Parrot Time Magazine

The Thinking of Speaking
Issue #12 November / December 2014
Extras
Which Language Is...?

Which Language Is...?

by Erik Zidowecki
November / December 2014 |  asd


I can not even begin to count how many times and how many variants of this question I have seen asked. It seems like the automatic question for so many new members in a group to mention. Which language is the easiest to learn? Which language is the hardest? Which language is the best? Which language should I learn? Which language is the easiest to learn for an English speaker? Which language goes best with white wine? Well, that last one is not real, but it represents the silliness of some of these. Silliness? Yes. For the most part, asking these sort of questions is done just to have something to ask, in my view. A person can hardly think that such a question has not already been asked a few dozen times, after all, they are in a group of language learners. And it really does not take a lot of thought to come up with the only true answer: it depends.

Let us address these questions on an individual basis so as to clarify my reasoning of them. "Which language is the easiest?" That one is clearly not objective. Comparing the difficulty level of one language to another will always be based upon a person's own experience or knowledge. A person that knows Spanish will find Italian easier to learn but they will probably be more confused by Russian, while a Polish speaker will probably find Russian easier than leaning Italian. Essentially, it is easier to learn a language that is in the same family as the one you already know. By this same logic, comparing which is the hardest language to learn is equally subjective.

A sarcastic answer to the question of which is the hardest that I've seen is "Any extinct one" because the available resources for it are probably very limited, and finding another person to converse with in any capacity will be pretty much impossible. Of course, when someone asks this kind of question, the are most likely asking in reference to the globally taught or "popular" languages. No one is really expecting an answer like "Boruca", which is an endangered Chibchan language of Costa Rica.

A language affinity is something quite common among language enthusiasts. While most of them can name a language they absolutely hate, they can also likely tell you a language or two that they absolutely love.

Some people do make these questions of easiest or hardest a little more specific. They might ask, for example, "Which language is the hardest to learn between Mandarin, Japanese, Thai and Korean?" This can upset some people because only one dialect of Chinese is asked about, although few others exist. As people try to answer this, they will start going into details about the strengths and weaknesses of each, perhaps even trying to convince others about how good their native language is, telling them they should learn it. This gets even more confusing as people give their opinions on languages they have never studied. Indeed, what is the likelihood that someone will have learned all the languages being asked about to be able to give a comprehensive answer. Even that would still be based upon their personal background, which might be completely different from the asker's.

It can be argued that some languages are easier for most people, no matter what they speak. There are artificial languages that were created, like Esperanto and Interlingua, with vocabulary and grammar that makes them simpler for speakers of several languages to comprehend. There are also some pidgins and creoles which are simplified versions of two or more combined languages that are rather simple in their constructs.

"Which language is best?" This can be a very dangerous question to ask. You might as well be asking which football team is the best. Everyone has their favourites for their own reasons, and they will try to convince you that their choice is the only right one because otherwise, they would not have chosen it. This will also kick off a flurry of attacks on other languages. One person will say that language A is the best, then another person will claim that language B is the best and that language A is only for idiots. A third person will claim that both A and B are not even worth mentioning and that language C is the true language of the gods. Listening to all their reasons for their choices will not do you any good because they will also be subjective, like claiming that one has simpler verb conjugations while another has a better sentence structure.

Asking the related question of "Which language is the worst?" will get the insults and fists flying even faster, as everyone's personal prejudice will come pouring out in buckets. It will be worse than tossing a mouse into a cat convention. While it may sound incorrect to think of "language lovers" having specific ones they do not like, it is still common for people to have strong feelings against one just as they have strong feelings for one.


"Which language should I learn?" This one depends on why you are planning to learn it. If you just want to acquire another language and you do not care which one, then you would probably be looking for one that would be easier. On the other hand, you might want a challenge and so would be looking for a difficult one. Maybe you want to do it to help in your job, in which case that would depend on what you do and where you are. What if you want to learn it to impress women (and yes, there are plenty of people who do it for this reason. Impressing men as well). That would require knowledge of the type of person you are doing it for.

A more specific answer to this question would be "Which language do you want to learn?" because if the person is not interested in the language, they will find it much harder to apply themselves to learning it. I think this aspect, the interest in the language, and possibly in the culture and country it is related to, is one of the most vital components when selecting a language. It is providing you the incentive to study. If you feel no connection to what you study, then why are you doing it? This is true of most subjects. When people have to decide what to do in their lives, or even which hobbies to start, what they choose is best aided by them wanting to learn or practise it.

When one of these questions is asked more specifically, like "Which language is the easiest to learn for an English speaker?", the answer is more obtainable, but still rather obvious. Match language families. But the answer will still be complicated because it depends on the person. For example, English is a Germanic language, so possible answers could be German, Dutch and Swedish. But each of those languages have their own particular quirks that the person might find easy or hard. Furthermore, the person asking this might have a natural affinity for a language that is not even suggested, making that one the easiest for them.

Affinity


A language affinity is something quite common among language enthusiasts. While most of them can name a language they absolutely hate, they can also likely tell you a language or two that they absolutely love. They will not be able to fully explain why the strong hatred or love exists because they do not understand it themselves. I first got interested in languages because of the alphabets. Seeing Mayan and Russian and Greek and understanding that there were whole cultures that existed using a completely different writing system fascinated me. When I started poking around languages more, I was intrigued by the sounds of certain ones: the harsh yet smooth tones of Russian, the melody of Irish, the old world charm of Italian. They always sound so lovely to me and I am drawn to them. On the other hand, I hate the sound of French, finding it too snobbish and lazy to my ears. I am talking purely about the languages themselves, not the culture or people; they are not necessarily tied to the language affinity, although they can be. I love the Italian culture and am interested in both Russian and Ireland, but I have no desire to see France while some of my favourite films are French.

A person may also enjoy a language for other reasons while not having a true affinity for it. Papiamento is a language I find interesting and fun, so I have a fondness for it, but I am not drawn to it in the same way as the others. Meanwhile, there are languages that I have no feelings towards at all, positively or negatively. It is not something that can be easily defined or understood, but I am sure you know what I am talking about if you have spent any amount of time exploring other languages (and I assume you have, or else you would not even be interested in reading this!).

Why These Questions?


So why do people ask these kinds of questions? Most of the time, I think they ask them because they are trying to make themselves known in the new group. Some people like to introduce themselves while others want to post something they feel will get a lot of responses and thus attention to them. This way, they can instantly show they are "into" languages.

This may not be the best strategy though, because most people will have already asked or seen these questions asked before and are tired of them. Personally, whenever I see them now, my eyes just glaze over. Some people will do that, simply ignore them. Some will join in and contribute to the discussion, usually resulting in endless disagreements like I mentioned before. Some may even become hostile towards this, expressing their frustration at seeing such a question yet again being asked when there is no answer and perhaps guessing that the person is just looking for attention.

You Really Want to Know?


Now, it is possible that the new person really wants to know the answer to one of these questions, but I doubt that is the case. Most people that make a practice of dealing with many languages will already understand that these questions are completely subjective and are relative to the person asking, not to anyone else's opinion. It is like a chef asking a group of other chefs "What is the best way to boil an egg?" Each chef will give their personal thoughts and none of them will agree, but it is such a basic question that they do not even consider it one worth answering. They would rather be discussing entire dishes or concepts of cooking.

I am not saying that such questions are entirely without merit. Rather, such a question should be posted in a fixed place with a short answer about how it depends on things like I outlined, then anyone asking should be redirected there. Having these questions replayed over and over has never provided any new insight that I have seen and only end up, at best, taking up time and space and, at worst, starting arguments.

There are other questions that can cause similar problems and are done for similar reasons. One thing that language learners love to do is ask how to translate a word or phrase into as many languages as possible. Forums and chats are flooded with these requests all the time. There are also many web pages that already contain such lists. Perhaps the most popular one is "How do you say 'I love you' in as many languages as possible?". Do a search on that and you will find numerous web pages with lists for it.

Wasting Time


In some ways, these can be even more aggravating then the "Which language is...?" questions, because they are done only to waste time. No one ever needs to know how to say "chicken" in twenty languages. If they are translating something, they will only need it in one other language, and they will need more than just that one word. The only time I have found such a question to have any merit is if someone is doing an etymological research on a word. That is, they are looking at the origins of the word and want to present how it connects across many languages. I wrote a series of articles once doing just that, examining the origins and relationship of words for certain foods like bread, milk and egg. But that was a specific case. When people ask for multiple translations for a word, they are normally doing it just as a fun time waster.

Now some people love these lists and will be appalled that I consider them wastes of time. "Language is not all serious," they would tell me, "sometimes, it is fun to just see different words!" I would agree with that, but being fun does not mean it is not a time waster. Just ask someone caught up in playing Candy Crush about how much time they have wasted on it. Few would even try to justify it as something useful.

If you are in a language learning community with some kind of board or forum for posting things, you will inevitably also get the completely non-language related topics. That is mainly because the people feel like they are in a community of their peers and can then talk about anything. It is good that they feel that way, but that can also cause them to post things that completely irrelevant. Not only does that frustrate people who do not want to talk about lemon pie on a language board (and I certainly would not... pumpkin pie, yes, or even banana cream pie, but not lemon), it can make it harder to find the posts that are on topic. On a large forum, this also contributes to the decline of the forum in speed, since every message has to be gone through whenever a post is shown. I have seen where this became so bad that forum was becoming unusable, but the moderators refused to delete any of the non-language related postings because "someone might like them".


I am sure you can think of particular questions from people that have frustrated you or made you smile and contribute. You have probably also asked some of your own. I know I have asked some simple question and posted some rather pointless topics merely to get people talking. The one thing that is more of a problem for a group than an abundance of trivial posts is the lack of posts of any kind. Many people are afraid to be the first to say something, but will happily respond to what another person writes.

With that perspective, then the "trivial and meaningless" question and requests can play a vital role in the growth and continual health of a group. It is always a matter of finding the proper balance. You want enough to keep things going but not enough that it drives people away. It is not even a single phenomenon: a group will not become active then suddenly die. It will happen in waves, as new people come in and others leave, the group becomes reborn over and over again. People that were there many years before will visit and tell you that it is not "their" group any more because they see so many people they do not know while the ones they knew have largely moved on. That is the nature of groups.

And The Answer Is?

Inevitably, these questions create discussions and debates, but rarely come up with an actual answer. That is always left to the question asking to determine from the various opinions and arguments given. Such answers can never really come from external sources because language learning, or at least the drive behind it, is always personal. Even if someone were to come up with a definitive answer to your question, it may not suit you. For example, if you ask which is the best ice-cream flavor, and everyone tells you “chocolate”, you may find you don't like the taste and really prefer vanilla.

Before you ask one of these questions, I hope you think about why you are asking it and what you really think an answer could be. There really isn't anything wrong with asking, but you might not get the response you thought you would.

Which Language Is...?
Writer: Erik Zidowecki
Images:
Alvimann: Egyptian glyphs
Petey: Magnifier on globe; Question heads; Language bubble; Way sign; Thinking allowed chalkboard; Communication silhouettes; Women with phone;

All images are Copyright - CC BY-SA (Creative Commons Share Alike) by their respective owners, except for Petey, which is Public Domain (PD) or unless otherwise noted.

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