How do people judge the difficulty of a language they’re studying?

[sporedandroid]

I’m just wondering how people judge this. I was thinking about comparing the difficulty of the languages I’ve studied and how it differs from other people’s opinions. Since I mostly study and try to understand languages, while other people mainly try to speak the language maybe they’re judging it from a completely perspective. I keep hearing online about how easy Hebrew is to learn and I don’t agree at all.

Funny enough I’ve met two people who call Hebrew easy in real life. Both of them claimed to learn to read Hebrew in an hour or so. When I actually saw them read Hebrew they kept mixing up the letters and making silly mistakes. I guess no one has an agreed on a definition of reading Hebrew. Maybe their standard was memorizing the alphabet. My mom has plenty of stories of people who say Spanish is an easy language, but they end up sounding like Tarzan in Spanish.

[rdearman]

I don't have an answer for your question, but it did remind me of a discussion a long while back about different languages. The subject under discussion was that it appeared that for some languages the difficulty was loaded up front (Chinese, Arabic, etc) and that other languages the difficulty was back loaded (Spanish, Italian, etc). The argument went that although the beginning Chinese, Russian, or Arabic learner was presented with different script, difficult word construction (cases, etc) after the initial pain then language becomes easier to learn. Back loaded languages on the other hand were listed as Spanish, Italian, etc. and their difficult parts were after the beginner stage, when in order to use the language properly you have to dive into grammar and sentence construction.

Another thing you may be encountering is the Dunning–Kruger effect which is a cognitive bias in which people mistakenly assess their ability as greater than it is, and others who are better believe themselves worse. The idea being if you don't know how much you don't know, you assume you know a lot, but if you do know how much you don't know, you assume you're crap.

[Deinonysus]

Hungarian, Xhosa, Polish, and Navajo are very easy. They're written in the Latin alphabet so you already practically know them!

The two people you met clearly know nothing about learning languages. Being able to sound out Hebrew just enough to make it through your Bar/Bat Mitzvah does not mean that you speak Hebrew. I agree with rdearman, the Dunning-Kruger effect is in full force here.

[iguanamon]

For an English-speaker, my languages are fairly easy. I have riffed off Spanish to learn Portuguese; Ladino/Djudeo Espanyol; Catalan. I've leveraged Haitian Creole to gain a huge discount in Lesser Antilles French Creole... and I can read and understand a surprising amount of standard French as a bonus.

...I keep hearing online about how easy Hebrew is to learn and I don’t agree at all.
Funny enough I’ve met two people who call Hebrew easy in real life. Both of them claimed to learn to read Hebrew in an hour or so. When I actually saw them read Hebrew they kept mixing up the letters and making silly mistakes. I guess no one has an agreed on a definition of reading Hebrew. Maybe their standard was memorizing the alphabet. ...

When I learned Ladino/Djudeo-espanyol, I already spoke Spanish to a high level. The language nowadays is written in the Latin script. It took me a long time and a lot of reading in Hebrew Rashi script to actually get to where I could read Djudeo-espanyol easily. I started with a novel with parallel scripts on facing pages. I had the huge advantage of already knowing the language in its Latin script. I just needed to get used to Rashi and reading from right to left.

It took a lot of daily reading in Rashi to get to where I could read it easily. I was also exposed to the other Hebrew scripts- Modern Hebrew, Meruba (square), and Solitreo (Cursive Rashi). In the Ladino Bible, Hebrew proper names and place names are written in Hebrew script without vowels. It took me a long time to be able to read them and they still give me a bit of trouble from time to time. So, don't feel bad. It was difficult for me too and I had a lot more advantages than you do.

...My mom has plenty of stories of people who say Spanish is an easy language, but they end up sounding like Tarzan in Spanish.

There was an old thread on HTLAL called "Spanish- a wolf in sheep's clothing" or something like that. It's true. To get the grammar of the language right requires study, practice and work... just like a "harder" language. A lot of people think Portuguese is a "walk in the park" after learning Spanish, but the devil is indeed in the details. It takes a lot of work to keep the similar languages separate and get the grammar right. Despite my advantages, learning Portuguese was a bear at times for me. Still, it took me much less time and effort to get through than Spanish did.

At least these are languages that are close to English and each other. So, I've had major advantages in my learning. I can tell you this, that language-learning does get easier after you have at least one "under your belt" (learned to at least B2 equivalent) so to speak. Successfully learning a second language to a high level gives a learner certain benefits. Doing so means they now know have a much better idea of what works for them in learning. They know how a language works. They also know that there are good days and bad days in learning and how to persevere. These are all advantages that an experienced learner has that a monolingual beginner doesn't have... yet.

So, yes, self-learning any language as a monolingual beginner is not easy. Languages more distant from English are indeed harder for English-speakers to learn. Learning to read in a different script takes time and practice. Nobody would buy a language course if it said on the cover "Learn X in 5 years*" - *5 years of daily frustration and you'll still have more work to do and frustration for even more years... just not as much! Only $19.99! Operators standing by! Call NOW!

[rdearman]

"Learn X in 5 years*" - *5 years of daily frustration and you'll still have more work to do and frustration for even more years... just not as much! Only $19.99! Operators standing by! Call NOW!

Only 5 years? Shut up and take my money!

[jeff_lindqvist]

The topic Iguanamon mentioned:
Spanish: A wolf in sheep’s clothing

[El Forastero]

I recorded a video answering this question (In spanish) according to my own experiences and point of view. The reasons for considering a languages as difficult can be classified in two groups:

- Concerning the student: What is his native lnaguage? Is this his first foreign language? Does he need this language for studies or work? Does he have some native friends to practice with? is he going to visit / live the country this language is spoken in? Does he have enough time to study? How is his motivation? Even the apparently easiest language to learn could be the hardest if I have only one hour a week or no motivation at all.

- Concerning the language itself: Alphabet, phonetics, grammar, vocabulary... Even resources and teacher availability is implied, also some socio-politic contexts. For instance, if it's a forbidden language by the government, or if the language is considered less-prestigious than others. Learning an indigenous language from my country could be extremely difficult even though having an easy grammar, pronounciation, little vocabulary and a latin-based alphabet with no diacritics. Why? Because there's no books, methods or apps to learn it, nor teachers, institutes. The speakers live deep into the jungle and they prefer to speak spanish because of trade.

That's why, for me, Italian was so easy to learn (three monts from scratch to C1) and russian is a continuous struggle (Three months and I wouldn't pass the A1 exam yet)

This is my answer (in spanish):

[devilyoudont]

Well at least this makes me feel a little better about how completely difficult I find Spanish (which, one day I will return to)

[sporedandroid]

I grew up speaking Spanish and I’m most comfortable with English. I also was in French immersion for a year, but since I quit I’m definitely not fluent in French. I also tried to teach myself Icelandic as a teen. Partially to see how “hard” it is. I didn’t find it as hard as people said it was. They have intimidating long words, but I had no trouble spelling them. I also didn’t find the grammar on the online course too bad.

I mostly quit because of a lack of resources and progress. I would never say I’m fluent in Icelandic, but I think I have some idea of how difficult it is. When I started Hebrew it was way harder. Nothing seemed to stick in my memory. It felt a million times harder than Icelandic. I knew vocabulary would be harder. Everything felt harder. I keep hearing about how simplified and easy modern Hebrew is for people. After several months of doing subs2srs I’m starting to notice that the root system makes words easier to memorize.

It seems like Hebrew has the most upfront difficulty for vocabulary. It’s not just that it’s not Indo-European. The words are constructed differently, so they all seemed similar to me and I kept mixing them up. Learning the few Finnish words I learned felt more like learning Icelandic words that weren’t cognates. That didn’t happen with Hebrew.

[aokoye]

I’m just wondering how people judge this. I was thinking about comparing the difficulty of the languages I’ve studied and how it differs from other people’s opinions. Since I mostly study and try to understand languages, while other people mainly try to speak the language maybe they’re judging it from a completely perspective. I keep hearing online about how easy Hebrew is to learn and I don’t agree at all.

Funny enough I’ve met two people who call Hebrew easy in real life. Both of them claimed to learn to read Hebrew in an hour or so. When I actually saw them read Hebrew they kept mixing up the letters and making silly mistakes. I guess no one has an agreed on a definition of reading Hebrew. Maybe their standard was memorizing the alphabet. My mom has plenty of stories of people who say Spanish is an easy language, but they end up sounding like Tarzan in Spanish.

Not so shockingly, I think whether or not a language is easy or not is very subjective and very individual from person to person. I personally judge the ease/difficult of a language for myself based off of how easy a time I'm having with it. That is based off of, among other things, how related it is to the languages I speak well, how straight forward I find the grammar, to an extent how easy it is for me to learn the writing system, orthography, and so on.

With regards to Hebrew, it isn't at all uncommon, at least in the US, for a seemingly large segment Jewish people to refer to "reading Hebrew" as the ability to "decode" the script. Understanding the words and sentences isn't included in that. So yes according to most people in my local Jewish community, I can read Hebrew. That said, I can't understand most things without the aid of a translation.