What Makes A Language Hard to Learn?
Learning a new language is difficult and requires a lot of time. Some people say that some languages are harder to learn than others while other people argue that there is no such thing as a “hardest language”. Benny the Irish Polyglot writes that “the term ‘hardest language’ exists for no reason other than discouragement’. A quick search online provided me with a detailed list of which languages are the hardest to learn. But what characteristics does a “hard language” have? What makes a language easy to learn?
I believe the answer lies in language opaqueness.
First, we need to get some basic terms down. Grapheme is a letter that represents the spoken sound, or a phoneme. Language opaqueness refers to how similar a grapheme is to the corresponding phoneme. For example, in English almost every letter has several different sounds; the ‘a’ in cat does not sound the same as the ‘a’ in wall. English would be considered an opaque language. An example of a transparent language, or a language where the grapheme corresponds to the phoneme, would be Italian. Grapheme-phoneme conversion is the process by which a grapheme is converted in a phoneme. So, basically, taking a written word and making it into a spoken word.
So what does language opaqueness have to do with anything?
Several people have done studies on the relationship between language opaqueness and ho
w quickly children learn to read (Ziegler et al 2010, Wimmer et al 1994). If a written language is highly transparent then the phonetic pattern should be easier to detect and, thus, the language is easy to learn (Warner et al 1994). Phonological awareness is most important in less transparent languages because of the variation in pronunciation of letters (Ziegler et al 2010). So, as you’d expect, the more transparent the language is, the easier it was for the children to learn to read. Indeed, in a study conducted by Paulesu (2000), Italian student showed faster word and nonword reading than English students. Paulesu (2000) also found that for Italian students the left superior temporal regions associated with phoneme processing were activated while in English readers the left posterior inferior temporal gyrus, associated with word retrieval, was activated. Transparent languages are able to rely on how a a letter sounds, while in opaque languages using memorization is more common.
But, wait, there’s more. . .
There are several other factors that go into making a language hard or easy to learn. One determining aspect is what your mother tongue is. For example, a native English speaker will have an easier time picking up Spanish than a native Arabic speaker because of the similar alphabet, or orthography.
However, just because a language is hard to read does not necessary imply it will be hard to speak. Take Mandarin Chinese for example. While the written language is immensely complicated, the spoken language only involves four tones and the grammar is relatively simple. In comparison, Spanish, which is considered an easy written language to pick up, is more difficult to speak because of the various verb tenses.
So can you rank a language?
In order to rank languages, one has to look at the opaqueness, among other factors. The “easiest” language, while generally subjective, can be objectively measured. So what makes a language “hard”? The phonics of the language has a very important role in making this distinction but it is also important to remember there are several other factors that make a language difficult to learn.
References
Lewis, B. (2010, August 17). What’s the hardest language to learn in the world? – Fluent in 3 months – Language Hacking and Travel Tips. Retrieved from http://www.fluentin3months.com/most-difficult-language/
Paulesu, E., McCrory, E., Fazio, F., Menoncello, L., Brunswick, N., Cappa, S., . . . Frith, U. (2000). Cultural effect of brain function. Nature Neuroscience, 3, 91-96. doi:10.1038/71163
Simon, G., Bernard, C., Lalonde, R., & Rebaï, M. (2006). Orthographic transparency and grapheme–phoneme conversion: An ERP study in Arabic and French readers. Brain Research, 1104(1), 141-152. doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2006.05.071
What are the hardest languages to learn? – Lingholic. (2014, May 19). Retrieved from http://www.lingholic.com/hardest-languages-learn/
Wimmer, H., & Goswami, U. (1994). The influence of orthographic consistency on reading development: Word recognition in English and German children. Cognition, 51(1), 91-103. doi:10.1016/0010-0277(94)90010-8
Ziegler, J., Bertrand, D., Tóth, D., Csépe, V., Reis, A., Saine, N., . . . Faísca, L. (2010). Orthographic Depth and Its Impact on Universal Predictors of Reading: A Cross-Language Investigation. Psychological Science, 1-9. doi:10.1177/0956797610363406
