Which one is the easiest language to learn?

November 19, 2008 9:49 AM

Which language is easiest to learn?

I'm currently studying and preparing for the Foreign Service Officer hiring process, and I want to gain some extra points on the register by learning a critical language. My question is, which of the following is easier to learn:
Korean
Russian
Turkish

Why these three out of the list? It's the three that Rosetta Stone has a learning program for currently. I am already aware of the Foreign Service Lanuguage Institute and plan on using that as a supplement. Thank you in advance.

posted by hipersons to work & money (27 comments total)

My cousin (who teaches English in South Korea) tells me that Korean is somewhat easy to pick up on, especially their alphabet. YMMV of course.
posted by aheckler at 9:56 AM on November 19, 2008

There's a list here (a few posts down) that would suggest the order of difficulty (easy to hard) would be Russian, Turkish, Korean. The list is purported to be the result of a study by the British Foreign Office, although I didn't attempt to track down the original study.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 9:59 AM on November 19, 2008 [3 favorites]

I've been living in Kiev for almost two years where, although the national language is Ukrainian, Russian is more commonly spoken. I can now read Cyrillic, although unless it's an English word written in Cyrillic, I almost never understand the word. I guess I should say I can phonetically sound out Cyrillic words. I can speak menu Russian - order a drink, sometimes ask people for two or four of "that". It is, for me at least, a very very hard language. Take into account that I did take classes, both before coming over and a little bit (like 4 times) after coming here. Then I pretty much gave up. There are something like 16 tenses and no articles in this language, plus the usual masculine, feminine and neuter jazz. Way too much for me.

On the other hand, just to prove that I'm not a complete idiot, I lived in Germany for three months and picked up enough German to have a halting, yet somewhat decent conversation.

Of the three languages you mention, I would think Turkish would be the easiest simply because they use a Roman alphabet with a few extra symbols. But I've been to Turkey several times and I can not even remember how to say "thank you" (again, I swear I'm not this much of an idiot in non-language parts of my life...mostly)

Good luck!
posted by monkey!knife!fight! at 10:26 AM on November 19, 2008

especially their alphabet

learning the alphabet is like 0.001% of the work involved in learning a language.
posted by troy at 10:39 AM on November 19, 2008 [5 favorites]

Grammatically - Korean is the simplest. Both Russian and Turkish have cases for which there is no equivalent in English and can be difficult to grok. I've studied Russian and found it fairly reasonable to learn. I got grammatically further than I did in French (many fewer verb tenses in Russian). Turkish is a crazy f*ed up language that adds not just case endings - but possessive endings to their nouns. One noun can have over 100 different forms - it's not Hungarian/Finnish f*ed up - but it's on its way.
posted by Wolfie at 10:41 AM on November 19, 2008

Yeah, when Sejong the Great invented the Korean alphabet, it was with ease of use in mind.
posted by Kirklander at 10:45 AM on November 19, 2008

A polygot friend said Turkish was pretty easy because the grammar is fairly simple and the words tend to be short.

Then again she's a language super-whiz. She had no trouble with Russian but Arabic knocked on her on knees.

I picked up basic French pretty easy, but I had 3 years of Latin and a lot of immersion in French culture, so figuring out word meanings was (kinda) easy. I still can't remember the genders in any not-sounding-like-a-toddler way.


( small aside, apparently a cute western girl who speaks in formal Ottoman Turkish is endlessly entertaing to men. )
posted by The Whelk at 10:56 AM on November 19, 2008

The language whiz I know says Russian is especially difficult. She has told me a lot of americans speak "kitchen russian" and very few learn it as a second language properly. Id say pick the language that offers you the most time with native speakers. Answering questions on a computer application isnt the same as actually knowing the language or holding a conversation that isnt the russian equivalant of "engrish." Dont let your foreign friends cut you slack. You should be pronouncing like a native.

If youre an english native it might be a better idea to return your software for the spanish version. Spanish and English has a lot in common and if youre an american then you shouldnt have too much trouble finding a native speaker.
posted by damn dirty ape at 11:05 AM on November 19, 2008

In my experience, native speakers of any and every language always claim their own language is the hardest. The Japanese have taken this to high art, exaggerating how "difficult for foreigners" their writing is, and even developing formalized shock and awe responses when some baka gaijin actually manages to pronounce a word correctly. Gasp!

None of the three languages you mention is especially difficult, I don't think. I'd choose whichever one offers the greatest number of real people you can practice with, because Rosetta Stone alone won't get you far.
posted by rokusan at 11:20 AM on November 19, 2008

Here's a list from a US source -- seems mostly to match up with the British Foreign Office list above.

Speaking as someone who plays around at learning languages for fun, I have to say that the fact that language A is easier for most people than language B does not necessarily mean language A is easier for you. I personally find, say, German much easier than Spanish, but it seems to be the reverse of most people. Also, ease of learning has at least as much to do with resources as inherent difficulty: If you can you hang out with a native speaker of X, but not of Y, then then X will probably be easier for you to learn. Even if the only real difference is that you think one of them is more fun, or sounds nicer to you, or you find its culture/media more interesting, that may make a big difference in motivation.
posted by fidelity at 11:35 AM on November 19, 2008

learning the alphabet is like 0.001% of the work involved in learning a language.

Not if it's Chinese.
posted by martinrebas at 12:18 PM on November 19, 2008 [1 favorite]

Pick the language/culture/country you have the most interest in. I firmly believe that interest trumps difficulty every time.

(I learned more Japanese in three months from a Japanese girlfriend than the Latin I learned in three years of HS/College classes.)

Don't let the alphabet be a deciding factor. Korean is really simple, you can pick it up in an afternoon.
posted by Ookseer at 12:29 PM on November 19, 2008 [1 favorite]

German is relatively easy in my opinion - it shares many vocabulary with English or similar-sounding words that can be easily interpreted (witness Tanz for "dance" and Haare for "hair", to name a few), and grammar is the same. The cons are: yes, German is notorious for super-long words, and some people I know think it's a very... "harsh" language.

French isn't easy. I keep tripping up over the vocabulary and grammar.

Chinese - it's not easy for Westerners. You have to learn about tone and get those right, because a LOT of words are pronounced the same and if you get the tone wrong, you're liable to offend someone or say something REALLY stupid. Also, you can't simply look at a character and deduce its pronunciation. Grammar is weird too; no tenses, no gender, no plurality. That said, though, if you can master Chinese, then I'll congratulate you.
posted by curagea at 1:04 PM on November 19, 2008

I have to agree that opportunities to converse with native speakers is a big, big deal. After working very hard to get pretty damn good at Swedish I had almost zero use for it back in the States.

At the same time, the language I learned in classes did almost nothing to prepare me to understand the native language spoken at speed. Nothing can replace speaking with and listening to a native.
posted by trinity8-director at 1:20 PM on November 19, 2008

Pick the language/culture/country you have the most interest in. I firmly believe that interest trumps difficulty every time.

Yup. Not to mention that there is no objective answer to your question; as you can see from the answers in this thread, some will say Language X is the hardest, others that it's the easiest. The only one of your three that I know is Russian, which I would not call "easy" but which I have found a lot of fun and a pleasure to learn. Turkish should be fairly easy because it's a straightforward agglutinative language: you just tack on endings to the stem, and there are no irregular verbs. Korean has a nice simple writing system, but like Japanese it is hard to use socially because of the complex status system; as the Wikipedia article says:

When talking about someone superior in status, a speaker or writer usually uses special nouns or verb endings to indicate the subject's superiority. Generally, someone is superior in status if he/she is an older relative, a stranger of roughly equal or greater age, or an employer, teacher, customer, or the like. Someone is equal or inferior in status if he/she is a younger stranger, student, employee or the like.... There are no fewer than 7 verb paradigms or speech levels in Korean, and each level has its own unique set of verb endings which are used to indicate the level of formality of a situation. Unlike honorifics — which are used to show respect towards the referent — speech levels are used to show respect towards a speaker's or writer's audience.

If you think you can deal with that, give it a shot. In general, though, I would say to look at the first few chapters of an introductory text of each and see which attracts you most. Nobody else can tell you which will be easier or more pleasurable for you.
posted by languagehat at 1:33 PM on November 19, 2008 [1 favorite]

Keep in mind that a lot of what makes learning a Language easy is your interest in it. Motivation is important, and since the three languages are very different I'd consider which culture appeals to you the most.
posted by Solon and Thanks at 1:34 PM on November 19, 2008

Because language is reflective of the culture of its speakers, all languages are equally complex. There's no quantifiable reason for why a language is complex in one particular aspect, but simpler in another, but the complexity equals out. Our brains can only handle so much, but we'll take on as much as we can handle to be as expressive as we can be. If a language has a rich morphological system, it may be syntactically simpler. For example, English does not have a lot of case markings (the morphology has leveled out over the last several hundred years) but the syntax is wicked. Finish is the opposite, you can put words in relatively free order, but you better attach all the right bits (case markings) or you'll end up with something incomprehensible.

What is really going to make the biggest difference in your ease of learning a new language is your interest and motivation. That, and you might find you have a natural proclivity to grasping a certain aspect of a language—possibly because its similar to an aspect of a language you already know, or could be because it's completely different, or because you are good at figuring out the patterns, who knows, go find out and see! For example, some people are pretty good at picking up accents. Maybe they have a good acoustic awareness. This may benefit them at excelling at a language that is phonologically complex or different from their own. Then again, they may find that learning a language that is phonologically similar to their native one (in complexity, or sounds, or alternations, whatever) is easy and encourages them to continue onto the harder aspects.

Of the languages you are choosing from, its interesting that each one has its own distinct orthography system. Which one looks most interesting to you? Which language's people and culture are you most curious about? Do you want to learn a language that has similar aspects to English? Or would you be motivated and challenged to take on something completely different, Korean has tones, Turkish has interesting template morphology (vowels change depending on other factors), Russian has a lot of soft/hard consonant distinctions...all of these things could be fun, could suck. Depends on what you bring with you and how you use it.
posted by iamkimiam at 2:02 PM on November 19, 2008 [1 favorite]

Er, Korean doesn't have tones. Chinese does, though.
posted by needled at 2:19 PM on November 19, 2008

You're totally right. 100% brainfart.
posted by iamkimiam at 3:13 PM on November 19, 2008

Assuming you're a PIE-derivative Westerner (that is, you speak a language like English, German, French, Spanish, etc, as your mother tongue), I'd bet on Esperanto.

Now, as for useful languages... that's another story.
posted by IAmBroom at 3:16 PM on November 19, 2008 [1 favorite]

Learn the one you find most interesting. A language that you are interested in will be easier to learn than one you have little interest in.
posted by clark at 6:20 PM on November 19, 2008

Because language is reflective of the culture of its speakers, all languages are equally complex. There's no quantifiable reason for why a language is complex in one particular aspect, but simpler in another, but the complexity equals out.

Many a linguist would disagree with you.

One way to grade the difficulty of a language is to measure the average age at which children learning their native language achieve functional literacy, controlled for socioeconomic factors. Standardizing these measures is difficult but it has been attempted many times.

I can't find a link right now but I vaguely remember that Western European languages are ranked as easiest (especially due to strict official standardization), and Chinese with its non-phonetic writing system is one of the most difficult. And English, somewhat suprisingly, is considered rather difficult because it is so irregular, so dynamic and so regionalized.

Sorry but I don't know where Russian, Turkish and Korean sit on this scale.
posted by randomstriker at 8:55 PM on November 19, 2008

For an English speaker, you'll have better luck with the language closest to that. None of those three really qualify, though. Turkish and English share the same basic alphabet, but FWIU the similarities end there. Russian is notoriously difficult, grammatically (but I love the way Russian sounds!) and Korean, I would venture, is the same. The Korean alphabet (syllabary?) is relatively simple to learn, and you can read and write the language, at least phonetically, really quickly. Though Korean also employs Chinese characters at various times as well.
posted by zardoz at 11:27 PM on November 19, 2008

A polygot friend said Turkish was pretty easy because ... the words tend to be short.

Turkish is agglutinative. In my limited contact, I had gotten the impression that this gives it short word base fragments, but ridiculously long sentence-length words?
posted by jacalata at 11:33 PM on November 19, 2008

I would concentrate on the language of the culture you are most interested in. Your interest will help you learn it and your skill in that language will influence your career. If you learn Korean, you might end up living in Korea. Do you want to live in Korea?
posted by Gor-ella at 8:49 AM on November 20, 2008

You can't control for all socioeconomic factors. And even if you could, length of time that children take to learn the language is not an accurate or absolute metric by which to measure the objective complexity of the language. It's like saying that oranges must be more challenging to eat than apples because the people in this country take longer to peel the skins than the people of that country, and therefore time trials prove that oranges are more complex. Not only can you not account for everything, but you're using a measure (time) to account for something (level of complexity) that can't be proven in that way.

Also – and I am NOT directing this at anyone in particular, just putting it out there – Saying that one language is easier to learn or more complex than another is dangerous myth. The reason why it is a dangerous notion is because language is indexical of the culture of its speakers, and making claims about its simplicity promotes negative attitudes of those speakers. Saying that "[language X] is easy" is one step away from the idea that [language X]'s people are simple or lazy. This is linguistic prejudice, and it can affect everything from the micro levels of society to the macro.

Chapter 7 of Laurie Bauer and Peter Trudgill's Sociolinguistics book, Language Myths, covers this one directly.
posted by iamkimiam at 9:31 AM on November 20, 2008

Put another way...
When you leave your house each morning, you take what you need with you. But more than that, you take as much as you need with you. Individual reasons for why and how much you carry with you may vary, but as a whole, your neighborhood population has an average amount of "stuff" they carry with them and use. But your neighborhood may be close to mass transit, which many of your neighbors may use. Their average amount of stuff they carry will be different than that of another population, let's say a rural one. But all OUTSIDE (socioeconomic) factors being equal, people will carry, on average, the same amount of stuff, based on what is maximally efficient. Claims about populations that carry, on average, more or less stuff (but not because of outside factors) is a claim about a difference in the brains of those people. It's saying that the reason for this difference is found in the heads of populations being looked at. This type of claim and study is questionable.
posted by iamkimiam at 10:21 AM on November 20, 2008