[Languagemaxxing] Best / worst foreign languages to learn

[Fontaine]

I'll begin by sharing my experiences or things I've learned on the internet.

- English: vital and relatively easy.

- French: my native language. Lots of weird exceptions and pronunciations that make the language very challenging for a foreigner.

- Arabic: the alphabet is the easiest part. I gave up when I saw the transliteration and the pronunciation were often different, and after reading a grammar / conjugation book. Even students in Morocco / Algeria have trouble mastering the language.

- Spanish: easy for the most part but conjugation is a nightmare

- German: the case system is actually the easiest thing about German, worst is the verbs, adjective case and word order. Gave up at advanced level because I didn't have the motivation to push things more (would have required at least a thousand intense hours of grammar exercises and verb learning).

- Vietnamese: hardest tonal language in the world - only one old missionary reportedly masters it

- Chinese: you're actually learning three "languages" at the same time: hanzi, pinyin and tones. Very challenging, more than Japanese.

- Russian: alphabet is easier than you think. Case system somewhat of a nightmare, more than German even.

- Thai: hard language, weird alphabet and tonal.

 

[CompleteFuckingLoser]

Japanese: Lots of free material online, massive community dedicated to learning, potential job prospects (but not really anything that great), enjoyable and not overly difficult to read (Kanji are actually not that bad when you get used to them).

Cons: Culture isn't that great, Japanese generally hate westerners, hard to speak.

 

[Cuyen]

I can speak finnish,english and mongolian as foreign languages and ı think all of them are easy languages specially finnish,mongolian and Turkish if you interest to learn because they are a part of same language family,Turkish and mongolian is nearest

 

[Deleted member 12256]

I'll begin by sharing my experiences or things I've learned on the internet.

- English: vital and relatively easy.

- French: my native language. Lots of weird exceptions and pronunciations that make the language very challenging for a foreigner.

- Arabic: the alphabet is the easiest part. I gave up when I saw the transliteration and the pronunciation were often different, and after reading a grammar / conjugation book. Even students in Morocco / Algeria have trouble mastering the language.

- Spanish: easy for the most part but conjugation is a nightmare

- German: the case system is actually the easiest thing about German, worst is the verbs, adjective case and word order. Gave up at advanced level because I didn't have the motivation to push things more (would have required at least a thousand intense hours of grammar exercises and verb learning).

- Vietnamese: hardest tonal language in the world - only one old missionary reportedly masters it

- Chinese: you're actually learning three "languages" at the same time: hanzi, pinyin and tones. Very challenging, more than Japanese.

- Russian: alphabet is easier than you think. Case system somewhat of a nightmare, more than German even.

- Thai: hard language, weird alphabet and tonal.

English was easy the easiest to learn
French was easy but i never become fluent to them i didn't try enough
Arabic seems waaay difficult especially learning the alphabet
German seems easy i never tried to learn but they seem easy
Russian is also easy to learn , i would give it a try
Asian languages (chinese, japanese , thai etc) Are hard AF
Also Spanish and Portoguese seems easy to learn they are not hard.

 

[Fontaine]

Japanese: Lots of free material online, massive community dedicated to learning, potential job prospects (but not really anything that great), enjoyable and not overly difficult to read (Kanji are actually not that bad when you get used to them).

Cons: Culture isn't that great, Japanese generally hate westerners, hard to speak.

I would add in the Cons: weeaboo stigma, economy with high tax rate, difficult to live there and impossible to get permanent residence / citizenship.

 

[Modus Coperandi]

tfw you have a latin proficiency certificate but can't form a single proper sentence.

 

[Fontaine]

tfw you have a latin proficiency certificate but can't form a single proper sentence.

This seems relatively common. I can understand German (somewhat) but I can't express myself in German at all. I knew people who understood French but couldn't speak it.

Reading / understanding seems to be the easiest part in any language, expressing yourself is way harder.

 

[Brahcel]

U learned all those in how long?

Only the main popular languages will matter anyways unless ur moving to SeA

Everyone should know english first. Then depending on where u go. Spanish/russian/chinese or arabic. Rest not needed

 

[Fontaine]

U learned all those in how long?

I only master French (native) and English (took 6 years to reach advanced level, 10 years for mastery). I have a medium/mediocre level in German (I can recognize most vocabulary but have abysmal grammar, conjugation and expression skills) after 2 years. I have an entry level in Chinese after 2 years.

It should be mentioned that I suffered from depression until a recent time and that it probably slowed my progress.

In any event you shouldn't believe the copers / kool-aid sellers who state that you can learn languages in 3 or 6 months. True, absolute mastery (at ease in all situations) takes between 8 and 15 years. The vast majority of high school students have a very mediocre level after 6 years of study.

 

[Weed]

Russian: alphabet is easier than you think. Case system somewhat of a nightmare, more than German even.

Elab

 

[Deleted member 10314]

Cope

 

[Anger]

I know how to translate ancient greek

 

[Jockcel]

Learning french is much more complicated compared to English but I still did it.
btw I hired a tutor to learn Russian for 3 years but I still don't understand it AT ALL. Needless to say I gave up. It is a NIGHTMARE language.

 

[Deleted member 2798]

I can read + write German at decent proficiency - understanding accented speech is a bit more difficult, and speaking takes me a lot of deliberation (not much of a speaker to begin with, even in English).

I tried learning Turkish and Russian at various points (out of a book), both for maybe 3 weeks, and made decent progress (could typically go at a rate of 1-2 chapters a day). I got sidetracked both times by school and the attendant misery - coming home, the last thing I wanted to do was study grammar + vocabulary, and opted rather to burn out the nausea and anger in me by listening to music.

The Cyrillic alphabet is very easy to learn and isn't really too dissimilar to the Roman alphabet. It takes maybe a couple of days to get it down, but probably quite a bit longer before you can read at a decent pace.

It would be nice to understand this:



But the satisfaction was more immediate from this:

The vast majority of high school students have a very mediocre level after 6 years of study.

tbh

I took German for 4 years of high school and 4 semesters of university. I learned a lot of important details from private study after that - you're not really prepared to be articulate in a foreign language by schooling.

People in high school were learning grammar at such a slow pace (due in no small part to the redundancy and torpidity of the curriculum) that by the time they were learning plusquamperfekt with inordinate intensiveness as seniors, they would slip into saying things like "Ich hat einen Apfel" because they hadn't used the present tense in so long.

 

[Hoffman_13]

learn chinese
because they're going to take over the world and everyone will speak it

 

[Brahcel]

I only master French (native) and English (took 6 years to reach advanced level, 10 years for mastery). I have a medium/mediocre level in German (I can recognize most vocabulary but have abysmal grammar, conjugation and expression skills) after 2 years. I have an entry level in Chinese after 2 years.

It should be mentioned that I suffered from depression until a recent time and that it probably slowed my progress.

In any event you shouldn't believe the copers / kool-aid sellers who state that you can learn languages in 3 or 6 months. True, absolute mastery (at ease in all situations) takes between 8 and 15 years. The vast majority of high school students have a very mediocre level after 6 years of study.

Lol u mean rosetta ston. What do u use

 

[Zesto]

I have an entry level in Chinese after 2 years.

Mogs me.

 

[Blue Squirtle]

Japanese would be the best.

 

[Incellectual]

I took latin for 4 years and I still suck at it. I took Chinese for 1 year and my teacher told me I have a russian accent in Chinese even though I don't speak Russian.

 

[Fontaine]

Russian: alphabet is easier than you think. Case system somewhat of a nightmare, more than German even.

Elab

More cases and weird exceptions. For example words after a negation sometimes take genitive and sometimes accusative.

btw I hired a tutor to learn Russian for 3 years but I still don't understand it AT ALL. Needless to say I gave up. It is a NIGHTMARE language.

I don't think a tutor is necessarily a magical solution. If you haven't covered your bases solidly, especially in grammar, and if you have low / fluctuating motivation, you're fucked no matter what. I believe language is essentially an emotional issue: true mastery requires a real passion and drive to learn, grinding like a nice pupil isn't enough past a certain point.

I took German for 4 years of high school and 4 semesters of university. I learned a lot of important details from private study after that - you're not really prepared to be articulate in a foreign language by schooling.

People in high school were learning grammar at such a slow pace (due in no small part to the redundancy and torpidity of the curriculum) that by the time they were learning plusquamperfekt with inordinate intensiveness as seniors, they would slip into saying things like "Ich hat einen Apfel" because they hadn't used the present tense in so long.

The school system can make any serious student acquire intermediate level in a language. However reaching an advanced level where you are always comfortable is not something that a school system, a book or a phone app can do. Reaching an advanced level (which is the only true "language speaking", and the level that provides actual symbiosis with the culture) essentially requires extreme personal motivation. You must always be learning, 10 hours a day, and incorporate the language in your normal non-language activities.

 

[jerrycan dan]

Japanese: multiple writing systems, most of which nobody even uses, with rules that get broken so often they might as well not exist. Stupid grammar, not a beautiful language like the Romance languages at all, spoken only on an archipelago with a shrinking economy, a declining population, extreme levels of social alienation, an absolutely gutted culture and a population that hardly speaks English so you'll have to learn their extremely complex language to go there for any extended period of time.

You're better off learning Swahili.

 

[Fontaine]

Japanese: multiple writing systems, most of which nobody even uses, with rules that get broken so often they might as well not exist. Stupid grammar, not a beautiful language like the Romance languages at all, spoken only on an archipelago with a shrinking economy, a declining population, extreme levels of social alienation, an absolutely gutted culture and a population that hardly speaks English so you'll have to learn their extremely complex language to go there for any extended period of time.

You're better off learning Swahili.

Easiest Asian language is reportedly Malay / Indonesian. Too bad the countries it gives you access to are Muslim and dark-skinned.

 

[jerrycan dan]

Easiest Asian language is reportedly Malay / Indonesian. Too bad the countries it gives you access to are Muslim and dark-skinned.

It's common knowledge that an English speaker can learn Indonesian in several months, it's impressively easy.

 

[Fontaine]

It's common knowledge that an English speaker can learn Indonesian in several months, it's impressively easy.

I agree it's easy but I dislike the very-often-seen "several months". There's a Dunning-Kruger effect in all languages where you progress rapidly at first, and then obligatorily meet your first exceptions / conjugations / realize how much vocabulary you still don't know.

Very easy in any language to say basic stuff and understand most "textbook" sentences... But if I put someone who learned Indonesian for 6 months in Indonesia and ask him to translate a newspaper article or have a meaningful conversation with people... That's another matter entirely. It's easy to do a few monkey tricks but actual language mastery always takes more effort than what people imagine. (That's why you often hear claims like "I learned Japanese in one year" on the internet - the reality is that they haven't, it's the Dunning-Kruger speaking).

 

[CompleteFuckingLoser]

Japanese: multiple writing systems, most of which nobody even uses, with rules that get broken so often they might as well not exist. Stupid grammar, not a beautiful language like the Romance languages at all, spoken only on an archipelago with a shrinking economy, a declining population, extreme levels of social alienation, an absolutely gutted culture and a population that hardly speaks English so you'll have to learn their extremely complex language to go there for any extended period of time.

You're better off learning Swahili.

The rules aren't hard at all. The Kanji are a lot easier to learn than people make them out to be. They're used as words. Combined with the fact that the grammar is (mainly) used as an entirely different alphabet, l its really not that bad. I also think it's a beautiful language.

Everything else is true though. Japanesemaxxing was fun, but it's not going to get me a gf or a productive job. It's not a real skill since there are many ugly white men who know Japanese to my level or even better.

If you love japanese media (especially hentai ), I would say learning Japanese is worth it, but don't expect it to be a real tangible skill. It's a fun side language where, if you learn it, you get tons of good media to cope with.... especially hentai.

 

[Deleted member 3291]

I had plans to learn French after I am done with college if it ever happens to get a safe job in Canada but it’s not the case anymore

 

[Fontaine]

I had plans to learn French after I am done with college if it ever happens to get a safe job in Canada but it’s not the case anymore

Sticking with a language is so hard that so far I only did so with English.

It's very easy to switch "because reasons" all the time.

 

[Miro Chad]

Language learning is a Incel Trait.

 

[PersonalityDoubleD]

- Spanish: easy for the most part but conjugation is a nightmare

The same is probably true for italian. Easier to learn if you already speak a romance language.

 

[CyborgIncel]

I know English, German and Croatian fluently as I learned them before I was even 7. I can't imagine how a non-Slavic speaker could manage to get a grasp on all the cases in Croatian tbh. English and German are easy as shit imo. Currently learning Japanese and the hardest part was to rewire my brain into language learning mode since I never actually spent time trying to actively learn a language as opposed to passively acquiring it as a kid.

 

[LilFatty]

Its hard to learn arabic if you dont speak it from an early age, thats the only reason i know it.

 

[andinocel]

I've tried a few languages.

• My native tongue is Spanish.
• English I learned as a child.
• I took French in high school and I can still read it. No disrespect OP, as it's your native language, but the silly exceptions drive me nuts. It is a good language to learn if you want to impress femoids, though
• Arabic is an impossible nightmare. I would love to learn it as I'm eager to get a job in one of the Gulf countries for a few years at least, but, while Arabic certainly does open doors, English is the main business language in that region.
• I really like Japanese. And no, not for the anime or hentai. I genuinely like Japanese history and traditional culture. While there are problems in Japan (declining population, workaholism, shrinking economy, hikokomori) I like the fact that introversion is prized, and, while I am aware that I will always be a gaijin, I feel like my personality will match well with locals.
  • Another factor I like: Japanese society still keeps foids in check, relegating them to Office Ladies in most workplaces.
  • Japanese culture also doesn't have a concept of women worshiping chivalry. I laugh when I listen to Youtube videos by some Western femoid or read blogs by some Anglo beta white knight, bitching how Japanese guys don't hold doors, don't pull out chairs, don't offer seats, etc.
  • Minor thing I enjoy about the Japanese: no fucking tipping. Here in the US, people expect tips for everything and it's gotten out of hand. From what I have read, Japanese find it slightly offensive to get tipped, in fact
• I self-taught myself Russian a bit, and I'll be honest that my main motivation was the hope of talking to hot Russian foids. It's not too hard, really, but I never buckled down. However, I can easily pass for a Central Asian (Uzbek, Kyrgyz, etc.) and as people from those regions are not treated well, I don't expect that a visit to Russia would be a positive experience
• I taught myself German and I can manage simple conversations. The awkward word order makes me pull my hair out at times.
• I tried a bit of Mandarin, and it is surprisingly easy. Like Japanese culture, there's no notion of chivalry

 

[Vodaccenu]

Cope

 

[thespanishcel]

I'm Spanish so for me learning French was easy, I could also learn Italian or Portuguese but they aren't so useful like other languages like German. But German for a native Spanish speaker is horrible to learn kek

 

[Smallus Dickus]

Almost through all of my education I had only german in school and I never learned it to be honest. I just friggin hate that language. I learned english through vidya games mostly. I loved RPG games, and without Internet connection back in mid to late 90's I was playing mostly with one hand on my mouse/keyboard and with english dictionary in my second hand.
I tried to learn some spanish, but I failed. But it seemed like fairly easy one, so when I'm gonna have some more time I think I'm gonna try to learn at least basics of it. As a Slav it would be pretty easy to learn languages like Russian to, hardest part would be to learn their alphabet.

 

[T-Swan]

English is my native language. Spanish is pretty easy to learn, and super useful if you like to go to other countries. Once you have one latin based language, you can get the gist of most other latin languages, like Portuguese, italian, and french. Icelandic is super hard. There are about 27 possible tenses for each word. It's crazy.

 

[wasted12years]

Norwegian is not really useful to learn if you're a Swede like me. Unless it's for a high ranking job or something.

 

[Deleted member 14577]

I tried learning russian, spanish and german over duolingo but I'd always get bored. Last year I took a chinese course which I also just gave up after a few weeks, I did pretty well with it but, you guessed it, I got bored. The teacher was hot af though.

 

[Autizmooos]

I'll begin by sharing my experiences or things I've learned on the internet.



- Arabic: the alphabet is the easiest part. I gave up when I saw the transliteration and the pronunciation were often different, and after reading a grammar / conjugation book. Even students in Morocco / Algeria have trouble mastering the language.

- Spanish: easy for the most part but conjugation is a nightmare

.

Even students in Morocco / Algeria have trouble mastering the language. i'm from tunisia but it's the same thing we got problem with it cause we never use it in maghreb region we speak derija or (berber in some areas) and it's different than arabic yet when arabs speak their language we could understand them but they can not understand us
for me i can speak french english arabic tunisian derija and berber language and a bit of german so far the hardest language for me is german i hate it

 

[Blacktarpill]

I started to learn Danish but i am not really working hard to it

 

[TravisBickleCel]

From what I know:

Easiest: English / Dutch / Swedish / Norwegian / Danish

Hardest: Armenian / Polish / Hungarian / Finnish / Cherokee

 

[blickpall]

Russian is also easy to learn , i would give it a try

Russian is NOT easy to learn. There are a handful of things that make it easy to get into, but incredibly hard to not sound like an idiot/get proficient.

 

[Deleted member 12256]

Russian is NOT easy to learn. There are a handful of things that make it easy to get into, but incredibly hard to not sound like an idiot/get proficient.

Well i found it to be easier to learn russian because of my own language. Same for many eastern europeans. Maybe it's more difficult to english speakers. My money i still on Asian languages, especially something like mandarin chinese.

 

[Mainländer]

- Spanish: easy for the most part but conjugation is a nightmare

Portuguese is also like that but the conjugations are even more numerous and harder. But all else is easy tbh.

For me:

Portuguese: native language. Like I said above, aside from verbs everything is pretty easy and a lot of similar vocabulary with English. Most people go to Spanish anyway, I can't judge them.

English: I have a good proficiency since I'm a graduated English teacher. In its written form it's IMHO the best language in the world. The spoken form is a bit confused sometimes and lots of exceptions in pronunciation. Most useful language in the world anyway, and even more so on the internet (MUST learn as a NEET/hiki/LDARing loser).

German: I'm like B1 or B2, dk. Looks like a shittier, less Latin-influenced and unnecessarily complicated version of English. Don't learn it tbh.

Japanese: I tried it but the writing system is a nightmare. 100% not worth it just to be a weeb.

 

[Scorn]

>be polish
>russian is easy cuz some words are similar or even the same
>have to learn german in uni
>404 what the fuck

 

[Dude420]

@Fontaine are you french or Quebecor?