English

[samwitdangol]

I must say, I am extremely grateful that English is my first language; if I had to learn it, I would jump of a bridge.

[j_tour]

I must say, I am extremely grateful that English is my first language; if I had to learn it, I would jump of a bridge.

Well why don't you just turn that frown upside down, mister man.

Could be worse, thinking of homophonic phrases in French.n

That's a bastard of a language.

Meh, English, add some jiddischer Sprache, it's fine.

[outin]

I wonder why, seemed easy to learn to me. Is it the grammar? Or spelling?

[ranjit]

Maybe because Finnish shares a lot of grammatical structure? For some reason, Scandinavians seem to pick up very fluent English. It's still a bit of a mystery to me.

Why you have thrice as many letters per word is still beyond me though.

[outin]

Maybe because Finnish shares a lot of grammatical structure? For some reason, Scandinavians seem to pick up very fluent English. It's still a bit of a mystery to me.

Why you have thrice as many letters per word is still beyond me though.

Efficiency. We do not need to add extra words like prepositions to say what we want, we just add suitable endings to the existing words. It does make the words longer, but expressions shorter

Of the languages I have studied (English, Swedish and German) I still think Finnish is the most efficient for fast and concise communication. Maybe partly because it is the youngest as a written language and grammar was created more as a project in the 16th century instead of evolving naturally during a long timeframe.

But I get why Finnish would feel difficult for someone not used to hearing it from childhood. Unless you're Hungarian:)

[j_tour]

But I get why Finnish would feel difficult for someone not used to hearing it from childhood. Unless you're Hungarian:)

I have no reason to doubt that.

I'm sure most anybody could pick up some conversational Finnish, just like any other language, but it depends on the morphology of the cases, and if there were many pronunciation difficulties. 

Also if the cases are divided up into a number of classes of declensions to where you have to recall immediately which one any given word belongs to.  Sort of like, the nominative plural of "apparatus" is "apparatus," not "apparati," because they don't belong to the same class of noun declensions.

Hungarian, huh.  Well, IIRC that's one of the comparatively few languages that is stress-timed, like English, so that might be easier for a native English speaker who gets confused about the vast majority of languages that are syllable-timed, such that every syllable gets its own little time unit.

More or less.

[outin]

I have no reason to doubt that.

I'm sure most anybody could pick up some conversational Finnish, just like any other language, but it depends on the morphology of the cases, and if there were many pronunciation difficulties. 

Also if the cases are divided up into a number of classes of declensions to where you have to recall immediately which one any given word belongs to.  Sort of like, the nominative plural of "apparatus" is "apparatus," not "apparati," because they don't belong to the same class of noun declensions.

Hungarian, huh.  Well, IIRC that's one of the comparatively few languages that is stress-timed, like English, so that might be easier for a native English speaker who gets confused about the vast majority of languages that are syllable-timed, such that every syllable gets its own little time unit.

More or less.

Non natives do have some trouble with choosing the correct declensions usually, but some pick it quite fast.

Since Finnish is almost always pronounced as it is written it's not that hard to speak if you know your grammar. The vowels and double consonants seem to be a bit tricky...There's the vowel harmony to understand and the somewhat rare diphthongs. The consonant gradation can also take some time to get used to.

But it's not that hard, promise!