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{{WPRDAC|Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Language/2007_December_17#Hardest_language}}
{{WikiProject Languages}} <!-- Formerly assessed as Start-class -->
{{WikiProject Education}}
{{WikiProject Linguistics|applied=Yes|applied-importance=}} <!-- Formerly assessed as Redirect-class -->
{{WikiProject Reference Desk Article Collaboration|Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Language/2007_December_17#Hardest_language}}
}}{{oldafdfull| date = 16 December 2012 (UTC) | result = '''merge to [[Second-language acquisition]]''' | page = Difficulty of learning languages }}
{{merged-to|Second-language acquisition|date=01:21, January 6, 2013‎}}


{{oldafdfull | date = 10 March 2011 | result = to keep | page = Most difficult language to learn }}
I am intrigued by the "genetic disposition" part: combining the results of Scherag et al. (2004) with Ross and Bever (2004), you might conclude that "right-handed familials" do better in German, and "left-handed familials" do better in English. The natural follow-up question would be, are there, in fact, more left-handed people in (medieval) England than in (medieval) Germany?
{{archive box | auto=yes }}
* I. McManus, A. Hartigan, Declining left-handedness in Victorian England seen in the films of Mitchell and Kenyon. Current Biology, Volume 17, Issue 18, Pages R793-R794[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14623524]
*Research in the U.K. showed a decline in left-handedness in the older population compared to the younger generation. [http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/helthrpt/stories/s10297.htm] "the prevalence of left-handedness is 11.2% at age 15, and falls to 4.4% at age 70."
*"Statistiken geben den Anteil der Linkshänder in Deutschland mit rund 15 Prozent an" [http://www.rhein-main.net/sixcms/detail.php/3344700]
if this is true, there are actually more left-handed people in Germany than in the UK.
[[User:Dbachmann|dab]] <small>[[User_talk:Dbachmann|(𒁳)]]</small> 09:18, 18 December 2007 (UTC)


== Time to think about moving? ==
==someone claims that korean is hardest and that he saw a chart showing korean above chinese and japnes==


[[#Anglocentrism in this article|Above]] I noted several problems with this article. Now I'm going to try to start thinking about some solutions. I don't think there's any point in doing any rewriting yet until we have agreed on what the article should actually be about. I propose that "Hardest language" is not really the best title or topic; the very concept of a single "hardest language" is not taken seriously or investigated anymore in second language acquisition, it's only discussed on random people's blogs; it's not an academically valid topic, as any linguist can tell you there are many ways to measure a language's difficulty. Searching Google for "hardest language", the first two pages come up with numerous blogs, which claim Icelandic, Polish, Hungarian, Japanese, Sanskrit, Russian, and a variety of other languages as the "hardest". This illustrates two things: 1) there are many more languages that claim the title of "hardest" than the nationalist editors here want you to think; and 2) the people discussing this problem are, for the most part, not linguists and have no idea what they're talking about (see some of the laughable claims [http://www.claritaslux.com/blog/the-hardest-language-to-learn/ here] and [http://blog.leximo.org/2009/03/worlds-hardest-languages-to-learn.html here]). If you search Google Scholar for the same term, it becomes clear that "hardest language" is a concept in [[computational linguistics]] and is wholly unrelated to the topic being discussed in this article; and it's not a concept in [[Second language acquisition|SLA]] at all.
<blockquote>
:The FSL courses grew out of the US army's need to rapidly develop translators for various "exotic" langauges for the first time ever around the period of WWII.... they at some point developed a chart of difficulty of languages based on the number of hours it took for American GI's to master them....At any rate, Korean was listed in the very highest level of difficulty, a notch above both Japanese and Chinese in fact.
:Everyone I have ever met who has learned both Korean and Japanese agrees that their grammars are almost as similar as those of any two Romance languages, but that that of Japanese has been streamlined, while Korean remains comparatively much more complex.
:I have made good progress in a number of other "difficult" or exotic languages such as Russian and Arabic. Compared to Korean, both of these languages are much easier, i.e., if you apply yourself well, consistently, and intelligently every day for a number of years, after a single handful you will be rather advanced. However, with Korean you will still be in a fog. I have studied scores of languages, and Korean is unquestionably the most difficult one I have ever encountered.
</blockquote> [[User:Laws dr|Laws dr]] ([[User talk:Laws dr|talk]]) 02:53, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
:We can't use this, because we can't source it to a reliable source. I really doubt you'd be still in a fog after a couple of years, though. BTW, "streamlined" is meaningless. --'''[[User:Kjoonlee|Kjoon]]'''[[User talk:Kjoonlee|lee]] 03:21, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
::Also, you could make the reverse case that English is even harder, because in Korea it takes more than 6 years of school to get reasonably good at reading English short stories. --'''[[User:Kjoonlee|Kjoon]]'''[[User talk:Kjoonlee|lee]] 03:25, 7 May 2008 (UTC)


So the article, most likely, should be about language learning difficulty in general, not about some hopeless quest to find the single 'hardest' language. Unfortunately, a good title for this is hard to find. Google Scholar reveals that "language difficulty" (which is currently a redirect to this page), is actually used synonymously with [[language impairment]] in most of the literature (and a secondary use, but still with more hits than our topic, is for measuring the difficulty level of a passage, for example in a standardized test). "Language learning difficulty", likewise, is mostly about language impairment. Any other ideas? <b class="Unicode">[[User:Rjanag|r<span style="color:#8B0000;">ʨ</span>anaɢ]]</b>&nbsp;<small><sup>[[User talk:Rjanag|talk]]</sup>/<sub>[[Special:Contributions/Rjanag|contribs]]</sub></small> 16:10, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
In addition, Korean written language (hangul) uses an alphabetized system which makes it quite easy to learn and read. After being unable to read at all, I was taught by my grandfather to read Korean in two weeks (albeit without understanding all that was being read).[[Special:Contributions/72.80.172.205|72.80.172.205]] ([[User talk:72.80.172.205|talk]]) 20:16, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
:Also, FWIW, [http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=%22difficulty+of+language%22&btnG=Search&as_sdt=2000&as_ylo=&as_vis=0 this] search turns up a few articles by EK Horwitz, which may be useful in developing this article (and certainly more useful than the misinterpreted studies added in by some of the editors above). <b class="Unicode">[[User:Rjanag|r<span style="color:#8B0000;">ʨ</span>anaɢ]]</b>&nbsp;<small><sup>[[User talk:Rjanag|talk]]</sup>/<sub>[[Special:Contributions/Rjanag|contribs]]</sub></small> 16:12, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
::Agree with the title move if "many" reliable sources can back up for the suggested titles. Are you going to expand the article?--[[User talk:Caspian blue|'''Caspian''' blue]] 16:30, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
:::I'm hoping to expand it, but I need a clearer idea what it should be about. If it's just "hardest language" I wouldn't have much to say other than "the question of which language is 'hardest' is futile...". Something about what makes language easy or difficult to learn (based on both characteristics of the language and characteristics of the learner) would make more sense, and that is actually a topic that is taken seriously in the literature. <b class="Unicode">[[User:Rjanag|r<span style="color:#8B0000;">ʨ</span>anaɢ]]</b>&nbsp;<small><sup>[[User talk:Rjanag|talk]]</sup>/<sub>[[Special:Contributions/Rjanag|contribs]]</sub></small> 16:33, 8 December 2009 (UTC)


I started this article with the full awareness that it is going to report ''opnions'' on ''which'' languages are considered "hard" (or "hardest"), for ''whom''.
==from someone in the navy on about.com==
In the Navy of the Defense Language Institute, Korean is seen as the hardest of the Category IV languages, which are Arabic, Chinese, and Korean. A US Military guide of About.com wrote: "Right now only 8 Languages are being taught (for Navy). Cat IV: Arabic, Chinese, Korean. Cat III: Persian-Farsi, Serb-Croatian, Hebrew, Russian. Cat I: Spanish. ...Korean is the hardest language here [Navy], apparently it is 75 weeks long now, and they are trying to make it a Cat V language."<ref>http://usmilitary.about.com/cs/education/a/dliarticle_5.htm</ref>


The article has seen an extraordinary amount of trolling and confusion introduced by the well-meaning and clueless.
:If you don't mind, I think this should go in. There's no reason why somebody writing about US Military at About.com would lie about this.
If you do not know what the article is supposed to discuss, and if you do not have any references on the topic, how about just leaving it alone? This article will be based to 100% on quotable references. Our task is just to gather these referenes. If it is "anglocentric", too bad, that's because you didn't provide sufficient references from the Russian or German viewpoint.


Historically, what happened was that I happened to find a couple of references suggesting that ''Korean'' is the hardest-to-learn language. These references were suppressed by {{user|Kjoonlee}}, apparently a Korean expat, for no reason other than [[WP:IDONTLIKEIT]]. After some time I became fed up and walked away. Since then, the confusion here on this talkpage has just become worse, with insightful comments such as Utopial's "Including some of these studies is also OR" (wtf?) who took it upon himself to call the artice "uneducated" and "a disgrace to the linguistics field" again for no coherent reason, although he did ramble about "a yahoo top contributor".
[[User:Laws dr|Laws dr]] ([[User talk:Laws dr|talk]]) 04:07, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
What is going on here? Why does this topic attract comments of such abysmal qualtity? --[[User:Dbachmann|dab]] <small>[[User_talk:Dbachmann|(𒁳)]]</small> 20:04, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
:I'm not sure whether that's addressed to me or to everyone. I agree that many of the comments above are abysmal, and that is part of why I was trying to start a discussion about improving the article; if my comments are abysmal, too, though, I would appreciate hearing why you think so. <b class="Unicode">[[User:Rjanag|r<span style="color:#8B0000;">ʨ</span>anaɢ]]</b>&nbsp;<small><sup>[[User talk:Rjanag|talk]]</sup>/<sub>[[Special:Contributions/Rjanag|contribs]]</sub></small> 20:47, 9 December 2009 (UTC)
:As for "our task is just to gather those references"...well, as for me, I tend to believe that Wikipedia articles should be more than just collecting/listing/quoting references. There's a lot to be said for exercising judgment and using knowledge of the field (which, based on your well-informed comments, I assume you have) to decide what information is worthy of inclusion and to mold it into a coherent article. If we were just doing nothing but gathering and spitting back references, there would be no way to stop people from filling up this article with whatever garbage they find floating around (and, as you have noticed, the internet is already full of unreliable garbage on this topic). And if the only goal of this article is to report unreliable opinions of bloggers (since that is what almost all the discussion online is--as I explained above, I don't see this topic get serious attention from academics), then how would it be encyclopedic? There are tons of little topics that bloggers spout opinions about, we don't necessarily have articles on all of them. The article ought to be about a topic that actually exists and is taken seriously. <b class="Unicode">[[User:Rjanag|r<span style="color:#8B0000;">ʨ</span>anaɢ]]</b>&nbsp;<small><sup>[[User talk:Rjanag|talk]]</sup>/<sub>[[Special:Contributions/Rjanag|contribs]]</sub></small> 20:52, 9 December 2009 (UTC)


:Dab wrote: Historically, what happened was that I happened to find a couple of references suggesting that ''Korean'' is the hardest-to-learn language. These references were suppressed by {{user|Kjoonlee}}, apparently a Korean expat, for no reason other than [[WP:IDONTLIKEIT]].
== Hard languages for English speakers ==
:dab, I think you should explain to people here exactly how the Wexler study that you found shows that Korean is the hardest language for toddlers to learn. And then when they understand it, you could put it back in. [[User:Laws dr|Laws dr]] ([[User talk:Laws dr|talk]]) 20:06, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
::The Wexler study does not show that at all; you are twisting its meaning around, as I explained above. Either you're a POV-pusher or you simply don't understand basic linguistics; either way, you should not re-add the irrelevant study. <b class="Unicode">[[User:Rjanag|r<span style="color:#8B0000;">ʨ</span>anaɢ]]</b>&nbsp;<small><sup>[[User talk:Rjanag|talk]]</sup>/<sub>[[Special:Contributions/Rjanag|contribs]]</sub></small> 20:19, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
:::One of the couple of references that Dab said he found was the Wexler study. As you can see from the above quote he still holds that the Wexler study 'does' show that Korean is the hardest for toddlers to learn. Now what beats me is why he doesn't explain in detail how the study shows this. He's a linguist too. [[User:Laws dr|Laws dr]] ([[User talk:Laws dr|talk]]) 05:14, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
::::Well, it doesn't show that. It shows that ''one'' feature of Korean is acquired later than that feature is in the other languages that Wexler happened to test; that doesn't prove anything about all languages in the world and it doesn't prove anything about Korean as a whole since it is only considering one feature. <b class="Unicode">[[User:Rjanag|r<span style="color:#8B0000;">ʨ</span>anaɢ]]</b>&nbsp;<small><sup>[[User talk:Rjanag|talk]]</sup>/<sub>[[Special:Contributions/Rjanag|contribs]]</sub></small> 05:39, 17 December 2009 (UTC)
:dab, you're not helping at all. And I'm no expat. I still think you're not being very logical here. --'''[[User:Kjoonlee|Kjoon]]'''[[User talk:Kjoonlee|lee]] 04:16, 2 January 2010 (UTC)


:Korean was long ranked the most difficult language for English speakers by the FSI, though it looks as though that place is now taken by Japanese. (Though if you ignore orthography, I can think of several languages more difficult than either.) [[User:Kwamikagami|kwami]] ([[User talk:Kwamikagami|talk]]) 01:21, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
[[Talk:Korean language#Hardest Language to master?]] --'''[[User:Kjoonlee|Kjoon]]'''[[User talk:Kjoonlee|lee]] 19:29, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
::Could you give the source for "Korean was long ranked the most difficult language for English speakers by the FSI"?[[User:Laws dr|Laws dr]] ([[User talk:Laws dr|talk]]) 16:34, 17 January 2010 (UTC)
: all a question of [[WP:CITE]]. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a decent source even for the purported British Foreign Office survey. [[User:Dbachmann|dab]] <small>[[User_talk:Dbachmann|(𒁳)]]</small> 11:26, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
::Well, there is a PDF link from the GAO (part of the Department of State of the US) that I've mentioned there. --'''[[User:Kjoonlee|Kjoon]]'''[[User talk:Kjoonlee|lee]] 12:31, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
::Also what are the several languages that you can think of that are more difficult than either? [[User:Laws dr|Laws dr]] ([[User talk:Laws dr|talk]]) 18:31, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
:::Why does that matter? No one cares what random Wikipedia editors think about which languages are hard. We're here to discuss improving the article, not to share our opinions. If you want to share your opinions about Korean, I suggest you find [[WP:Alternative outlets|another place to do so]]. <b class="IPA">[[User:Rjanag|r<span style="color:#8B0000;">ʨ</span>anaɢ]]</b>&nbsp;<small><sup>[[User talk:Rjanag|talk]]</sup>/<sub>[[Special:Contributions/Rjanag|contribs]]</sub></small> 18:40, 18 January 2010 (UTC)


== Awkward carveout of topic for an article ==
I've added a reference to the "Foreign Service Institute (FSI) of the US Department of State", which claims that Korean is one of the 5 most-difficult, but Japanese is even harder.
Alas, the reference I've added is second-hand.
Does the "Foreign Service Institute" have their own web site we could cite?
Please replace that reference to the actual FSI web site, if you can find it.


I feel this article treats an artificially constricted topic. Replacing it with a new article on a slightly more general topic e.g. ''[[Comparative difficulty of acquisition of various languages (human)]]'' (I'm not really suggesting that as a title) would allow a more relaxed discussion of the features of various languages that tend to make them more or less easy to learn, without the narrow focus on "more difficult." [[User:EEng|EEng]] ([[User talk:EEng|talk]]) 00:02, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
I wouldn't be surprised if learning to fluently Korean takes longer than Japanese, even if that reference is correct that learning to speak *and* write Japanese takes longer than Korean.
--[[Special:Contributions/72.198.67.13|72.198.67.13]] ([[User talk:72.198.67.13|talk]]) 21:26, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
:See discussion [[#Time to think about moving?|above]]. <b class="IPA">[[Special:Contributions/Rjanag|r<span style="color:#8B0000;">ʨ</span>anaɢ]]</b>&nbsp;([[User talk:Rjanag|talk]]) 01:15, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
Oops, I confess my eyes glazed over when scanning the Talk page here. Keep up the good work. [[User:EEng|EEng]] ([[User talk:EEng|talk]]) 03:13, 28 May 2010 (UTC)


it is interesting that Korean also pops up as a language that is very difficult to acquire as a ''first'' language. So perhaps Korean is, in fact, the most difficult language... [[User:Dbachmann|dab]] <small>[[User_talk:Dbachmann|(𒁳)]]</small> 20:25, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
::the topic of this article was perfectly fine before people ruined it. It was the meme of "hardest language". So what if "hardest language" doesn't hold up as a scientific definition? Wikipedia has lots of articles on pop culture memes. --[[User:Dbachmann|dab]] <small>[[User_talk:Dbachmann|(𒁳)]]</small> 10:41, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
:I can assure you that Korean, as a first language, is just as easy (or just as difficult) as English. :p --'''[[User:Kjoonlee|Kjoon]]'''[[User talk:Kjoonlee|lee]] 21:29, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
::well, ''you'' may say that, but then you are probably older than five years. Native speakers of Korean older than five will be just as proficient as native speakers of English older than five. The differences appear when you start polling three or four year olds. And there, as we state in the article, you will find that Korean toddlers take longer to come to terms with their grammar than English toddlers. [[User:Dbachmann|dab]] <small>[[User_talk:Dbachmann|(𒁳)]]</small> 11:31, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
:::You seem to be extrapolating from one data point. --'''[[User:Kjoonlee|Kjoon]]'''[[User talk:Kjoonlee|lee]] 12:24, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
::::true. In the spirit that one point is better than none. I would obviously welcome the addition of more data points, and I certainly don't want to jump to conclusions, least of all in the article text. [[User:Dbachmann|dab]] <small>[[User_talk:Dbachmann|(𒁳)]]</small> 13:10, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
:::::But it was a single data point in more ways than one. Not to mention logically invalid. --'''[[User:Kjoonlee|Kjoon]]'''[[User talk:Kjoonlee|lee]] 22:30, 14 January 2008 (UTC)


"Wikipedia has lots of similar articles" is not an argument for notability (see [[wp:OTHERSTUFF]]). For the topic to be restricted to the ''popular perception'' of the relative difficulty of various languages, there would need to be reliable sources discussing such popular perceptions. Are there? (And here, BTW, we run into a really, really serious parochialism issue: such perceptions without doubt vary widely depending on the mother tongue of the perceiver. How could an intelligible article comprehend all that -- or would it just be "...perceptions among speakers of English"?) [[User:EEng|EEng]] ([[User talk:EEng|talk]]) 15:01, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
we seem to have a misunderstanding here: [http://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Hardest_language&diff=184472353&oldid=184350514 your edit] is unjustified. Nowhere do we claim that "language is just structure". We merely say that long-distance relations take ''longest'' to acquire and may ''in this sense'' be considered the most difficult part (they take longest to learn). We have two data points: (a) Korean children take exceptionally long to acquire Korean grammar. (b) the US Department of State notes that Korean is exceptionally difficult for English speakers. That's ''two'' data points. We cannot conclude from this that "Korean is the hardest language" in any absolute sense, but we certainly can and should mention these points for what they are worth. --[[User:Dbachmann|dab]] <small>[[User_talk:Dbachmann|(𒁳)]]</small> 11:40, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
:::This topic deserves an article on Wikipedia for the simple reason that it is one of the most common questions that linguists get asked by students and laymen. It is one of the most popular questions on Yahoo! Answers. It is convenient to have this article on Wikipedia for the ease of organizing all the ramifications to the question in one place. I have actually referred questioners to this very article rather than spending too much time dealing with all the possibilities and issues involved. If an encyclopedia is a place to find answers to common questions, then this article is perfect since it deals with a very common question with all the details in a single place. It is a ''perfect'' article for an encyclopedia that is user friendly. --[[User:Taivo|Taivo]] ([[User talk:Taivo|talk]]) 15:44, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
:[[Grammar]], in a wider sense, encompasses more than just syntax. Knowledge of grammar (including semantics, idioms, pragmatics, and so on) is what constitutes fluency. Unrelated criteria cannot be clumped into two data points. You seem to be confused. --'''[[User:Kjoonlee|Kjoon]]'''[[User talk:Kjoonlee|lee]] 18:14, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
OK now, um, what question is "one of the most popular questions"? Is it, ''Which language is hardest?'' (whatever that means)? Or is it, ''What are the popular perceptions regarding which languageis hardest?'' ? Anyway, Wikipedia can't have an article simply because it deals with an oft-posed question. If there are no reliable sources which can act as a basis for a presentation of actual ''answers'' to such a question (or, at least, of a framework by which the question might be usefully attacked), then it can't be the subject of a Wikipedia article. As it stands the article has few or no such sources. [[User:EEng|EEng]] ([[User talk:EEng|talk]]) 17:34, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
:::The question is "What is the hardest language (to learn)?" Why shouldn't an encyclopedia '''''answer common questions'''''? It seems quite arrogant of encyclopedia makers to require users to dig for data rather than making it easy to find. Where else would a reader answer this question? In several different places in the encyclopedia otherwise. This article actually does offer a good framework from which the question can be attacked from several angles. Does that mean that the article as it now stands is perfect? No. But it means that there is a very useful framework to attack the question here--second language acquisition issues, availability of data issues, U.S. government measurements for how it measures "most difficult", etc. There is, of course, no concrete answer that fits all people, but this article approaches the question from a number of useful angles and will enlighten the casual reader who doesn't want to dig in twenty articles for the answer (assuming the reader even knows which of twenty articles will give pieces of the puzzle). And your contention that unless an article can be based on a single source then it shouldn't be here is rather unencyclopedic, actually. There are many articles that are based on multiple sources. If you require a single principal source for each article then you've simply built a collection of book reports rather than an encyclopedia. --[[User:Taivo|Taivo]] ([[User talk:Taivo|talk]]) 17:55, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
::Personally I think that, once we do the research and put in the work, we can have the best of both worlds: an article that both answers a common question, and does so in an academic and accurate way. That would be something like what we have now, only cleaned up a lot: [[Hardest language]] should redirect to something like "what makes languages hard to learn" (not in that wording of course, but a title that expresses that), and the first section of the article should probably address the issue that there is no one "hardest" language (for all the reasons we have discussed before), which will answer the common question, and then the rest of the article would outline factors that contribute to what makes a particular language harder or easier (stuff like relatedness to known languages) and what general factors contribute to how well a person learns a language (stuff like motivation and aptitude). That way we can still answer the question that, admittedly, most uninformed people are coming here about, but without "pandering" to what we personally know is a silly caricature of language. The general structure of what the article should be, I think, is pretty clear; all that remains is to find sources and actually fill that in, something I have not yet sat down and tried to do.<b class="IPA">[[Special:Contributions/Rjanag|r<span style="color:#8B0000;">ʨ</span>anaɢ]]</b>&nbsp;([[User talk:Rjanag|talk]]) 18:04, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
:::I completely agree. --[[User:Taivo|Taivo]] ([[User talk:Taivo|talk]]) 18:27, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
I didn't say an article should be based only on a single source. I also didn't say an article shouldn't try to answer questions people might have; I said that along with good intentions there must exist one or more reliable sources on which the article can be based. In particular, if such answers must be arrived at by synthesizing bits of 20 other articles, and there is no source (or to be clear, are no sources) which have done that work already, then Wikipedia can't present such answers. See [[wp:No_original_research#Synthesis_of_published_material_that_advances_a_position]]. Good luck to you all in refining the scope and building the article; I was just making a passing observation. [[User:EEng|EEng]] ([[User talk:EEng|talk]]) 19:45, 28 May 2010 (UTC)


== British Foreign Office study ==
the non sequitur is all yours. the point is that the long distance relations are acquired ''last'', after all other aspects had been acquired, earlier. the acquisition of syntax thus ''concludes'' language acquisition. You are, at this point, edit warring. I will revert your deletion once more and recommend you try [[Wikipedia:Dispute resolution]] from here. I do not spend time researching an obscure topic just to see the result blanked on flimsy or no grounds. If you want to ''add'' material, you are most welcome to develop this article further. [[User:Dbachmann|dab]] <small>[[User_talk:Dbachmann|(𒁳)]]</small> 09:05, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
:And I'm telling you that syntax is not all there is to grammar. --'''[[User:Kjoonlee|Kjoon]]'''[[User talk:Kjoonlee|lee]] 10:30, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
::Let's say I teach you Korean syntax. Do you think that would let you conclude your acquisition of Korean? Do you think language acquisition stops at 5? --'''[[User:Kjoonlee|Kjoon]]'''[[User talk:Kjoonlee|lee]] 10:36, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
:::the statement concerns L1, not L2. your hypothetical teaching me Korean is a complete non-sequitur. Language acquisition ''never'' stops, that's a truism. Yes, ''L1'' acquisition stops at around 5: you cannot acquire L1 once you're past that age. Can we now please be reasonable? You appear to object to the statement for some reason, but you are not willing to let me know why, proffering unrelated comments instead. I don't see why it should disturb you that Korean is labelled "difficult" in the ''actual references'' we cite. Your involvement seems to be somehow related to your own proficiency in Korean (according to your user page). It beats me why that should be so. If I was a speaker of Korean, I would be proud of the fact rather than trying to edit-war about it. Also, can you please ''stop'' telling me "that syntax is not all there is to grammar"? It's a truism, I obviously agree, I've said so twice already, and it has nothing to do with the statement you keep removing. [[User:Dbachmann|dab]] <small>[[User_talk:Dbachmann|(𒁳)]]</small> 10:48, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
::::Sources for all your claims, please. --'''[[User:Kjoonlee|Kjoon]]'''[[User talk:Kjoonlee|lee]] 12:09, 16 January 2008 (UTC)


I keep reading about a study by the British Foreign Office that found the most difficult language to learn for British diplomats. (For example, on [http://www.usingenglish.com/articles/which-most-difficult-language.html this article at usingenglish.com].) However, I haven't been able to locate the original source, and I can find no mention of it on the Foreign Office website. Is anyone aware of where it might be found? <span style="font-family:Palatino;"> — [[User:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#194D00;">Mr. Stradivarius</span>]] <small><i>([[User talk:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#0F0073;">drop me a line</span>]])</i></small></span> 01:23, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
:I have sent an email to the Foreign Office about this. I can imagine they are busy, so I don't know if they will be able to respond. I will give an update here if I hear anything from them. <span style="font-family:Palatino;"> — [[User:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#194D00;">Mr. Stradivarius</span>]] <small><i>([[User talk:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#0F0073;">drop me a line</span>]])</i></small></span> 01:44, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
I found a document on the [http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/NISPAcee/UNPAN007287.pdf Foreign Office Personnel Rules], which states that, among other things, the overseas allowance for diplomats is "also paid for language skills, varying according to the difficulty of the language". There may be more on this on their website - I shall have a look. <span style="font-family:Palatino;"> — [[User:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#194D00;">Mr. Stradivarius</span>]] <small><i>([[User talk:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#0F0073;">drop me a line</span>]])</i></small></span> 13:23, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
:I can't find anything on pay scales for Foreign Office staff, but it appears from [http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/publications-and-documents/freedom-of-information/information-we-publish/#what-we-spend this page] that this information will be published eventually. No idea when, though. If it comes to it, it looks like we could request the information through a Freedom of Information Request - however I think that may be a little extreme! These quotes of Basque, Japanese and Hungarian being on the top of the Foreign Office's difficult language list must have come from somewhere though. We just need to find out where. <span style="font-family:Palatino;"> — [[User:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#194D00;">Mr. Stradivarius</span>]] <small><i>([[User talk:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#0F0073;">drop me a line</span>]])</i></small></span> 14:32, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
I got a nice reply from the man at the National Archives. From the [http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/searchresults.asp?SearchInit=0&txtsearchterm=difficulty+AND+language&txtfirstdate=&txtlastdate=&txtrestriction=fo&hdnsorttype=Reference&image1.x=0&image1.y=0 search] he did for me, it looks like this might be the document we are looking for: [http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/displaycataloguedetails.asp?CATID=4187112&CATLN=6&Highlight=%2CLANGUAGES%2CDIFFICULTY&accessmethod=0 'Hard' languages and their relative degree of difficulty]. It looks like I will have to shell out some cash to get this document into digital form, so I'd like to make sure it's the one we're after before I get an estimate. It is quite old (1950), and it seems reasonable to assume that the Foreign Office may have changed the way they measure language difficulty since then. Does anyone have advice? <span style="font-family:Palatino;"> — [[User:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#194D00;">Mr. Stradivarius</span>]] <small><i>([[User talk:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#0F0073;">drop me a line</span>]])</i></small></span> 15:01, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
:Further searching turns up three more documents, although the first still looks like the most likely.[http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/displaycataloguedetails.asp?CATID=4187280&CATLN=6&Highlight=%2CDIFFICULT%2CLANGUAGE%2CLANGUAGES&accessmethod=0][http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/displaycataloguedetails.asp?CATID=4187279&CATLN=6&Highlight=%2CLANGUAGES%2CDIFFICULT%2CLANGUAGES&accessmethod=0][http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/displaycataloguedetails.asp?CATID=2455762&CATLN=6&Highlight=%2CHARD%2CLANGUAGES&accessmethod=0] <span style="font-family:Palatino;"> — [[User:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#194D00;">Mr. Stradivarius</span>]] <small><i>([[User talk:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#0F0073;">drop me a line</span>]])</i></small></span> 15:11, 18 March 2011 (UTC)


== Requested move ==
''what'' claim do you want me to source? the statement you keep removing ''without rhyme or reason'' is completely sourced to an academic study,
{{discussion top|1=Delisted - withdrawn by nominator.}}
:''K. Wexler, 'On Unparsable Input in Language Acquisition', in: Lyn Frazier, Jill G. De Villiers (eds.), Language Processing and Language Acquisition (1990), ISBN 0792306600.'' (which you left standing in the "References" section, you just removed all mention of it in the article body)
{{tlx|Requested move/dated|Comparative difficulty of languages for native English speakers}}
Since you are obviously not following what I am saying, I do not intend to invest more time talking in your general direction. Well done, we have now run into 3RR. If anyone else is watching this, now would be a good time to comment. Otherwise, unless Kjoon decides to switch on his brain and actually make a coherent statement of what he wants, this'll just be a slow revert war. Not wikilike, not sensible, not even rational. I enjoy debates and intelligent controversy, but this is just dull. [[User:Dbachmann|dab]] <small>[[User_talk:Dbachmann|(𒁳)]]</small> 12:17, 16 January 2008 (UTC)


[[Most difficult language to learn]] → [[Comparative difficulty of languages for native English speakers]] — The difficulty of a language depends highly on what languages you already speak. The present title, however, implies that there is a "most difficult language" in absolute terms, which is not the general view in linguistics as far as I can see. Restricting the article to the difficulty of languages for native English speakers would allow for a much clearer direction in writing the article, and would avoid much of the arguments about scope, adding new languages, etc. that can be seen on the [[Talk:Most difficult language to learn/Archive 1|talk page archives]]. I am also concerned that the concept of a "most difficult language" in absolute terms does not have any reliable sources that can prove its notability, whereas the concept of the most difficult language for native English speakers can be [[User:Mr. Stradivarius/Hardest language for native English speakers|easily sourced]]. These issues have already been discussed at length on the talk page ([[Talk:Most difficult language to learn#Time to think about moving?|here]] and [[Talk:Most difficult language to learn#Awkward carveout of topic for an article|here]]) and in the recent [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Most difficult language to learn|deletion discussion]]. <span style="font-family:Palatino;"> — [[User:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#194D00;">Mr. Stradivarius</span>]] <small><i>([[User talk:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#0F0073;">drop me a line</span>]])</i></small></span> 03:54, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Hardest_language&curid=14748432&diff=184714970&oldid=184713871] - well done. I realize you are just trolling, for reasons best known to yourself. Sorry I took you serioius for a minute there. --[[User:Dbachmann|dab]] <small>[[User_talk:Dbachmann|(𒁳)]]</small> 12:32, 16 January 2008 (UTC)


*'''Oppose'''. The proposed title is just far too long and detailed for a useful Wikipedia title. This article is about much more than just difficulty for English speakers. It is also about general issues of what makes language A hard (or easy) for speakers of language B to learn. Only a single paragraph is about English speakers. The title can be changed to something like language acquisition difficulty or some such other form, but this article is not just about English speakers, although 99% of the readers will be English speakers and the paragraph on English difficulty is appropriate. I agree that there is no absolute "hardest language" and the current title is probably not the best, but the proposed title is abominable and fails to entail the majority of the article's content, focusing on a single paragraph. --[[User:Taivo|Taivo]] ([[User talk:Taivo|talk]]) 07:06, 20 March 2011 (UTC)


:It is true that there is only a very small amount of material in the "For native English speakers" section at the moment. I was thinking that if we could find consensus for a page move, then we could expand it considerably. Alternatively I had thought of being bold and creating a page on [[Comparative difficulty of languages for native English speakers]] myself, then proposing a merge with this page, but that seemed a little disingenuous given the amount of discussion already generated.
:Actually, your suggestion of [[language acquisition difficulty]] is a good idea, I think, and would also avoid the arguments about the scope of the article. I was put off going this route initially because of your rejection of my suggestion of [[language complexity]] in the deletion discussion, but maybe I was too hasty. If we are going to go this route, how about [[difficulty of learning languages]] instead? There usually isn't a distinction made between ''language learning'' and ''language acquisition'' in SLA research these days, and ''language learning'' is more familiar to the layman. I did think of [[language learning difficulty]], but somehow it reminds me too much of ''language difficulty'', which is used mostly for speech impairments in the academic literature. What do you think? <span style="font-family:Palatino;"> — [[User:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#194D00;">Mr. Stradivarius</span>]] <small><i>([[User talk:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#0F0073;">drop me a line</span>]])</i></small></span> 07:58, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

::"Difficulty of Learning Languages" would be an acceptable title. --[[User:Taivo|Taivo]] ([[User talk:Taivo|talk]]) 16:38, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

*'''Support''' in theory. The article should be renamed, but it should be simply named and not use some long drawn out psycho-babble to completly describe the topic. The most common name should be preferred in order to increase the possibility of the article showing up in internet searches. If I was searching for this topic on Google,I would most likely type in [[Most difficult language to learn for English speakers]]. A bit dumbed down from what has already been proposed, but its straight and to the point, and will increase the likelihood of the page showing up in a common English language search engine result.--[[User:Jojhutton|Jojhutton]] ([[User talk:Jojhutton|talk]]) 13:30, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

:If we're going with simple names, then why not go the whole hog and make the title [[Hardest language for native English speakers]]? (I would insist on the ''native'', because otherwise it could include people speaking English as a second language, which would open a whole other can of worms.) I understand wanting to get the page high in search rankings, but the problem with titles like this is that they imply that there really ''is'' a "hardest language". There certainly seem to be "harder languages" for native speakers, but I don't think the sources support the idea of "one language to rule them all". If we imply the latter I think we might see lots of rehashing of the "my language is harder than your language" edit wars, and I'd like to avoid that if possible. <span style="font-family:Palatino;"> — [[User:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#194D00;">Mr. Stradivarius</span>]] <small><i>([[User talk:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#0F0073;">drop me a line</span>]])</i></small></span> 14:27, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

::I just took the begining of what this article is already titled. Didn't think that was going to be controversial. I said my peace.--[[User:Jojhutton|Jojhutton]] ([[User talk:Jojhutton|talk]]) 14:39, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

:::No need to apologise. I'd like the title to be simple, too. It's just a matter of finding the right balance between all the different factors. It would be great to have your input on the rest of the suggestions here, too. <span style="font-family:Palatino;"> — [[User:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#194D00;">Mr. Stradivarius</span>]] <small><i>([[User talk:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#0F0073;">drop me a line</span>]])</i></small></span> 14:48, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

*'''Support''' if the /* Possibility of acquisition */ section to be removed. ––[[User:虞海|<Span xml:lang="zh-Hant-CN" lang="zh-Hant">虞海</Span> (<span class="Unicode">Yú Hǎi</span>)]] <Big>[[User talk:虞海#top|<span class="Unicode">✍</span>]]</Big> 14:04, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

:You don't have to wait for the outcome of this discussion to do that. I think under any title that section is rather dubious. In any case, you should feel free to remove it, and if anyone objects to it, then they can discuss it somewhere else on the talk page. This discussion is purely about the page move. <span style="font-family:Palatino;"> — [[User:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#194D00;">Mr. Stradivarius</span>]] <small><i>([[User talk:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#0F0073;">drop me a line</span>]])</i></small></span> 14:48, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

::No. I oppose the removal of the possibility of acquisition section. It is, of course, one of the factors involved. Your deletion of this section has been reverted, so you must get consensus for deleting it on this Talk page before removing it again. But that discussion is not relevant here in this move proposal. --[[User:Taivo|Taivo]] ([[User talk:Taivo|talk]]) 16:41, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

*'''Oppose''' Rather than changing the title to accommodate current limitations with the article (anglocentrism in particular), and in doing so solidify this limited perspective, why not just edit the article to address these issues so that the article is more deserving of a more general title? I have already pointed out ways the article can be improved ([[Talk:Most difficult language to learn#Time to think about moving|here]] and [[Talk:Most difficult language to learn/Archive 1#Anglocentrism in this article|here]]), although the last time I tried to bring this up the discussion got mostly overwhelmed by a repetition of an ongoing nationalistic argument. Anyway, the point is, this article ''could be'' an article on factors that make a language difficult to learn and on which languages have a reputation for being difficult. <b class="IPA">[[Special:Contributions/Rjanag|r<span style="color:#8B0000;">ʨ</span>anaɢ]]</b>&nbsp;([[User talk:Rjanag|talk]]) 16:55, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

:I do share your concern - my idea for renaming the page wasn't simply to get rid of the more general perspective, it was to move it to another page such as [[Language transfer]] or [[language complexity]], or however else we wanted to work out the details. However, it seems like most people here are happier with a more general title, so I think I'll change my !vote to speed things up. In any case, if a section on "difficulty for native English speakers" in a more general article became long enough, it would probably end up being split off into a stand-alone article anyway. <span style="font-family:Palatino;"> — [[User:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#194D00;">Mr. Stradivarius</span>]] <small><i>([[User talk:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#0F0073;">drop me a line</span>]])</i></small></span> 02:43, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

*Change my !vote to '''oppose''' the Abominable Title, and instead support a move to [[Difficulty of learning languages]]. Most people seem to be happier with this option, and I also like it because it will likely stop the arguments we've seen on the talk page, and will still allow an academic perspective on the question. <span style="font-family:Palatino;"> — [[User:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#194D00;">Mr. Stradivarius</span>]] <small><i>([[User talk:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#0F0073;">drop me a line</span>]])</i></small></span> 02:43, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

*'''Oppose''' "Comparative difficulty of languages for native English speakers"; '''Support''' "Difficulty of learning languages". What the article says may apply to spoken language, but a written language that requires learning thousands of characters, like Chinese or Japanese, is objectively more difficult to learn than one than one that uses an alphabetic script. [[User:Kauffner|Kauffner]] ([[User talk:Kauffner|talk]]) 10:29, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
:I think "native English speakers" also implies native English readers and writers, so there would be no need to worry about leaving out literacy with a title of "Comparative difficulty of languages for native English speakers". In fact, I'm in favour of including reading and writing in the article, as I argued in the [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Most difficult language to learn|deletion discussion]]. It still looks like [[Difficulty of learning languages]] is the more popular choice, however. <span style="font-family:Palatino;"> — [[User:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#194D00;">Mr. Stradivarius</span>]] <small><i>([[User talk:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#0F0073;">drop me a line</span>]])</i></small></span> 10:56, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
::Reading and writing should be no more than a single paragraph here, although an appropriate paragraph. The primary difficulties in learning language are the linguistic aspects of that language, not the orthographic aspects. One can learn Japanese and Chinese perfectly well without ever looking at a printed text, just as native speakers of any language can be perfectly fluent yet perfectly illiterate. So any discussion of reading/writing difficulty must be subordinated in this article and not emphasized. --[[User:Taivo|Taivo]] ([[User talk:Taivo|talk]]) 13:38, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
:::Have you tried learning a foreign language? I think the method you are describing is a bit unusual. In general, students rely on textbooks and dictionaries, so real-world language learners almost always write better than they speak. Of course, other methods are possible. You can learn Chinese with the pinyin writing system and Japanese with the hiragana writing system. Computer-based learning allows a greater focus on the spoken language than tapes do. But the article should focus on how people really learn language. [[User:Kauffner|Kauffner]] ([[User talk:Kauffner|talk]]) 03:30, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
::::I do see what you mean - both of you. However, this seems more like a general editing issue than a page-move issue. Let's save this space for discussion about the page move. (And, yes, I know that I'm as guilty of going off-topic as anyone.) <span style="font-family:Palatino;"> — [[User:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#194D00;">Mr. Stradivarius</span>]] <small><i>([[User talk:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#0F0073;">drop me a line</span>]])</i></small></span> 05:00, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

{{discussion bottom}}

== Phonology section ==

A good seminal paper to cite there would be the following:
*{{cite journal | url=http://jimflege.com/files/Flege_new_similar_JP_1987.pdf | title=The production of 'new' and 'similar' phones in a foreign language: evidence for the effect of equivalence classification | last=Flege | first=James Emil | year=1987 | journal=Journal of Phonetics | volume=15}}
<b class="IPA">[[Special:Contributions/Rjanag|r<span style="color:#8B0000;">ʨ</span>anaɢ]]</b>&nbsp;([[User talk:Rjanag|talk]]) 14:52, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

== Phonology edits ==

It is important to remember that this article must be written accurately. My edits to the phonology section were to remove the absolutes that implied "all speakers have trouble (or ease) doing X". Japanese speakers can HEAR the difference between [r] and [l], the problem they have is in producing the difference when they speech center is conditioned to vary them by environment. English speakers have the same problem with initial [ts] and [ŋ]--they can hear the sounds there, but they just have a very difficult time producing them there. --[[User:Taivo|Taivo]] ([[User talk:Taivo|talk]]) 17:08, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
:I am all for making the article accurate. Surely the best thing to do in this case is improve the example, rather than taking it out altogether? It is a lot harder to understand the concept without it. And yes, Japanese speakers can hear the difference between /l/ and /r/, but they put them in the same mental category - the English words ''light'' and ''right'' do sound like the same word to a Japanese speaker. It's the mental category that I'm interested in here. Is there a wording for the example that you would be happy with? <span style="font-family:Palatino;"> — [[User:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#194D00;">Mr. Stradivarius</span>]] <small><i>([[User talk:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#0F0073;">drop me a line</span>]])</i></small></span> 22:03, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
::Actually, the example is "[l] and [r] are allophones in Japanese so a Japanese speaker may have difficulty acquiring them". That is perfectly clear and all that is necessary. If the reader doesn't understand what an allophone is, then that is why there is a wikilink. We cannot go through Wikipedia and explain in detail every technical term every time it is encountered. The whole issue of "mental category" is not an appropriate expansion for this. It's also not really relevant. Japanese speakers hear the difference between [r] and [l] just fine, but they have not been trained to produce them in the "wrong" place. It's not about mental categories, it's about learning how to produce them outside of their normal environment. English speakers can hear a word-initial [ts] perfectly well in [tsar] or [tsitsi], but since they've never learned how to produce the sound in this location, that's the problem--not some "mental category". Just as English speakers have never learned to produce pharyngeals, speakers must learn to produce [ts] in the "wrong place". --[[User:Taivo|Taivo]] ([[User talk:Taivo|talk]]) 23:19, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
:::It may be "perfectly clear and all that is necessary" to someone who already has specialist knowledge, but I don't think this is the case for the lay reader. We should not assume that readers will know the difference between phones, allophones, and phonemes. I think we have two choices - we can either make lay readers hunt through the [[allophone]] article to find a clear example of what it is, just to make sense of the point we are trying to make; or, we can include a short example in the text of this article. I don't think expert readers would be put at a disadvantage if we included such an example. Is it really such a bad idea? <span style="font-family:Palatino;"> — [[User:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#194D00;">Mr. Stradivarius</span>]] <small><i>([[User talk:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#0F0073;">drop me a line</span>]])</i></small></span> 00:05, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
::::The example you previously included was simplistic and inaccurate. I find it hard to imagine an accurate example that doesn't take up more space than it really deserves. "right" and "light" do ''not'' sound alike to Japanese speakers. The question isn't whether or not Japanese speakers can hear the difference. The question is whether they have ''learned'' how to place one sound in the environment of the other or not. --[[User:Taivo|Taivo]] ([[User talk:Taivo|talk]]) 00:31, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
:::::They may not sound alike, but they ''do'' sound like the same word. I have personally taught Japanese students of English many such /l/ and /r/ word pairs, and invariably the reaction I get is "They're the same!" This seems to be the exact question we are discussing to me. You seem to be very forthright over something that seems like common sense to me, so maybe I've missed something. Could you explain how the ability to hear the difference between the words is different from the ability to place one sound in the environment of the other? (Should this be "move one sound ''out'' of the environment of the other"?) <span style="font-family:Palatino;"> — [[User:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#194D00;">Mr. Stradivarius</span>]] <small><i>([[User talk:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#0F0073;">drop me a line</span>]])</i></small></span> 02:46, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
::::::Here is what goes on: 1) When a speaker learns their language, they learn to produce certain sounds in certain environments; 2) they can still hear the difference between the sounds, thus they can identify non-native speakers who may confuse the sounds; 3) when learning a language with those sounds in other environments, they have to learn how to produce those sounds in a new environment, something that may or may not be easy to do (for example, when learning Swahili, English speakers must learn to produce [ŋ] at the beginning of a word); 4) their level of success at learning to produce those sounds in new environments marks their language to a greater or lesser degree as being "foreign" to the speakers of the language they are learning. Trying to make it sound like Japanese speakers are normally incapable of hearing the difference between [l] and [r] seems rather chauvinistic. It's simply not true. --[[User:Taivo|Taivo]] ([[User talk:Taivo|talk]]) 04:53, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
:::::::It's not just me - there's a whole article on this subject: [[Japanese speakers learning r and l]]. Of course they can tell the difference between the allophones, and identify people using the wrong allophone as having a foreign accent. This does not mean that they consciously distinguish between English words using /l/ and words using /r/. The article I linked to points out that Japanese speakers can distinguish between [l] and [r] when they are not mentally processed as speech. I am not contesting this. I'm interested in the mental representation of the sounds when they ''are'' processed as speech. Actually, that sounds like a pretty good working definition of a phoneme to me. <span style="font-family:Palatino;"> — [[User:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#194D00;">Mr. Stradivarius</span>]] <small><i>([[User talk:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#0F0073;">drop me a line</span>]])</i></small></span> 06:29, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
::::::::There's a difference between Japanese speakers processing [l] and [r] in Japanese words and identifying and using them in English words. --[[User:Taivo|Taivo]] ([[User talk:Taivo|talk]]) 06:34, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
:::::::::Thinking about it, I still object to the overt mention (besides the Wikilink I put in) of the ''right''/''light'' example. The reason is that linguists are very clear about what Japanese can and cannot do physically and linguistically. 1) Physically, they can hear the difference between [r] and [l]. 2) Linguistically, they don't ''notice'' the difference because of their linguistic conditioning. Given a sentence like, "Japanese speakers cannot hear the difference between [r] and [l]", an unsophisticated reader could easily infer that Japanese speakers are not ''physically'' capable of distinguishing the sounds rather than the very restricted linguistic sense of that statement. That's why I'm opposed to some simplistic statement and a longer statement that correctly captures the linguistic subtlety isn't really necessary in this context. --[[User:Taivo|Taivo]] ([[User talk:Taivo|talk]]) 14:43, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

"Allophone" is really not all that technically esoteric or abstruse of a term -- it's among the first things students learn in an introductory beginning Linguistics 101 class, and a number of people outside formal academic linguistics are familiar with it (including many foreign language teachers). If removing the term "allophone" would create difficulties for the article, I support keeping it... [[User:AnonMoos|AnonMoos]] ([[User talk:AnonMoos|talk]]) 15:39, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
:The term "allophone" is just fine and should stay. There was a further example that said, "Japanese speakers cannot hear the difference between ''right'' and ''light''" (or pretty close to that wording). I removed it for the reasons cited above. --[[User:Taivo|Taivo]] ([[User talk:Taivo|talk]]) 16:37, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
[[File:Phoneme-allophone-determination-chart.svg|thumb|250px|Diagram of basic procedure to determine whether two sounds are allophones]]
::Anyway, I just now made a nifty little chart and added it to article [[Allophone]], which I hope is helpful...[[User:AnonMoos|AnonMoos]] ([[User talk:AnonMoos|talk]]) 21:18, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

This sentence is a bit of a mouthful: "These sounds do not always appear to pose significant problems for second language learners, unless they are radically different than sounds in the native language, such as pharyngeals or clicks to a speaker whose native language does not contain them." Is there a way of making this more readable? <span style="font-family:Palatino;"> — [[User:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#194D00;">Mr. Stradivarius</span>]] <small><i>([[User talk:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#0F0073;">drop me a line</span>]])</i></small></span> 03:01, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
:The whole second half of the sentence (after "than sounds in the native language") can be easily deleted. --[[User:Taivo|Taivo]] ([[User talk:Taivo|talk]]) 04:53, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

== Requested move to [[Difficulty of learning languages]]==
<div class="boilerplate" style="background-color: #efe; margin: 2em 0 0 0; padding: 0 10px 0 10px; border: 1px dotted #aaa;"><!-- Template:RM top -->
:''The following discussion is an archived discussion of a [[WP:RM|requested move]]. <span style="color:red">'''Please do not modify it.'''</span> Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. ''

The result of the move request was: '''page moved'''. This move does not mean that the suggestions for merging or considering a better name are invalid. Those efforts should continue. [[User:Vegaswikian|Vegaswikian]] ([[User talk:Vegaswikian|talk]]) 21:31, 18 April 2011 (UTC)


----
----
I'm bilingual in English and Korean. English was second, and I acquired it after I was 5. Now, where does that leave your claims? --'''[[User:Kjoonlee|Kjoon]]'''[[User talk:Kjoonlee|lee]] 12:11, 16 January 2008 (UTC)


[[Most difficult language to learn]] → {{no redirect|1=Difficulty of learning languages}} — Relisted. --[[User:RegentsPark|rgpk]] <small>([[User talk:RegentsPark|comment]])</small> 20:46, 4 April 2011 (UTC) I think ''difficulty'' is more appropriate than ''most difficult'' because there doesn't seem to be agreement in the literature about which the best way to measure difficulty is, let alone which language is the most difficult. If we imply that there is a "most difficult" language in the title, we also invite the argument of who the language is most difficult for; difficulty of learning a second language depends heavily on what languages a person speaks, and we do not have space to follow this through for every language combination. ''Most difficult'' could also imply that there is a "most difficult" language in absolute terms, but as far as I can see the literature does not back this idea up. These issues have already been discussed at length on the talk page ([[Talk:Most difficult language to learn#Time to think about moving?|here]] and [[Talk:Most difficult language to learn#Awkward carveout of topic for an article|here]]), in the recent [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Most difficult language to learn|deletion discussion]], and in the recent [[Talk:Most difficult language to learn#Requested move|requested move discussion]] that was delisted halfway through. <span style="font-family:Palatino;"> — [[User:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#194D00;">Mr. Stradivarius</span>]] <small><i>([[User talk:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#0F0073;">drop me a line</span>]])</i></small></span> 02:44, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
References that you are genuinely "bilingual" rather than merely fluent in both Korean and English? If you acquired English past the age of 5, you are a native speaker of Korean, and have acquired English as your second language, even if you have near-native fluency. What makes your native language your native language is the acquisition of phonology before the age of 1. There is no way you can make up for this later. You are interested in [[Critical Period Hypothesis|secondary language acquisition and age]]? go read the article.
*'''Support''' Aside for the first (the lead) sentence, this article is really about (1) the impossibility (or certainly lack of standards) in differentiating the difficulties of learning one language over another; and (2) what causes languages to be difficult to learn. The second of which does seem to be its true intent. It needs a new lead paragraph which would be easier with a new title and it certainly needs additional citations and some reorganization. But this is a topic which has its literature, so it ought not to suffer from an [[Wikipedia:No original research]] problem. --[[User:Bejnar|Bejnar]] ([[User talk:Bejnar|talk]]) 03:43, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
:''[[Steven Pinker]], in his book ''[[The Language Instinct]]'', states that “acquisition of a normal language is guaranteed for children up to the age of six, is steadily compromised from then until shortly after puberty, and is rare thereafter” (Pinker 1994, p. 293).''
*'''Support''' per both [[User:Johnbod|Johnbod]] ([[User talk:Johnbod|talk]]) 15:51, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
so, there is room for debate on "L1" for ages 6-12. If you begin to acquire a language after you are 6, or even after you are 1, for that reason, you may still reach near-native fluency, but your acquisition process will diverge significantly from that of your first language. You want references? You want to learn about this (as opposed to idly bickering about it)? Read the article and the references linked. You want to discuss this, ''intelligently'' and presenting sources? Go to [[Talk:Critical Period Hypothesis]], but stop pestering this article. --[[User:Dbachmann|dab]] <small>[[User_talk:Dbachmann|(𒁳)]]</small> 12:29, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
* What about "relative difficulty of learning languages"? The issue is learning additional languages, after all, rather than of learning language at all. [[user:thumperward|Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work)]] - [[user talk:thumperward|talk]] 10:32, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
::I'm familiar with the topics, and I say you've been very misled. --'''[[User:Kjoonlee|Kjoon]]'''[[User talk:Kjoonlee|lee]] 17:08, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
:I'm not quite sure I see your point. "Difficulty of learning languages" suggests additional languages to me. If it was singular "Difficulty of learning language" then I would think of first language learning, but with plural I think of second language learning. Also, if you wanted to distinguish between these two then the logical choice would be something like "Difficulty of learning second languages", would it not? Why "relative"? <span style="font-family:Palatino;"> — [[User:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#194D00;">Mr. Stradivarius</span>]] <small><i>([[User talk:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#0F0073;">drop me a line</span>]])</i></small></span> 11:15, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
:::Wikipedia is not a forum. [[WP:NOT]]. I don't ask you to become an expert (and of course there's [[WP:NOR]]), but I think you need to become more familiar with the linguist's definition of grammar. --'''[[User:Kjoonlee|Kjoon]]'''[[User talk:Kjoonlee|lee]] 17:11, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
:: Because you're comparing one to another. It is difficult to learn any second language, but it is more difficult to learn some than others. That's the core point of the article. [[user:thumperward|Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work)]] - [[user talk:thumperward|talk]] 11:31, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
:::Actually, only some of the article will be about which languages are harder to learn, and people seem to be keen to restrict that to languages that are hard to learn for native English speakers. The beginning of the article will be about what makes a language hard to learn in general, with reference to individual features of language such as phonology, lexus, etc. Or at least that's the impression that I got from the talk page and the deletion discussion. In fact, I got shouted down when I tried to make the focus of this page more specifically on hard languages for native English speakers. So a large part of the article wouldn't be about comparing languages at all. <span style="font-family:Palatino;"> — [[User:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#194D00;">Mr. Stradivarius</span>]] <small><i>([[User talk:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#0F0073;">drop me a line</span>]])</i></small></span> 12:19, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
::adding relative would be ok by me. [[User:Johnbod|Johnbod]] ([[User talk:Johnbod|talk]]) 13:02, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
:::It would make the title longer, which is not desirable according to the Wikipedia article title guidelines, and also I don't see anything about "difficulty of learning languages" which implies "not relative". Also this discussion is for the proposed title of [[difficulty of learning languages]], not a different one. We would have to have a new discussion for "Relative difficulty of learning languages". (In fact, if you look at the previous requested move discussion, this is exactly what happened for "Difficulty of learning languages".) <span style="font-family:Palatino;"> — [[User:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#194D00;">Mr. Stradivarius</span>]] <small><i>([[User talk:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#0F0073;">drop me a line</span>]])</i></small></span> 14:11, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
:::: There's no need to get wound up in red tape. If consensus goes for a different title than the one in the nomination any closing admin with a brain will know what to do. As for the length, I assume that's a nod to the previous RM where the proposed title was quite excessively wordy. While article titles are supposed to be concise, they don't need to be as brief as absolutely possible. [[user:thumperward|Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work)]] - [[user talk:thumperward|talk]] 14:20, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
:::::Well, that's what I thought... The previous RM discussion seemed to be in favour of moving to "Difficulty of learning languages", but when I tried to move it myself after it was delisted, my move was reverted. That's why we're having a separate RM for this title. Curiously, none of the other people who posted in that discussion have done so here. I certainly can't blame them for running out of stamina though! <span style="font-family:Palatino;"> — [[User:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#194D00;">Mr. Stradivarius</span>]] <small><i>([[User talk:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#0F0073;">drop me a line</span>]])</i></small></span> 14:58, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
*'''Support''' per Mr. Stradivarius and Bejnar. [[User:Jenks24|Jenks24]] ([[User talk:Jenks24|talk]]) 08:32, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
*'''Oppose''' That title makes it sound as if what makes languages in general hard to learn (as opposed to, say, math), which is not an accurate reflection of the content of the article (which is more about what makes, e.g., Arabic hard to learn as opposed to, say, French). On the other hand, trying to accurately describe what this article is trying to be about would probably end up leading to some pretty academic-sounding titles (e.g. "Factors influencing difficulty in the acquisition of second languages"), which I don't think is very desirable either. To be honest, I am starting to get more and more attracted by the idea others have raised before regarding merging this with [[Second language acquisition]]: the main goal of this article has been (I think) for people looking for "what's the hardest language?" to stumble across this and be set on the right path ("oh, there really is no hardest language?" "oh, there are all these different factors that affect how difficult a language is?"); that could be done simply with a redirect to some section of [[Second language acquisition]] which would contain a trimmed version of this and a conclusion that there is no one "hardest language". In such a case, a lot of the chaff from this article would need to be trimmed, although I guess if we wanted to have a longer treatment here we could have it as a {{tlx|seealso}} linked from that subsection of the SLA article, and then a more academic-y title would be ok I think. <b class="IPA">[[Special:Contributions/Rjanag|r<span style="color:#8B0000;">ʨ</span>anaɢ]]</b>&nbsp;([[User talk:Rjanag|talk]]) 15:18, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
:I can definitely see where you're coming from here, and I said as much back in my very first comment in the deletion discussion. It's certainly true that the majority of the information that would be in this article is already on the wiki somewhere - for example [[language transfer]], [[order of acquisition]], and [[contrastive analysis]], just to name three off the top of my head. Couple that with the fact that this topic is not generally considered a valid one in SLA, and the case for merging is very good in my opinion. All we would need is a section in [[second language acquisition]] linking to all the relevant pages. My machinations here with both of the move discussions have been to make this article into something that ''is'' valid in SLA, and that is also acceptable with other editors. To be honest, I really don't mind which specific solution we come up with, I just don't think the current title and topic are acceptable. It looks like the suggestion of "Difficulty of learning languages", which was very much a compromise on my part anyway, is also reaching deadlock with your opposition. In this case, I'd really like to hear from [[User:Taivo|Taivo]], who was the most vocal advocate of keeping this page. I'll invite him to comment here and we can take things from there. <span style="font-family:Palatino;"> — [[User:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#194D00;">Mr. Stradivarius</span>]] <small><i>([[User talk:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#0F0073;">drop me a line</span>]])</i></small></span> 16:50, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
::I'll stick my finger in here to hold our place in the book, but I'll be gone the rest of the day and won't be able to reply until tomorrow. --[[User:Taivo|Taivo]] ([[User talk:Taivo|talk]]) 17:15, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
:::Rather than having multiple discussions in a formal RFM every time someone comes up with a new title for this article, perhaps we should initiate a single discussion and just brainstorm ideas for titles in a list. We can winnow out the obvious non-starters and then discuss the two or three that catch some support. --[[User:Taivo|Taivo]] ([[User talk:Taivo|talk]]) 04:17, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
:::As far as collapsing this article into another one, I disagree. We need to consider the questions that readers will ask that they want answered. This is one of the obvious ones that has to do with language (based on how often it's asked in places like Yahoo!Answers). Readers should not have to go digging through another article (or two) to find the tidbits of information scattered through the articles like Hansel and Gretel's bread crumbs. --[[User:Taivo|Taivo]] ([[User talk:Taivo|talk]]) 04:20, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
::::If we ''are'' going to change the title, then this one seems to have won clear support. Judging from people's responses, the problem now would seem to be deciding whether to go with "Difficulty of learning languages" or whether to merge. As for making readers dig through an article, that needn't be a problem - redirects can link to a specific section on a page, so if someone typed in, for example, "hardest language" into the search box, then it would take them straight to the right section of [[second language acquisition]]. I'm sure it's possible to give a useful and concise answer to this question in the space of one section. <span style="font-family:Palatino;"> — [[User:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#194D00;">Mr. Stradivarius</span>]] <small><i>([[User talk:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#0F0073;">drop me a line</span>]])</i></small></span> 12:27, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
:''The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a [[WP:RM|requested move]]. <span style="color:red">'''Please do not modify it.'''</span> Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.''</div><!-- Template:RM bottom -->

== Grammar ==

I think Grammar is what could determine the difficulty of a language alot more, followed by the phonetics (such as [[pronunciation]]). Like an isolating language is easy, and an [[agglutinative]] language is intermediate but an inflecting language is hardcore. I can very much call Basque the hardest language ever, it takes like books and books to explain it's grammar. Those scientific racists are ignorant, they say Europeans have a sophisticated language. Just look at English, it's not that hard, I'm not even sure where English falls into.

Here's a following example of a made up extremely difficult language.

"I love rainbows


I/Me = Fulazmingaru
WP:NOT to you too. The article cites its sources. End of story. I reciprocate your doubts regarding "expertise". We could start comparing our academic degrees (I am a linguist), but that would fall under WP:NOT too. Come back once you've found some source you want to cite. [[User:Dbachmann|dab]] <small>[[User_talk:Dbachmann|(𒁳)]]</small> 19:04, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
love = Pustaskishamaruna
:[[WP:NOT]] is totally irrelevant and you do not understand [[WP:NOR]] either. From your comments here it looks like you don't understand grammar, nor logic. --'''[[User:Kjoonlee|Kjoon]]'''[[User talk:Kjoonlee|lee]] 13:03, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
Rainbows = Baluumoucharamu


" Balum Fulaz Garu muuchmaramiyat Taskishapustaruna minsijirats " <small><span class="autosigned">— Preceding [[Wikipedia:Signatures|unsigned]] comment added by [[User: 75.159.9.234 | 75.159.9.234 ]] ([[User talk: 75.159.9.234 |talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/ 75.159.9.234 |contribs]]) 06:36, 1 April 2011 (UTC) </span></small><!-- Template:Unsigned -->
uh-huh. after 100,000 edits on Wikipedia, we find I do not in fact understand basic policy at all. So we are to take your word that you are "familiar with the topic", that I do not in fact understand logic, or grammar. Wikipedia doesn't work just based on [[Bare assertion fallacy|bare assertion]]. Come back once you have something of substance you would like to say. Until then, I recommend you just drop this. [[User:Dbachmann|dab]] <small>[[User_talk:Dbachmann|(𒁳)]]</small> 17:47, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
:Yes, that's true. This article is so full of OR that I had been hesitant to bring it up, but now the cat's out of the bag. Whether you are Jimmy Wales's grandfather or the world's leading authority on linguistics does not matter, or whether you are familiar with editing Wikipedia. You do nothing to build consensus, ignore valid statements, and offer no hard facts to back up your claims, on critical topics that have been brought up. You *are* unfamiliar with how Wikipedia really works. --'''[[User:Kjoonlee|Kjoon]]'''[[User talk:Kjoonlee|lee]] 18:40, 21 March 2008 (UTC)


:I think you're right. The article is definitely in need of a section on grammar. I'm afraid that your example can't be included though, due to Wikipedia's policy of not including [[WP:OR|original research]]. Feel free to contribute material on this yourself - just make sure that you [[WP:CITE|cite]] [[WP:RS|reliable sources]] for all your statements, and keep a [[WP:NPOV|neutral point of view]]. All the best. <span style="font-family:Palatino;"> — [[User:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#194D00;">Mr. Stradivarius</span>]] <small><i>([[User talk:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#0F0073;">drop me a line</span>]])</i></small></span> 06:43, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
dab (or should I call you Dbachmann?), if you are a linguist by trade, then you must have access to a lot more journals (or sources) than I do. Do you have sources where people discuss the criteria for deciding what makes a language hard? Do the people tend to agree? --'''[[User:Kjoonlee|Kjoon]]'''[[User talk:Kjoonlee|lee]] 18:52, 21 March 2008 (UTC)
:WP:NOR says you shouldn't be citing sources just to advance your own conclusions. If you write any statements in articles, they must all be paraphrases from the sources. --'''[[User:Kjoonlee|Kjoon]]'''[[User talk:Kjoonlee|lee]] 19:00, 21 March 2008 (UTC)


:What makes grammar difficult are inherent complexity and irregularity, as in Greek and many polysynthetic languages, as well as divergence from one's frame of reference. Basque isn't really all that difficult, it's just different from typical European languages. I'll give you an example of what makes English difficult: the word "the". That is very difficult to acquire for anyone who doesn't have articles in their language. More difficult than grammar, IMO, are the intricacies of the lexicon: when you use which word and how. A well-known example from English is "in the street" for something which is ''on'' the street, while "on the street" means something different entirely. That's far more daunting than grammar, because there is effectively no end to it. Mandarin is supposed to be grammatically simple, but the fact that you can't just string words together in their proper order and inflection due to lexical complications can make it more difficult to speak coherently than a language like Basque. — [[User:Kwamikagami|kwami]] ([[User talk:Kwamikagami|talk]]) 06:54, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
I am citing a source to state what it states. If you don't like the way I phrased it, suggest a better phrasing. Stop this childish revert warring. Yes, this article could be expanded further. If you send me a cheque of say USD 300, I'll sit down with it for a day, do a literature search and turn out a more comprehensive article. [[User:Dbachmann|dab]] <small>[[User_talk:Dbachmann|(𒁳)]]</small> 07:43, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
:Ah, I have suggested a better phrasing: it's off topic and illogical so it should be expanded (and justified) or deleted. You haven't expanded it, so I have deleted it. You keep reverting without good reasons, so I revert it back. --'''[[User:Kjoonlee|Kjoon]]'''[[User talk:Kjoonlee|lee]] 08:09, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
:Also, I'll take your refusal as admittance that you '''can't''' find sources. You haven't answered my question about sources for criteria. That's the basic foundation of this article. --'''[[User:Kjoonlee|Kjoon]]'''[[User talk:Kjoonlee|lee]] 08:14, 22 March 2008 (UTC)


== An unhelpful list? ==
== The case for merging ==
Should there be a list included in this article? As it's clear that languages from different language families are generally harder to learn the list should include many, in no specific order. ... Some widely known candidates might be (reasons) :
*Polish ([[gender (linguistics)|gender]]s)
*Portuguese (verb [[inflection]])
*Icelandish (far from other indoeuropeans)
*Hungarian (many [[Grammatical case|case]]s)
*Turkish (many [[suffix]]es)
*Vietnamese (many [[tone (linguistics)|tone]]s)
*Korean ([[grammar]])
*Chinese ([[writing]])
*Japanese (counting system, among other things)
*Cherokee ([[morphology (linguistics)]])
*Khoisan ([[click consonants]])
*Welsh ([[spelling]])
*[[Sentinelese language]] <small>—Preceding [[Wikipedia:Signatures|unsigned]] comment added by [[Special:Contributions/88.195.46.112|88.195.46.112]] ([[User talk:88.195.46.112|talk]]) 09:33, 12 April 2008 (UTC)</small><!-- Template:UnsignedIP --> <!--Autosigned by SineBot-->
*Add here (explaining why)
<small>—Preceding [[Wikipedia:Signatures|unsigned]] comment added by [[Special:Contributions/91.153.61.69|91.153.61.69]] ([[User talk:91.153.61.69|talk]]) 16:20, 8 March 2008 (UTC)</small><!-- Template:UnsignedIP --> <!--Autosigned by SineBot-->


Well, at last, we have reached a point of closure with [[User:Vegaswikian|Vegaswikian]] moving the article to [[Difficulty of learning languages]]. But just as he said, we shouldn't let this stop the discussion about the possibility of merging this article with [[second language acquisition]]. Myself, I have begun to feel that the real issue in whether we should merge or not is that of space. It feels better to me to have this topic as a section inside another article, because it is not usually considered a valid topic in SLA, and giving it its own article seems to be giving the subject a credence that it doesn't deserve. But, as [[User:Taivo|Taivo]] says, it is useful for readers, and while being useful is [[WP:ITSUSEFUL|not a good reason to have an article on something]], it ''is'' something that can be taken into consideration.
== The Most Difficult 2L ==


To balance these two viewpoints, I propose a practical solution: we should merge if we can condense the article down enough, but if we can't, we should leave it as a standalone page. As the present main contributor to ''second language acquisition'', I am perhaps in a special position to comment on this. I can confirm that the article is pressed for space - I have already split long sections out into sub-articles, and even so, it is still missing some essential sections such as sociolinguistic views on SLA. I am also concerned about undue weight - a large section on difficulty might erroneously cause readers to think it is as important a topic in SLA as say, [[interlanguage]] or [[sequences of acquisition]]. Is it possible to work difficulty into the article without causing an undue weight problem? I would like to hear your views. <span style="font-family:Palatino, Georgia, serif;"> — [[User:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#194D00;">Mr. Stradivarius</span>]] <sup>[[User talk:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#0F0073;">♫</span>]]</sup></span> 13:53, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
It is my oppinion that the American Native Tribe of the Navajo, is the most difficult second language to learn by anyone, no matter what their primary language might be. Hence, it was the language of choice chosen by the Americans to be used my the now famous Code Talkers durring World War Two. Craig Warn, Gallup NM <small>—Preceding [[Wikipedia:Signatures|unsigned]] comment added by [[Special:Contributions/204.134.36.140|204.134.36.140]] ([[User talk:204.134.36.140|talk]]) 16:18, 17 June 2008 (UTC)</small><!-- Template:UnsignedIP --> <!--Autosigned by SineBot-->


== Rosenberg 1979 ==
You show profound ignorance of both the specific and the general subject matter. Navajo was chosen simply because it had few speakers, and all of them resided within the United States. The choice had nothing whatsoever to do with any qualities inherent to the Navajo language. --[[Special:Contributions/76.71.46.198|76.71.46.198]] ([[User talk:76.71.46.198|talk]]) 17:51, 22 July 2008 (UTC)


About Rosenberg, A. (1979). Lingvisticæ Investigationes:III 3(2). 323-339 - this study was really not intended to be taken seriously. I've read it, and the author basically goes through all the major languages looking for the equivalent of English's "It's all Greek to me". For example, although English picks out Greek, the Greeks have a phrase that says "that sounds Chinese to me" (actually, I can't remember the actual phrase or language - this is just an example off the top of my head to demonstrate the method). He then goes through all similar phrases in all the languages, and works out who is at the top of the tree. It just happens to be Chinese. I notice the sentence in the article contains caveats about his claims, but I don't it belongs anywhere near a section that is trying to represent scientific consensus on the matter. We could maybe include it at the bottom of the article in a "myth of the hardest language" section or similar if we find enough pop science examples... <span style="font-family:Palatino, Georgia, serif;"> — [[User:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#194D00;">Mr. Stradivarius</span>]] <sup>[[User talk:Mr. Stradivarius|<span style="color:#0F0073;">♫</span>]]</sup></span> 09:54, 2 June 2011 (UTC)
== Murge to [[language learning aptitude]] ==
:Okay. I did not understand the context of his statement. The context of his statement should be added and it should be re-labeled "myth of the hardest language" section.--[[User:Ephert|Ephert]] ([[User talk:Ephert|talk]]) 10:07, 2 June 2011 (UTC)


== Reference ==
This page is
*{{cite web | url=http://languages-of-the-world.blogspot.com/2011/06/what-is-most-difficult-language-to_02.html | title= What is the most difficult language to learn -- and why? | first= Asya | last=Pereltsvaig | date=2 June 2011}}
# not at this point useful as a disambig article;
Has a decent discussion of some of the issues mentioned at this article, as well as links to some other sources that might be more [[WP:RS]] (although less accurate--this source has some valuable caveats about those other sources and the woman who wrote it is more of an expert than the writers of the more "official" sources probably are, but unfortunately it's still just a blog post). <b class="IPA">[[Special:Contributions/Rjanag|r<span style="color:#8B0000;">ʨ</span>anaɢ]]</b>&nbsp;([[User talk:Rjanag|talk]]) 21:07, 4 June 2011 (UTC)
# unexpandable beyond anything more than a start-stub given its coverage and subject matter;
# duplicating scope from the more broadly balanced and existing article, [[language learning aptitude]]; and
# sporting a cheerfully [[WP:NPOV|POV]] title.
Please merge the useful information, purge this page, and keep the [[WP:OR|crystalballing]] to pubs and the Language Desk. Or I can do it. ~ '''[[User:Jafet.vixle|Jafet]]''' • [[Special:Contributions/Jafet.vixle|business]] • [[User talk:Jafet.vixle|pleasure]] • [[User:Jafet.vixle/Watchlist|voicemail]] 09:19, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
:a "pov title", yes? As in [[oldest tree]], or [[oldest city]]? How is it "OR" to ''report'' original research? It's what Wikipedia is about. Except for Mr. Kjoonlee being a little difficult above, this article is fine. That's not a statement against merging, though, if done properly a merge may be perfectly arguable. --[[User:Dbachmann|dab]] <small>[[User_talk:Dbachmann|(𒁳)]]</small> 09:40, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
::"Oldest" is objective, in the sense that we can measure absolute ages of things and they can be compared. "Hardest" is also objective if we're talking about, say, the [[Mohs scale]], but in the context of this page I find it's like using "Smartest people" as the title for an article on [[intelligence quotient|IQ]]. ~ '''[[User:Jafet.vixle|Jafet]]''' • [[Special:Contributions/Jafet.vixle|business]] • [[User talk:Jafet.vixle|pleasure]] • [[User:Jafet.vixle/Watchlist|voicemail]] 06:54, 27 September 2008 (UTC)


*{{cite web | url=http://learnarize.com/what-are-the-hardest-languages-to-learn/ | title= What Are the Hardest Languages to Learn? | first= Hicham | last=Abbassa | date=27 March 2016}}
== Japanese harder than Chinese? ==
This article states a list of 5 most difficult languages in the world with details. This might be very useful for those who seeks to learn a new language.


==Merger completed==
This doesn't make any sense to me. Between the frustrating tonal part of the language to the even more complicated writing system, Chinese has always seemed harder than Japanese in every aspect to me. Are there any references to why Japanese would be considered more difficult?--[[User:Remurmur|Remurmur]] ([[User talk:Remurmur|talk]]) 07:43, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
Greetings and salutations, all! I would like to thank this opportunity to inform you all that I have taken the liberty of merging all of the content of this article into the article [[w:Second-language acquisition]] per [[TEMPLATE:afd-mergeto]] (Date: January 2013). Thank you and happy wikiying! [[User:Illegitimate Barrister|Illegitimate Barrister]] ([[User talk:Illegitimate Barrister|talk]]) 06:39, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Latest revision as of 16:14, 3 September 2023

Time to think about moving?

[edit]

Above I noted several problems with this article. Now I'm going to try to start thinking about some solutions. I don't think there's any point in doing any rewriting yet until we have agreed on what the article should actually be about. I propose that "Hardest language" is not really the best title or topic; the very concept of a single "hardest language" is not taken seriously or investigated anymore in second language acquisition, it's only discussed on random people's blogs; it's not an academically valid topic, as any linguist can tell you there are many ways to measure a language's difficulty. Searching Google for "hardest language", the first two pages come up with numerous blogs, which claim Icelandic, Polish, Hungarian, Japanese, Sanskrit, Russian, and a variety of other languages as the "hardest". This illustrates two things: 1) there are many more languages that claim the title of "hardest" than the nationalist editors here want you to think; and 2) the people discussing this problem are, for the most part, not linguists and have no idea what they're talking about (see some of the laughable claims here and here). If you search Google Scholar for the same term, it becomes clear that "hardest language" is a concept in computational linguistics and is wholly unrelated to the topic being discussed in this article; and it's not a concept in SLA at all.

So the article, most likely, should be about language learning difficulty in general, not about some hopeless quest to find the single 'hardest' language. Unfortunately, a good title for this is hard to find. Google Scholar reveals that "language difficulty" (which is currently a redirect to this page), is actually used synonymously with language impairment in most of the literature (and a secondary use, but still with more hits than our topic, is for measuring the difficulty level of a passage, for example in a standardized test). "Language learning difficulty", likewise, is mostly about language impairment. Any other ideas? rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 16:10, 8 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Also, FWIW, this search turns up a few articles by EK Horwitz, which may be useful in developing this article (and certainly more useful than the misinterpreted studies added in by some of the editors above). rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 16:12, 8 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with the title move if "many" reliable sources can back up for the suggested titles. Are you going to expand the article?--Caspian blue 16:30, 8 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'm hoping to expand it, but I need a clearer idea what it should be about. If it's just "hardest language" I wouldn't have much to say other than "the question of which language is 'hardest' is futile...". Something about what makes language easy or difficult to learn (based on both characteristics of the language and characteristics of the learner) would make more sense, and that is actually a topic that is taken seriously in the literature. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 16:33, 8 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I started this article with the full awareness that it is going to report opnions on which languages are considered "hard" (or "hardest"), for whom.

The article has seen an extraordinary amount of trolling and confusion introduced by the well-meaning and clueless. If you do not know what the article is supposed to discuss, and if you do not have any references on the topic, how about just leaving it alone? This article will be based to 100% on quotable references. Our task is just to gather these referenes. If it is "anglocentric", too bad, that's because you didn't provide sufficient references from the Russian or German viewpoint.

Historically, what happened was that I happened to find a couple of references suggesting that Korean is the hardest-to-learn language. These references were suppressed by Kjoonlee (talk · contribs), apparently a Korean expat, for no reason other than WP:IDONTLIKEIT. After some time I became fed up and walked away. Since then, the confusion here on this talkpage has just become worse, with insightful comments such as Utopial's "Including some of these studies is also OR" (wtf?) who took it upon himself to call the artice "uneducated" and "a disgrace to the linguistics field" again for no coherent reason, although he did ramble about "a yahoo top contributor". What is going on here? Why does this topic attract comments of such abysmal qualtity? --dab (𒁳) 20:04, 9 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure whether that's addressed to me or to everyone. I agree that many of the comments above are abysmal, and that is part of why I was trying to start a discussion about improving the article; if my comments are abysmal, too, though, I would appreciate hearing why you think so. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 20:47, 9 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
As for "our task is just to gather those references"...well, as for me, I tend to believe that Wikipedia articles should be more than just collecting/listing/quoting references. There's a lot to be said for exercising judgment and using knowledge of the field (which, based on your well-informed comments, I assume you have) to decide what information is worthy of inclusion and to mold it into a coherent article. If we were just doing nothing but gathering and spitting back references, there would be no way to stop people from filling up this article with whatever garbage they find floating around (and, as you have noticed, the internet is already full of unreliable garbage on this topic). And if the only goal of this article is to report unreliable opinions of bloggers (since that is what almost all the discussion online is--as I explained above, I don't see this topic get serious attention from academics), then how would it be encyclopedic? There are tons of little topics that bloggers spout opinions about, we don't necessarily have articles on all of them. The article ought to be about a topic that actually exists and is taken seriously. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 20:52, 9 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Dab wrote: Historically, what happened was that I happened to find a couple of references suggesting that Korean is the hardest-to-learn language. These references were suppressed by Kjoonlee (talk · contribs), apparently a Korean expat, for no reason other than WP:IDONTLIKEIT.
dab, I think you should explain to people here exactly how the Wexler study that you found shows that Korean is the hardest language for toddlers to learn. And then when they understand it, you could put it back in. Laws dr (talk) 20:06, 14 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The Wexler study does not show that at all; you are twisting its meaning around, as I explained above. Either you're a POV-pusher or you simply don't understand basic linguistics; either way, you should not re-add the irrelevant study. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 20:19, 14 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
One of the couple of references that Dab said he found was the Wexler study. As you can see from the above quote he still holds that the Wexler study 'does' show that Korean is the hardest for toddlers to learn. Now what beats me is why he doesn't explain in detail how the study shows this. He's a linguist too. Laws dr (talk) 05:14, 17 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Well, it doesn't show that. It shows that one feature of Korean is acquired later than that feature is in the other languages that Wexler happened to test; that doesn't prove anything about all languages in the world and it doesn't prove anything about Korean as a whole since it is only considering one feature. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 05:39, 17 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
dab, you're not helping at all. And I'm no expat. I still think you're not being very logical here. --Kjoonlee 04:16, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Korean was long ranked the most difficult language for English speakers by the FSI, though it looks as though that place is now taken by Japanese. (Though if you ignore orthography, I can think of several languages more difficult than either.) kwami (talk) 01:21, 3 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Could you give the source for "Korean was long ranked the most difficult language for English speakers by the FSI"?Laws dr (talk) 16:34, 17 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Also what are the several languages that you can think of that are more difficult than either? Laws dr (talk) 18:31, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Why does that matter? No one cares what random Wikipedia editors think about which languages are hard. We're here to discuss improving the article, not to share our opinions. If you want to share your opinions about Korean, I suggest you find another place to do so. rʨanaɢ talk/contribs 18:40, 18 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Awkward carveout of topic for an article

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I feel this article treats an artificially constricted topic. Replacing it with a new article on a slightly more general topic e.g. Comparative difficulty of acquisition of various languages (human) (I'm not really suggesting that as a title) would allow a more relaxed discussion of the features of various languages that tend to make them more or less easy to learn, without the narrow focus on "more difficult." EEng (talk) 00:02, 28 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

See discussion above. rʨanaɢ (talk) 01:15, 28 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oops, I confess my eyes glazed over when scanning the Talk page here. Keep up the good work. EEng (talk) 03:13, 28 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

the topic of this article was perfectly fine before people ruined it. It was the meme of "hardest language". So what if "hardest language" doesn't hold up as a scientific definition? Wikipedia has lots of articles on pop culture memes. --dab (𒁳) 10:41, 28 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Wikipedia has lots of similar articles" is not an argument for notability (see wp:OTHERSTUFF). For the topic to be restricted to the popular perception of the relative difficulty of various languages, there would need to be reliable sources discussing such popular perceptions. Are there? (And here, BTW, we run into a really, really serious parochialism issue: such perceptions without doubt vary widely depending on the mother tongue of the perceiver. How could an intelligible article comprehend all that -- or would it just be "...perceptions among speakers of English"?) EEng (talk) 15:01, 28 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This topic deserves an article on Wikipedia for the simple reason that it is one of the most common questions that linguists get asked by students and laymen. It is one of the most popular questions on Yahoo! Answers. It is convenient to have this article on Wikipedia for the ease of organizing all the ramifications to the question in one place. I have actually referred questioners to this very article rather than spending too much time dealing with all the possibilities and issues involved. If an encyclopedia is a place to find answers to common questions, then this article is perfect since it deals with a very common question with all the details in a single place. It is a perfect article for an encyclopedia that is user friendly. --Taivo (talk) 15:44, 28 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

OK now, um, what question is "one of the most popular questions"? Is it, Which language is hardest? (whatever that means)? Or is it, What are the popular perceptions regarding which languageis hardest? ? Anyway, Wikipedia can't have an article simply because it deals with an oft-posed question. If there are no reliable sources which can act as a basis for a presentation of actual answers to such a question (or, at least, of a framework by which the question might be usefully attacked), then it can't be the subject of a Wikipedia article. As it stands the article has few or no such sources. EEng (talk) 17:34, 28 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The question is "What is the hardest language (to learn)?" Why shouldn't an encyclopedia answer common questions? It seems quite arrogant of encyclopedia makers to require users to dig for data rather than making it easy to find. Where else would a reader answer this question? In several different places in the encyclopedia otherwise. This article actually does offer a good framework from which the question can be attacked from several angles. Does that mean that the article as it now stands is perfect? No. But it means that there is a very useful framework to attack the question here--second language acquisition issues, availability of data issues, U.S. government measurements for how it measures "most difficult", etc. There is, of course, no concrete answer that fits all people, but this article approaches the question from a number of useful angles and will enlighten the casual reader who doesn't want to dig in twenty articles for the answer (assuming the reader even knows which of twenty articles will give pieces of the puzzle). And your contention that unless an article can be based on a single source then it shouldn't be here is rather unencyclopedic, actually. There are many articles that are based on multiple sources. If you require a single principal source for each article then you've simply built a collection of book reports rather than an encyclopedia. --Taivo (talk) 17:55, 28 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Personally I think that, once we do the research and put in the work, we can have the best of both worlds: an article that both answers a common question, and does so in an academic and accurate way. That would be something like what we have now, only cleaned up a lot: Hardest language should redirect to something like "what makes languages hard to learn" (not in that wording of course, but a title that expresses that), and the first section of the article should probably address the issue that there is no one "hardest" language (for all the reasons we have discussed before), which will answer the common question, and then the rest of the article would outline factors that contribute to what makes a particular language harder or easier (stuff like relatedness to known languages) and what general factors contribute to how well a person learns a language (stuff like motivation and aptitude). That way we can still answer the question that, admittedly, most uninformed people are coming here about, but without "pandering" to what we personally know is a silly caricature of language. The general structure of what the article should be, I think, is pretty clear; all that remains is to find sources and actually fill that in, something I have not yet sat down and tried to do.rʨanaɢ (talk) 18:04, 28 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I completely agree. --Taivo (talk) 18:27, 28 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't say an article should be based only on a single source. I also didn't say an article shouldn't try to answer questions people might have; I said that along with good intentions there must exist one or more reliable sources on which the article can be based. In particular, if such answers must be arrived at by synthesizing bits of 20 other articles, and there is no source (or to be clear, are no sources) which have done that work already, then Wikipedia can't present such answers. See wp:No_original_research#Synthesis_of_published_material_that_advances_a_position. Good luck to you all in refining the scope and building the article; I was just making a passing observation. EEng (talk) 19:45, 28 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

British Foreign Office study

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I keep reading about a study by the British Foreign Office that found the most difficult language to learn for British diplomats. (For example, on this article at usingenglish.com.) However, I haven't been able to locate the original source, and I can find no mention of it on the Foreign Office website. Is anyone aware of where it might be found? Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 01:23, 16 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have sent an email to the Foreign Office about this. I can imagine they are busy, so I don't know if they will be able to respond. I will give an update here if I hear anything from them. Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 01:44, 18 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I found a document on the Foreign Office Personnel Rules, which states that, among other things, the overseas allowance for diplomats is "also paid for language skills, varying according to the difficulty of the language". There may be more on this on their website - I shall have a look. Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 13:23, 18 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I can't find anything on pay scales for Foreign Office staff, but it appears from this page that this information will be published eventually. No idea when, though. If it comes to it, it looks like we could request the information through a Freedom of Information Request - however I think that may be a little extreme! These quotes of Basque, Japanese and Hungarian being on the top of the Foreign Office's difficult language list must have come from somewhere though. We just need to find out where. Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 14:32, 18 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I got a nice reply from the man at the National Archives. From the search he did for me, it looks like this might be the document we are looking for: 'Hard' languages and their relative degree of difficulty. It looks like I will have to shell out some cash to get this document into digital form, so I'd like to make sure it's the one we're after before I get an estimate. It is quite old (1950), and it seems reasonable to assume that the Foreign Office may have changed the way they measure language difficulty since then. Does anyone have advice? Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 15:01, 18 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Further searching turns up three more documents, although the first still looks like the most likely.[1][2][3] Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 15:11, 18 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move

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The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
Delisted - withdrawn by nominator.

{{Requested move/dated|Comparative difficulty of languages for native English speakers}}

Most difficult language to learnComparative difficulty of languages for native English speakers — The difficulty of a language depends highly on what languages you already speak. The present title, however, implies that there is a "most difficult language" in absolute terms, which is not the general view in linguistics as far as I can see. Restricting the article to the difficulty of languages for native English speakers would allow for a much clearer direction in writing the article, and would avoid much of the arguments about scope, adding new languages, etc. that can be seen on the talk page archives. I am also concerned that the concept of a "most difficult language" in absolute terms does not have any reliable sources that can prove its notability, whereas the concept of the most difficult language for native English speakers can be easily sourced. These issues have already been discussed at length on the talk page (here and here) and in the recent deletion discussion. Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 03:54, 20 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose. The proposed title is just far too long and detailed for a useful Wikipedia title. This article is about much more than just difficulty for English speakers. It is also about general issues of what makes language A hard (or easy) for speakers of language B to learn. Only a single paragraph is about English speakers. The title can be changed to something like language acquisition difficulty or some such other form, but this article is not just about English speakers, although 99% of the readers will be English speakers and the paragraph on English difficulty is appropriate. I agree that there is no absolute "hardest language" and the current title is probably not the best, but the proposed title is abominable and fails to entail the majority of the article's content, focusing on a single paragraph. --Taivo (talk) 07:06, 20 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It is true that there is only a very small amount of material in the "For native English speakers" section at the moment. I was thinking that if we could find consensus for a page move, then we could expand it considerably. Alternatively I had thought of being bold and creating a page on Comparative difficulty of languages for native English speakers myself, then proposing a merge with this page, but that seemed a little disingenuous given the amount of discussion already generated.
Actually, your suggestion of language acquisition difficulty is a good idea, I think, and would also avoid the arguments about the scope of the article. I was put off going this route initially because of your rejection of my suggestion of language complexity in the deletion discussion, but maybe I was too hasty. If we are going to go this route, how about difficulty of learning languages instead? There usually isn't a distinction made between language learning and language acquisition in SLA research these days, and language learning is more familiar to the layman. I did think of language learning difficulty, but somehow it reminds me too much of language difficulty, which is used mostly for speech impairments in the academic literature. What do you think? Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 07:58, 20 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
"Difficulty of Learning Languages" would be an acceptable title. --Taivo (talk) 16:38, 20 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support in theory. The article should be renamed, but it should be simply named and not use some long drawn out psycho-babble to completly describe the topic. The most common name should be preferred in order to increase the possibility of the article showing up in internet searches. If I was searching for this topic on Google,I would most likely type in Most difficult language to learn for English speakers. A bit dumbed down from what has already been proposed, but its straight and to the point, and will increase the likelihood of the page showing up in a common English language search engine result.--Jojhutton (talk) 13:30, 20 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If we're going with simple names, then why not go the whole hog and make the title Hardest language for native English speakers? (I would insist on the native, because otherwise it could include people speaking English as a second language, which would open a whole other can of worms.) I understand wanting to get the page high in search rankings, but the problem with titles like this is that they imply that there really is a "hardest language". There certainly seem to be "harder languages" for native speakers, but I don't think the sources support the idea of "one language to rule them all". If we imply the latter I think we might see lots of rehashing of the "my language is harder than your language" edit wars, and I'd like to avoid that if possible. Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 14:27, 20 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I just took the begining of what this article is already titled. Didn't think that was going to be controversial. I said my peace.--Jojhutton (talk) 14:39, 20 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No need to apologise. I'd like the title to be simple, too. It's just a matter of finding the right balance between all the different factors. It would be great to have your input on the rest of the suggestions here, too. Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 14:48, 20 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
You don't have to wait for the outcome of this discussion to do that. I think under any title that section is rather dubious. In any case, you should feel free to remove it, and if anyone objects to it, then they can discuss it somewhere else on the talk page. This discussion is purely about the page move. Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 14:48, 20 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No. I oppose the removal of the possibility of acquisition section. It is, of course, one of the factors involved. Your deletion of this section has been reverted, so you must get consensus for deleting it on this Talk page before removing it again. But that discussion is not relevant here in this move proposal. --Taivo (talk) 16:41, 20 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Rather than changing the title to accommodate current limitations with the article (anglocentrism in particular), and in doing so solidify this limited perspective, why not just edit the article to address these issues so that the article is more deserving of a more general title? I have already pointed out ways the article can be improved (here and here), although the last time I tried to bring this up the discussion got mostly overwhelmed by a repetition of an ongoing nationalistic argument. Anyway, the point is, this article could be an article on factors that make a language difficult to learn and on which languages have a reputation for being difficult. rʨanaɢ (talk) 16:55, 20 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I do share your concern - my idea for renaming the page wasn't simply to get rid of the more general perspective, it was to move it to another page such as Language transfer or language complexity, or however else we wanted to work out the details. However, it seems like most people here are happier with a more general title, so I think I'll change my !vote to speed things up. In any case, if a section on "difficulty for native English speakers" in a more general article became long enough, it would probably end up being split off into a stand-alone article anyway. Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 02:43, 21 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose "Comparative difficulty of languages for native English speakers"; Support "Difficulty of learning languages". What the article says may apply to spoken language, but a written language that requires learning thousands of characters, like Chinese or Japanese, is objectively more difficult to learn than one than one that uses an alphabetic script. Kauffner (talk) 10:29, 21 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think "native English speakers" also implies native English readers and writers, so there would be no need to worry about leaving out literacy with a title of "Comparative difficulty of languages for native English speakers". In fact, I'm in favour of including reading and writing in the article, as I argued in the deletion discussion. It still looks like Difficulty of learning languages is the more popular choice, however. Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 10:56, 21 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Reading and writing should be no more than a single paragraph here, although an appropriate paragraph. The primary difficulties in learning language are the linguistic aspects of that language, not the orthographic aspects. One can learn Japanese and Chinese perfectly well without ever looking at a printed text, just as native speakers of any language can be perfectly fluent yet perfectly illiterate. So any discussion of reading/writing difficulty must be subordinated in this article and not emphasized. --Taivo (talk) 13:38, 21 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Have you tried learning a foreign language? I think the method you are describing is a bit unusual. In general, students rely on textbooks and dictionaries, so real-world language learners almost always write better than they speak. Of course, other methods are possible. You can learn Chinese with the pinyin writing system and Japanese with the hiragana writing system. Computer-based learning allows a greater focus on the spoken language than tapes do. But the article should focus on how people really learn language. Kauffner (talk) 03:30, 22 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I do see what you mean - both of you. However, this seems more like a general editing issue than a page-move issue. Let's save this space for discussion about the page move. (And, yes, I know that I'm as guilty of going off-topic as anyone.) Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 05:00, 22 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Phonology section

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A good seminal paper to cite there would be the following:

  • Flege, James Emil (1987). "The production of 'new' and 'similar' phones in a foreign language: evidence for the effect of equivalence classification" (PDF). Journal of Phonetics. 15.

rʨanaɢ (talk) 14:52, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Phonology edits

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It is important to remember that this article must be written accurately. My edits to the phonology section were to remove the absolutes that implied "all speakers have trouble (or ease) doing X". Japanese speakers can HEAR the difference between [r] and [l], the problem they have is in producing the difference when they speech center is conditioned to vary them by environment. English speakers have the same problem with initial [ts] and [ŋ]--they can hear the sounds there, but they just have a very difficult time producing them there. --Taivo (talk) 17:08, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I am all for making the article accurate. Surely the best thing to do in this case is improve the example, rather than taking it out altogether? It is a lot harder to understand the concept without it. And yes, Japanese speakers can hear the difference between /l/ and /r/, but they put them in the same mental category - the English words light and right do sound like the same word to a Japanese speaker. It's the mental category that I'm interested in here. Is there a wording for the example that you would be happy with? Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 22:03, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, the example is "[l] and [r] are allophones in Japanese so a Japanese speaker may have difficulty acquiring them". That is perfectly clear and all that is necessary. If the reader doesn't understand what an allophone is, then that is why there is a wikilink. We cannot go through Wikipedia and explain in detail every technical term every time it is encountered. The whole issue of "mental category" is not an appropriate expansion for this. It's also not really relevant. Japanese speakers hear the difference between [r] and [l] just fine, but they have not been trained to produce them in the "wrong" place. It's not about mental categories, it's about learning how to produce them outside of their normal environment. English speakers can hear a word-initial [ts] perfectly well in [tsar] or [tsitsi], but since they've never learned how to produce the sound in this location, that's the problem--not some "mental category". Just as English speakers have never learned to produce pharyngeals, speakers must learn to produce [ts] in the "wrong place". --Taivo (talk) 23:19, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It may be "perfectly clear and all that is necessary" to someone who already has specialist knowledge, but I don't think this is the case for the lay reader. We should not assume that readers will know the difference between phones, allophones, and phonemes. I think we have two choices - we can either make lay readers hunt through the allophone article to find a clear example of what it is, just to make sense of the point we are trying to make; or, we can include a short example in the text of this article. I don't think expert readers would be put at a disadvantage if we included such an example. Is it really such a bad idea? Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 00:05, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The example you previously included was simplistic and inaccurate. I find it hard to imagine an accurate example that doesn't take up more space than it really deserves. "right" and "light" do not sound alike to Japanese speakers. The question isn't whether or not Japanese speakers can hear the difference. The question is whether they have learned how to place one sound in the environment of the other or not. --Taivo (talk) 00:31, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
They may not sound alike, but they do sound like the same word. I have personally taught Japanese students of English many such /l/ and /r/ word pairs, and invariably the reaction I get is "They're the same!" This seems to be the exact question we are discussing to me. You seem to be very forthright over something that seems like common sense to me, so maybe I've missed something. Could you explain how the ability to hear the difference between the words is different from the ability to place one sound in the environment of the other? (Should this be "move one sound out of the environment of the other"?) Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 02:46, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Here is what goes on: 1) When a speaker learns their language, they learn to produce certain sounds in certain environments; 2) they can still hear the difference between the sounds, thus they can identify non-native speakers who may confuse the sounds; 3) when learning a language with those sounds in other environments, they have to learn how to produce those sounds in a new environment, something that may or may not be easy to do (for example, when learning Swahili, English speakers must learn to produce [ŋ] at the beginning of a word); 4) their level of success at learning to produce those sounds in new environments marks their language to a greater or lesser degree as being "foreign" to the speakers of the language they are learning. Trying to make it sound like Japanese speakers are normally incapable of hearing the difference between [l] and [r] seems rather chauvinistic. It's simply not true. --Taivo (talk) 04:53, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It's not just me - there's a whole article on this subject: Japanese speakers learning r and l. Of course they can tell the difference between the allophones, and identify people using the wrong allophone as having a foreign accent. This does not mean that they consciously distinguish between English words using /l/ and words using /r/. The article I linked to points out that Japanese speakers can distinguish between [l] and [r] when they are not mentally processed as speech. I am not contesting this. I'm interested in the mental representation of the sounds when they are processed as speech. Actually, that sounds like a pretty good working definition of a phoneme to me. Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 06:29, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
There's a difference between Japanese speakers processing [l] and [r] in Japanese words and identifying and using them in English words. --Taivo (talk) 06:34, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thinking about it, I still object to the overt mention (besides the Wikilink I put in) of the right/light example. The reason is that linguists are very clear about what Japanese can and cannot do physically and linguistically. 1) Physically, they can hear the difference between [r] and [l]. 2) Linguistically, they don't notice the difference because of their linguistic conditioning. Given a sentence like, "Japanese speakers cannot hear the difference between [r] and [l]", an unsophisticated reader could easily infer that Japanese speakers are not physically capable of distinguishing the sounds rather than the very restricted linguistic sense of that statement. That's why I'm opposed to some simplistic statement and a longer statement that correctly captures the linguistic subtlety isn't really necessary in this context. --Taivo (talk) 14:43, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Allophone" is really not all that technically esoteric or abstruse of a term -- it's among the first things students learn in an introductory beginning Linguistics 101 class, and a number of people outside formal academic linguistics are familiar with it (including many foreign language teachers). If removing the term "allophone" would create difficulties for the article, I support keeping it... AnonMoos (talk) 15:39, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The term "allophone" is just fine and should stay. There was a further example that said, "Japanese speakers cannot hear the difference between right and light" (or pretty close to that wording). I removed it for the reasons cited above. --Taivo (talk) 16:37, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Diagram of basic procedure to determine whether two sounds are allophones
Anyway, I just now made a nifty little chart and added it to article Allophone, which I hope is helpful...AnonMoos (talk) 21:18, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This sentence is a bit of a mouthful: "These sounds do not always appear to pose significant problems for second language learners, unless they are radically different than sounds in the native language, such as pharyngeals or clicks to a speaker whose native language does not contain them." Is there a way of making this more readable? Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 03:01, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The whole second half of the sentence (after "than sounds in the native language") can be easily deleted. --Taivo (talk) 04:53, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: page moved. This move does not mean that the suggestions for merging or considering a better name are invalid. Those efforts should continue. Vegaswikian (talk) 21:31, 18 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]


Most difficult language to learnDifficulty of learning languages — Relisted. --rgpk (comment) 20:46, 4 April 2011 (UTC) I think difficulty is more appropriate than most difficult because there doesn't seem to be agreement in the literature about which the best way to measure difficulty is, let alone which language is the most difficult. If we imply that there is a "most difficult" language in the title, we also invite the argument of who the language is most difficult for; difficulty of learning a second language depends heavily on what languages a person speaks, and we do not have space to follow this through for every language combination. Most difficult could also imply that there is a "most difficult" language in absolute terms, but as far as I can see the literature does not back this idea up. These issues have already been discussed at length on the talk page (here and here), in the recent deletion discussion, and in the recent requested move discussion that was delisted halfway through. Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 02:44, 27 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not quite sure I see your point. "Difficulty of learning languages" suggests additional languages to me. If it was singular "Difficulty of learning language" then I would think of first language learning, but with plural I think of second language learning. Also, if you wanted to distinguish between these two then the logical choice would be something like "Difficulty of learning second languages", would it not? Why "relative"? Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 11:15, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Because you're comparing one to another. It is difficult to learn any second language, but it is more difficult to learn some than others. That's the core point of the article. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 11:31, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, only some of the article will be about which languages are harder to learn, and people seem to be keen to restrict that to languages that are hard to learn for native English speakers. The beginning of the article will be about what makes a language hard to learn in general, with reference to individual features of language such as phonology, lexus, etc. Or at least that's the impression that I got from the talk page and the deletion discussion. In fact, I got shouted down when I tried to make the focus of this page more specifically on hard languages for native English speakers. So a large part of the article wouldn't be about comparing languages at all. Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 12:19, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
adding relative would be ok by me. Johnbod (talk) 13:02, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It would make the title longer, which is not desirable according to the Wikipedia article title guidelines, and also I don't see anything about "difficulty of learning languages" which implies "not relative". Also this discussion is for the proposed title of difficulty of learning languages, not a different one. We would have to have a new discussion for "Relative difficulty of learning languages". (In fact, if you look at the previous requested move discussion, this is exactly what happened for "Difficulty of learning languages".) Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 14:11, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
There's no need to get wound up in red tape. If consensus goes for a different title than the one in the nomination any closing admin with a brain will know what to do. As for the length, I assume that's a nod to the previous RM where the proposed title was quite excessively wordy. While article titles are supposed to be concise, they don't need to be as brief as absolutely possible. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 14:20, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Well, that's what I thought... The previous RM discussion seemed to be in favour of moving to "Difficulty of learning languages", but when I tried to move it myself after it was delisted, my move was reverted. That's why we're having a separate RM for this title. Curiously, none of the other people who posted in that discussion have done so here. I certainly can't blame them for running out of stamina though! Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 14:58, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support per Mr. Stradivarius and Bejnar. Jenks24 (talk) 08:32, 9 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose That title makes it sound as if what makes languages in general hard to learn (as opposed to, say, math), which is not an accurate reflection of the content of the article (which is more about what makes, e.g., Arabic hard to learn as opposed to, say, French). On the other hand, trying to accurately describe what this article is trying to be about would probably end up leading to some pretty academic-sounding titles (e.g. "Factors influencing difficulty in the acquisition of second languages"), which I don't think is very desirable either. To be honest, I am starting to get more and more attracted by the idea others have raised before regarding merging this with Second language acquisition: the main goal of this article has been (I think) for people looking for "what's the hardest language?" to stumble across this and be set on the right path ("oh, there really is no hardest language?" "oh, there are all these different factors that affect how difficult a language is?"); that could be done simply with a redirect to some section of Second language acquisition which would contain a trimmed version of this and a conclusion that there is no one "hardest language". In such a case, a lot of the chaff from this article would need to be trimmed, although I guess if we wanted to have a longer treatment here we could have it as a {{seealso}} linked from that subsection of the SLA article, and then a more academic-y title would be ok I think. rʨanaɢ (talk) 15:18, 9 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I can definitely see where you're coming from here, and I said as much back in my very first comment in the deletion discussion. It's certainly true that the majority of the information that would be in this article is already on the wiki somewhere - for example language transfer, order of acquisition, and contrastive analysis, just to name three off the top of my head. Couple that with the fact that this topic is not generally considered a valid one in SLA, and the case for merging is very good in my opinion. All we would need is a section in second language acquisition linking to all the relevant pages. My machinations here with both of the move discussions have been to make this article into something that is valid in SLA, and that is also acceptable with other editors. To be honest, I really don't mind which specific solution we come up with, I just don't think the current title and topic are acceptable. It looks like the suggestion of "Difficulty of learning languages", which was very much a compromise on my part anyway, is also reaching deadlock with your opposition. In this case, I'd really like to hear from Taivo, who was the most vocal advocate of keeping this page. I'll invite him to comment here and we can take things from there. Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 16:50, 10 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I'll stick my finger in here to hold our place in the book, but I'll be gone the rest of the day and won't be able to reply until tomorrow. --Taivo (talk) 17:15, 10 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Rather than having multiple discussions in a formal RFM every time someone comes up with a new title for this article, perhaps we should initiate a single discussion and just brainstorm ideas for titles in a list. We can winnow out the obvious non-starters and then discuss the two or three that catch some support. --Taivo (talk) 04:17, 15 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
As far as collapsing this article into another one, I disagree. We need to consider the questions that readers will ask that they want answered. This is one of the obvious ones that has to do with language (based on how often it's asked in places like Yahoo!Answers). Readers should not have to go digging through another article (or two) to find the tidbits of information scattered through the articles like Hansel and Gretel's bread crumbs. --Taivo (talk) 04:20, 15 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If we are going to change the title, then this one seems to have won clear support. Judging from people's responses, the problem now would seem to be deciding whether to go with "Difficulty of learning languages" or whether to merge. As for making readers dig through an article, that needn't be a problem - redirects can link to a specific section on a page, so if someone typed in, for example, "hardest language" into the search box, then it would take them straight to the right section of second language acquisition. I'm sure it's possible to give a useful and concise answer to this question in the space of one section. Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 12:27, 15 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Grammar

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I think Grammar is what could determine the difficulty of a language alot more, followed by the phonetics (such as pronunciation). Like an isolating language is easy, and an agglutinative language is intermediate but an inflecting language is hardcore. I can very much call Basque the hardest language ever, it takes like books and books to explain it's grammar. Those scientific racists are ignorant, they say Europeans have a sophisticated language. Just look at English, it's not that hard, I'm not even sure where English falls into.

Here's a following example of a made up extremely difficult language.

"I love rainbows

I/Me = Fulazmingaru love = Pustaskishamaruna Rainbows = Baluumoucharamu

" Balum Fulaz Garu muuchmaramiyat Taskishapustaruna minsijirats " — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.159.9.234 (talkcontribs) 06:36, 1 April 2011 (UTC) [reply]

I think you're right. The article is definitely in need of a section on grammar. I'm afraid that your example can't be included though, due to Wikipedia's policy of not including original research. Feel free to contribute material on this yourself - just make sure that you cite reliable sources for all your statements, and keep a neutral point of view. All the best. Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 06:43, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
What makes grammar difficult are inherent complexity and irregularity, as in Greek and many polysynthetic languages, as well as divergence from one's frame of reference. Basque isn't really all that difficult, it's just different from typical European languages. I'll give you an example of what makes English difficult: the word "the". That is very difficult to acquire for anyone who doesn't have articles in their language. More difficult than grammar, IMO, are the intricacies of the lexicon: when you use which word and how. A well-known example from English is "in the street" for something which is on the street, while "on the street" means something different entirely. That's far more daunting than grammar, because there is effectively no end to it. Mandarin is supposed to be grammatically simple, but the fact that you can't just string words together in their proper order and inflection due to lexical complications can make it more difficult to speak coherently than a language like Basque. — kwami (talk) 06:54, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The case for merging

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Well, at last, we have reached a point of closure with Vegaswikian moving the article to Difficulty of learning languages. But just as he said, we shouldn't let this stop the discussion about the possibility of merging this article with second language acquisition. Myself, I have begun to feel that the real issue in whether we should merge or not is that of space. It feels better to me to have this topic as a section inside another article, because it is not usually considered a valid topic in SLA, and giving it its own article seems to be giving the subject a credence that it doesn't deserve. But, as Taivo says, it is useful for readers, and while being useful is not a good reason to have an article on something, it is something that can be taken into consideration.

To balance these two viewpoints, I propose a practical solution: we should merge if we can condense the article down enough, but if we can't, we should leave it as a standalone page. As the present main contributor to second language acquisition, I am perhaps in a special position to comment on this. I can confirm that the article is pressed for space - I have already split long sections out into sub-articles, and even so, it is still missing some essential sections such as sociolinguistic views on SLA. I am also concerned about undue weight - a large section on difficulty might erroneously cause readers to think it is as important a topic in SLA as say, interlanguage or sequences of acquisition. Is it possible to work difficulty into the article without causing an undue weight problem? I would like to hear your views. Mr. Stradivarius 13:53, 20 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Rosenberg 1979

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About Rosenberg, A. (1979). Lingvisticæ Investigationes:III 3(2). 323-339 - this study was really not intended to be taken seriously. I've read it, and the author basically goes through all the major languages looking for the equivalent of English's "It's all Greek to me". For example, although English picks out Greek, the Greeks have a phrase that says "that sounds Chinese to me" (actually, I can't remember the actual phrase or language - this is just an example off the top of my head to demonstrate the method). He then goes through all similar phrases in all the languages, and works out who is at the top of the tree. It just happens to be Chinese. I notice the sentence in the article contains caveats about his claims, but I don't it belongs anywhere near a section that is trying to represent scientific consensus on the matter. We could maybe include it at the bottom of the article in a "myth of the hardest language" section or similar if we find enough pop science examples... Mr. Stradivarius 09:54, 2 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Okay. I did not understand the context of his statement. The context of his statement should be added and it should be re-labeled "myth of the hardest language" section.--Ephert (talk) 10:07, 2 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Reference

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Has a decent discussion of some of the issues mentioned at this article, as well as links to some other sources that might be more WP:RS (although less accurate--this source has some valuable caveats about those other sources and the woman who wrote it is more of an expert than the writers of the more "official" sources probably are, but unfortunately it's still just a blog post). rʨanaɢ (talk) 21:07, 4 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This article states a list of 5 most difficult languages in the world with details. This might be very useful for those who seeks to learn a new language.

Merger completed

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Greetings and salutations, all! I would like to thank this opportunity to inform you all that I have taken the liberty of merging all of the content of this article into the article w:Second-language acquisition per TEMPLATE:afd-mergeto (Date: January 2013). Thank you and happy wikiying! Illegitimate Barrister (talk) 06:39, 6 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]