"Easiest" language?

[Fra]

It is Turkish. Turkish is the easiest for sure. But not necessarily for English speakers, this is for everyone in general. Read this:

A research conducted worldwide has established that Turkish children are the fastest at learning their native language.

The results were released at the International Association for the Study of Child Language’s 10th congress in Berlin, Germany, where it was indicated that Turkish children could speak their native language by the age of 2-3 years in a grammatically correct manner. Linguistics Professor Klann Delius noted that the Turkish language was easy to learn. “Suffixes in Turkish that determine person and tense are regular. Using them is like arranging Lego pieces.” According to the research, it takes 12 years for Arab speaking children, and 4-5 years for German children to acquire the grammatical mastery in their mother tongue. The congress held in Berlin is attended by about 800 linguists from around the world.

To view the full article, visit http://www.lingforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=101or go to http://www.zaman.com/?bl=national&alt=&hn=22321

[Alcadras]

That's an interesting article.
In Turkey, turkish children learn to read at the age of 7-8. It takes only a year to learn to read and write.

I learned to read and write at the age of 2. Do not shocked like .
Whenever I say it to other people, they laugh at me and don't believe. But that's the truth. Even I can't believe it but my mother shows me the proofs.
I used to write on walls with pens. Owing to number plates of cars, I used to try reading them.
That's it.

[Sisyphe]

It is Turkish. Turkish is the easiest for sure. But not necessarily for English speakers, this is for everyone in general. Read this:

A research conducted worldwide has established that Turkish children are the fastest at learning their native language.

The results were released at the International Association for the Study of Child Language’s 10th congress in Berlin, Germany, where it was indicated that Turkish children could speak their native language by the age of 2-3 years in a grammatically correct manner. Linguistics Professor Klann Delius noted that the Turkish language was easy to learn. “Suffixes in Turkish that determine person and tense are regular. Using them is like arranging Lego pieces.” According to the research, it takes 12 years for Arab speaking children, and 4-5 years for German children to acquire the grammatical mastery in their mother tongue. The congress held in Berlin is attended by about 800 linguists from around the world.

To view the full article, visit http://www.lingforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=101 or go to http://www.zaman.com/?bl=national&alt=&hn=22321

Maybe for native speakers....you've obviously NEVER tried to learn Turkish though - I assure you it is the furthest thing from easy.

[Fra]

Hey yes, it does not necessarily mean that Turkish is the easiest for speakers of any language. But the the article at http://www.lingforum.com does show that it is the default easiest language. so for example, if u wanna learn a language very different from your own, then, Turkish might be a good choice.

[ego]

No tenses?
Then how can you say that you will do something, or that you did something? How can you make a difference between was, is and will be?

Interesting...

Just because a language doesn't overtly mark certain things grammatically doesn't mean it can't express those concepts (since all human languages are able to express things like past/future/conditional/counterfactuals) Many of the world's languages don't usually overtly mark tense or plurals, yet those concepts are still readily expressed. Of course those same languages may overtly mark things that Indo European languages don't. For instance, someone whose native language is ergative-absolutive (not present in most IE languages while a few have ergative constructions) might be surprised to find out that (most) IE languages don't mark ergativity yet everyone seems to get along fine .

What's ergativity?

[Rounin]

A girl in my Chinese class told me Indonesian was really easy to learn as well. It's just anecdotal evidence of course, but it would be really interesting to learn some Indonesian some time to test the hypothesis.

[0stsee]

A girl in my Chinese class told me Indonesian was really easy to learn as well. It's just anecdotal evidence of course, but it would be really interesting to learn some Indonesian some time to test the hypothesis.

I think Norwegian is an easy language as well.


Mark

[Rounin]

By the way, I wonder if it's possible to find a more comprehensive listing of the data presented during that conference? After all, it would be even more interesting if it turned out that they'd covered other languages as well, such as Mandarin and Indonesian and so on. Anyone have any ideas?

[0stsee]

By the way, I wonder if it's possible to find a more comprehensive listing of the data presented during that conference? After all, it would be even more interesting if it turned out that they'd covered other languages as well, such as Mandarin and Indonesian and so on. Anyone have any ideas?

Which conference?

[Rounin]

The conference mentioned in the article. The professor cited there provided me with a clarification, though; it seems as it's mainly the morphological structure which is easily learned, rather than the language as a whole. She also suggested reading Dan Slobin's "The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition".

[ausdag]

Hello, new member here.

I think it's a bit inaccurate to say Indonesian is an easy language. Grammatically it is less complex than a lot of European languages or English. But Indonesian as taught in grammar books is what we call 'Standard Indonesian' - Bahasa Baku. These days more and more people are making a greater distinction between Standard Indonesian and the many varieties of Spoken Indonesian.

These varieties are not 'dialects'. They all constitute Indonesian, ie, Bahasa Indonesia.
Until recently many Indonesian linguists even refused to acknowledge these varieties as legitimate I think because they did not conform to the standards of Standard Indonesian, and because they couldn;t be classified as dialects.

Standard Indonesian is rarely encountered in spoken form except in older movies, some TV dramas TV advertisements and the news and on formal occassions although none of these contexts necessarily exhibit purely Standard Indonesian.

The disparity between Standard Indonesian and the colloquial Jakarta variety is very wide - wider than that between Standard (Oxford) English and most colloquial forms of English.

The Central Java variety (the one I'm most familiar with) is different again, but still Indonesian - not a dialect. It is endowed with a rich array of idiom and inuendo as a result of the influence of Javanese. This is not necessarily in the form of loan words from Javanese, but in the form of ideas translated over into spoken Indonesian.

The Jakarta Chinese variety, which I now encounter on a daily basis in my job as a high school teacher here in Jakarta is different again. It is influenced by a variety of factors and is spoken at a very fast pace.

In fact, it may be fair to say that once you have studied the grammar of Standard Indonesian, in order to progress on to spoken communication there is much you have to 'unlearn'.

My dilemma after years of exposure to non-standard varieties of Indonesian has actually been getting back into Standard Indonesian in order to improve my written Indonesian skills.

This shouldn't be taken as discouragement, but rather encouragement to explore the very interesting array of spoken Indonesian on offer in this country.

Cheers,

DavidG

....oh..did I mention 'Bahasa Gaul' as well? Now there's an interesting variety. There're even a few dictionaries (albeit little ones) devoted to this variety of spoken Indonesian....

[Rounin]

Thank you for that very useful bit of information. It's nice to know the situation's not always as simple as it may seem...!

[0stsee]

Hello, new member here.

I think it's a bit inaccurate to say Indonesian is an easy language. Grammatically it is less complex than a lot of European languages or English. But Indonesian as taught in grammar books is what we call 'Standard Indonesian' - Bahasa Baku. These days more and more people are making a greater distinction between Standard Indonesian and the many varieties of Spoken Indonesian.

These varieties are not 'dialects'. They all constitute Indonesian, ie, Bahasa Indonesia.
Until recently many Indonesian linguists even refused to acknowledge these varieties as legitimate I think because they did not conform to the standards of Standard Indonesian, and because they couldn;t be classified as dialects.

Standard Indonesian is rarely encountered in spoken form except in older movies, some TV dramas TV advertisements and the news and on formal occassions although none of these contexts necessarily exhibit purely Standard Indonesian.

The disparity between Standard Indonesian and the colloquial Jakarta variety is very wide - wider than that between Standard (Oxford) English and most colloquial forms of English.

The Central Java variety (the one I'm most familiar with) is different again, but still Indonesian - not a dialect. It is endowed with a rich array of idiom and inuendo as a result of the influence of Javanese. This is not necessarily in the form of loan words from Javanese, but in the form of ideas translated over into spoken Indonesian.

The Jakarta Chinese variety, which I now encounter on a daily basis in my job as a high school teacher here in Jakarta is different again. It is influenced by a variety of factors and is spoken at a very fast pace.

In fact, it may be fair to say that once you have studied the grammar of Standard Indonesian, in order to progress on to spoken communication there is much you have to 'unlearn'.

My dilemma after years of exposure to non-standard varieties of Indonesian has actually been getting back into Standard Indonesian in order to improve my written Indonesian skills.

This shouldn't be taken as discouragement, but rather encouragement to explore the very interesting array of spoken Indonesian on offer in this country.

Cheers,

DavidG

....oh..did I mention 'Bahasa Gaul' as well? Now there's an interesting variety. There're even a few dictionaries (albeit little ones) devoted to this variety of spoken Indonesian....

Very well said David!

The written Indonesian is indeed so different from the spoken one(s), it sounds very artificial.
Nobody would speak that way in everyday life.

There are some exceptions though:
I met people from Nusa Tenggara (Southeastern Indonesia), and their spoken Indonesian corresponds very much to the written one, it even shocked me a bit at first.


MarK

[Jiwa Matahari]

Sure it's easy! To think that I'm having so much trouble in English, thinking about tenses all the time

[Barong]

Im a native Dutch speaker, and people say Dutch is one of the hardest languages to learn, and believe me, im still having trouble with the grammar

English on the other hand is quite simple, maybe because English arised from Dutch.

anyway, people around me are saying that bahasa indonesia is very easy to learn, maybe because of all the Dutch loanwords

but my grandfather said, that spoken Indonesian is different from written Indonesian, but i think that is true for any language.