Most difficult to understand spoken language? in terms of listening comprehension.

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drp9341
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Most difficult to understand spoken language? in terms of listening comprehension.

Postby drp9341 » Fri Jul 08, 2016 6:03 am

So throughout my language learning journey, I've realized that I have had a much more difficult time understanding certain languages than others.

For example, about 4 years ago I completed Assimil French, and could speak read and write quite well. I was studying French at the same time I took my first phonetics class at university, and I studied the sounds of french; I was no stranger to how French sounded. I shadowed the Assimil lessons, and my French conversation partners often complimented me on my accent.

Despite this, I had a very hard time understanding spoken French. Native media was almost entirely incomprehensible except for a the occasional string of words that I heard. I even read Camus' "L'étranger" twice, the second time reading along while listening to the audiobook. It wasn't until I started watching "Français Authentique" videos that I finally got the hang of understanding spoken French.

German on the other hand, I got to about lesson 40 of assimil, and only put about 3 months of work into it total. However, when I heard German, I could hear all the words I knew perfectly. Unlike French, where I "knew" all the words but couldn't make out what was being said.

Therefore, I found German was much easier in terms of listening comprehension than French was.

However, I can't imagine that French is the hardest language in terms of listening comprehension. I know this question is subjective, and one's native language would play a large roll in deciding which language is the "hardest" to understand. However I'd imagine that tonal languages would be quite challenging to understand for native speakers of a non-tonal language. I've also heard that spoken Danish is very hard to understand.

*** I know some variations of a standard language might be considered "the most difficult" such as Northern Irish English, or Quebecois etc. However, this is probably due to the fact that it's not the variant of the language that you studied, so presumably if you were to have studied that variant like you studied the variant you did study, the difficulty would probably be comparable.

What do you guys think!

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Re: Most difficult to understand spoken language? in terms of listening comprehension.

Postby Olekander » Fri Jul 08, 2016 6:09 am

Any language that diverges massively from its written form will be hard to understand if the majority of your L2 aquisition comprises reading and writing.

I'd say Danish is well up there from a theoretical point of view, but then again you could argue that something with a bunch of cases and tenses in the agglutinative form would be hard to follow as you need to get a "feel" for the prefixes and suffixes instantly and on the spot, as opposed to being able to decipher them with plenty of time, which is permitted through reading. Consider how students learn latin at school etc. I certainly remember treating Latin as more of a mathematical problem than as a language. Now I speak Russian the idea of cases makes a lot more sense.

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Re: Most difficult to understand spoken language? in terms of listening comprehension.

Postby Finny » Fri Jul 08, 2016 6:36 am

I'm in the "it's all relative" camp; I believe the difficulty primarily depends on the distance of the language from your native one, although cognitive factors and past experiences may certainly have effects. By the distance, I'm referring to this, basically, for an English speaker:

Image

Regarding cognitive and experiential factors, I'm convinced different people have different affinities for particular languages. I know I've always found French to be an "at home" language, even when I barely understood any of it. I experienced a similar feeling of deja vu with Catalan and Portuguese. Italian, on the other hand, isn't nearly as "homey" to me. Germanically, I found Swedish and Norwegian much more familiar than Danish or Dutch, even though, as with all of the languages I previously mentioned, all four are considered level 1/3 languages for English speakers.

On the 3-level scale for English speakers, German would be considered a 1.5/3 language, but with a limited exposure to it, I found it to be about as foreign as Danish, or to put it another way, easier than the FSI rankings would suggest.

At the 2/3 level, I found Icelandic significantly more comprehensible (though still barely, of course) with a few minutes of "study" than Finnish, and I found Finnish ever so slightly more comprehensible than Russian. Reviewing the FSI guide will reveal further contradictions there, as they rate Finnish as more difficult than Russian though still within the 2/3 category, and rate Russian at the same level as Icelandic, although my experience was different.

Why do these differences exist for me? I have no idea, but I'd guess they have to do with variance in (sub)conscious (dis)interests in the languages and/or cultures. Whatever the reasons, if I were ever to learn any of these languages to a high level for pleasure, I know enough about how I learn languages to know that I'd make faster progress focusing on one of the languages that already seemed "easier" to me than on one of the ones that already seemed more difficult out of the gate. After Spanish and French, that would mean Portuguese or Catalan instead of Italian if I were looking at Romance languages, or Norwegian or Swedish or German over Danish or Dutch if I were considering Germanic languages. At a 2/3 level, it would mean choosing Icelandic or Finnish over Russian. Know thyself!
Last edited by Finny on Fri Jul 08, 2016 6:55 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Most difficult to understand spoken language? in terms of listening comprehension.

Postby kujichagulia » Fri Jul 08, 2016 6:49 am

Hahaha... as if to prove the point that Japanese is quite difficult for native English speakers, the woman at the top of the graphic that Finny posted above is speaking terrible Japanese: 話す日本語? (hanasu nihongo?) In English, this would mean something like: "(Is it) the Japanese (language) that speaks?" "Can you speak Japanese" is 日本語が話せますか❓ (nihongo wo hanasemasu ka?)

Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled programming. :D

Yeah, it's all relative. For sure, Japanese is taking me a long time to become fluent in. But things like pronunciation and hearing words pronounced, especially in standard Japanese, I find easier than in Portuguese and when I was taking French in college. Of course, the grammar, vocabulary and writing system in Japanese are all quite difficult. If you wrap up grammar comprehension with listening, then it can be difficult to comprehend spoken Japanese, but it won't be because of the sounds.

EDIT: Corrected 日本語を話せますか❓ to say 日本語が話せますか❓
Last edited by kujichagulia on Wed Jul 13, 2016 3:05 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Most difficult to understand spoken language? in terms of listening comprehension.

Postby IronMike » Fri Jul 08, 2016 10:05 am

Thinking back to the languages that I've studied, I have to say Spanish, but only because of the speed with which native speakers rattle on.

Kyrgyz took a bit of work at first, as they also speak very quickly. But once I was a few lessons in, I started being able to pick out words and syntax that I knew.
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Re: Most difficult to understand spoken language? in terms of listening comprehension.

Postby YtownPolyglot » Fri Jul 08, 2016 4:17 pm

I've got a terrible ear for tone, so Chinese would be one of the most difficult languages for me to understand as a spoken language.
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Re: Most difficult to understand spoken language? in terms of listening comprehension.

Postby ilmari » Sat Jul 09, 2016 4:37 am

I guess the French liaisons are part of the difficulty. I personally find Korean quite difficult in terms of listening comprehension, and Korean has liaisons very similar to the French ones.
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Re: Most difficult to understand spoken language? in terms of listening comprehension.

Postby Sizen » Sat Jul 09, 2016 5:31 am

Taking the written language out of the equation, I'd figure any language with a large repertoire of phonemes that don't exist in your native language would make for difficult listening, especially those that use allophones in your own language as distinct phonemes. Any other quirks like vowel length, tones, clicks, nasalisation and consonant gemination could also potentially pose a problem depending on your background.

Personally, I've found all of the Romance languages relatively easy to listen to. Catalan, with its vowel reduction, was a bit more tricky at first, but that's mostly because I studied it through the written language.

Japanese has a high number of homonyms and distinguishes between vowel length and geminated and non-geminated consonants. It also has a number of sounds that don't exist in my dialect of English (/ɸ/, /ɰᵝ/, /ɴ/, /ɕ/, /ʑ/, /ç/) and a tendency of devoicing /i/ and /u/ which creates more homonyms. I wouldn't say it's especially hard to listen to, however.

For me, Cantonese has been the hardest to understand. Tones 2 and 5 sound similar, and so do 5 and 3. And if I'm not paying attention, a 3 will sound like a 6 and vice-versa. And don't get me started on 6 and 4. ;) Then again, my Cantonese is so basic, it's not fair for me to call it difficult.

Korean and its distinction between plain, aspirated and tense consonants is also a fun time. In theory, my brain knows the difference, but in practice, I only have a fraction of a second to figure out which one it is and my batting average is less than 100%, so to speak.
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Re: Most difficult to understand spoken language? in terms of listening comprehension.

Postby Sol » Sat Jul 09, 2016 7:10 am

I can only pick out a few words of Korean so far, but it is apparently very hard to pick apart separate words, even if you have a good grasp on the language. You know how in your language learning journey, there is that key moment when you go from 'can pick up on a few phrases and words' to 'wow I actually understand/get the gist of this'? Apparently in Korean it's all or nothing as the words feel sewn together! I was reading a post on HTLAL about the difficulty of Korean, and the author was very frustrated. It sounds so cool though.
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Re: Most difficult to understand spoken language? in terms of listening comprehension.

Postby outcast » Sat Jul 09, 2016 7:38 am

Uh oh, you guys are setting off red lights and alarms along the hallways of my head regarding Korean oral comprehension... :)
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