Can you learn the hardest language in the world? | Irina Pravet | TEDxOtaniemiED
Irina’s talk at TEDxOtaniemiED is titled ‘Can you learn the hardest language in the world?’ and delves into the increasingly relevant topic of foreign-language speakers learning Finnish. Irina provides examples of unique and interesting yet highly effective methods for learning Finnish - the so-called hardest language in the world.
The talk is illustrated with Sketchnotes by Linda Saukko-Rauta at www.redanredan.fi.
Born in Romania, raised in Canada and now living in Finland, Irina Pravet has been translating herself across cultures and languages for as long as she can remember. She does not believe in the existence of a fixed set of ‘language learning talents’, instead she believes that we all have the ability to succeed in learning a new language by being strategic, having fun and playing with our natural strengths. Currently Irina is a Finnish language & transitions abroad coach at www.languagecatalyst.com.
This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at ted.com/tedx
I had 2 room mates, both foreigners, both had been in Finland for several years, 1 spoke Finnish, the other didn't, the one who didn't speak Finnish was fluent in english, the one who spoke Finnish didn't know how to speak english. The fluent english speaker could get by easily with english (as Finns are excellent english speakers), but for the other one, learning Finnish was the only way to be able to communicate with people. Based on this, I would say that the best way to learn Finnish while living in Finland is to refuse to use english.
Completely agree. The same thing is with Danish.
While it is obvious that some languages are easier than others, nothing is "the hardest". It depends on a variety of things, like your mother tongue, how many languages you already know, and, like she repeatedly said for 16 minutes, your motivation.
PARUN KUMAR I
The very first key to learn anything is convince yourself it's easy, next take time to learn, and the last is practice practice practice!!
Having lived in different countries, I always have measured my own comfort level in speaking a foreign language by how comfortable I was answering the phone, and understanding what the person on the other end was talking about, and being able to answer the person without too much trouble. I say "the phone", because you don't have the luxury of pausing for very long on a phone, like you would in a face to face situation, without having the person on the other end of the phoneline yelling out "hello, hello???" They can't see you grasping for words on a telephone, you can't read their lips while they are talking, they can't see your gestures, so you better be able to answer them, quickly.
Finnish is hard but it's not the hardest language in the world...
+Majid Q pretty much every language in the world's native speakers never "finish" learning it. As in I don't know every word in the entire, vast English language
+Jonas Right. Ithkuil is the hardest. www.ithkuil.net/04_case.html
+Jo no, it is not...
+Jonas I have taken Finnish and I know if I really applied myself I could learn it. Avarsky (the main language of Respublica, Dagestan ) is harder because you must also learn Russian and go to Maxachkala University, Dagestan in order to learn it. Maг1арул мац1 (по аварски ) = Аварский ( по Русски ) And it is important to remember to say you are Avar, when you go there. It order to determine which is the hardest language in the World you would have to study every language in the World and that is completely impossible. Basque is supposed to be another hard one, and I have studied a small smidge of it.
+Анастасия Юрь Ева Another factor is all the dialects of Avarsky, even though only a million people speak it. There is the Dialect of Northern Azerbaijan / Za Ka Tala, which is quite different than the S.W. Dagestani Dialect of Charodinski Raion. ( Raion 28 )
"Can you learn the hardest language in the world?" - The question is very subjective. The difficulty of the particular language depends on what language group you belong to. If you are native Estonian, then Finish will be the easiest language to learn... It's frustrating to see TEDx gives the stage to the so-called "experts" who have no idea what they are talking about...
Pj musk
Finnish is very hard, but I think that is not the hardest in the world. I'm still trying to learn and get better in Finnish :D Like she said, the best way to learn is practicing, but is a little bit hard to find someone to talk or learning too
I could help you if you need someone to chat with in Finnish. I'm not really up for giving my email or anything else personal up on KZhead, but there's this gaming site called playforia (i think it'd originally finnish or smtn but it has many languages to choose for playing) with online versions of basic games like chess, yatzy, pool, snooker etc. I used to play with german people so i could chat in german to them. Tell me if you're interested and I can share my nickname and we can be friends and play something or you can just go there by yourself and try to find finns who'd want to chat a bit in Finnish during a game. :)
I criated an account in this web site, my neme there is Renan_Finn, I suppose that is easier you add me, because I don't know very well the site. Thanks, I will use to search finnishes to talk, mutta add minua :)
I'm finn, but for me it's just so funny to see so many people fighting about which language is the hardest. The funniest part is that most of the people havent even try really to learn that language, even they say "its not that hard, or the hardest". Like cmon, there is not such a thing "the hardest language". I would call english the hardest if it would be my opinion, but it would not make it the ultimateandonlyfact. Same thing with finnish, it might be hard to many people, but its just a personal opinion. Thanxx and sry my bad english. 👼
People have all kinds of crazy ideas about language learning... one of the most common is that learning a language is much easier as a kid, like your first language... this is just because people totally forget everything they went through learning their first language, the hours spent at nursery (pre-school) and school learning the alphabet, the shapes of different letters... I remember colour cards to learn "red", "green", "blue" etc etc, and for ages whenever it got to "silver", I would call it "shiney"! Usually, the hard thing is putting the effort into learning it when it's so much easier not to. Or maybe it's just hard to teach it if you don't know techniques that are easier.
english isnt hard ! i am an Arabian i learnt english from playing video games!
The only thing I took from this is that she loves herself
oh, Irina! What are you talking about? Where are you from? Don't be so proud yourself if you have learnt Finnish. I'm learning Finnish too and I already have read fictions while I have been learning Finnish less then 6 months. It's so hard for you if you belong to group of Romanic-German languages, but not for Slavs! Cause we too have many endings and the degree of alternation of consonants and we have word's genders which Finns haven't. Also our stresses always fall to different sylabs and it changes a meaning of the word! I don't say that Finnish is easy, no. But it's not impossible! Especially for Slavs! ;)
Why "especially for slavs"? Slavic languages are indo-european too, just like romance and germanic languages.
I am multilingual and can honestly say that this is an excellent speaker. This speech makes sense and I like the way she explained the process. I can relate to it having learned a few languages myself. I am almost sure I could never do a cartwheel, but how she explained it, it makes sense that it is all in your head, really.
My mother spoke Finnish fluently. It was her mother tongue; and man is it a difficult language. I'll always love the sound of it. Kitos!
Kiitos
I'm from Vietnam. I love to learn English and I think I love learning languages...!!! Not really hard to learn any languages If you have passion, believe yourself and confident DARE TO LEARN, You will know it's easy or hard when you learn :)
+Huyen Vo Cool! I've been learning Vietnamese for about a year now and although it has been hard, I sill enjoy learning it :)
+Caleb Lee Wow. Bạn rất giỏi. Hy vọng bạn sẽ học tiếng vIệt giỏi hơn nữa. Chúc bạn thành công nhé :)
Da cam on ban! :D
Huyen Vo can i learning English with you?
@@huyenvo775 Hi! I come in from Viet Nam, and I want to learing English with you?
As an ESL speaker, I think she literally said nothing, I mean nothing.
You are an electrostatic loudspeaker?
@@animepeople8744 I don't know if you're joking or not but he/she meant English as a second language (ESL).
I saw her 25 minute initiation video to lure Finnish learners. It was the most boring thing ever. Lots of talk, rhetoric but no substance.
As an English teacher and speaker of 4 languages I unfortunately have to agree. I mean no offense. This is applicable to everything in life, absolutely everything.
I live in Quebec (Canada) where French-Canadians try to socially isolate non-French speakers all the time. Thank you for this video. I needed inspiration.
I loved this video. It's really interesting... I absorved many good tips that we need to do during our learning process!
Language difficulty is relative to your native tongue and any other languages already learnt / familiar. Since Finnish belongs to a very small linguistic family, its characteristics will be very different from what one is likely to know already, rendering the learning process much more difficult. So actually, we are dealing with a "difficulty versus different" concept. Also, the various areas of the brain are more or less active in individuals including memory (short-term and long-term), creative and logical , which means that we are all naturally good at something and will find certain things easy and other things more challenging. I speak 3 foreign languages (Latin-based, Slavic and Finnic) and I can say that learning Finnish has pushed my mind to extremes, so I disagree with the concept, "you can learn anything" attitude. I have also witnessed many people abandon classes because it gets too much for them. I think it's great to listen to this motivational speech but the reality speaks volumes. There's a good reason why Finland has two national languages and why most people speak English. Finnish is not the most difficult, nor one of the most difficult... but it's certainly one of the most unique in the world!
she said if you think you can't then you can't
I found Bulgarian the hardest language to learn. I dabble in around 17 languages but have not attempted Finnish. I will wait to try to learn Finnish as my last language. I will finish with Finnish.
How did u learn bulgarian, what resources did u use??
Try Polish or Russian then Bulgarian will be a piece of cake, I guess.
I did not learn much Bullnblahh. Do OK with Russian (Ukrainian) and polisk
do you really know/speak 17 languages? that's amazing!
I'm not at a conversational level but can do basic communication. Say hello, thank you,please,ask for help and such.
I'm an African American polyglot who speaks multiple languages at various levels..Finnish being one of them and I think the hardest language in the world is the African language Xhosa even tho Finnish is tuff but so is Polish..which I just started
4:32 A normal person would be scared to fuck that cartwheel up in front of everyone, she's a savage
twice.
Caleb Rosengard ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) Twice...
penile 1 So truu and cause she used one hand ( ͡◉ ͜ʖ ͡◉)
+A Cat I love your profile picture and name (coz I love cats)!
Suhair Awsaj :D ^-^
Finnish is hard even to me, and I'm from Finland and I have lived my whole life in Finland :D
People who are talking about the hardest language rarely know the really hard languages. All you need is devotion and time. The question alone is ridiculously easy to answer: Yes you can.
Irina's talk is full of concepts that hold merit. I particularly liked her overarching theme of deconstructing our belief in whether we can or can't do something and its effect on our future development. She reiterates it with the Henry Ford quote, "Whether you think you can or can't, you are right." From a linguistic background and also being a Chinese language learner for the past 11 years, I believe this to really epitomize what makes people successful or lead to their giving up on learning. She continues this theme by asking us to look at our beliefs from a socio-cultural level. Not just looking at our beliefs as an internal psychological state, but something we develop by our interactions with people, with texts and our environment. It's at this point, from 2:33-3:21, where she answers the question why it is important to learn a language and why people shouldn't give up. I would have liked to have seen her focus her 15 minutes on a talk specifically on this topic. She seems to have a lot more to say, but alas 15 minutes is a short time to talk deeply on any level.
It took me year to learn the basics well. In four years I was able to talk on my own freely and also I was able to understand others without problems. That's because of capable teacher when I moved to Finland when I was 12 year old. Now after 14 years of living here 99% of people think I am from Finland originally. Many says that they don't believe me to be not from here based on my writing and how I speak. Finnish is hard to learn, but not impossible, if you only want to do it :) And is good place to live, with freedom to think your way. Nowadays I have more trouble talking and writing my original language rather than my second one since you do not need Russian much and I am sometimes searching the right words in my head.
finnish is easy, i've been speaking it my whole life! :D
Perspective: my both dogs learnt to understand Finnish really, really well. In a year, we could communicate real nice. In the end part of their life, they understood as much as children of maybe 5 years old. Dogs are linguistically talented (some concepts may be too hard, like explaining Earth or how a car operates) but people are even more so. I trust anyone can learn what ever language, if they want to. In a couple of years, you can pretty much compete against the smartest dogs understanding what ever language.
but can they do a cartwheel
@@Schnittwin Probably. Search videos about it.
i really adore the way you talk.
It is a good lecture on how to learn a difficult language. Thanks Madam.
Finnish really isn't as hard as people think, it's just a different structure but it's very logical and consistent. Stop thinking in the Germanic and Romance language structures and basically try to think outside the box and you'll be fine. But of course if you don't live in Finland then it's hard cause you might not use it so much.
Finnish is learned like other languages; one step at a time.
The difficulty of any language depends on a person's perspective. Personally, Khmer (Cambodian) seems much harder.
she talks very clearly and fluently.
So, It's was amazing this video!
she said literally nothing
hahahaha at least she did a cartwheel
I'm saying.. 😂💥🔫
The hope is that you can apply the principles that the speaker has applied to learning Finnish to other large learning tasks.
AHAHAHAHAH, Upvoted!
More than 5 minutes into this and I'm still waiting . . .
People who think French is hard make me laugh, look at Chinese and Finnish! lol. Hard, complicated, like any language would be but NOT impossible !
+Diamante Dea Chinese isn't that hard though. No need to be scared of it.
+Diamante Dea I think with Chinese you're thinking of the written part, but the spoken language itself isn't that complicated.
+brainchild Cantonese is, 6 tones, and most westerners have trouble distinguishing between the tones.
+Diamante Dea Well, the two hardest parts of spoken Chinese are the tone and its high dependence of context. Nothing more. ;)
日本語は…
thank you. unrelated to the language material, a few things you said led me to a lovely epiphany with my struggle with the aftermath of my cancer. thank you.
Hope life is treating you well these days xx
You are absolutely right Warm welcome from Bangladesh
What are we supposed to get out of this talk? I don't feel any further ahead after watching it.
+GhostsOfAsia nothing, its a pointless video
+GhostsOfAsia Just shut up and do it, stop whining. That's the point I got.
She's just showing us how great she is.
When a talk starts out with something like: "Can you learn?" you can usually tell there will not be enough substantive material following to obstruct your progress to the inevitable end of a blind alley.
Baily Wassup sure🔔🔊
Great, now I know how to cartwheel.
Hehehehe!
I am English and have learned Finnish. I am pretty good at languages and have a degree in Russian. I was motivated because I love Finland and when I heard Keith Armstrong speaking Finnish on TV I realised that it isn't impossible for an Englishman to learn Finnish. It took me YEARS to get past the beginner phase but once you've got used to the grammar and built up a reasonable vocabulary so much of the more advanced vocabulary can be understood because you understand the 'little' words that go together to make the longer ones. For me one of the hardest things was having to learn how the language was actually spoken rather than it's formal written form. I worked through a great book called Kato Hei which gave a fantastically thorough breakdown of spoken Finnish. After that it was a lot easier.
What a great video!
Great job Irina!!!! :D You're an inspiration!!!
Alex Gentry ,
Alex Gentry 我需要中文U2频道
VOU丅ubE
中文台u2频道
我需要中文U2频道
Inspiring, I face the same troubles when learning Japanese.
You must like what you're doing, so you can master it quickly.
Great lecture to be followed..
I don't think learning basic finnish is hard but learning all the variations of words used in sentences with different meanings must be a pain in the ass. And also getting used to saying the word just how it's written could be difficult for some people.
I do have learned Finnish. In fact, it isn't that hard ass people think. I'd say even Finnish is one of the easiest languages for me. Yeah, maybe grammar seem difficult, but very logical, almost no exeptions from the rules and the best thing is that it is pronoused same way as written, letter by letter, and you always know how to pronounce a word unlike in English and many other languages. I wish Finnish was global a language instead of fkn English. :D
Евгений Александрович i think finnish have very easy pronounciation compared to english or russian, i have just started to study russian and some words are just impossible for me to pronounce XD like i cant even heard any difference between и and ы... and then there is ц,ш,щ,з,ж,ч,с.......
It's a long journey my friend... I've been learning russian for quite a few years now, but only for 9 months in an actual academic way, and let me tell you that it takes quite some time to get it right. I haven't even passed the basic level yet. The point is to really be interested in the language (and i'm obsessed), otherwise i would have probably dropped it already
+BAEPSAE, but in English there're some difficult sounds like th ar r, and never can be sure how to pronounce most word whereas Finnish also is pronouced same way as written. Russian is partially also about it, you never get [i] sound instead of written o (women), or written u as [u] or [a] and other sound metamorphoses which may be listed endlessly. We have only some kind of reduction with o and e, witch unstressed make sounds similar to a and и (but not strong a/и stressed) and then с/з (like s in English can sound differently). Another problem might be stress syllable, but English has same trouble too, whereas Finnish don't and always has same stress position. Russian may be hard at grammar, but when it comes to pronunciation - English is a real piece of hell and I can't speak it. Ч - CHair, Ш - SHop, З - iS, C - buS, И - shEEp (but short), Ы - shIp (in US accent), Ж - George (ʤ without d), Ц/Щ I can't remember any word in English to represent these sounds, but anyways it isn't even comparable with difficulties we have with th (ð vs s vs z vs θ vs f). Try Polish else, it is "a Paradise for Ц, Ч, Ш and Щ. :D
Läpinäkymätön I'm learning Russian now as well. That's how I accidentally got to this video.
+Golden Mushrooom Sorry but we do have W and it is suppose to, in standardized Swedish, sound very close to the W in English (with a slightly rolling sound similar to W in "welcome"), we just very rarely use it and are lazy and use the sound for "V" instead in modern language. The situation is similar with Z that we also have but very few actually uses and the S sound is used instead. But we still have them both. It is also good to remember that when it comes to pinpoint sounds in a language one often neglect the fact that it is very rare that all native speakers pronounce the words in exactly the same way. There are always dialect, sociolects and different types of slang from different eras, and even the pronunciation between age groups with int he same dialect and sociolect might differ. Even if you boils it down to a standardized formal language you will still have variations within what is still considered "correct language". Language is not static, it is organic and messy just like people is. So for example it is often said that Swedish do no have diphthongs, and that might be true for the "standard Swedish" that was constructed and thought in public school to eradicate dialects and create a national unified language, but no one has ever spoken like that in normal life. There are many dialects that has diphthongs and even triphtongs in Swedish. There is also Swedish dialects that do have sounds similar to IPA Þ and well as sounds similar to IPA ð but are written T and D. In some places the letter Ä sounds like "e" and in others it is a deep "ä" and in yet others there it is a diphthong similar to "äe". In some places you will not hear a difference in U and Ö but in yet other places the letter Ö sounds like a michmash of "öou". The same with the sound "sj", "stj", "sk", "skj" etc where in my dialect the words Sjö, Stjärna, Skönt, Skjuta, Station, Vision, Jargong and Dijong has the exact same sound, IPA X or ɧ, and just 100 km away the sound is more similar to IPA ʑ . Should a mention the south Swedish "R" or the northern thick "L"? I could go on and on and on but the point is that because of this it is actually very hard to draw general conclusions of what exact sound a letter actually represent without hearing the sounds, knowing how the person speak or write it in IPA (but that might not be perfect either). And it is even harder to draw conclusion on how a word is pronounced in a language - or even worse; how a word in English is pronounced with a accent from that language - without knowing the dialect/sociolect etc of the person describing it. Last but not least: I was actually drilled by my English teacher in the British "Posh" pronunciation(UK public school pronunciation) go the English alphabet in school, so we did actually learn "new sounds" in our language class. However I still ended up sounding more like a nasal American, because of all movies and music. However it happens that I do mix the two creating kind of a mishmash dialect/accent. I think this is a quite common problem among Swedes and that quite few actually know/reflect on when they use what dialect and the mix ends up sounding like an accent in it self (on top of the accent originating from the mother-tongue).
you did an awesome court-wheel!!!
I'm learning Japanese in Japan. I'm not sure what the biggest take away from this was supposed to be but for me it was that social rejection equals physical pain and not speaking the language often (but not always) produces that. Ouch. I think I've felt that many a time here.
Learning Finnish is easier after watching this video, but something else of me got much harder.
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
AI913 :^)
This talk has given me some motivation. All my life I was occasionally around other people that were fluent in other languages. Polish (my mother), Lithuanian (a friend), German (wrestling coach), mandarin (coworker), Hindi (coworker), ebo (coworker), Russian (a friend), Spanish(coworker), italian(a neighbor), japanese(a neighbor). And I'm interested in speaking French, Portuguese, Greece and Korean and visiting these countries. What do you think?
the whole world is surrounding you!
almost...I am not there.
Ken Marriott *igbo
Yes igbo. I can't spell.
She keeps on wafflling without having to feel like to come to straight point !Tedious as it is !
You can research about this and have an achievement🙏🙏👏👏❤️
I expect what it really comes down to--and what she was saying between the lines--is that Finnish people won't speak Finnish to foreigners, so foreigners can't learn it. That's because Finnish people speak English very well, so they don't feel they need to put up with other people's bad Finnish. I can understand it, but I can also see how frustrating it must be for people who actually want to learn Finnish. Probably the best strategy in these situations is to plough on in Finnish and try to explain to your interlocutor that you really want to learn Finnish. Eventually once you get good enough people will stop automatically switching to English. Or at least one would hope so!
I am from finland and I started to learn englis at third class and I am now only 12 years old.
every one who goes to school in Finland starts to study English in third or first grade of school and it doesn't stop before 9 grade so thats why almost everyone speaks English in Finland.
Flaze3, your conclusion is wrong, as it's a typical behavior for most people around the world. I've been in 10-15 countries and it was always like that.
I have an idea. Pretend that you don't speak English. Tell them you speak Japanese. When they start speaking English, say "what?" in Finnish.
Yes Finnish is so hard that I have never heard a foreigner speaking fluent Finnish. There is always mistakes in pronunciation or grammar.
Same with British English, although sounding like a native or never making mistakes are unrealistic goals.
+luisvictormf But I know Finnish people who can speak fluent English or at least I can not tell the difference between native speakers and them. But I am unable to find any native English speaker speaking native Finnish. I am native Finnish speaker and I have acquaintance who is native English speaker and has lived over 20 years in Finland. However his Finnish does not sound native at all. For example (Smokahontas) SAARA is famous Finnish singer who can speak fluent English. Can you find an example of native English speaker who can speak native Finnish?
+falcoillusion982 Nope. Never heard a Finnish speaker sounding native-like from any I've ever heard (from dozens). It's usually very good but mistakes are usually in every sentence. But the point is that it's generally the same for foreign speakers of any language, including me. The focus should be on being able to communicate effectively, not producing flawless language.
+falcoillusion982 "There is always mistakes in pronunciation or grammar." Indeed, and your English is free of such mistakes ;)
+Diseases of Civilization US/UK. Point stands.
I didn't know english while my schooling and college. I didn't know grammar, vocabulary. How to study this Like alot.... At that time. I was also failure in english. My friends and teachers was always told me. I have been failed in english a lot of times. During my schooling and college. But now I can speak this language without any error. That's reason I decide that I want to study this. I should speak this without any error. I read a lot of English books and watch English videos to study this. Finally I study this. Now I can speak this.
This female is simple, humble, Informative and amazing, I'm in love with her personality.
neither motivating nor educational.
+RD Cain It's "Neither motivational nor educational."
+RD Cain Her presentation is not that good, but her points and her ideas are. How about you try a more contructive approach and give her some specific suggestions to improve? Because your comment was not motivational, educational, funny or constructive either.
+RD Cain Why do you need motivation from a video? If you wanna learn a new language practice and learn it with people who speak it. There are lots of forums in the net where you can easily find people and contact them by Skype. Give it a try! ;)
exactly
estou tentando aprender um pouco de inglês.e admiro muito quem falar vários idioma.
+vend1301 1301 Tudo é questão de pràctica. Você deve praticar o inglés sempre que você poder sem medo.
Good explanation about the Finnish language
Lived in Finland for 4 months now. Everytime ive even tried to speak Finnish, locals just look at me like "what are you talking about" then speak to me in English. I give up, i go home in 2 months. Thank god Finns know English!
Pretty boring. Not straight to the point, so wordy.
A third of the video is a waste of life time.
Mathias Maranhão Thought the same thing exactly
She's Jewish, what can you expect. They love hearing themselves talk.
For some reason I forgot i've been here before... wasted minutes of my life again...
Please don't be so rude.
Объясните, что она хотела сказать? выступление на 16 минут, а смысла не уловил(
Damn, I never thought about it like that. I'm a Finn but my first language is Swedish. Learning Finnish wasn't a quest for enlightenment for me, it was about being able to speak with my godfather and my neighbors. Learning something I knew would be useful every day. But then again, I learned it at a very young age. People can learn new things at any age but languages do come easier when young, or so some professors claim. And using it often is more important than reading every single book on grammar rules.
How about reading, watching movies in that spoken language, & also having conversations about those books and movies to touch each other's hearts? Because language is very closely tied to identity, culture, and how we perceive ourselves and others. Compassion, faith, and charity can supercharge your language learning. That's my conviction.
as a Hungarian girl myself I still have a hard time 😂 you really need to learn Hungarian if youre young other wise its really really hard to learn to speak it correctly plus speak Dutch & English :) but I really want to learn Spanish ahhhh
I speak*
+Elena :3 hy español is very easy, if you born in Spain
those were some nice cartwheels lol
Nothing is impossible to get life even it may be to learn something new in life so always make your perspective positive...
Ok, say this out loud. (good ice cream) Hyvää jäätelöä. Now you know lil Finnish. ;)
7:52 most extreme vocal fry ever
i think chinese is more difficult for europeans than finnish, as it has tones.
+Wolfram Hüttermann Well, every language has its tricky side, but also chinese words are often short and its grammar is rather simple and very similar to the english one. (Although I know you meant europeans beyond english speaking countries).
汉语是世界上最难学的语言
Maybe Finnish is not the hardest language in the world (I was learned it in my school days, so this is true for me personally), but there are a lot of simple but important points in this vid, which everyone should to understand, because it's useful to theirsefl.
wow awesone...
Suomihan on helppoa.
no eikä oo
kyl se on kun koko ikänsä on puhunu :D
Ovimbarungue no visepa mbindu.
ookkonaaoulusta kyllä
ei ulkomaalasille
Finnish, Hungarian, Icelandic, Russian, Cantonise, Arabic they are all very dificult
+Graziela Almeida don't forget portuguese u.u ahh theres so much grammar that even i a native speaker gets destroyed x.x
+Aldo Paulino difficult latin language but this is because the pronounciation differences and an extensive vocabulary (brasilian and european portuguese). I think someone who knows english and spanish can learn portuguese easily.
Ozan Bayrak i don't know about latin but in my opinion all of the romance languages are hard to learn because of the construction and grammar itself. There are less vocabulary in verb to be in english compared to portuguese that's why i think it is simpler than say: french, portuguese and spanish about Latin i don't know since it's pretty much a dead language
+Graziela Almeida POLISH
+Aldo Paulino take a look :D en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adyghe_language
Very good conference.
The love of my life was Anelma Rissnoan, From northern Finland, The only phrase she taught me was ( Saxaliner pimea Gore ) A German shepherd dog.
What?.. It’s saksanpaimenkoira
Asian languages are much harder than Finnish.
Cantonese is one of the most hardest languages I have ever studied. Poeh!
Yeah... No... The different tones, the writing style and pronounciation it's very simillar to Vietnamese. Have you study Cantonese? Or Mandarin? Then we will talk.
+Donald Trump So... You tried Korean? So how complex do you think the grammar of it compared to Finnish? Since I know Korean should be mildly hard to understand with its' strange rammar, but Finnish do have about 15 cases and a verb can have many different kind of forms.
Donald Trump Ok, I know. I'm just asking the grammar difficulty.
Donald Trump Oh.. Ok.
For Malaysian like me, the hardest language to pronounce the words are german and other Balkan languages
i feel that pronouncing german is pretty direct, imo similar to how we try to pronounce malay, except it is pronounced differently.
learn the hocking/spitting noise, then get your head around the vowels. they are sort of inbetween malay and english. but, it's similar to Malay in that it is pronounced 'how it reads' except for the hocking noise and vowels. You have to pronounce EVERYTHING including bits at end of sentences unlike in Malay where often you stop during the last letter and intone things without pronouncing the whole word. prob the hardest ones are schw and eischt type combos which don't happen in Malay. Also the grammar is way more complicated than Malay but you speak English so it won't be too scary ;) I'm Englis but my mum is German so I grew up hearing older relatives talking it. And learning malay as my dad lives there. My malay is way better than my German though as I don't live there/use it.
buzzingtalk it is fun to learn new language :)
German is not Balkan, you can't say „German and other Balkan languages“ :)
Im sure you dont know what Danish is
I think Finnish is hard for most people to learn because it comes from a relatively small language family; the only other mainstream languages which resemble Finnish are Hungarian and Estonian, and I don't think learning Finnish would be too difficult for them. Many people say learning Russian is hard, but if you already know Polish or Ukrainian I think it would be pretty easy if you are willing to put in the effort. For English speakers, learning Latin based languages is probably the easiest, because our vocabulary is heavily based on Latin and French in particular.
I lived in the Arab world for a decade, speak fluent street Arabic, but I consider is complicated grammar, where even object have to be identified with a variety of endings. I.e., take the word for book, "AL- KHITAB". My book is "khitabee", your book "Khitanuk" (if you are a male), "Khitrabik" your book (for female) and "Khitabbum" (their book, or the book belonging to the group). And every single object has such identifiers tacked on. Arabic also has a gutteral (from deep in the throat letter "G") and several ways to pronounce "D". I consider Chinese the hardest, as i you must know at least 2000 pictograms to be literate -- and be able to use four tonal inflections.
I've been learning French for about 3 months and I'm still struggling with pronouncing the r sound 😂
The pronouncing is one of the hardest things in French. After two years I'm still trying not to sound wierd while speaking
Finnish is pretty easy to learn, the 3 hardest languages are pretty "dead" nowadays but: 1) Old Chinese 2) Old Arab 3) Old French It would take several years for anyone to learn one of these three.
from djibouti in the wrold nothings is hard because it is depend on you whether you study but wish always that you will overcome
We may first try to define what is a difficult language? How easy it is to pronounce/recognize each letter in the alphabet, whether words are read as spelled or not, what are the grammar rule, and most important of all do you have LOTS of exceptions to the rules that you have to memorize? How easy to reach a decent/complex conversation? How easy to write a perfect piece of text in that language? In my opinion, a well structured language with an efficient grammar is easy.
+Doaa Altarawy Good point. English has the reputation to be easy, and in fact, the level needed for basic conversation is easy to reach. But writing and pronunciation follow no exact rules, grammar classical literature's English is a lot different from colloquial, words have a high range of very different meanings in different context (and there is an obscene slang meaning for a lot of words, too). Is this really easy?
Yes, i can understand English. But grammar and pronunciation in English is harder to achieve.
IF you think Finnish is hard.... try CANTONESE! It'll make Finnish a piece of cake
+Them Notmen Yea Cantonese has 9 tones & shit xD
+EmpressMileena 2015 omg, Cantonese is not as hard as VIETNAMESE (I am learning Japanese and Vietnamese)!!
+Them Notmen cantonese is fuck. Words haven't declansions and conjuctions.
+Them Notmen It is hard for an English speaker, grammar is easy, tones are not. And the difference between writing and spoken pronunciation is a mind fuck.
+Perfume Lyrics HAHAHHAH no.
Chinese and Arabic are way harder than Finnish
i think chinese is kinda simple because the verbs dont change like in english
Daniel Lee well i don't know that! But i think that English is simple and fast to learn specially comparing with Arabic cauz verbs in Arabic change a lot since i'am an Arabic native speaker!
Chinese has no grammar in use. You remember only vocabulary, but the hardest thing of learning Chinese is remembering those vocab itself, of course
I think the language you're trying desperately to learn and failing miserably at is the hardest language. So all foreign languages pretty much qualify.
there is grammar in chinese , but it is little. vocabulary doesnt allow you to form sentences? grammar is needed to form sentences? how do you think of my opinion?
Children in Finland have no great problem with learning Finnish. At five years old my daughter spoke two languages with equal fluency. Learning another language becomes more and more difficult as one grows older. After about the age of eleven it becomes a great task and yet it is at this age in Britain that foreign language learning starts in most schools. It is no wonder that few people in Britain speak a second language unless their parents are bi-lingual.
This was very motivating! It broaden the way I perceive learning a new complicated language. I feel more confident now, this was a great eye opener. Coin the phrase "Nothing is impossible" you're the only one who can stumble on your own path and deviate from any obstacle. This will make it easier for me to learn Russian! :D and then Finnish! She made this language sound interesting and compelling.
Navajo language: i'm about to end this man's whole carreer
Suomea, täytyypä joskus opetella, seku vain. Lappia ossaan jo jotenki: "Matte motav vee" (Minä ajattelin että minä otan veden.) "Säyt syä" (Sinun täytyy syödä.)
Jari Satta mä oon kotosin kymenlaaksosta ja puhun välil miinku lappalainen; kaikki kirjaimet päällekkäin. :)
I think the problem with languages as a former language teacher of EFL who had a life in Germany is that people think of it as an academic enterprise, it's school work. A lot of the way it was perceived in an academic institution is teaching towards an exam and it reinforces this idea of right and wrong in a language. The best thing for me when learning German and going to live there for the first time in Germany as a 22 year old language teacher without a degree without all those good marks and being told yes I was intelligent enough to have a European life and that I deserved it for being the best swot at school. I wasn't that person at first. I was a solid bat at GCSE and got three modest A levels, I just wanted to live in another culture because it was part of me already. I'd first lived abroad in West Berlin when I was 18 months old until I was three. It was the most natural thing in the world to me; as the friends we made then became my German exchange parter family in Berlin. It was all very fraternal and seemed the most natural thing in the world that I would study abroad with a different language of instruction at university to mine own native tongue like my German exchange partner s mother had done as a German woman in Paris. It was just a part of me I wanted for myself no-one encouraged me or said I was suitable for it. So the motivation to succeed has to come from you. Secondly, is to be blown completely out for your comfort zone with the amount of language you have to deal with so that you are forced to be tolerant of ambiguity with your productive skills and and parsing and tolerant of ambiguity preferably all day like a baby immersed in a totally alien liguisitic world it has to make sense of. If you are forced to respond in conversation weather you understand everything that is said or not and you just guess like a two year old people are more likely to help you and paraphrase and recast for you to help you understand. For example, briefly in Holland whilst visiting Maastricht. I saw a sandwich (brodjes) in Dutch with the phrase eet Samcklijk written on it. I thought it might have meant egg sandwich and I asked a very miffed sandwich seller if I could have an egg sandwich please os I thought een eet Schmacklijk alsterblift is what I said. She thought I was abosloutely nuts pointed to a chicken sandwich and said Kip Brodjes, and I never forgot that I learned the word for chicken sandwich that way without meaning to. Eventually I got my egg sandwich by gesticulation. I then saw people using that phrase whilst eating they said eet Smacklijk to each other. I though it might mean is it tasty like Es Schmeckt does in German at the time. next time I went to Holland the lady said it to me at the till and it was obvious it means Guten Appetit or have a nice meal. that's how I feel babies learn languages through trial an error and being corrected naturally in conversation. Not being afraid of criticism is crucial. Reden wie ein Wasserfall, to be a motormouth was according to my Russian teacher of German in Kassel good for learning languages where as Reden ist siber Schweigen ist Gold Silence is golden is a better plan for life in general. Phenomenology I think is important to language learning in a full immersion environment we learn in a series of different experiences of phenomena which we perceive as funny or memorable in some way. i even enjoyed learning that way as a man.
Verry good lecture
wow she's beautiful
Kristopher Williams.....not really
^ gay
Phil Harris
Kristopher Williams she's a Jew...
Diamond Miner 😅😃
Wasted 16 minutes of my life. Learned absolutely nothing. Her speech was just meaningless drivel.
As far as I'm concerned cartwheel is bomb example for understood how to learn anything little bt little we go to gym muscles growth step by step I have to say I glad after Watch stupendous video .........
There is nothing hard or hardest. Your attitude about learning is very important. There are only things that you know it or don’t know it . I understand what she mean and actually it is very true. I think everyone who really believe themselves are intelligent enough to make things happen, will understand her some day
Absolutely hollow presentation! 15 minutes of speaking about nothing.
yes i can learn finnish 'cause i'm finnish. And those who think finnish isn't hard, try to translate this: epäjärjestelmällistyttämättömyydellänsäkään. If you think im just playing with you, google. that really is a finnish word.
Translate these two Hungarian words: Megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért, Elkelkáposztásítottalanítottátok. And I can show you the longest Hungarian word. These are a short one ;D
+Milán Karácson I do understand that finnish may not be the hardest language by it's words, more like how they are said. like english have two words for dog: dog and dogs. we have: koira : dog koirat : dogs koiria : dogs koirani : my dog koirani : your dog and so on. at last, the previous comment was for those who think finnish isn't hard.
+Petrus Rauhala Yeah I do understand. I can play with the words in Hungarian: kutya, eb, kutyák, kutyus, kutyi, kutyuli, kutyáid, kutyád... etc. All these means dog. I think you thinking something like this. (Hungarian and Finnish is little bit similar I think)
+Milán Karácson And you probably understand that it's pretty hard to talk about finnish because it has so many words that english doesn't have or i just don't know them. :D
+Petrus Rauhala Yeah I know ;D In English use 1 word for more things. In other languages (like finnish, hungarian) can use more words to one thing. That was surprise for me when I started to learn English. :D
Japanese is considered at least twice as hard for English native speaker. Finnish =1100 hours of learning while Japanese is 2200+ hours.
It's quite impossible to say for sure which langauage is the most difficult to learn, because as you said it depends so much on what you already know before starting. For example, for native speakers of some Asian langauages Finnish is normally much more challenging to learn than Japanese, because many Asian langauages are more or less related to each other. Same with most langauages spoken in Europe. Finnish langauage is related to Estonian and Hungarian, and it has lot of words copied from German, English and Swedish, and that's why it helps a lot if you already speak one of those langauages.
Patralgan english is also very hard for someone that is japanese
FannyPlaysMLBB that’s not true. Japanese has tons of borrowed words from English.
Yes, the same area was activated in the brain because it can't actually distinguish between physical and emotional pain, so it does not matter where the pain comes from, your body or your mental, it will still be seen as pain, and the brain will try to get rid of it the same way (release of endorphines).