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07-23-2006, 10:13 PM
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#31 | | Member
Join Date: Feb 2006
Threads: 45
Posts: 483
| Germanic "barbaric" tribe invasions were actually a big cause for the fall of the Western Roman Empire. | 
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07-24-2006, 06:16 AM
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#32 | | Member
Join Date: Jun 2006
Threads: 40
Posts: 357
| German is not a Romance language, but look at its alphabet. | |
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07-24-2006, 06:38 AM
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#33 | | Senior Member
Join Date: May 2006 Location: VAN down by the RIVER! Gender: Unknown
Threads: 69
Posts: 1,497
| From those that I'm slightly familiar with: Enllish, German and French -- the French is the hardest. German is the easiest. From other languages, I would say that Russian is of a same difficulty as French, walking together with Ukrainian but I can't judge that as I'm a native speaker. | |
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07-24-2006, 10:58 AM
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#34 | | Senior Member
Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Hicktown, USA
Threads: 34
Posts: 1,431
| Have you taken a look at Russian grammar though? Personally, I haven't, but I had a Russian friend who went to school in Russia through 7th grade (I knew her during 8th) and she said that she didn't even know or remember all the rules to proper grammar. | |
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07-24-2006, 11:09 AM
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#35 | | Senior Member
Join Date: May 2006 Location: VAN down by the RIVER! Gender: Unknown
Threads: 69
Posts: 1,497
| I came to US in the midst of 7th grade and yes, I was studying Russian grammar extensively. It is harder than English, especially with different transformations of words and exceptions from rules.
However, I should mention that US schools don't pay as much attention to grammar as any ex-USSR school would do (it even backtraces to hymnasiums before revolution of communism  ), as I have younger brother in school here. Well, not knowing what a perfect tense is in 3rd grade, grhm! isn't exactly an idea of extensive grammar learning.
Study of grammar may not be so useful from first glance but it really helps learning another language and we were _required_ to learn three: Russian(native for our region), Ukrainian, and English.
Last edited by mr_chipset : 07-24-2006 at 11:16 AM.
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07-24-2006, 11:14 AM
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#36 | | Junior Member
Join Date: Apr 2006
Threads: 10
Posts: 122
| Chinese cant be that hard.. i know an guy who has been tutored the last 4 yrs to speak chinese..and now he's fluent with the language..its really amazing how he picked up the language..lol but funny at the same time seeing an italian guy speak chinese.. | |
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07-24-2006, 11:27 AM
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#37 | | Senior Member
Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: Veni Vidi Vici West Hartford, Connecticut
Threads: 79
Posts: 1,177
| Being fluent with a lagnuage doesn't mean you've mastered it. We speak fluent English, but have we mastered it?
English is actually based from German which Latin influenced somewhat. For example, the German Alphabet is similar to the Latin Alphabet.
The Fall of the Ancient Roman Empire was just loss of political power, it practically became the Byzantine Empire after Constantine announced Christianity. | |
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07-24-2006, 11:31 AM
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#38 | | Senior Member
Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: Veni Vidi Vici West Hartford, Connecticut
Threads: 79
Posts: 1,177
| You know what would be cool? If Latin came back to life by having a country nationalize it as their official language. The name "Roman Empire" will be used in the future because it symbolizes power. | |
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07-24-2006, 02:03 PM
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#39 | | Junior Member
Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Michigan
Threads: 12
Posts: 205
| I'd have to go with Spanish. I took French for a little, and I thought it was easier than Spanish (after you get the spelling and pronunciation down). I heard German is pretty easy...a lot like English. But even though you don't want to hear it, Latin really is the hardest Romance language out there. You have to conjugate literally everything in a bazillion different declensions, conjugations, and a whole bunch of other ****. | |
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07-24-2006, 02:26 PM
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#40 | | Senior Member
Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: Veni Vidi Vici West Hartford, Connecticut
Threads: 79
Posts: 1,177
| Tennis girl you're right because in Latin the syntax doesn't matter. That means you can place words any where in the sentence as long as you decline and conjugate everything correctly. It'll still make sense but it'll be really hard to translate. That's why reading Virgil, Homer, Plato, etc is really hard in Greek or Latin. | |
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07-24-2006, 02:58 PM
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#41 | | Senior Member
Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Hicktown, USA
Threads: 34
Posts: 1,431
| Quote: |
You know what would be cool? If Latin came back to life by having a country nationalize it as their official language. The name "Roman Empire" will be used in the future because it symbolizes power.
| Only if cool = scary... | |
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04-26-2008, 07:59 AM
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#42 | | Member
Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: New York
Threads: 49
Posts: 375
| According to this U.S. government website (which seems pretty accurate), the most difficult Latin-scripted flourishing languages for English speakers to learn are Finnish, Estonian, and Hungarian (all Uralic languages). Vietnamese is at least as difficult as (and probably more so than) these, but its Latinization is only a relatively recent, artificial addition. | |
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04-26-2008, 09:53 AM
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#43 | | Junior Member
Join Date: Mar 2008 Location: Dallas Gender: Male
Threads: 9
Posts: 252
| WOULD EVERYONE PLEASE STOP SAYING HINDI/CHINESE/JAPANESE/RUSSIAN/ETC. THE QUESTION IS LANGUAGE WITH THE ROMAN ALPHABET. CHINESE, THAI, HINDI, ETC ARE NOT IN THE ROMAN ALPHABET....right? that just the way i interpreted the question, i don't mean to be like a *****...I know the all caps looks harsh...
anyways...,
Vietnamese... they're an Asiatic language (with the tones) and use only the romanized alphabet. Next may come Indonesian/Malay/Turkish/Filipino...
all use the Roman alphabet....
Indonesian,Malay, and Filipino don't really have tones. But the way the sentence is structured and the translation to the words is sort of off. Hard for a westerner.
Turkish, Its romanized, as well as several other Muslim-based languages (Like Kurd I think...), but its pretty much romanized Arabic with different sounds for several words I hear.
Vietnamese wins(in my book) because it is romanized... but for a westerner...the tones are killer. The sentence structure is not too similar either.
but after all of those?...if you mean European language...
Probably English, we have so many grammar 'exceptions' and our laws are screwed up like why do we have a 'ph' in phone? why not just 'fone'...or why is through spelled all funny? why not just thru/throo/threw...I mean...sometimes the 'ch' sound is like 'champ' and the its like 'christ' or 'chloe' other times... we have borrowed words and soo much other stuff.
English is weird...
other then that, Polish seems difficult... | |
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