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Originally posted by Vector A Yep. Easiest of the easy, supposedly.

Dutch shouldn't be much of a challenge either, I believe.

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I dunno, one thing at a time. I would rather be quite good at one second language than mediocre at a few.

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Originally posted by Vector A I dunno, one thing at a time. I would rather be quite good at one second language than mediocre at a few.

I wholeheartedly agree. I just meant to say that, if you want to begin studying an easy language, Dutch is also an alternative.

I'd be happy to see you studying one language already, I wouldn't be so cruel as to swamp you with more

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Originally posted by Lira I wholeheartedly agree. I just meant to say that, if you want to begin studying an easy language, Dutch is also an alternative.

Dutch ain't that easy. It's full of weird rules and exceptions. That's what I hear anyone say that's trying to learn Dutch.

Also, who speaks Dutch anyway? No other countries speak Dutch (except for a bit of Belgium and a couple of islands no one ever really goes to ) and when you're in Holland, you can just speak English and everyone will understand you.

Then again, it would be cool to meet or speak to an American who'd converse in Dutch with me

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Originally posted by Frenkieee Also, who speaks Dutch anyway?

Afrikaaners? Fair few of them

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Originally posted by Sushipunk Afrikaaners? Fair few of them

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Originally posted by Sushipunk Pretty cool. Though Afrikaans and Dutch are very similar.

I thought they speak Afrikaans

Although you can easily tell Afrikaans descended from Dutch, there's quite a lot of difference between the two.

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Originally posted by Vector A Yep. Easiest of the easy, supposedly.

French isn't that easy to learn, its full of little rules. For example: usually to say something in the plural form you have to add an ''s'' at the end of the word (ex: des choses (things) une chose (a thing).

But with words that end with ''al'' (ex: cheval (horse) or journal, you dont add an ''s'' you have to replace the ''al'' with ''aux'' so it becomes ''chevaux'' (horses).

You have to refer to things in the masculine or feminine form, in english you say ''a hamburger'' in french its ''un hamburger'' (''un'' is like ''a'' in masculine form) in english you would say ''a frie'', in french its ''une frite'' (une is the feminine form of ''a'')

^ this one is the one common rule that gives the most trouble to english speakers id say

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Originally posted by Lira Japanese is incredibly simple, the completely different vocabulary notwithstanding. The writing is a bit complex, I give you that, but: It's got just 5 vowels, none of which should pose a problem to the average speaker of European languages (the "u" is a bit different, but pronouncing it the way you already do is fine); No consonant should pose a problem to European language learners. Even the "f", which isn't really an "f", shouldn't be much of a problem if you never get the distinction right. Oh, and the "r/l"; The language is extremely regular - if you know how to conjugate one verb, you pretty much know how to conjugate every other verb... with the sole exception of two odd members, which aren't THAT different to begin with; Case marking is pathetically simple: Just put a morpheme after each word and you're done. There are no exceptions that I can think of. "Inu" is dog. "Inuga" means "Dog as subject", "Inuwo" means "Dog as object", "Inuwa" means "Dog as topic"; "Burayanga" means "Brian as subject", "Burayanwo" means "Brian as object" (kinky!), and "Burayanwa" means that Brian is the topic. See? No surprises. There aren't many verb tenses. At least, not to me (Portuguese is the Romance language with the most tenses, as I recall it). Verb agreement is non-existent. No plural (except for a few reduplications and special pronoun forms). No gender. See? Not that hard, is it? Haha, ya uzhe zabyl to, stho ya uchil'sya 10 let nazad. Mne nado uchit'sya russkiy yazyk esche raz True.

Japanese for Dummies by Lira


I would buy that book

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Rawlings speaks 10 languages, since mother tongue doesn't count, at least not according to me.

Currently, I can speak English and a wee bit German. Not much more. However, I do want to know more languages, such as Japanese, Korean, Italian, Russian, Spanish and Arabic. Maybe Danish as well, since Danes talk like they've got oatmeal down their throats

Also, if you want to try a language with a really fucked up grammar system, try Swedish. Here, the tenses aren't decided by rules or regularities, but what sounds the most sensible. We also have our own weird way pronouncing our 9 vowels (a, e, i, o, u, y, å, ä and ö).

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Originally posted by mathieu French isn't that easy to learn, its full of little rules.

So are most other languages.

I've taken classical Greek so I know all about grammatical gender (it has three genders rather than two) and weird pluralizations. So far French does not really seem so complicated compared to that...

Yeah don't listen to Mathieu. French is easy. It's easy because the rules make sense, imo.