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ArchivesBasque ? for Lumia
in reply to a message by Lumia
Could you give me a guess at the difficulty factor to learn Basque for someone who speaks fluent English and French, and basic conversant Italian? Thanks.
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Basque is not a Indoeuropean language, so it is not related with English or French or Italian. It is an isolated language and knowledge of other languages are irrelevant to help in learning Basque.
Note: is this fluent speaker of French you? Because your guesses about French pronunciation are completely wrong.
Note: is this fluent speaker of French you? Because your guesses about French pronunciation are completely wrong.
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Pronunciation guesses?
What pronunciation guesses are you referring to? I haven't made any that I can recall, especially as my French skills are at best rudimentary. While I have been told by native French speakers that my accent is good, I would only offer pronunciation advice if I had heard the word spoken by a native.
Yes, I am aware that Basque is an isolated language. However, I am unaware as to its structure and provided the fluency information in case there were some very basic constructural parallels that might influence the learning curve. I was looking for the relative scale of difficulty generally applied to learning Basque. (For example, Icelandic is typically considered the most difficult language for non-natives to learn.)
Frankly, while your answers are very informative---your responses sometimes come across as bruque.
What pronunciation guesses are you referring to? I haven't made any that I can recall, especially as my French skills are at best rudimentary. While I have been told by native French speakers that my accent is good, I would only offer pronunciation advice if I had heard the word spoken by a native.
Yes, I am aware that Basque is an isolated language. However, I am unaware as to its structure and provided the fluency information in case there were some very basic constructural parallels that might influence the learning curve. I was looking for the relative scale of difficulty generally applied to learning Basque. (For example, Icelandic is typically considered the most difficult language for non-natives to learn.)
Frankly, while your answers are very informative---your responses sometimes come across as bruque.
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Sorry
I mistook you with garden2. Accept my apologies.
"For example, Icelandic is typically considered the most difficult language for non-natives to learn."
Perhaps among English speakers (obviously, I don't know), but I usually found Arabic, Chinese or Japanese considered most difficult languages for non-natives.
I found this article about this matter, in which Hungarian is the most difficult.
http://www.usingenglish.com/articles/hardest-language.php
The Basque has some difficulties to Indoeuropean speakers:
different order of the words in sentence (SOV)
flexion of grammatical cases
very complex verbal system
very complex system of prefixes and suffixes
"your responses sometimes come across as bruque"
Perhaps it is because my English is only basic and I aply the language and behaviour politeness rules from my language/culture plus I'm a direct person. Probably a text completely acceptable to me can be rude to English readers.
Sorry about that.
I mistook you with garden2. Accept my apologies.
"For example, Icelandic is typically considered the most difficult language for non-natives to learn."
Perhaps among English speakers (obviously, I don't know), but I usually found Arabic, Chinese or Japanese considered most difficult languages for non-natives.
I found this article about this matter, in which Hungarian is the most difficult.
http://www.usingenglish.com/articles/hardest-language.php
The Basque has some difficulties to Indoeuropean speakers:
different order of the words in sentence (SOV)
flexion of grammatical cases
very complex verbal system
very complex system of prefixes and suffixes
"your responses sometimes come across as bruque"
Perhaps it is because my English is only basic and I aply the language and behaviour politeness rules from my language/culture plus I'm a direct person. Probably a text completely acceptable to me can be rude to English readers.
Sorry about that.
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Thanks and thanks.
Actually your written English is quite good---so much so that I didn't really consider that its "brusque" quality could be a translation/fluency issue.
For English speakers, Icelandic is generally considered extremely difficult to learn, but I'm sure others would echo your choices for "most difficult". Regarding the Hungarian---surprising. I'll have to ask my linguist friends what they think about the findings.
Thanks for the language info.
Actually your written English is quite good---so much so that I didn't really consider that its "brusque" quality could be a translation/fluency issue.
For English speakers, Icelandic is generally considered extremely difficult to learn, but I'm sure others would echo your choices for "most difficult". Regarding the Hungarian---surprising. I'll have to ask my linguist friends what they think about the findings.
Thanks for the language info.
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Typo: "brusque"
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