Arabic would be so neat to learn! Except I'm afraid of the written form...
I suspect I don't have it in me to learn another very different alphabet any time soon (if ever), if I persist with Chinese, which is more than enough to be getting on with.
I wish I could bottle this and sell it to the Japanese educational system...
Ah, well, to be fair, I'm sure I have a Romance/Germanic language bias here. I do think English is probably harder to learn for people whose native language is quite different, it's just that of the languages I know well enough to comment on, I think it's the easiest, grammar-wise (also, I think of the grammar mistakes one could make, few give rise to real ambiguity - it might sound wrong, but the reader/listener would still be able to tell what you mean).
Yes! All the grammar difficulty is in weird places and sort of mixed up with syntax...
With the syntax and with the writing system, yeah. Which, to my mind, makes it harder to figure through. It seems less clear-cut 'learn this rule and then you'll be fine' than the sort of grammar say Latin throws at you.
One reason it's nice to be able to do so much language stuff online where speaking is secondary at best... ;)
Indeed! It's one of the reasons I haven't yet convinced myself to do a proper course, which would force me to do that... (the main other being that I'm too far along for absolute beginner and not far enough along for intermediate, which is an awkward place to be)
no subject
I suspect I don't have it in me to learn another very different alphabet any time soon (if ever), if I persist with Chinese, which is more than enough to be getting on with.
I wish I could bottle this and sell it to the Japanese educational system...
Ah, well, to be fair, I'm sure I have a Romance/Germanic language bias here. I do think English is probably harder to learn for people whose native language is quite different, it's just that of the languages I know well enough to comment on, I think it's the easiest, grammar-wise (also, I think of the grammar mistakes one could make, few give rise to real ambiguity - it might sound wrong, but the reader/listener would still be able to tell what you mean).
Yes! All the grammar difficulty is in weird places and sort of mixed up with syntax...
With the syntax and with the writing system, yeah. Which, to my mind, makes it harder to figure through. It seems less clear-cut 'learn this rule and then you'll be fine' than the sort of grammar say Latin throws at you.
One reason it's nice to be able to do so much language stuff online where speaking is secondary at best... ;)
Indeed! It's one of the reasons I haven't yet convinced myself to do a proper course, which would force me to do that... (the main other being that I'm too far along for absolute beginner and not far enough along for intermediate, which is an awkward place to be)