Myth 7 Some Languages are Harder than Others

Lars-Gunnar Andersson, the author of this passage believes that some languages can
be harder than others in some certain aspect, but in general, that’s hard to tell. The
reason why people find a language is easy to learn is that this new language is similar
to his mother tongue in linguistics, cultural background and vocabulary.
With the help of grammar, vocabulary and rules of usage, one can know how to and
when to speak correctly. The author studies the relationship between the vocabulary
and the simplicity of language first, finding that they can’t say the language will be
easier to learn if it uses fewer words because that may increase the difficulty for
people to express their thoughts. Then, English may be simpler due to the different
forms of address reflect social distinction which exist in all societies, he comes to the
conclusion that rules of usage is the thing mankind can’t avoid.
But orthography can be simpler as long as the sounds are match the letters and writing
system and the spelling are possible to change from one writing system to another
without changing anything in the language structure. There is also a measure of
linguistic simplicity in grammar. Firstly, sound system has a scale of difficulty. The
fewer vowels, the fewer consonants and the syllabic structure a language has, the
simpler the sound system is. Secondly, analytic languages are easier than synthetic.
The author uses two examples for this claim. The first one is children learn analytic
language of their native language first then come to synthetic language. The second
one is pidgin languages which have simple grammatical structure of sentences and
mostly are analytic is what people regard as simplified versions of their own
languages.
But languages are not uniformly simple or difficult as some language may be simpler
than others in a certain aspect but more difficult in other aspects in turn. There are a
handful of scales for measuring simplicity in language but researchers haven’t find the
trading relationships between the different scales.
To conclude, some language appears to be harder than others, but it is hard to explain
exactly how and to what extent.
Vocabulary
Rules of usage
Writing system Orthography
Grammar—sound system, construction of words