yudantaiteki wrote:

The claim is not that any one specific person will learn German faster than Arabic, but that on average, a native English speaker will learn German faster than Arabic.  The similarities between the languages would be one reason for that, but not necessarily the only one.

Oh, Ok. But then, if we agree on two points:
1. the average English speaking student of Arabic isn't interested in Arabic culture and media, and is learning the language simply as a means to an unrelated end (fulfilling a job requirement, for instance);

2. this stat speaks to what the people I describe above experience when trying to learn the language;

Then, clearly, someone learning a language because he loves the culture, loves to listen to its media, read its literature, etc. should ignore this stat. It does not apply to him or her, it will not inform what strategy he should pick. For him, whatever this new language is, isn't as hard as for the people I describe in point 1.

Except for Japanese. In the case of Japanese, the writing system is an extra hurdle. It's something the Japanese spend 16 years studying, themselves. No amount of love for the culture will change that, it requires a specially designed strategy to learn (RtK is a part of one such strategy). But, with Arabic, once you get passed the script (which is easy, hardly worth discussing) there's no objective reason why it should be harder to learn than German. Pretty sure it doesn't have any of the crazy compounds German has (to be fair, some of my struggles with German came before I learned English, but I've been having a pretty tough time lately too).

Last edited by Stansfield123 (2013 June 11, 10:25 pm)

SomeCallMeChris wrote:

I don't really want to argue it either... I'll just say that if someone wants to suggest  that a language with tremendous grammatical similarity, tons of cognates, and a largely overlapping spelling->pronunciation scheme is -not- easier to learn than another language that has few cognates, a unique grammar, and a unique writing system... well, then, such a person is welcome to his opinion. It's not a debate worth even having.

And if you wanna argue that it's easier for a native Polish speaker (that's what Aya, the person over whom this argument started, is, btw.) to learn English pronunciation than Japanese, then, indeed, that's not a debate worth having. Just be content with your silly opinion  

See how this "let's just talk past each other in an obnoxious manner" business can work both ways?

Last edited by Stansfield123 (2013 June 11, 10:31 pm)

*cough*. Swedish has more in common with English than you'd think. Old English is basically funny-sounding Swedish. You can link that-det (OE þæt) and most pronouns easily, and much of the vocab is intuitive if you know how English evolved (min-mine)... same with German, though to a lesser extent.
Not to mention, all that Shakespeare finally starts making sense when you encounter words like varför...The French vocab is gargantuan, but the base of the language is still Germanic, and once you learn to link them it gets quite ok. Swedish also has a pretty easy to grasp grammar system, which is cool (plural system and tidbit aside). I took a crash course a few years ago and got conversational after a few months of 1h/week classes; lovely language. Shame I forgot it all.

Oh, and then there's that German dialect which sounds pretty much like English, but spelled differently. "Mei Haus is grien"= "My House is Green." Totally different languages, surely.

123, maybe you should read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_languages

The most widely spoken Germanic languages are English and German

This statement should probably give you some insight. Aside from the similarities which are already mentioned in Wikipedia, English also has a large percent of words deriving from German (around 70% if I'm not mistaking). That doesn't mean that they are absolutely the same of course. So yeah, German is definitely easier compared to Japanese for most Westerners.

Last edited by Arupan (2013 June 12, 12:36 am)

learningkanji wrote:

I think RTK1 kinda spoiled me. It was a fun, routine way of studying, that worked well and showed me results fast. I was surprised at how effective it was and that's what kept me going. I tried Genki a bit and Tae Kim and after I finished reading the lesson and moved on to the practice part, I could barely remember anything I read/"learned".

I'm still looking for a method of learning the pronunciations/grammar that is as fun/easy as RTK1 but it looks like it's not gonna happen. I'll just have to come back to reality and realize it won't be like RTK1.

You seem to be fond of memorizing things. Why don't you download the grammar stuff I linked to and have a try? Everything comes with line-by-line audio and plenty of example sentences so you can get some listening practice (and speaking if you choose to repeat after the recording). The explanations are very easy, written in plain English. The audio is by Japanese native speakers.

I tend to go by the assumption that all major languages are about the same difficulty to a baby.

For the l2 learner though, the easiness at first will be boosted by:
-familiar writing system
-volume of cognates
-similar sound system
-similar grammar
and probably in that order. There's also cultural similarity which could have an effect.

That's why Japanese is hard for english speakers. There's an upfront investment in learning hiragana (at the very least) and then it takes a while before you can read it quickly. You don't get much vocab for free (other than a lot of gairaigo).

As for learning without grammar, I am learning Chinese this way and so far so good. I can tell you almost nothing about chinese grammar but my comprehension is steadily getting better and better. Of course my knowledge of Japanese/kanji is very useful.

As for Japanese, I haven't touched learner material (textbooks and the like) since passing 2kyuu after a year in Japan. And I honestly I think what got me to that level in a year was building up vocabulary by reading junior high school library books and manga in addition to being immersed in Japanese real life at least some of the time. I remember getting up to passive/causative in a textbook and not getting it at all, which seems absurd to me now because it's really not that difficult to explain (maybe i just had a bad textbook). But at some point it clicked and I could understand how they worked 'in the wild.' Frequently when studying lists of example sentences of similar but slightly different grammar patterns in study materials, I had no idea how or why x meant y, but later these things became clear to me through exposure. In general I found the whole 'this is how you say important language item xyz (english sentence) in Japanese' style of textbook instruction not very helpful. An example of this would be learning something like　"I only eat apples = リンゴしか食べません。" as a set.
Instead I found my level increased as I familiarized myself with the meaning of more and more individual words (such as しか in the above example) in a bottom up fashion (gleaned via dictionaries and translations) in tandem with getting the top down meaning or gist from context, leading to rapid vocabulary expansion + slow consolidation of grammar intuition. Learning the actual meaning of grammar words instead of just memorizing how to say x in y sentence patterns allows you to comprehend a larger pool of potential sentences that use those words. I don't think many textbooks actually provide definitions for grammar words like しか、から、られる or individual particles.

That's not to say all textbooks are bad or that you should never use them.

I've said it before, but all you need to learn a language is a) the language itself in a palatable format and b) something (anything) that can be used to glean meaning from it (that could be dictionaries, l1 subtitles, translations, a language partner etc).

RawToast wrote:

Just a note about using graded readers as a foothold into 'the good stuff'. I found them extremely boring, especially the level 1 readers. I found it similar to reading Spot the Dog or elementary school English texts. "At the next stop 3 people got on the bus" , "At the next stop 2 people got on the bus", and then "At the next stop 1 person got off the bus" yawn.

Well, if you're referring to the story I think you're referring to, then it really picked up after the people got off the bus: the guy almost dies, has a long conversation with his dead grandma and eventually wakes from a six month coma. I was more upset about the one that details the history of the Kimono through the centuries. Holy mother of God, who cares how many layers women wore in the late Edo period.

But yeah, graded readers get old quickly. Even Yotsubato, which is not much more difficult than graded readers, is more interesting, and funny at times.

Tzadeck,

you're perfectly right - probably. I'm not a native speaker of English, so I cannot speak on their behalf. I started to learn English after I already knew French, and I found English to be some kind of simplified French, and yet I don't know English as well as I do French - the reason is simple: I've never found English particularly appealing. School is not to blame, by the way, I learned both languages entirely on my own when I was a teenager.
In the long run, every language is equally difficult or easy.

If ifs and ands were beer cans, everybody would be drunk, except for those who don't like beer (I don't).
As far as learning languages goes, everything is highly individual, it's almost impossible to say what will be working. I've never done Heisig, for example, I was familiar with his book before I started to learn Japanese and rejected his approach entirely. For the OP Heisig was a fun way to learn.

I'm not everybody, you're not everybody, we're individuals. An individual learns a language, not an abstract human being.
An average learner? - no such entity. Why should it matter that Croatian is potentionally 'easier' than Japanese, I have no interest in Croatian. Should you force me to learn it, I would fall asleep. The only difficult language is the one you don't want to learn as the saying goes.

By the way, I didn’t say that the things Nadiatims listed were unimportant or not true.

RawToast wrote:

Just a note about using graded readers as a foothold into 'the good stuff'. I found them extremely boring, especially the level 1 readers. I found it similar to reading Spot the Dog or elementary school English texts. "At the next stop 3 people got on the bus" , "At the next stop 2 people got on the bus", and then "At the next stop 1 person got off the bus" yawn... I'd actually rather SRS sentences.

But isn't that part of the purpose of a graded reader, to repeat the information in slightly different ways so that you can pick up words from context?

I started learning Japanese last October.
Learned kana by simple drilling, grammar with Tae Kim's guide, kanji with RtK and vocabulary with Core 2k/6k (and iKnow).
Now I know ~2400 kanji with an average retention rate around 90%.
Speaking about Core 2k/6k mature rate is around 75%, retention rate is lower. But recently I got bored with this and stopped.
Since the beginning of May I started reading manga (for example Rosario+Vampire). At the beginning it was rather difficult, but the more the merrier - the more I read, the easier it became.
Reading native materials really sped up the progress of learning Japanese.
I regret only one thing - I spend too much time on just Core 2k/6k (somewhere 5 months), I'd better take a lighter version or just some basic vocabulary.

After all these things I suppose that immersion with the addition of 1-2 grammar books is really one of the most efficient ways of learning language (at least for me).
So I'm going to take Genki or some other textbook and then continue immersion.