Language complexity: Difference between revisions

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== Perceived difficulty ==

A common conventional wisdom is that some languages are inherently harder to learn than others. Thisas belieffirst appliesor tosecond firstlanguages, anddue secondto languagetheir learninggreater complexity. ItHowever this belief is as of yet not supported by scientific evidence.

The perceived difficulty of second language acquisition entirelyseems dependsto largely depend on the languagesimilarity one’sbetween learningthe andlearner's itsnative relationslanguage toand one’s nativethe language they are learning. In a study conducted in 2013, scientists <ref>{{cite book |last=Cysouw |first=Michael |editor1-last=Borin |editor1-first=Lars |editor2-last=Saxena |editor2-first=Anja |title=Approaches to Measuring Linguistic Differences |publisher=De Gruyter Mouton |year=2013 |pages=57-82 |chapter=Predicting language-learning difficulty |isbn=978-3-11-048808-1}}</ref> used [[Foreign Service Institute|FSI]]’s data to try to identify the criteria that have an influence on the difficulty of foreign language learning.

* First, a language that is genetically related to the learner's native language will be easier to learn than a language from a different family. This is mostly due to language structure. The closer a language is to another, the more similar their structures will be (this applies to sounds, grammar, vocabulary, and so on).

* Another criterion is the [[writing system]]. ItLearners will be quicker to learn a language whenwhich writing withuses the same writing system as thetheir firstown language, than anative language using another writing system.

Therefore, the most complicated language to learn for an English native speaker would be for example a non-[[Indo-European languages|Indo European]] [[Ergative-absolutive alignment | ergative language]] with a different writing system thatand useswith postpositions.

Another study <ref>{{cite book |last=Stevens |first=Paul B. |editor1-last=Wahba |editor1-first=Kassem M. |editor2-last=Taha |editor2-first=Zeinab A. |editor3-last=England |editor3-first=Liz |title=Handbook for Arabic Language Teaching Professionals in the 21st Century |publisher=Lawrence Erlbaum Associates |year=2006 |pages=35-66 |chapter=Is Spanish really easy? Is Arabic really so hard? Perceived difficulty in learning arabic as a second language |isbn=978-0-203-76390-2}}</ref> conducted in 2006, started with the commun idea that Arabic is ahard difficultto languagelearn for an English native speaker, more so than for example Spanish or German. This study is also based on the FSI classification of languages according to their difficulty, placing Arabic in the fourth (relatively difficult) group. The study thus compares Arabic onwith manylanguages differentusually levelsperceived withas othereasier languages,to contrastinglearn thatand inconcludes this case,that Arabic is not thatinherently difficultmore comparedcomplex tothan othersthese languages. ItThe givesstudy manyprovides examplesa list of characteristicslinguistic whichproperties arethat easier inmake Arabic actually simpler than in otherthese languages perceived as easier to learn. For instance, verbs in Arabic, despite the complexity of their consonant roots, arewould be easier to learn than those in other languages, because Arabic has very specific sub-rules and only one [[Morphology (linguistics)#Paradigms_and_morphosyntax|verb paradigm]]. Spanish, as well as other languages, is therefore more complicated than Arabic in its verb tenses; French is more complicated in its phoneme-graphgrapheme correspondence; German, Polish and Greek, in their complex case [[inflection|inflections]] and Japanese in its complicated writing system. Despite the few easier characteristics of Arabic compared to others languages, English native speakers perceive this language as more difficult because itits differsstructure toand awriting largesystem extentare fromvery thedifferent samefrom English characteristics. There are thus many parameters that can be used to measure the difficulty of a language compared to another.

This belief is not often addressed for [[language acquisition| first language learning]]. If it was, it could give some insight on if some languages are inherently more difficult than others to learn. However, some studies look at some linguistics characteristics in particular. There is some evidence<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Bleses |first1=Dorthe |last2=Vach |first2=Werner |last3=Slott |first3=Malene |last4=Wehberg |first4=Sonja |last5=Thomsen |first5=Pia |last6=Madsen |first6=Thomas O. |last7=Basbøll |first7=Hans |year=2008 |title=Early vocabulary development in Danish and other languages: A CDI-based comparison |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-child-language/article/early-vocabulary-development-in-danish-and-other-languages-a-cdibased-comparison/D12A283664A8BA4A695D0DDF3378555A |journal=Journal of Child Language |volume=35 |issue=3 |pages=619-650 |doi= 10.1017/S0305000908008714 |access-date=2020-05-18}}</ref> that sound structure might influence early lexical development in children. Danish children were found to have a slight delay compared to other languages, who show a similar pattern. On the other hand, they seem to catch up on the delay when they reach two years of age. This shows that sound structure might have an influence on the difficulty of a language. There is, however, not enough evidence to confidently say that some languages are easier or harder to learn as a first language.