examples.
10/10 video 💯💯
I find more joy in learning Korean so it comes easier to me than say Spanish which for me has always been difficult.
Im Norwegian, and had some German, Spanish and even Italian at school, but never really cared about language learning until encountering Polish. When I started my Polish journey, I quickly discovered how incredibly easy the languages I briefly started to learn at school over the years were! With German I get many words "for free", the same with latin languages because of English and globalism in general. Polish to my ears was like hearing aliens speak; the words are incredibly difficult to remember and longer with lots of consonants. It's amazing that languages can be so different when we live so close to each eachother.
I will try to take from Steve and other polyglots that the mindset you have towards the language you are learning is crucial, and that putting too much pressure on yourself can destroy the motivation and fun from it all.
Being Russian of a Polish origin I started learning Polish as an adult and was smashed by how easy it was for me. Polish grammar, pronounciation and reading rules widely accepted to be ones of the most complicated in the world were clear to me from the first glance just because I speak Russian natively.
I learned English the hard way when I was a child and am currently learning French. Although they are considered to be very close I can’t say my knowledge of English helps a lot to pronounce french words correctly.😁 Also, I have a friend who got married and moved to Oslo. Just hearing her speak to her dog in Norwegian assured me I would never be able to speak it because it is a kind of a supewpower. So, yeah, native language determines a lot.
Wish you the best of luck in your Polish journey. Szerokiej drogi!😊
bardzo kocham jezyk polski 🤍❤
I know no language prettier than Polish.
Pozdrowienia z Polski ;)
Steve, I totally agree with what you say, which is "Chinese's grammar is extremely easy" 你讓我會心一笑
For anybody learning Arabic, if you do not have a specific goal then I suggest learning Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). MSA is the base of Arabic, this is the version that you’ll read in books, news, websites and religious texts. And it is the one that is understood and uniform from Morocco to Oman. Once you’ve learned MSA, it will be easy to learn the dialect of your choice whether it is Egyptian, Syrian, Saudi as you will only need to learn the pronunciation system and some different words most words are the same as MSA.
Dear Mr Steven, both you and Zoe mentioned Arabic. I'd like to see your collaboration with Brian Wiles, a native English speaker who learned Mandarin and Arabic. That'd be great for all the Arabic learners out there!
Brian is great and quite inspiring!
@@rashidah9307 Definitely. Brian is great and his content is awesome, however, I'd like to see a bit more Chinese stuff from him. Would be fun to see Zoe & Brian collaboration with Steven.
@@rashidah9307 Arabic is one of the languages on my language list, I got highly inspired by Brian. I guess it won't be too hard for me, since my mother tongue is Polish (which shares a lot of things in common with Arabic)
@@LeeSeungrhee I'm studying Jordanian Arabic. One of the hardest things about learning how to speak Arabic is the language diversity within even one country or small region. It means that there are SO many different ways of expressing the same thing, more than one way to conjugate many verbs, grammar patterns that differ from place to place, different ways to pronounce the same words... And there aren't so many fun learning resources (although it's growing). So it takes a long time to learn ALL the basics and you need to be highly motivated. BUT I love Arabic!
Mongolian is the hardest language I have encountered. I am Bulgarian. Learnt Russian, then English, then Italian, then German, then Latin, then Mandarin. Then tried some Gaelic, French, Bahasa, Hebrew, Korean, Cantonese, Japanese just for fun. Then came Mongolian. I struggled for an year and gave it up. Now I am
Every language is hard to learn. But for me , German and French are the hardest.
I'm learning chinese now but dont find it any harder than when I learned german in highschool. I mean yeah it has characters and tones and stuff but those things aren't inherently difficult, just time consuming. For me the hardest part of a language is complex grammar rules and genders and tenses and stuff, it really helps that Chinese doesn't have that and the grammar is relatively forgiving.
@@pear-zq1uj Genders and tenses in Chinese? Chinese grammar is just patterns.
Dutch and Scandinavian languages are difficult to learn because the native speakers automatically respond to foreign learners in English
And then there are crazy people like me who go from elementary - school French and high - school Spanish straight to something like Finnish. The easiest thing is that it's written in Latin script and is extremely phonetic, but the case system and consonant graduation are so complicated. But I love it anyway. That language has seriously changed my life.
Also, I haven't learned Dutch, but I know some High German, and my family speaks Mennonite Low German, so if I hear Dutch or read it, I can pick up quite a bit.
i found japanese pretty easy to learn because i had a lot of topics that interested me, and I don't believe its as difficult as some people say it is. but I want to learn korean next, itll be hard to find content that interests me but having learned a similar language I will pick up some things quicker. Im excited to experiment on which I find easier in the end.
I don't know how anyone can tolerate the writing system. It seems so much worse than Mandarin - every character has like 12 pronunciations randomly selected in any context
@@muskyoxes it's not random, there's patterns to it. And you can just learn them from words rather than on their own and it saves a lot of headaches.
I'm a native Polish speaker and now I'm learning German and to my suprise it's so hard. My brain is bombarded with English language since I was born (TV, school, marketing, games, the Internet) so it was a piece of cake. I was learning Swedish for some time and it was coming into my brain so smoothly! With having learned two germanic languages already, I thought the German will be a cherry on top of that... Couldn't be more wrong 😩
Edit:
Actually we even have more cases than German and this is what I find to be the worst aspect. For example if Polish has 7 cases, (let them be called 1-7), and German has 4 (let them be called a-d) it's not like 1=a, 2=b, 3=c etc. but
a=1,3,5
b=7
c=6,2
d=4
If German had 7 cases it would be so much easier 😂
I just wanted to know more about the polish cases and I found this:
Indication of quantities of five and more. In "pięć kotów" (five cats), "cats" is in the genitive form. Two to five cats use the nominative plural (dwa koty/two cats) and one cat uses the nominative singular (jeden kot/one cat).
I am like, why? :D
In german it's much easier. It's just like the subject is in nominative, the object is mostly in accusative and the genetive is just Display of Possession. The only tricky case it has is dative because it has more than one function.
So it definitely must be harder to learn polnish than german in this regard. I'm not in your head but I can't imagine that the case system is confusing for you :D
The learning content is a key. Many languages courses are developed for business and financial purposes, so companies only design what’s profitable. I learn languages purely for fun with no business or financial incentive in it. The uncommon languages (which companies don’t find profitable) cause you really to be creative to find the resources❤
Nowadays you can find whatever you want on the Web, and us it for learning. I regularly bring YTY videos in Arabic into LingQ as lessons. Wasn't possible not so long ago.
I agree with Steve that Slavic languages are difficult to learn, although I've only studied Ukrainian. It's not just the grammar, but words have complicated derivational prefixes and suffixes, which are difficult to figure out and I haven't found any teaching materials that explain the derivational affixation patterns. It seems to have a lot of synonyms, so its hard to figure out which one to use in different contexts. There are some things about Ukrainian that are easier than I expected. Even with all the cases, the endings are quite predictable. The pronunciation seem quite regular based on the spelling (except you have to hear the words to discover which syllable is stressed, the writing won't tell you).
I learned arabic about maybe 19 years. I can understand the writing but I still cannot catch what arabs are speaking. Now I’m learning chinese because many people talk to me in chinese. Perhaps they assume I’m a chinese because of my look. I need to know chinese too because it’s becoming of my work too.
我很喜欢zoe 她motivate我学习汉语 😇😇
Two of my favourite language learners 🤍
There are related languages, some very closely related, some more distantly related and there are languages that are probably not at all related to your native language. That's the whole explanation.
I tried learning many languages and in my opinion the most difficult in speaking are tonal languages (Thai, Cantonese, Mandarin..) . When it comes to complexity, I studied Arabic and it's really complex but logical at the same time once you learn the patterns. I create content in various languages in my channel and I'm planning on making more content in Arabic as I plan on using it more after not using it for many years. I'm Croatian and speak about six languages not all in same level, though.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I was wondering about your experience with tone languages, as Croatian has been described as having pitch-accent. Of course it is not the same as a more "fully fledged" tone language, but nonspecialists could think it gives you a headstart for tone languages. So just curious if you experienced any synergy or maybe interference in this respect?
You're correct about Arabic it is very hard but at the same time logical and everything has its rule and reason make it possible to learn because the road is already lined for you unlike some languages you feel like you're lost.
@@seenonyt2210 That's right. Croatian has four pitch accents: long/short, rising/failing. It does help to some extent in learning tonal languages but when speaking Croatian it comes natural to use these tones, you know. Speaking as a native speaker, many things in language come off as natural, whereas in learning a foreign language we need to understand why certain changes happen and how they happen. Also, you need to memorize new vocabulary and tonal languages have so many words that all seem similar to each other which makes them difficult to memorize and speak in a right tonality. That's my opinion.
@@MaryLingYao Completely agree with you. For example, English is not a very logical language especially in writing. Many things don't make sense, many exceptions etc. Once mastering the beginner's level in Arabic, I think everyone would agree how many things make much sense. Learning the patterns is the key.
@@darioshub Thanks a lot for your reply. It makes total sense. The difference between unconscious knowledge of our mother tongue and learning a new language, and the difference between systems of pitch accent / tone. So yeah, it remains a challenge, and fun.
Wow, that is so interesting to see such a perspective! German is for her way easier than Persian, and just a tad easier than Arabic. And I would not even consider German to be particularly hard, and bazillion times easier than Chinese (my native language is Czech). Interestingly, there is one aspect of Chinese language which I am still not absolutely comfortable with, and that are these complements, mainly the ones which are related to motion (in my language we have verbs of motion and many prefixes as well as aspect to navigate through descriptions of motion). Although complements are totally simple on paper, in reality they still tend to make me feel a bit awkward while using them.
You say Korean would be 2200 hours in 88 weeks. That's 5 hours per day. Sadly, what Korean Cultural Centre was offering in Madrid was only 2 hours per week, so I ended up quitting in the 2nd year, because each level was 60 hours per year in 30 weeks, so at that pace, everything was easily forgotten and you needed 2 years to try the TOPIK 1 exam (equivalent to A1 in Common European Framework of Reference - CEFR), and also pay a money I didn't have being unemployed.
Mandarin was a breeze for me to learn, because I love 2010's Chinese music, and, and learned by speaking to native speakers, and it was the first language I ever learned as an American
Within a year I can watch Chinese movies, and understand what their saying, I can sing along to 邓紫棋and蔡依林
Great. Other than speaking with native speakers what did you do to learn chinese soo quickly?
@prasanth2601 that was it, I began with a CZcams video on basic words and phrases, then started using these phrases to talk to people, then wrote down their responses
And I got a good drasp of the language this way
Im studying arabic professionally as part of my degree, and my opinion - on top of what you have already said - is that arabic is often not straight forward in its way of expressing things. Often sentences (especially in standard arabic) can be extremely symbolic or poetic. Some authors also write in a style that may be more or less expressive. News in arabic is not as difficult i feel, since its pretty straight forward with what they are trying to communicate. But a novel like Al-Ayyam from Taha Hussein who tries to say that the protagonist felt the chill wind might say something like "the cool nice air that went by the face of his had not been touched by the warmth of the sun" or something, sometimes you just encounter sentences where you think "what is going on here??"
Oh, it’s Zoe!!!
I find that understanding Italian is really hard. But, speaking it is easy.
My wife is Chinese, first language is Cantonese and second Mandarin. Incredibly difficult to learn either one so i only try Mandarin. After 15 years of marriage I still know 100 times more Spanish. I know a few words and phrases in Mandarin, that's it. Chinese characters, all I know is the symbol of money, that's all.
Стив прав, внутренняя мотивация очень важна, её может поддержать интересная содержательная сторона изучаемого материала, но не менее важна и внешняя мотивация, когда изучаемый язык связан с твоей профессией и помогает тебе улучшить твоё финансовое положение.
I'm also dabbling with Arabic and one of the most interesting things about it is how isolated it seems to have remained despite being so close to both Europe and Asia historically and culturally. Other than Japanese which only really clusters with Korean, Arabic is the most insular "big" language as it only really clusters with Hebrew, and loosely with Persian and Turkish (Aramaic and other minor/dead language notwithstanding)
You seem not to be aware of the vast territory of Afroasiatic languages like Berber, Chadic, Ethiopian languages, Somali. Those are all related somehow to semitic languages. This spans the whole of the Sahara and beyond into the sahel as well as the horn of Africa.
Arabic was in no way insular.
Your statements and generalizations are nothing but your ignorance.
@@NP1066 i meant insular with respect specifically to major European or Asian languages it had continued and prolonged contact with
those other languages you have mentioned are relatively contained and it can be called a single cluster
of course, other language clusters are also pretty closed from the rest of the world, but Arabs and Berbers had massive contact with Europe for over 1000 years, which is why it surprises me that mutual influence is not as significant as I would have expected - many fundamental concepts didn't make it either way
as a point of reference, Russian appears to me much closer to Southern European languages than Arabic - however Arab speakers coexisted with Southern Europeans in very significant numbers and even regional majorities for 7 to 10 centuries depending on the region
@@ergwer45624
Yes the Mediterranean see, the desert and the Zagros and Taurus mountain ranges might have something to do with that. (On top of the religious and conflictual history aspect).
Still it's not as incredibly stark or unexplainable as language isolates like Hungarian or Estonian, in the middle of Europe which are not even Indo-European.
I am learning english now it is to hard to me..this man is a spiration .
I relish your videos and video's Zoe 😍
My favorite two languages channels
Language feel helps a lot, i try to learn Mandarin for a bit, could not get tones right whatsoever, after living in china for 7 years, i noticed word just flowing in without learning. Also tones got suddenly (after 2 years) very clear, sadly i still did not take a class back then, i guess it would have been much more easy ...