[RJ555]

I would really like to learn foreign languages. I always struggled in school with them (Welsh, German and French), but mostly because I didn't like the teachers and the rote learning style. In terms of my current ability, I need to improve on my English grammar. With Welsh and French I can speak a few basic phrases and understand a few words. Welsh was always tough with the mutations

I have a long list of languages I want to learn before I die, in order of preference probably: French, Swedish, Japanese, Cantonese, Welsh, Portuguese and Spanish. Maybe some dutch and german, why not! So yes, a nice short list to work towards.

I was thinking of starting with French (I love french films so there'll be plenty of practice), but is this the best for a first language? I remember hearing that its grammar rules and structure make additional language learning easier, is this true? At the same time I need something easy so as not to be disheartened.

[AnyRandomName]

(Original post by RJ555)
I would really like to learn foreign languages. I always struggled in school with them (Welsh, German and French), but mostly because I didn't like the teachers and the rote learning style. In terms of my current ability, I need to improve on my English grammar. With Welsh and French I can speak a few basic phrases and understand a few words. Welsh was always tough with the mutations

I have a long list of languages I want to learn before I die, in order of preference probably: French, Swedish, Japanese, Cantonese, Welsh, Portuguese and Spanish. Maybe some dutch and german, why not! So yes, a nice short list to work towards.

I was thinking of starting with French (I love french films so there'll be plenty of practice), but is this the best for a first language? I remember hearing that its grammar rules and structure make additional language learning easier, is this true? At the same time I need something easy so as not to be disheartened.

I think French would be a good idea because it would help you if you wanted to learn languages like Portuguese, Spanish, Italian etc. I also find French the easiest foreign language that I've tried so maybe French would be good to ease you into language-learning?
Also, I know lots of people will probably disagree with me on this but it might be a good idea to learn a decent amount of Latin. It would help you a lot with grammar and vocab for lots of other languages.

[miniteen]

Lol, you're ambitious.

I think French is a good start yes. But don't drive yourself nuts. Japanese and Cantonese are going to be quite hard, and I don't recommend you learn Cantonese at all. It's better to have a good mastery in 3 languages than being elementary in 10.

If I were you, I would try to stick to a certain family of languages at first. Start with French, you will then find Portuguese and Spanish very easy. When you get to a good level, you can see what you want to do next.

May I ask, what makes you want to learn Cantonese of all languages? (I am thinking of taking it this year, but I'm advanced in Mandarin already so it's a bit different. Here too it's a family of languages. Oh and Japanese and Chinese (all forms) are extremely different languages, though knowing one will help with the other. If you insist on learning asian languages, I'd suggest starting with Mandarin and then continuing with Japanese, but don't start with these languages.)

[RJ555]

(Original post by AnyRandomName)
I think French would be a good idea because it would help you if you wanted to learn languages like Portuguese, Spanish, Italian etc. I also find French the easiest foreign language that I've tried so maybe French would be good to ease you into language-learning?
Also, I know lots of people will probably disagree with me on this but it might be a good idea to learn a decent amount of Latin. It would help you a lot with grammar and vocab for lots of other languages.

I'll be starting with French for the next few years then I think (a family member is a retired French teacher so I don't know why I didn't start sooner!). I've also heard that learning a second language makes further languages easier due to the brain adapting? Heres hoping a nice, relatively straight-forward language will help ease me in.

(Original post by miniteen)
May I ask, what makes you want to learn Cantonese of all languages? (I am thinking of taking it this year, but I'm advanced in Mandarin already so it's a bit different. Here too it's a family of languages. Oh and Japanese and Chinese (all forms) are extremely different languages, though knowing one will help with the other. If you insist on learning asian languages, I'd suggest starting with Mandarin and then continuing with Japanese, but don't start with these languages.)

Out of interest, what is it that makes Japanese the most difficult (I always hear this)? More difficult than say western languages or other Eastern Languages. Is it the lack of latin roots/"foreignness" of it, the characters or its sentence structure?

I was lucky enough to have a few basic Japanese lessons, and in terms of the pronunciation it makes a lot of sense to me (words seem to sound how they look). My earliest taught second language was Welsh, which was obviously the complete opposite of this!

Thank you for your comments!

[Caribbeantwist]

In my opinion the easiest one out of that list is Spanish. If you are just getting into languages I'd personally start out with Spanish. It's easy to pick up


This was posted from The Student Room's iPhone/iPad App

[Sem193]

Spanish is a good language to start with. It's easier than French, in my opinion, and you can easily learn French, Italian and Portuguese after learning Spanish. I don't even learn Portuguese and I can understand the majority of what my Brazilian friends write and some of what my Italian friends write. Also, Spanish is helping me pick my French back up. It's also a very beautiful language and you'll find many speakers to help you. French wouldn't be bad either though

[Caribbeantwist]

Yeah I find Spanish easier than French


This was posted from The Student Room's iPhone/iPad App

[Freier._.lance]

(Original post by RJ555)
I'll be starting with French for the next few years then I think (a family member is a retired French teacher so I don't know why I didn't start sooner!). I've also heard that learning a second language makes further languages easier due to the brain adapting? Heres hoping a nice, relatively straight-forward language will help ease me in.



Out of interest, what is it that makes Japanese the most difficult (I always hear this)? More difficult than say western languages or other Eastern Languages. Is it the lack of latin roots/"foreignness" of it, the characters or its sentence structure?

I was lucky enough to have a few basic Japanese lessons, and in terms of the pronunciation it makes a lot of sense to me (words seem to sound how they look). My earliest taught second language was Welsh, which was obviously the complete opposite of this!

Thank you for your comments!

Languages aren't inherently difficult to learn. Difficulty of learning a new language usually depends on how different the language is you are learning to the one you grew up with, and this is probably why native English speakers find far-eastern languages so difficult to pick up. The same is true vice-versa.

My uncle told me he wished he'd have learnt fewer languages, and advised me to do the same. He once after putting down the phone from speaking with his son asked me which language he was speaking as he'd forgotten.

[miniteen]

(Original post by RJ555)
Out of interest, what is it that makes Japanese the most difficult (I always hear this)? More difficult than say western languages or other Eastern Languages. Is it the lack of latin roots/"foreignness" of it, the characters or its sentence structure?

I was lucky enough to have a few basic Japanese lessons, and in terms of the pronunciation it makes a lot of sense to me (words seem to sound how they look). My earliest taught second language was Welsh, which was obviously the complete opposite of this!

Thank you for your comments!

I actually personally find Korean harder. It's a question of personal preference, how close the language is to your mother language, and how enthusiastic you are. Being exposed and having support is also a huge advantage. You didn't answer my question though?

[RJ555]

(Original post by miniteen)
I actually personally find Korean harder. It's a question of personal preference, how close the language is to your mother language, and how enthusiastic you are. Being exposed and having support is also a huge advantage. You didn't answer my question though?

Oh right! I have friends in Hong Kong/didn't know there was a progression through the Chinese languages.

[miniteen]

(Original post by RJ555)
Oh right! I have friends in Hong Kong/didn't know there was a progression through the Chinese languages.

It's not so much a progression since at the end of the day, they all have the same grammar structure (as far as I'm aware, though if you count tibetan than that no longer is the case), the words are all the same except for some words here and there which are unique to the dialect (Cantonese has a lot of those.)
The thing is that Cantonese has quite a bit more tones than Mandarin, and already getting to grip with 4 tones for someone who isn't used to tones is extremely difficult, let alone with 6 or more. Mandarin speakers also tend to find learning Cantonese difficult because of that.

[SophiaKeuning]

Spanish was easier than French. But that may be because I did French earlier in school so it just seemed earlier because I already had the gist of learning languages and learnt it at a less advanced level than French.

[sorae]

Japanese!


Speaking from experience, what makes Japanese difficult is the word order, which once you get the hang of is simple, and probably how it uses Chinese characters. But getting to a decent level in both speaking and listening in Japanese is simple. Writing/reading is the harder part, but that comes with time.

[Gales]

Swedish was very easy when I learnt it. It's a good one to start at - didn't like the plurals though.

[besarlalluvia]

Frankly there is no 'best' language to learn first. Some people find learning Japanese so much easier than French. There's such a variation of grammatical structure in your desired languages, that I can't tell you which would be easier. Swedish has a similar structure to English, but then, the pronunciation is weird. Cantonese has wild tones, but the grammar in Chinese languages is pretty simple. Japanese is full of agglunitation (suffix upon suffix upon suffix), but I personally love this feature. French, Spanish and Portuguese, obviously, are all similar. Learning Spanish will make it very easy to learn Portuguese, French only a little. French has complicated pronunciation which I'm only just coming to master at A-Level. Spanish has more tenses that French, and more flexibility when it comes to syntax (ordering of words), which can be confusing at first.

I won't tell you which is the best, you decide. There is nothing wrong with going straight into Cantonese, by the way. If you don't want to learn Mandarin, don't force yourself. You just won't get anywhere.

[miniteen]

(Original post by besarlalluvia)
Frankly there is no 'best' language to learn first. Some people find learning Japanese so much easier than French. There's such a variation of grammatical structure in your desired languages, that I can't tell you which would be easier. Swedish has a similar structure to English, but then, the pronunciation is weird. Cantonese has wild tones, but the grammar in Chinese languages is pretty simple. Japanese is full of agglunitation (suffix upon suffix upon suffix), but I personally love this feature. French, Spanish and Portuguese, obviously, are all similar. Learning Spanish will make it very easy to learn Portuguese, French only a little. French has complicated pronunciation which I'm only just coming to master at A-Level. Spanish has more tenses that French, and more flexibility when it comes to syntax (ordering of words), which can be confusing at first.

I won't tell you which is the best, you decide. There is nothing wrong with going straight into Cantonese, by the way. If you don't want to learn Mandarin, don't force yourself. You just won't get anywhere.

The simple fact that most of our words in French are the same as those in English will make French easier to learn for someone who does not have a particular preference for either language when learning these languages. With London being full of French people, and the Eurostar at King's Cross being so convenient, having support to learn French is a lot easier than Japanese.

Most people start Japanese and find it very easy, but they never take it to a higher level. Because the pronunciation is incredibly simple, and the basic grammar is relatively simple as well, Basic Japanese is actually easier than Basic French. But then when you start with kanji, and you have kanji with 12 different possible pronunciations, I'm not so sure you will find Japanese that easy anymore. And even for Chinese people, the kanji can be a hassle in Japanese because of the different pronunciations. Of course they will always understand it, but reading out loud or knowing how to pronounce certain things will take some time to learn. Some Japanese themselves even forget the pronunciation of certain words.
After you progress from basic french and move on to intermediate, it gets easier. The words are virtually the same as in English. Also, since in French you can tell the pronunciation from the spelling (the other way round isn't true though) it becomes quite easy to learn words. You can also guess words in French, which you can rarely do in Japanese (unless you know Korean or a form of Chinese.)
Then comparing the intermediate/advanced grammar (I'm talking written, i.e. newspaper articles etc.) both are relatively difficult, but with Japanese it is sometimes very difficult to tell who is the subject, especially since they tend to omit the subject and passive is a form of respect. French is a lot more straightforward, and the different verb modes are used not as a form of respect but as a way of conveying what is hypothetical (subjonctif, conditionnel) and fact (indicatif.)

I think it is very misleading to say to someone who is learning their first second language (and has no real personal preference) that they are of the same difficulty. It can be really demotivating when they start the language and find it too hard.

The Foreign Service Institute* has ranked different languages according to their difficulty for a native (non-bilingual) english speaker. Japanese, Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese), Korean and Arabic are at the bottom of the list (i.e. hardest to learn.) Japanese is considered here to be the most difficult. I believe they put the languages in this particular order for the exact same reasons I cited above. Of course, I stand by my statement where if you have a particular affinity for a language, you will find it easier, which is why I find Korean harder than Chinese or Japanese. Also, I'd like to point out that whereas at Cambridge or Oxford taking two languages as a BA is considered normal, when it comes to the East Asian languages they rarely let you take two. This is because getting to a certain level in any of these takes a very very long time. And I said holds for Chinese as well. Go to France for 6 months you will come back with a very decent level. Come to Beijing for one year and you will still be high elementary to lower intermediate.

* Site I talked about: http://www.effectivelanguagelearning...age-difficulty

EDIT: I just stumbled across this website and I find it extremely good to understand why Chinese is difficult. It was written by a senior professor in Chinese (of the University of Michigan) I believe and it is quite spot on. Of course he isn't talking basic Chinese, but more why someone who, at the end of 4 years of Chinese, still finds the language so difficult. http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html

[besarlalluvia]

(Original post by miniteen)
The simple fact that most of our words in French are the same as those in English will make French easier to learn for someone who does not have a particular preference for either language when learning these languages. With London being full of French people, and the Eurostar at King's Cross being so convenient, having support to learn French is a lot easier than Japanese.

Most people start Japanese and find it very easy, but they never take it to a higher level. Because the pronunciation is incredibly simple, and the basic grammar is relatively simple as well, Basic Japanese is actually easier than Basic French. But then when you start with kanji, and you have kanji with 12 different possible pronunciations, I'm not so sure you will find Japanese that easy anymore. And even for Chinese people, the kanji can be a hassle in Japanese because of the different pronunciations. Of course they will always understand it, but reading out loud or knowing how to pronounce certain things will take some time to learn. Some Japanese themselves even forget the pronunciation of certain words.
After you progress from basic french and move on to intermediate, it gets easier. The words are virtually the same as in English. Also, since in French you can tell the pronunciation from the spelling (the other way round isn't true though) it becomes quite easy to learn words. You can also guess words in French, which you can rarely do in Japanese (unless you know Korean or a form of Chinese.)
Then comparing the intermediate/advanced grammar (I'm talking written, i.e. newspaper articles etc.) both are relatively difficult, but with Japanese it is sometimes very difficult to tell who is the subject, especially since they tend to omit the subject and passive is a form of respect. French is a lot more straightforward, and the different verb modes are used not as a form of respect but as a way of conveying what is hypothetical (subjonctif, conditionnel) and fact (indicatif.)

I think it is very misleading to say to someone who is learning their first second language (and has no real personal preference) that they are of the same difficulty. It can be really demotivating when they start the language and find it too hard.

The Foreign Service Institute* has ranked different languages according to their difficulty for a native (non-bilingual) english speaker. Japanese, Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese), Korean and Arabic are at the bottom of the list (i.e. hardest to learn.) Japanese is considered here to be the most difficult. I believe they put the languages in this particular order for the exact same reasons I cited above. Of course, I stand by my statement where if you have a particular affinity for a language, you will find it easier, which is why I find Korean harder than Chinese or Japanese. Also, I'd like to point out that whereas at Cambridge or Oxford taking two languages as a BA is considered normal, when it comes to the East Asian languages they rarely let you take two. This is because getting to a certain level in any of these takes a very very long time. And I said holds for Chinese as well. Go to France for 6 months you will come back with a very decent level. Come to Beijing for one year and you will still be high elementary to lower intermediate.

* Site I talked about: http://www.effectivelanguagelearning...age-difficulty

EDIT: I just stumbled across this website and I find it extremely good to understand why Chinese is difficult. It was written by a senior professor in Chinese (of the University of Michigan) I believe and it is quite spot on. Of course he isn't talking basic Chinese, but more why someone who, at the end of 4 years of Chinese, still finds the language so difficult. http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html

There are also many Cantonese speakers in London - probably more than French.
There are probably more Germanic words in English than Latin. Latin words are used more formally in English. In an everyday situation, would you rather say 'end' or 'terminate' (the Latin-derived)?
Swedish would be easier to learn than French, if we go by your point of similarity. Both the structure and the vocabulary are more similar.

Of course Japanese wouldn't be easy once you start going into the advanced stuff - nor would any language. 12-reading kanji are not even common.
French grammar also gets complicated if you start going into, let's say, imperfect subjunctive, or simple past.
OP said he's not very good at languages, only having tried Welsh and French. Why is it so bad that he try Japanese or Cantonese? I know someone who did French and Japanese AS, got a C in French and A in Japanese, and is now on her way to A* for A2 and holds an offer to study the language at Cambridge. Some people just can't grasp the Romance languages.

Oh, and other people can have advice too. There is no need to neg.

[Existentialistic]

Esperanto. It is ridiculously easy to learn and it's a well known fact that learning a third language is generally easier than learning a second language.

[acer0951]

I may be wrong but i think like me if youve done french gcse and are not doing it at A level then maybe you should try to create an advancement in your language skill yourself.. i might use rosetta stone to learn french cos ive done for gcse so it wont be completely new!

[asparkyn]

(Original post by RJ555)


Out of interest, what is it that makes Japanese the most difficult (I always hear this)? More difficult than say western languages or other Eastern Languages. Is it the lack of latin roots/"foreignness" of it, the characters or its sentence structure?

I was lucky enough to have a few basic Japanese lessons, and in terms of the pronunciation it makes a lot of sense to me (words seem to sound how they look). My earliest taught second language was Welsh, which was obviously the complete opposite of this!

Thank you for your comments!

Japanese isn't impossible, I think its difficulty is over-exaggerated. Anyone can breeze through its pronunciation. What may seem daunting at first is its grammar, although this is again a false difficulty. You have to get used to its completely different grammatical structure (eg. In english you sould say 'I like cats', but in Japanese you would say 'neko ga suki desu' --> literally cats [ga particle] like [end of a sentence]) It's all back-to-front, but it's not hard once you get used to it.

Again, many foreigners are daunted by its three alphabets. Of all these three alphabets, only kanji will pose a longer-term problem (you can learn hiragana and katakana in two days). However, kanji can always be learned by reading childrens manga because most of them will have furigana in them (ie. hiragana subtitles). This will take longer to learn to write and recognise, especially if you don't have a background in Mandarin or Cantonese or similar Asian languages. Again, it's not impossible, and I have met many foreigners with astounding knowledge of kanji.

The most difficult part of Japanese is undoubtedly its culture. Much more so than many other languages, the Japanese culture is integral in its language. Without cultural awareness, it is impossible (yes, impossible) to speak Japanese well. There are six (or more) levels of politeness which are all used to varying social situations. The most polite forms are of course the hardest to remember and speak. There are many ways to apologise, and many levels of apologies, from the informal 'suman' to the staggering 'moushiwake gozaimasen'. In order to be able to properly learn the politeness levels in Japanese, I think it's important that one lives in Japan and gets exposed to the many social demands that require such politeness. Socialising with Japanese friends outside of Japan is not enough, because you only end up using one form of speech, hence getting stuck when, say, trying to open a bank account!