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one ques, voodoo how did u take 6 years of latin in HS? I thought HS was only 4 years?

Originally posted by Vinin
one ques, voodoo how did u take 6 years of latin in HS? I thought HS was only 4 years?

I went to private school--started in 7th grade. First year of latin, there were 35 or so people in the class. By the 3rd year, there were about 15. When I was a senior, there were only 4 of us left! It was their loss, the last couple of years of latin were the most fun--just translation. We translated the entire Aeneid, Ovid's Metamorphosus, Catullus (but not the risque poems, unfortunately), and some Horace (very difficult). Translated Cicero and Julius Caesar in earlier years.

ok gotcha, so your high school went 7th to 12th? thats pretty cool.
I'd love to learn latin but my school district doesn't offer it so I'll just hafta stick to spanish, french, and german. I plan to learn all of them and be multilingual. I'm already bilingual with chinese and English and am learning spanish. What languages do you all know? (i know its a little off subject, but it is on languages.)

Originally posted by VoodooDali


I went to private school--started in 7th grade. First year of latin, there were 35 or so people in the class. By the 3rd year, there were about 15. When I was a senior, there were only 4 of us left! It was their loss, the last couple of years of latin were the most fun--just translation. We translated the entire Aeneid, Ovid's Metamorphosus, Catullus (but not the risque poems, unfortunately), and some Horace (very difficult). Translated Cicero and Julius Caesar in earlier years.

Neat. Wish the public schools had offered that. Montaigne's father (Montaigne was a minor nobleman, famous diplomat and great essayist in the 16th century; his stuff reads like a modern existentialist, frequently) raised him hearing *only* Latin until he was 10 or 11, had a time when Latin was just away from its position as the central language of Western government, culture, science and thought. We, on the other hand, had to put up in high school with an English teacher who deliberately taught the language as though it were nothing but Latin prefixes and suffixes, divorced from contact with reality: dry, deadly stuff, fit more for disinterment in a morgue than speaking or reading. Is it any wonder, after going through the US Public School System, that most children see reading as equivalent in fun to a broken hip?

English and Swedish are easiest for Finnish people...French is quite easy as well. But try to learn Finnish if you are a foreigner Chinese and Japanese are even more difficult.

Originally posted by VoodooDali
Catullus (but not the risque poems, unfortunately)

Did you do the sparrow one? It's not risque as such, but it could be interpreted...interestingly

Originally posted by Kameleon


Did you do the sparrow one? It's not risque as such, but it could be interpreted...interestingly

Yes I know that one, but the ones that were omitted from my latin classes were more like this--
Check out this poem that Catullus wrote about a woman who stole his poems (kind of a modern translation):

Come here, nasty words, so many I can hardly
tell where you all came from.
That ugly slut thinks I'm a joke
and refuses to give us back
the poems, can you believe this sh-t?
Lets hunt her down , and demand them back!
Who is she, you ask? That one, who you see
strutting around, with ugly clown lips,
laughing like a pesky French poodle.
Surround her, ask for them again!
"Rotten slut, give my poems back!
Give 'em back, rotten slut, the poems!"
Doesn't give a sh-t? Oh, crap. Whorehouse.
or if anything's worse, you're it.
But I've not had enough thinking about this.
If nothing else, lets make that
pinched b-tch turn red-faced.
All together shout, once more, louder:
"Rotten slut, give my poems back!
Give 'em back, rotten slut, the poems!"
But nothing helps, nothing moves her.
A change in your methods is cool,
if you can get anything more done.
"Sweet thing, give my poems back!"

In latin:

adeste hendecasyllabi. quot estis
omnes. undique quotquot estis omnes.
iocum me putat esse moecha turpis.
et negat mihi nostra reddituram
pugillaria si pati potestis.
persequamur eam. et reflagitemus.
quae sit quaeritis. illa quam uidetis
turpe incedere mimice ac moleste
ridentem catuli ore Gallicani.
circumsistite eam. et reflagitate.
moecha putida. redde codicillos.
redde putida moecha codicillos.
non assis facis. o lutum. lupanar,
aut si perditius potest quid esse.
sed non est tamen hoc satis putandum
quod si non aliud potest ruborem
ferreo canis exprimamus ore.
conclamate iterum altiore uoce.
moecha putide. redde codicillos.
redde putida moecha moecha codicillos.
sed nil proficimus. nihil mouetur.
mutanda est ratio modusque uobis
siquid proficere amplius potestis.
pudica et proba. redde codicillos.

English is the easiest language to learn IMO, and maybe that's why it is the international language . I've tried to learn French and German but i found both hard and i only recall a few words now, nothing more.

On the other hand just don't try to learn Greek if you are not extremely patient.

I think that which language is easiest to learn for you depends much on your what mother tongue you speak. German was easiest for me, as Luxembourgish is closely related to it. After this comes English, and I agree that French is really hard to learn.

What I have seen is that people speaking Italian, Spanish or Portuguese (sp?) pick up French much faster than German.

Obviously Mysteria is right that how difficult a language is to learn, depends a lot on your own mother toungue. Languages belonging to the same family are easier to learn than languages belonging to very remote families.

I would also like to add that difficulty is also depending on what level of mastery we are talking about. English for instance, is a very difficult language to master to perfection, but a fairly easy language to learn at "everyday conversation level". Japanese is fairly easy to learn to speak (also for people who are native Latin/Germanic speakers) but it is very difficult to write since they use three different alphabets, whereof one is based on Chinese pictograms.

From personal knowledge and what I've heard from other people, I would say Finnish is one of the most difficult languages to learn, due to it's extremly complex and rich grammar - I think they have like 13 different kasus It is supposed to be more difficult than Latin. Swahili is supposed to be very easy to learn, much due to it's simple grammar and few words. It's also a useful language to learn, since lots of different people in Africa speak Swahili as 1st or 2nd language.

Of the languages I have studied (English, French, German, Russian, Japanese) I found Russian the absolutely most difficult, no comparison. The grammar is very complex, similar to Latin, and it demands you to think in a different way, to create new concepts.

Originally posted by frogus
Do you think the world would be a better place if we had a standard, international language?

Yes, I really think so. It wouldn't need to be the same 1st language for everybody, people could still keep whatever native language they wished, but I think everybody should start learning a common international language as kids. I don't care what language, although I think in theory a constructed, regular language like Esperanto would be fine.

Assuming English is first language....

I've found German to be fairly simple, as with Latin. For Latin vocab, all you need to know are English derivatives. German was very similar to English.

Re: Assuming English is first language....

Originally posted by The Z
I've found German to be fairly simple, as with Latin. For Latin vocab, all you need to know are English derivatives. German was very similar to English.

Yes, it is, isn't it? Dutch is even more. It's fascinating noting the Dutch words during conversation that went out of fashion during the English Renaissance. Of course, it's hard to follow the conversation at the same time.

It is? Never heard anyone speak Dutch before....maybe it's something I should look into. On a different note, French (for me) has been a brutal language to learn, simply because the grammar system is a little "off-hand", especially since my school has done primarily grammar, and not a lot of vocab. In some cases you *need* the vocab to do the grammar.

A world language

Originally posted by C Elegans
... although I think in theory a constructed, regular language like Esperanto would be fine.

I think the idea behind Esperanto was for it to be a world language. Unfortunately, just about the only ones speaking it are catholic priests, so unless you have lengthy confessions to make when abroad it's pretty useless. Besides, Esperanto has been superceded by Ido, which, since noone I know (including me) knows anything about it, hardly is making any great progress in turning into a world language.

Among the major languages, I put my bet on Swahili in regard to reading and writing, although I believe pronounciation could be troublesome.

It seemed time, given the turnaround of members, to bring back this old thread, and get some new reactions. If you don't want to read the entire thread (and I think it's pretty interesting), at least read the first post to get an idea what it's about. And please don't post if you only know one language and haven't the vaguest idea what is required to learn and truly know any others. It will save us all the time spent in laughing at you.

I've heard foreigners say Dutch is a hard language. I can't say if the grammar is hard to learn –since I'm speaking and writing the language for my whole life-, but I do know that the pronunciation is quite difficult. Foreigners have no idea how to use their tongue when speaking Dutch.

English is, to my knowledge, one of the easiest languages to learn, although I think that depends on the amount of affiliation and talent you have with the language.

I've also studied French and German. Speaking French has always been a big problem for me. Writing is doable, although the grammar is quite difficult. However, if you practise French often enough, I think it's easier to learn than German. Ohh the grammar is a really pain in the ass with that language. Der, den, die, das, du, sie, Sie, ihn, Ihnen (I'll not even elaborate on the different prepositions). You really need to learn the different pieces of a sentence again. The verbs, pronouns, the finite form, the direct, etc. Without knowing how to construct a proper sentence, you might as well give up.

I never took Spanish, but I might follow a few classes next year when my uni schedule allows me to. A few of my friends are now studying Spanish, though, and, according to them, it's quite doable.

All in all, I have to say that, personally, I found English the easiest language to learn.

[QUOTE=C Elegans]
From personal knowledge and what I've heard from other people, I would say Finnish is one of the most difficult languages to learn, due to it's extremly complex and rich grammar - I think they have like 13 different kasus It is supposed to be more difficult than Latin. Swahili is supposed to be very easy to learn, much due to it's simple grammar and few words. It's also a useful language to learn, since lots of different people in Africa speak Swahili as 1st or 2nd language.
[/QUOTE]
You are absolutely right there. Also the pronouncing it makes it even more difficult to learn, as the fact that we use few more letters than ie english uses...
I've tried to teach finnish to some friends of mine from other countries, and have noticed that it's veryu difficult or near impossible to teach them to pronounce even close to correctly and to teach them to use right form of the word at the right time...

But, to the question of easiest language, I would also say latin. I've studied it a bit, unluckily my high school had only one course of it. It's not that difficult to learn really

I had long heard that Spanish is easy to learn, but when I took a basic course at university once I found myself disagreeing.
Initially it is straightforward, but when you get into the more complex verb tenses it becomes quite difficult. The vowels in the verbs have a tendency to reverse their spelling, and I found this very difficult to keep straight.

There were other parts of the grammar I found complicated as well, though I can't recall what they are.

I honestly found French *much* easier to learn than Spanish. Though, admittedly, it is a required subject in Canada up until about grade nine, so, for me, learning it was incremental.

I suspect Spanish has the reputation of being easy to learn because it is fairly easy to pick up through osmosis if you are in a Spanish-speaking environment. Formally studying the language is another matter... I found anyway.

In my opinion German is the easiest, but that's because my native language is dutch, and german is closely related to dutch. Basicly, it's like speaking Dutch but with casi and a big potato in your mouth. German is easy, but it's also a really ugly, brutal language. "Ich liebe dich" sounds more like "I want to hit you in the face really hard" than "I love you". But that's just my humble opinion