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Archive 1 |
I am intrigued by the "genetic disposition" part: combining the results of Scherag et al. (2004) with Ross and Bever (2004), you might conclude that "right-handed familials" do better in German, and "left-handed familials" do better in English. The natural follow-up question would be, are there, in fact, more left-handed people in (medieval) England than in (medieval) Germany?
if this is true, there are actually more left-handed people in Germany than in the UK. dab (𒁳) 09:18, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
- The FSL courses grew out of the US army's need to rapidly develop translators for various "exotic" langauges for the first time ever around the period of WWII.... they at some point developed a chart of difficulty of languages based on the number of hours it took for American GI's to master them....At any rate, Korean was listed in the very highest level of difficulty, a notch above both Japanese and Chinese in fact.
- Everyone I have ever met who has learned both Korean and Japanese agrees that their grammars are almost as similar as those of any two Romance languages, but that that of Japanese has been streamlined, while Korean remains comparatively much more complex.
- I have made good progress in a number of other "difficult" or exotic languages such as Russian and Arabic. Compared to Korean, both of these languages are much easier, i.e., if you apply yourself well, consistently, and intelligently every day for a number of years, after a single handful you will be rather advanced. However, with Korean you will still be in a fog. I have studied scores of languages, and Korean is unquestionably the most difficult one I have ever encountered. Arguelles, Alexander. January 12th, 2005. How to Learn any Language forum (link added in later -- Laws dr ( talk) 21:37, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
Laws dr ( talk) 02:53, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
In addition, Korean written language (hangul) uses an alphabetized system which makes it quite easy to learn and read. After being unable to read at all, I was taught by my grandfather to read Korean in two weeks (albeit without understanding all that was being read). 72.80.172.205 ( talk) 20:16, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
In the Navy of the Defense Language Institute, Korean is seen as the hardest of the Category IV languages, which are Arabic, Chinese, and Korean. A US Military guide of About.com wrote: "Right now only 8 Languages are being taught (for Navy). Cat IV: Arabic, Chinese, Korean. Cat III: Persian-Farsi, Serb-Croatian, Hebrew, Russian. Cat I: Spanish. ...Korean is the hardest language here [Navy], apparently it is 75 weeks long now, and they are trying to make it a Cat V language." [1]
Laws dr (
talk)
04:07, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
This would be more well expressed version:
Laws dr ( talk) 17:43, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
Talk:Korean language#Hardest Language to master? -- Kjoon lee 19:29, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
I've added a reference to the "Foreign Service Institute (FSI) of the US Department of State", which claims that Korean is one of the 5 most-difficult, but Japanese is even harder. Alas, the reference I've added is second-hand. Does the "Foreign Service Institute" have their own web site we could cite? Please replace that reference to the actual FSI web site, if you can find it.
I wouldn't be surprised if learning to fluently Korean takes longer than Japanese, even if that reference is correct that learning to speak *and* write Japanese takes longer than Korean. -- 72.198.67.13 ( talk) 21:26, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
it is interesting that Korean also pops up as a language that is very difficult to acquire as a first language. So perhaps Korean is, in fact, the most difficult language... dab (𒁳) 20:25, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
we seem to have a misunderstanding here: your edit is unjustified. Nowhere do we claim that "language is just structure". We merely say that long-distance relations take longest to acquire and may in this sense be considered the most difficult part (they take longest to learn). We have two data points: (a) Korean children take exceptionally long to acquire Korean grammar. (b) the US Department of State notes that Korean is exceptionally difficult for English speakers. That's two data points. We cannot conclude from this that "Korean is the hardest language" in any absolute sense, but we certainly can and should mention these points for what they are worth. -- dab (𒁳) 11:40, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
the non sequitur is all yours. the point is that the long distance relations are acquired last, after all other aspects had been acquired, earlier. the acquisition of syntax thus concludes language acquisition. You are, at this point, edit warring. I will revert your deletion once more and recommend you try Wikipedia:Dispute resolution from here. I do not spend time researching an obscure topic just to see the result blanked on flimsy or no grounds. If you want to add material, you are most welcome to develop this article further. dab (𒁳) 09:05, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
what claim do you want me to source? the statement you keep removing without rhyme or reason is completely sourced to an academic study,
Since you are obviously not following what I am saying, I do not intend to invest more time talking in your general direction. Well done, we have now run into 3RR. If anyone else is watching this, now would be a good time to comment. Otherwise, unless Kjoon decides to switch on his brain and actually make a coherent statement of what he wants, this'll just be a slow revert war. Not wikilike, not sensible, not even rational. I enjoy debates and intelligent controversy, but this is just dull. dab (𒁳) 12:17, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
[4] - well done. I realize you are just trolling, for reasons best known to yourself. Sorry I took you serioius for a minute there. -- dab (𒁳) 12:32, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
I'm bilingual in English and Korean. English was second, and I acquired it after I was 5. Now, where does that leave your claims? -- Kjoon lee 12:11, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
References that you are genuinely "bilingual" rather than merely fluent in both Korean and English? If you acquired English past the age of 5, you are a native speaker of Korean, and have acquired English as your second language, even if you have near-native fluency. What makes your native language your native language is the acquisition of phonology before the age of 1. There is no way you can make up for this later. You are interested in secondary language acquisition and age? go read the article.
so, there is room for debate on "L1" for ages 6-12. If you begin to acquire a language after you are 6, or even after you are 1, for that reason, you may still reach near-native fluency, but your acquisition process will diverge significantly from that of your first language. You want references? You want to learn about this (as opposed to idly bickering about it)? Read the article and the references linked. You want to discuss this, intelligently and presenting sources? Go to Talk:Critical Period Hypothesis, but stop pestering this article. -- dab (𒁳) 12:29, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
WP:NOT to you too. The article cites its sources. End of story. I reciprocate your doubts regarding "expertise". We could start comparing our academic degrees (I am a linguist), but that would fall under WP:NOT too. Come back once you've found some source you want to cite. dab (𒁳) 19:04, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
uh-huh. after 100,000 edits on Wikipedia, we find I do not in fact understand basic policy at all. So we are to take your word that you are "familiar with the topic", that I do not in fact understand logic, or grammar. Wikipedia doesn't work just based on bare assertion. Come back once you have something of substance you would like to say. Until then, I recommend you just drop this. dab (𒁳) 17:47, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
dab (or should I call you Dbachmann?), if you are a linguist by trade, then you must have access to a lot more journals (or sources) than I do. Do you have sources where people discuss the criteria for deciding what makes a language hard? Do the people tend to agree? -- Kjoon lee 18:52, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
I am citing a source to state what it states. If you don't like the way I phrased it, suggest a better phrasing. Stop this childish revert warring. Yes, this article could be expanded further. If you send me a cheque of say USD 300, I'll sit down with it for a day, do a literature search and turn out a more comprehensive article. dab (𒁳) 07:43, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
Should there be a list included in this article? As it's clear that languages from different language families are generally harder to learn the list should include many, in no specific order. ... Some widely known candidates might be (reasons) :
—Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.153.61.69 ( talk) 16:20, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
It is my oppinion that the American Native Tribe of the Navajo, is the most difficult second language to learn by anyone, no matter what their primary language might be. Hence, it was the language of choice chosen by the Americans to be used my the now famous Code Talkers durring World War Two. Craig Warn, Gallup NM —Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.134.36.140 ( talk) 16:18, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
You show profound ignorance of both the specific and the general subject matter. Navajo was chosen simply because it had few speakers, and all of them resided within the United States. The choice had nothing whatsoever to do with any qualities inherent to the Navajo language. -- 76.71.46.198 ( talk) 17:51, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
This page is
Please merge the useful information, purge this page, and keep the crystalballing to pubs and the Language Desk. Or I can do it. ~ Jafet • business • pleasure • voicemail 09:19, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
This doesn't make any sense to me. Between the frustrating tonal part of the language to the even more complicated writing system, Chinese has always seemed harder than Japanese in every aspect to me. Are there any references to why Japanese would be considered more difficult?-- Remurmur ( talk) 07:43, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
This article just like its title "hardest language" is subjective along with its contents and reasoning. This categorization is mainly done according to native english speakers rather than including non-english speakers. Measuring languages is not an exact science like mathematics and will differ according to each person, whatever their native language. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.104.70.109 ( talk) 17:24, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
so? the same goes for pleasure and thousands of other articles. This is irrelevant. The important point is that the opinions given are referenced per WP:CITE. -- dab (𒁳) 17:42, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
I feel like the following section is fairly dubious and would like to ask you guys how you feel about removing it.
There may also be a genetic disposition determining which aspects of language a learner will find most difficult. Ross and Bever (2004) propose that right-handed individuals with left-handed family members (left-handed familials, LHFs) and right-handed individuals with only right-handed family members (right-handed familials, RHFs) showed differences in language learning strategy, with RHFs focusing on grammatical relations and LHFs on lexical knowledge."
My concern is that even though a reference is included, the claim doesn't appear to be supported by any kind of scientific study. This proposal by Ross and Beaver seems to suffer from the logical fallacy Correlation does not imply causation. – Novem Lingvae ( talk) 08:46, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
Regardless of whether they are reliable sources or not, they aren't fully cited anywhere -- as far as I can tell there's just "Ross and Bever (2004)" without any further expansion on the title of their book or article, its publication data, etc. Similarly some other sources are only cited by author's last name and date, without title or publisher or anything. -- Jim Henry ( talk) 02:12, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
I have deleted it from the article (see entry above).
In my opinion it should be deleted even if an acceptable reference can be found. Even if we have the study in hand, we don't know the effect size. How much difference does it make? It's also just one study. - Do c t orW 22:40, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
I've decided to move here the assertion that Hungarian is the hardest language, a claim based on the number of noun cases. This appears on it's face to be sloppy journalism (if it is journalism at all), as anyone familiar with learning the most difficult languages knows that a single feature such as case or tones doesn't by itself make a language harder for English speakers than Japanese or Korean. More importantly from the perspective of Wikipedia guidelines, it blatantly contradicts what appears to be the consensus from all other sources. And there's the question of whether the sourcing is reliable. Even if this can be reliably sourced, we might discuss whether it falls under WP:FRINGE.
According to a survey by the British Foreign Office among its diplomatic staff, the most difficult language to learn for adult English speakers is Hungarian, followed by Japanese. [3] unreliable source? This survey naturally included only languages that are used in diplomatic relations and does not rule out the possibility of other languages that are even more difficult to learn.
A related issue is what is meant by "learning a language". Is reliable communication sufficient, or does "learning" require perfect/near-perfect mastery of pronunciation and grammar? - Do c t orW 22:59, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
There is no evidence of the Foreign Office list being true. The "source" provided in this article is not reliable, and actually a bit of googling proves that this list is an internet myth that has been circulating for years, giving slightly modofied versions of the same list. Not a single one carries a link or picture of an original source. Of course, in the official site of the Foreign Office there is nothing to be found. The needs to be removed, it is not up to wikipedia standards. Chinayouren ( talk) 12:21, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
[4] Laws dr ( talk) 16:27, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
This source isn't really valid/working. Just an FYI.
http://www.nvtc.gov/lotw/months/november/learningExpectations.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.156.40.46 ( talk) 14:45, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
This is an archived link http://web.archive.org/web/20071014005901/http://www.nvtc.gov/lotw/months/november/learningExpectations.html
Also, Wikibooks has an entry about the research.
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Language_Learning_Difficulty_for_English_Speakers --
Caspian blue
12:05, 31 October 2009 (UTC)
Laws dr ( talk · contribs) has been trying to emphasizing that Korea is the hardest language to learn by removing the cited information from The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) of the US Department of State, but by adding a dubious source from About.com. He did the same thing to Korean language, but which is deleted by other editors working on it. The reliability of About.com has been questioned many times on Reliable source noticeboard, and as I was looking at the page, I believe that Laws dr ( talk · contribs)'s making a original research by cherrypicking from the seemingly interview by "one soldier". I think the whole content referenced by the About.com should be removed due to its reliability and credibility of the source.
Language Selection
Right now only 8 Languages are being taught (for Navy). Cat IV: Arabic, Chinese, Korean. Cat III: Persian-Farsi, Serb-Croatian, Hebrew, Russian. Cat I: Spanish. Those are your only "options" and I have not received my language yet, but I did give them my top 3 selections of Korean, Russian, and Arabic. Everybody is telling me this about my selection. Korean I probably won't get because I only have a 103 DLAB. Korean is the hardest language here, apparently it is 75 weeks long now, and they are trying to make it a Cat V language. Russian is hard to get because they don't really need too many Russian linguists anymore. Arabic, a lot of people get Arabic, and since it's in my top three, guess which language I'm probably going to get :). Arabic. But we'll see how it goes. The word on class wait time is Feb-April (4-6 months), however, word is coming down the chain of command that there will be a number of classes opening very soon and that many people will be put into classes within a month, but we'll see how it works out.— about.com
http://usmilitary.about.com/cs/education/a/dliarticle_5.htm
Caspian blue 12:20, 31 October 2009 (UTC)
According to Wexler, the constructions that take children the longest to master are long-distance dependencies. The long-distance dependency of the reflexive pronoun in Korean is not implemented correctly by Korean children until the age of five (Wexler 1990, p. 109), making Korean the most difficult language for toddlers to master, according to Wexler's study.[1]
— edit by Laws dr
I can't find any such conclusion in the book at all, so removed Laws dr ( talk · contribs)'s original research and synthesis per WP:No original research and WP:CITE.-- Caspian blue 12:42, 31 October 2009 (UTC)
This article is a disgrace to the linguistics field. It needs to be completely overhauled by someone who actually has some knowledge of the field. Just to give you an idea of how weak this article is, read this contribution from a yahoo top contributor:
"The world's most complex sound systems are a tie between the Northwest Caucasian language Ubyx (now extinct) and the Khoisan languages of southern Africa.
The world's most complex word building systems are the Caddoan languages of the North American Plains (Pawnee and Arikara especially).
The world's most complex sentence building system is probably English.
The world's most complex meaning building systems are the Australian aboriginal languages.
Every language is equally complex with respect to the total complexity of every other language. It just depends on how you mix and match different levels and different types of complexity. The Caddoan languages, for example, build gigantic words, but only have about 10 different sounds and no sentence structure. English, on the other hand, builds very complex sentences, but has a fairly average sound system, and very simple word-building processes.
And then there is Archi, a Northeast Caucasian language. Archi has a fairly complex sound system and a very complex word-building system. If you count all the possible forms of a Latin verb, you come up with about 150 forms or so. If you count all the possible forms of an Archi verb, you come up with 1.5 MILLION different forms. Now THAT is verb complexity.
The viewpoint of a PhD in Linguistics who teaches at a major US university" Utopial ( talk) 08:53, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
"The viewpoint of a PhD in Linguistics who teaches at a major US university" is not good enough. The quoted claims on "the world's most complex sentence building system", "the world's most complex meaning building systems" and "Every language is equally complex with respect to the total complexity of every other language." are pulled from thin air entirely and would need excellent (academic, peer-reviewed sources) attribution.
We are simply reporting on who said what. We do not have the intention of drawing any conclusions regarding " WP:TRUTH". This article did suffer some trolling, bizarrely from Korean patriots among other things, but its approach is perfectly sound. I draw your attention to this revision (a pre-trolling version of mine, March 2008). I strongly recommend reverting to that before continuing to build the article. -- dab (𒁳) 15:04, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
This article needs to be redone in a way that is objective and rational, and get rid of "sources" that are not at all realiable.
First of all, we need to define the terms. "Harder" can mean many things, and it depends on many factors. The most important of these factors are:
1- the LEVEL desired (some languages are difficult at basic level and some only become had at advanced level), 2- the set of ABILITIES of the student (Some languages are easy if you are good at imitating sounds, others require you to master complex grammars) 3- The linguistic BACKGROUND of the student (obvious)
In most cases, there is not a single answer to "Which is the most difficult language", but it is possible to prove that, for the ADVANCED Level, Chinese is more difficult than any other language. This is true regardless of the Background of the student, with the only possible exception of Korean/Japanese students.
The proof of this is done looking at the different elements needed to master a language, and at the relative importance of vocabulary at a higher level. Complete proof available <a href=" http://chinayouren.com/en/2009/11/23/2530">in this article</a> Chinayouren ( talk) 12:15, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
um, no, because there is no "objective" account here. All we do is report opinions, and these opinions are referenced to sources. No opinions are endorsed or disendorsed in Wikipedia's voice. There is no such thing as "proof" as you claim, pointing to chinayouren.com (by an astonishing coincidence also your username), there is only opinion, and whether an opinion isincluded here will depend on its respective WP:DUE weight. -- dab (𒁳) 15:07, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
Someone removed this saying that it was from 'unreliable forum' but the user who posted the text in the forum is Professor Arguelles. It doesn't matter where the message was delivered; what matters is the credibility and authority of the person who said it -- a notable language Scholar and polyglot.
When I tried to put it back in, the forum website was on a blacklist, so I had to take it out. Forums in itself aren't reliable. But when there is no question as to the the identity of a certain poster, and that poster is an authority in the field (in this case, languages) the site can be and should be inserted in the reference.
Here's the info:
A polyglot named Alexander Arguelles stated that Korean was the hardest language he has ever encountered, and claimed that he saw a chart of difficulty of languages based on the number of hours it took for the American GI's to master them, and Korean was at the very top, above both Japanese and Chinese. [5] — Laws dr ( talk) 14:55, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
As it's currently written, the article seems to be quite anglocentric (at least, the parts I've read); all the sections that list which languages are 'hard' are only really listing languages that would be hard for an English speaker, and only listing "major" languages (the ' top 20 languages (fig. 4)). This has caused some quite famous 'hard languages' to be ignored: for example, for an article on 'hard languages', I am shocked that there is no mention of Basque, a language whose perceived difficulty has inspired sayings. Another one that's not mentioned is Fula, which John McWhorter calls one of the hardest in his book The Power of Babel (note: book, not forum)—he attributes that to what he calls the "gender" system, by which I assume he's referring to its noun class system. And hey, in the U.S., some popular wisdom believes that English is one of the hardest language because of its exceptions to rules, and that native speakers are lucky they didn't have to struggle through what ESL learners do...not that popular wisdom makes it true, but there has to be a source for this perception somewhere.
Anyway, the point is, by adopting an ethnocentric point of view the writers of this article have missed many obvious things. And the article is only hurt more by nationalistic attempts to "prove" that one's own language is the hardest for some reason another (and why should that be a source of pride, anyway?). Not to mention that, from a linguistic standpoint, it's not possible to "prove" one language as the hardest like User:Chinayouren has been trying to do. Looking at one or two linguistic features (borrowings, writing system) does not prove generalizations about entire languages, and is just the sort of behavior that the field as a whole has been trying to move away from (I just recently got back from a conference in which a long panel discussion centered somewhat around criticizing some studies that looked at phonological /ba, da, ga/ discrimination and tried to assume that that accurately reflected natural language processing). Chinayouren's analysis, while spirited and made in good faith, is like blind men and an elephant. The same can be said for Laws dr's misuse of the Wexler study [14] to try and suggest that the time of acquisition of one feature can tel you how difficult an entire language is. rʨanaɢ talk/ contribs 16:31, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
I believe mentioning of just one linguist saying that Japanese is "without question" the hardest language for English speakers to learn is giving undue weight:
-- Laws dr ( talk) 18:06, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
Above I noted several problems with this article. Now I'm going to try to start thinking about some solutions. I don't think there's any point in doing any rewriting yet until we have agreed on what the article should actually be about. I propose that "Hardest language" is not really the best title or topic; the very concept of a single "hardest language" is not taken seriously or investigated anymore in second language acquisition, it's only discussed on random people's blogs; it's not an academically valid topic, as any linguist can tell you there are many ways to measure a language's difficulty. Searching Google for "hardest language", the first two pages come up with numerous blogs, which claim Icelandic, Polish, Hungarian, Japanese, Sanskrit, Russian, and a variety of other languages as the "hardest". This illustrates two things: 1) there are many more languages that claim the title of "hardest" than the nationalist editors here want you to think; and 2) the people discussing this problem are, for the most part, not linguists and have no idea what they're talking about (see some of the laughable claims here and here). If you search Google Scholar for the same term, it becomes clear that "hardest language" is a concept in computational linguistics and is wholly unrelated to the topic being discussed in this article; and it's not a concept in SLA at all.
So the article, most likely, should be about language learning difficulty in general, not about some hopeless quest to find the single 'hardest' language. Unfortunately, a good title for this is hard to find. Google Scholar reveals that "language difficulty" (which is currently a redirect to this page), is actually used synonymously with language impairment in most of the literature (and a secondary use, but still with more hits than our topic, is for measuring the difficulty level of a passage, for example in a standardized test). "Language learning difficulty", likewise, is mostly about language impairment. Any other ideas? rʨanaɢ talk/ contribs 16:10, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
I started this article with the full awareness that it is going to report opnions on which languages are considered "hard" (or "hardest"), for whom.
The article has seen an extraordinary amount of trolling and confusion introduced by the well-meaning and clueless. If you do not know what the article is supposed to discuss, and if you do not have any references on the topic, how about just leaving it alone? This article will be based to 100% on quotable references. Our task is just to gather these referenes. If it is "anglocentric", too bad, that's because you didn't provide sufficient references from the Russian or German viewpoint.
Historically, what happened was that I happened to find a couple of references suggesting that Korean is the hardest-to-learn language. These references were suppressed by Kjoonlee ( talk · contribs), apparently a Korean expat, for no reason other than WP:IDONTLIKEIT. After some time I became fed up and walked away. Since then, the confusion here on this talkpage has just become worse, with insightful comments such as Utopial's "Including some of these studies is also OR" (wtf?) who took it upon himself to call the artice "uneducated" and "a disgrace to the linguistics field" again for no coherent reason, although he did ramble about "a yahoo top contributor". What is going on here? Why does this topic attract comments of such abysmal qualtity? -- dab (𒁳) 20:04, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
Who said the arabic is cosidered a hard language? that is bullshit, for me, I would put Arabic in the first catagory as an easy language and put English in the forth catagory instead. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.68.25.174 ( talk) 21:45, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
Where is your detailed reliable source that says Arabic is very hard and should be placed in the hardest languages catagory while english is easy and it in the first catagory. If that is only for English speakers then why did not u indicate that in the article سلام(Peace) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.68.25.174 ( talk) 21:59, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
I've just removed, for the second time, an essay which is longer than the article itself and which consists of a minor additional illustration of a small point. It even appears to be unpublished. I've left in a single sentence with a link to the author's personal web site, in order to throw a bone to the editor who seems to insist on including something that does not seem to me to add anything to the article. Nevertheless, the inclusion of a massive amount of material to make a minor point would certainly have to be argued for here and agreed upon by a consensus of editors. - Do c t orW 19:59, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
85.178.49.178/ 85.178.24.108 is clearly User:Laws dr. I don't know if he's intentionally abusing multiple accounts or if he's simply forgotten his password. Uncooperative demands like this and unwelcome rants like this are not appropriate; his 'contributions' should be reverted on sight. He can be invited to the talk page as usual. rʨanaɢ talk/ contribs 23:43, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
A friend just showed me this article, looks pretty useful. I've only glanced at it so far, but it appears to be accessible to non-linguists and free of glaring errors.
rʨanaɢ ( talk) 20:23, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
I feel this article treats an artificially constricted topic. Replacing it with a new article on a slightly more general topic e.g. Comparative difficulty of acquisition of various languages (human) (I'm not really suggesting that as a title) would allow a more relaxed discussion of the features of various languages that tend to make them more or less easy to learn, without the narrow focus on "more difficult." EEng ( talk) 00:02, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
Oops, I confess my eyes glazed over when scanning the Talk page here. Keep up the good work. EEng ( talk) 03:13, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
"Wikipedia has lots of similar articles" is not an argument for notability (see wp:OTHERSTUFF). For the topic to be restricted to the popular perception of the relative difficulty of various languages, there would need to be reliable sources discussing such popular perceptions. Are there? (And here, BTW, we run into a really, really serious parochialism issue: such perceptions without doubt vary widely depending on the mother tongue of the perceiver. How could an intelligible article comprehend all that -- or would it just be "...perceptions among speakers of English"?) EEng ( talk) 15:01, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
OK now, um, what question is "one of the most popular questions"? Is it, Which language is hardest? (whatever that means)? Or is it, What are the popular perceptions regarding which languageis hardest? ? Anyway, Wikipedia can't have an article simply because it deals with an oft-posed question. If there are no reliable sources which can act as a basis for a presentation of actual answers to such a question (or, at least, of a framework by which the question might be usefully attacked), then it can't be the subject of a Wikipedia article. As it stands the article has few or no such sources. EEng ( talk) 17:34, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
I didn't say an article should be based only on a single source. I also didn't say an article shouldn't try to answer questions people might have; I said that along with good intentions there must exist one or more reliable sources on which the article can be based. In particular, if such answers must be arrived at by synthesizing bits of 20 other articles, and there is no source (or to be clear, are no sources) which have done that work already, then Wikipedia can't present such answers. See wp:No_original_research#Synthesis_of_published_material_that_advances_a_position. Good luck to you all in refining the scope and building the article; I was just making a passing observation. EEng ( talk) 19:45, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 |
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 |
I am intrigued by the "genetic disposition" part: combining the results of Scherag et al. (2004) with Ross and Bever (2004), you might conclude that "right-handed familials" do better in German, and "left-handed familials" do better in English. The natural follow-up question would be, are there, in fact, more left-handed people in (medieval) England than in (medieval) Germany?
if this is true, there are actually more left-handed people in Germany than in the UK. dab (𒁳) 09:18, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
- The FSL courses grew out of the US army's need to rapidly develop translators for various "exotic" langauges for the first time ever around the period of WWII.... they at some point developed a chart of difficulty of languages based on the number of hours it took for American GI's to master them....At any rate, Korean was listed in the very highest level of difficulty, a notch above both Japanese and Chinese in fact.
- Everyone I have ever met who has learned both Korean and Japanese agrees that their grammars are almost as similar as those of any two Romance languages, but that that of Japanese has been streamlined, while Korean remains comparatively much more complex.
- I have made good progress in a number of other "difficult" or exotic languages such as Russian and Arabic. Compared to Korean, both of these languages are much easier, i.e., if you apply yourself well, consistently, and intelligently every day for a number of years, after a single handful you will be rather advanced. However, with Korean you will still be in a fog. I have studied scores of languages, and Korean is unquestionably the most difficult one I have ever encountered. Arguelles, Alexander. January 12th, 2005. How to Learn any Language forum (link added in later -- Laws dr ( talk) 21:37, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
Laws dr ( talk) 02:53, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
In addition, Korean written language (hangul) uses an alphabetized system which makes it quite easy to learn and read. After being unable to read at all, I was taught by my grandfather to read Korean in two weeks (albeit without understanding all that was being read). 72.80.172.205 ( talk) 20:16, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
In the Navy of the Defense Language Institute, Korean is seen as the hardest of the Category IV languages, which are Arabic, Chinese, and Korean. A US Military guide of About.com wrote: "Right now only 8 Languages are being taught (for Navy). Cat IV: Arabic, Chinese, Korean. Cat III: Persian-Farsi, Serb-Croatian, Hebrew, Russian. Cat I: Spanish. ...Korean is the hardest language here [Navy], apparently it is 75 weeks long now, and they are trying to make it a Cat V language." [1]
Laws dr (
talk)
04:07, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
This would be more well expressed version:
Laws dr ( talk) 17:43, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
Talk:Korean language#Hardest Language to master? -- Kjoon lee 19:29, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
I've added a reference to the "Foreign Service Institute (FSI) of the US Department of State", which claims that Korean is one of the 5 most-difficult, but Japanese is even harder. Alas, the reference I've added is second-hand. Does the "Foreign Service Institute" have their own web site we could cite? Please replace that reference to the actual FSI web site, if you can find it.
I wouldn't be surprised if learning to fluently Korean takes longer than Japanese, even if that reference is correct that learning to speak *and* write Japanese takes longer than Korean. -- 72.198.67.13 ( talk) 21:26, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
it is interesting that Korean also pops up as a language that is very difficult to acquire as a first language. So perhaps Korean is, in fact, the most difficult language... dab (𒁳) 20:25, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
we seem to have a misunderstanding here: your edit is unjustified. Nowhere do we claim that "language is just structure". We merely say that long-distance relations take longest to acquire and may in this sense be considered the most difficult part (they take longest to learn). We have two data points: (a) Korean children take exceptionally long to acquire Korean grammar. (b) the US Department of State notes that Korean is exceptionally difficult for English speakers. That's two data points. We cannot conclude from this that "Korean is the hardest language" in any absolute sense, but we certainly can and should mention these points for what they are worth. -- dab (𒁳) 11:40, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
the non sequitur is all yours. the point is that the long distance relations are acquired last, after all other aspects had been acquired, earlier. the acquisition of syntax thus concludes language acquisition. You are, at this point, edit warring. I will revert your deletion once more and recommend you try Wikipedia:Dispute resolution from here. I do not spend time researching an obscure topic just to see the result blanked on flimsy or no grounds. If you want to add material, you are most welcome to develop this article further. dab (𒁳) 09:05, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
what claim do you want me to source? the statement you keep removing without rhyme or reason is completely sourced to an academic study,
Since you are obviously not following what I am saying, I do not intend to invest more time talking in your general direction. Well done, we have now run into 3RR. If anyone else is watching this, now would be a good time to comment. Otherwise, unless Kjoon decides to switch on his brain and actually make a coherent statement of what he wants, this'll just be a slow revert war. Not wikilike, not sensible, not even rational. I enjoy debates and intelligent controversy, but this is just dull. dab (𒁳) 12:17, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
[4] - well done. I realize you are just trolling, for reasons best known to yourself. Sorry I took you serioius for a minute there. -- dab (𒁳) 12:32, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
I'm bilingual in English and Korean. English was second, and I acquired it after I was 5. Now, where does that leave your claims? -- Kjoon lee 12:11, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
References that you are genuinely "bilingual" rather than merely fluent in both Korean and English? If you acquired English past the age of 5, you are a native speaker of Korean, and have acquired English as your second language, even if you have near-native fluency. What makes your native language your native language is the acquisition of phonology before the age of 1. There is no way you can make up for this later. You are interested in secondary language acquisition and age? go read the article.
so, there is room for debate on "L1" for ages 6-12. If you begin to acquire a language after you are 6, or even after you are 1, for that reason, you may still reach near-native fluency, but your acquisition process will diverge significantly from that of your first language. You want references? You want to learn about this (as opposed to idly bickering about it)? Read the article and the references linked. You want to discuss this, intelligently and presenting sources? Go to Talk:Critical Period Hypothesis, but stop pestering this article. -- dab (𒁳) 12:29, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
WP:NOT to you too. The article cites its sources. End of story. I reciprocate your doubts regarding "expertise". We could start comparing our academic degrees (I am a linguist), but that would fall under WP:NOT too. Come back once you've found some source you want to cite. dab (𒁳) 19:04, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
uh-huh. after 100,000 edits on Wikipedia, we find I do not in fact understand basic policy at all. So we are to take your word that you are "familiar with the topic", that I do not in fact understand logic, or grammar. Wikipedia doesn't work just based on bare assertion. Come back once you have something of substance you would like to say. Until then, I recommend you just drop this. dab (𒁳) 17:47, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
dab (or should I call you Dbachmann?), if you are a linguist by trade, then you must have access to a lot more journals (or sources) than I do. Do you have sources where people discuss the criteria for deciding what makes a language hard? Do the people tend to agree? -- Kjoon lee 18:52, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
I am citing a source to state what it states. If you don't like the way I phrased it, suggest a better phrasing. Stop this childish revert warring. Yes, this article could be expanded further. If you send me a cheque of say USD 300, I'll sit down with it for a day, do a literature search and turn out a more comprehensive article. dab (𒁳) 07:43, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
Should there be a list included in this article? As it's clear that languages from different language families are generally harder to learn the list should include many, in no specific order. ... Some widely known candidates might be (reasons) :
—Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.153.61.69 ( talk) 16:20, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
It is my oppinion that the American Native Tribe of the Navajo, is the most difficult second language to learn by anyone, no matter what their primary language might be. Hence, it was the language of choice chosen by the Americans to be used my the now famous Code Talkers durring World War Two. Craig Warn, Gallup NM —Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.134.36.140 ( talk) 16:18, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
You show profound ignorance of both the specific and the general subject matter. Navajo was chosen simply because it had few speakers, and all of them resided within the United States. The choice had nothing whatsoever to do with any qualities inherent to the Navajo language. -- 76.71.46.198 ( talk) 17:51, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
This page is
Please merge the useful information, purge this page, and keep the crystalballing to pubs and the Language Desk. Or I can do it. ~ Jafet • business • pleasure • voicemail 09:19, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
This doesn't make any sense to me. Between the frustrating tonal part of the language to the even more complicated writing system, Chinese has always seemed harder than Japanese in every aspect to me. Are there any references to why Japanese would be considered more difficult?-- Remurmur ( talk) 07:43, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
This article just like its title "hardest language" is subjective along with its contents and reasoning. This categorization is mainly done according to native english speakers rather than including non-english speakers. Measuring languages is not an exact science like mathematics and will differ according to each person, whatever their native language. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.104.70.109 ( talk) 17:24, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
so? the same goes for pleasure and thousands of other articles. This is irrelevant. The important point is that the opinions given are referenced per WP:CITE. -- dab (𒁳) 17:42, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
I feel like the following section is fairly dubious and would like to ask you guys how you feel about removing it.
There may also be a genetic disposition determining which aspects of language a learner will find most difficult. Ross and Bever (2004) propose that right-handed individuals with left-handed family members (left-handed familials, LHFs) and right-handed individuals with only right-handed family members (right-handed familials, RHFs) showed differences in language learning strategy, with RHFs focusing on grammatical relations and LHFs on lexical knowledge."
My concern is that even though a reference is included, the claim doesn't appear to be supported by any kind of scientific study. This proposal by Ross and Beaver seems to suffer from the logical fallacy Correlation does not imply causation. – Novem Lingvae ( talk) 08:46, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
Regardless of whether they are reliable sources or not, they aren't fully cited anywhere -- as far as I can tell there's just "Ross and Bever (2004)" without any further expansion on the title of their book or article, its publication data, etc. Similarly some other sources are only cited by author's last name and date, without title or publisher or anything. -- Jim Henry ( talk) 02:12, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
I have deleted it from the article (see entry above).
In my opinion it should be deleted even if an acceptable reference can be found. Even if we have the study in hand, we don't know the effect size. How much difference does it make? It's also just one study. - Do c t orW 22:40, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
I've decided to move here the assertion that Hungarian is the hardest language, a claim based on the number of noun cases. This appears on it's face to be sloppy journalism (if it is journalism at all), as anyone familiar with learning the most difficult languages knows that a single feature such as case or tones doesn't by itself make a language harder for English speakers than Japanese or Korean. More importantly from the perspective of Wikipedia guidelines, it blatantly contradicts what appears to be the consensus from all other sources. And there's the question of whether the sourcing is reliable. Even if this can be reliably sourced, we might discuss whether it falls under WP:FRINGE.
According to a survey by the British Foreign Office among its diplomatic staff, the most difficult language to learn for adult English speakers is Hungarian, followed by Japanese. [3] unreliable source? This survey naturally included only languages that are used in diplomatic relations and does not rule out the possibility of other languages that are even more difficult to learn.
A related issue is what is meant by "learning a language". Is reliable communication sufficient, or does "learning" require perfect/near-perfect mastery of pronunciation and grammar? - Do c t orW 22:59, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
There is no evidence of the Foreign Office list being true. The "source" provided in this article is not reliable, and actually a bit of googling proves that this list is an internet myth that has been circulating for years, giving slightly modofied versions of the same list. Not a single one carries a link or picture of an original source. Of course, in the official site of the Foreign Office there is nothing to be found. The needs to be removed, it is not up to wikipedia standards. Chinayouren ( talk) 12:21, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
[4] Laws dr ( talk) 16:27, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
This source isn't really valid/working. Just an FYI.
http://www.nvtc.gov/lotw/months/november/learningExpectations.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.156.40.46 ( talk) 14:45, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
This is an archived link http://web.archive.org/web/20071014005901/http://www.nvtc.gov/lotw/months/november/learningExpectations.html
Also, Wikibooks has an entry about the research.
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Language_Learning_Difficulty_for_English_Speakers --
Caspian blue
12:05, 31 October 2009 (UTC)
Laws dr ( talk · contribs) has been trying to emphasizing that Korea is the hardest language to learn by removing the cited information from The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) of the US Department of State, but by adding a dubious source from About.com. He did the same thing to Korean language, but which is deleted by other editors working on it. The reliability of About.com has been questioned many times on Reliable source noticeboard, and as I was looking at the page, I believe that Laws dr ( talk · contribs)'s making a original research by cherrypicking from the seemingly interview by "one soldier". I think the whole content referenced by the About.com should be removed due to its reliability and credibility of the source.
Language Selection
Right now only 8 Languages are being taught (for Navy). Cat IV: Arabic, Chinese, Korean. Cat III: Persian-Farsi, Serb-Croatian, Hebrew, Russian. Cat I: Spanish. Those are your only "options" and I have not received my language yet, but I did give them my top 3 selections of Korean, Russian, and Arabic. Everybody is telling me this about my selection. Korean I probably won't get because I only have a 103 DLAB. Korean is the hardest language here, apparently it is 75 weeks long now, and they are trying to make it a Cat V language. Russian is hard to get because they don't really need too many Russian linguists anymore. Arabic, a lot of people get Arabic, and since it's in my top three, guess which language I'm probably going to get :). Arabic. But we'll see how it goes. The word on class wait time is Feb-April (4-6 months), however, word is coming down the chain of command that there will be a number of classes opening very soon and that many people will be put into classes within a month, but we'll see how it works out.— about.com
http://usmilitary.about.com/cs/education/a/dliarticle_5.htm
Caspian blue 12:20, 31 October 2009 (UTC)
According to Wexler, the constructions that take children the longest to master are long-distance dependencies. The long-distance dependency of the reflexive pronoun in Korean is not implemented correctly by Korean children until the age of five (Wexler 1990, p. 109), making Korean the most difficult language for toddlers to master, according to Wexler's study.[1]
— edit by Laws dr
I can't find any such conclusion in the book at all, so removed Laws dr ( talk · contribs)'s original research and synthesis per WP:No original research and WP:CITE.-- Caspian blue 12:42, 31 October 2009 (UTC)
This article is a disgrace to the linguistics field. It needs to be completely overhauled by someone who actually has some knowledge of the field. Just to give you an idea of how weak this article is, read this contribution from a yahoo top contributor:
"The world's most complex sound systems are a tie between the Northwest Caucasian language Ubyx (now extinct) and the Khoisan languages of southern Africa.
The world's most complex word building systems are the Caddoan languages of the North American Plains (Pawnee and Arikara especially).
The world's most complex sentence building system is probably English.
The world's most complex meaning building systems are the Australian aboriginal languages.
Every language is equally complex with respect to the total complexity of every other language. It just depends on how you mix and match different levels and different types of complexity. The Caddoan languages, for example, build gigantic words, but only have about 10 different sounds and no sentence structure. English, on the other hand, builds very complex sentences, but has a fairly average sound system, and very simple word-building processes.
And then there is Archi, a Northeast Caucasian language. Archi has a fairly complex sound system and a very complex word-building system. If you count all the possible forms of a Latin verb, you come up with about 150 forms or so. If you count all the possible forms of an Archi verb, you come up with 1.5 MILLION different forms. Now THAT is verb complexity.
The viewpoint of a PhD in Linguistics who teaches at a major US university" Utopial ( talk) 08:53, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
"The viewpoint of a PhD in Linguistics who teaches at a major US university" is not good enough. The quoted claims on "the world's most complex sentence building system", "the world's most complex meaning building systems" and "Every language is equally complex with respect to the total complexity of every other language." are pulled from thin air entirely and would need excellent (academic, peer-reviewed sources) attribution.
We are simply reporting on who said what. We do not have the intention of drawing any conclusions regarding " WP:TRUTH". This article did suffer some trolling, bizarrely from Korean patriots among other things, but its approach is perfectly sound. I draw your attention to this revision (a pre-trolling version of mine, March 2008). I strongly recommend reverting to that before continuing to build the article. -- dab (𒁳) 15:04, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
This article needs to be redone in a way that is objective and rational, and get rid of "sources" that are not at all realiable.
First of all, we need to define the terms. "Harder" can mean many things, and it depends on many factors. The most important of these factors are:
1- the LEVEL desired (some languages are difficult at basic level and some only become had at advanced level), 2- the set of ABILITIES of the student (Some languages are easy if you are good at imitating sounds, others require you to master complex grammars) 3- The linguistic BACKGROUND of the student (obvious)
In most cases, there is not a single answer to "Which is the most difficult language", but it is possible to prove that, for the ADVANCED Level, Chinese is more difficult than any other language. This is true regardless of the Background of the student, with the only possible exception of Korean/Japanese students.
The proof of this is done looking at the different elements needed to master a language, and at the relative importance of vocabulary at a higher level. Complete proof available <a href=" http://chinayouren.com/en/2009/11/23/2530">in this article</a> Chinayouren ( talk) 12:15, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
um, no, because there is no "objective" account here. All we do is report opinions, and these opinions are referenced to sources. No opinions are endorsed or disendorsed in Wikipedia's voice. There is no such thing as "proof" as you claim, pointing to chinayouren.com (by an astonishing coincidence also your username), there is only opinion, and whether an opinion isincluded here will depend on its respective WP:DUE weight. -- dab (𒁳) 15:07, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
Someone removed this saying that it was from 'unreliable forum' but the user who posted the text in the forum is Professor Arguelles. It doesn't matter where the message was delivered; what matters is the credibility and authority of the person who said it -- a notable language Scholar and polyglot.
When I tried to put it back in, the forum website was on a blacklist, so I had to take it out. Forums in itself aren't reliable. But when there is no question as to the the identity of a certain poster, and that poster is an authority in the field (in this case, languages) the site can be and should be inserted in the reference.
Here's the info:
A polyglot named Alexander Arguelles stated that Korean was the hardest language he has ever encountered, and claimed that he saw a chart of difficulty of languages based on the number of hours it took for the American GI's to master them, and Korean was at the very top, above both Japanese and Chinese. [5] — Laws dr ( talk) 14:55, 23 November 2009 (UTC)
As it's currently written, the article seems to be quite anglocentric (at least, the parts I've read); all the sections that list which languages are 'hard' are only really listing languages that would be hard for an English speaker, and only listing "major" languages (the ' top 20 languages (fig. 4)). This has caused some quite famous 'hard languages' to be ignored: for example, for an article on 'hard languages', I am shocked that there is no mention of Basque, a language whose perceived difficulty has inspired sayings. Another one that's not mentioned is Fula, which John McWhorter calls one of the hardest in his book The Power of Babel (note: book, not forum)—he attributes that to what he calls the "gender" system, by which I assume he's referring to its noun class system. And hey, in the U.S., some popular wisdom believes that English is one of the hardest language because of its exceptions to rules, and that native speakers are lucky they didn't have to struggle through what ESL learners do...not that popular wisdom makes it true, but there has to be a source for this perception somewhere.
Anyway, the point is, by adopting an ethnocentric point of view the writers of this article have missed many obvious things. And the article is only hurt more by nationalistic attempts to "prove" that one's own language is the hardest for some reason another (and why should that be a source of pride, anyway?). Not to mention that, from a linguistic standpoint, it's not possible to "prove" one language as the hardest like User:Chinayouren has been trying to do. Looking at one or two linguistic features (borrowings, writing system) does not prove generalizations about entire languages, and is just the sort of behavior that the field as a whole has been trying to move away from (I just recently got back from a conference in which a long panel discussion centered somewhat around criticizing some studies that looked at phonological /ba, da, ga/ discrimination and tried to assume that that accurately reflected natural language processing). Chinayouren's analysis, while spirited and made in good faith, is like blind men and an elephant. The same can be said for Laws dr's misuse of the Wexler study [14] to try and suggest that the time of acquisition of one feature can tel you how difficult an entire language is. rʨanaɢ talk/ contribs 16:31, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
I believe mentioning of just one linguist saying that Japanese is "without question" the hardest language for English speakers to learn is giving undue weight:
-- Laws dr ( talk) 18:06, 29 November 2009 (UTC)
Above I noted several problems with this article. Now I'm going to try to start thinking about some solutions. I don't think there's any point in doing any rewriting yet until we have agreed on what the article should actually be about. I propose that "Hardest language" is not really the best title or topic; the very concept of a single "hardest language" is not taken seriously or investigated anymore in second language acquisition, it's only discussed on random people's blogs; it's not an academically valid topic, as any linguist can tell you there are many ways to measure a language's difficulty. Searching Google for "hardest language", the first two pages come up with numerous blogs, which claim Icelandic, Polish, Hungarian, Japanese, Sanskrit, Russian, and a variety of other languages as the "hardest". This illustrates two things: 1) there are many more languages that claim the title of "hardest" than the nationalist editors here want you to think; and 2) the people discussing this problem are, for the most part, not linguists and have no idea what they're talking about (see some of the laughable claims here and here). If you search Google Scholar for the same term, it becomes clear that "hardest language" is a concept in computational linguistics and is wholly unrelated to the topic being discussed in this article; and it's not a concept in SLA at all.
So the article, most likely, should be about language learning difficulty in general, not about some hopeless quest to find the single 'hardest' language. Unfortunately, a good title for this is hard to find. Google Scholar reveals that "language difficulty" (which is currently a redirect to this page), is actually used synonymously with language impairment in most of the literature (and a secondary use, but still with more hits than our topic, is for measuring the difficulty level of a passage, for example in a standardized test). "Language learning difficulty", likewise, is mostly about language impairment. Any other ideas? rʨanaɢ talk/ contribs 16:10, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
I started this article with the full awareness that it is going to report opnions on which languages are considered "hard" (or "hardest"), for whom.
The article has seen an extraordinary amount of trolling and confusion introduced by the well-meaning and clueless. If you do not know what the article is supposed to discuss, and if you do not have any references on the topic, how about just leaving it alone? This article will be based to 100% on quotable references. Our task is just to gather these referenes. If it is "anglocentric", too bad, that's because you didn't provide sufficient references from the Russian or German viewpoint.
Historically, what happened was that I happened to find a couple of references suggesting that Korean is the hardest-to-learn language. These references were suppressed by Kjoonlee ( talk · contribs), apparently a Korean expat, for no reason other than WP:IDONTLIKEIT. After some time I became fed up and walked away. Since then, the confusion here on this talkpage has just become worse, with insightful comments such as Utopial's "Including some of these studies is also OR" (wtf?) who took it upon himself to call the artice "uneducated" and "a disgrace to the linguistics field" again for no coherent reason, although he did ramble about "a yahoo top contributor". What is going on here? Why does this topic attract comments of such abysmal qualtity? -- dab (𒁳) 20:04, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
Who said the arabic is cosidered a hard language? that is bullshit, for me, I would put Arabic in the first catagory as an easy language and put English in the forth catagory instead. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.68.25.174 ( talk) 21:45, 31 December 2009 (UTC)
Where is your detailed reliable source that says Arabic is very hard and should be placed in the hardest languages catagory while english is easy and it in the first catagory. If that is only for English speakers then why did not u indicate that in the article سلام(Peace) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.68.25.174 ( talk) 21:59, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
I've just removed, for the second time, an essay which is longer than the article itself and which consists of a minor additional illustration of a small point. It even appears to be unpublished. I've left in a single sentence with a link to the author's personal web site, in order to throw a bone to the editor who seems to insist on including something that does not seem to me to add anything to the article. Nevertheless, the inclusion of a massive amount of material to make a minor point would certainly have to be argued for here and agreed upon by a consensus of editors. - Do c t orW 19:59, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
85.178.49.178/ 85.178.24.108 is clearly User:Laws dr. I don't know if he's intentionally abusing multiple accounts or if he's simply forgotten his password. Uncooperative demands like this and unwelcome rants like this are not appropriate; his 'contributions' should be reverted on sight. He can be invited to the talk page as usual. rʨanaɢ talk/ contribs 23:43, 22 February 2010 (UTC)
A friend just showed me this article, looks pretty useful. I've only glanced at it so far, but it appears to be accessible to non-linguists and free of glaring errors.
rʨanaɢ ( talk) 20:23, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
I feel this article treats an artificially constricted topic. Replacing it with a new article on a slightly more general topic e.g. Comparative difficulty of acquisition of various languages (human) (I'm not really suggesting that as a title) would allow a more relaxed discussion of the features of various languages that tend to make them more or less easy to learn, without the narrow focus on "more difficult." EEng ( talk) 00:02, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
Oops, I confess my eyes glazed over when scanning the Talk page here. Keep up the good work. EEng ( talk) 03:13, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
"Wikipedia has lots of similar articles" is not an argument for notability (see wp:OTHERSTUFF). For the topic to be restricted to the popular perception of the relative difficulty of various languages, there would need to be reliable sources discussing such popular perceptions. Are there? (And here, BTW, we run into a really, really serious parochialism issue: such perceptions without doubt vary widely depending on the mother tongue of the perceiver. How could an intelligible article comprehend all that -- or would it just be "...perceptions among speakers of English"?) EEng ( talk) 15:01, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
OK now, um, what question is "one of the most popular questions"? Is it, Which language is hardest? (whatever that means)? Or is it, What are the popular perceptions regarding which languageis hardest? ? Anyway, Wikipedia can't have an article simply because it deals with an oft-posed question. If there are no reliable sources which can act as a basis for a presentation of actual answers to such a question (or, at least, of a framework by which the question might be usefully attacked), then it can't be the subject of a Wikipedia article. As it stands the article has few or no such sources. EEng ( talk) 17:34, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
I didn't say an article should be based only on a single source. I also didn't say an article shouldn't try to answer questions people might have; I said that along with good intentions there must exist one or more reliable sources on which the article can be based. In particular, if such answers must be arrived at by synthesizing bits of 20 other articles, and there is no source (or to be clear, are no sources) which have done that work already, then Wikipedia can't present such answers. See wp:No_original_research#Synthesis_of_published_material_that_advances_a_position. Good luck to you all in refining the scope and building the article; I was just making a passing observation. EEng ( talk) 19:45, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
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