spanish,french, english

Flipper,

The view on how difficult a language is is mostly personal.But there are , well, certain things that make a language hard or easy.

English is the 'easiest' (of course this is relative) language I have learned till now.However grammerwise I think Afrikaans (which I'm currently learning) is getting closer and closer to that 'title'.

Even Candy , an English teacher working in Germany, will have to admit that on most fronts German is harder (maily grammerwise though) than English*.Same with Spanish and Latin (or French for that matter).

Even if the languages are extremely closely linked to eatchother, this doesn't mean it's easier for the native speakers to learn anothers language.

Just take Dutch and Afrikaans, in case you didn't know Afrikaans is a language which came forth from Dutch.They share almost for 75% identical.Yet, Afrikaans in the most analytic indoeuropean language on earth and Dutch is quite the opposite.Dutch has extremely complicated verbs while Afrikaans lacks anything close to it.Dutch learners can learn Afrikaans quite easy (they'll always have an accent though) while Dutch is hard for Afrikaners**.Does this mean Afrikaans is inferior to Dutch?NO of course not, no language is superior or inferior to another.(In fact I think that 'easy' language have a huge advantage in some situations)

* Candy, I know that you don't like it when I call English 'easy', but remember that it's all relative. I bet that Dutch and German are pieces of cake compared to some African languages ;-)

**Afrikaners and Dutch don't really need to learn eacothers language though they can more or less understand eatchother straight away, but this isn't the same as speaking the language.

typo:

"They share almost for 75% identical"

"They are almost for 75% identical to eatchother"

<<* Candy, I know that you don't like it when I call English 'easy', but remember that it's all relative. I bet that Dutch and German are pieces of cake compared to some African languages ;-) >>

Well, I'll forgive you just this once! ;)

Those languages, being W. European languages, are all in the same ball park, though, even when you hide the details of their grammar. It's not like comparing them to Cantonese or other Asian languages-- English has no common ground with them and thus is more "hard" from that perspective.

Those languages aren't West European, but West Germanic.Secondly they are certainly not 'are all in the same ball park'.

The Netherlands (languages: Dutch and Afikaans) and England (English) are Western European countries. In addition these languages are Western Germanic, hence they are in the same "ball park" such that Cantonese is out beyond the "car park".

I group Afrikaans with the Netherlands since it is developed from Dutch.

This is a rather odd statement, there is no such thing as a 'western european' group.Mainly because this would include French and some Celtic languages.Languages are determinded by linguistics not geography.

What else would you call languages that are native to Western Europe, that share Romance and Germanic characteristics ? English is a Germanic language that shares much Romance vocabularly with French: a Romance language.

What do you mean by 'native to western europe'?!

Could you give me examples of those shared characteristics?

Exactly that. The same way it is applied in this usage:

"This page lists Internet sources for literary texts in the western European languages other than English."

http://www.lib.virginia.edu/wess/etexts.html


Vocabulary is one such characteristic.

Boring. Bye Bye.

I don't care if it's boring to you.

I have never heard about vocabulary being a shared characteristic between romance and germanic language. (english excluded)

'West European' is just NOT a language classification.Period.

" I don't care if it's boring to you.
I have never heard about vocabulary being a shared characteristic between romance and germanic language. (english excluded)
'West European' is just NOT a language classification.Period. "


For one I agree with Sander. Linguistically "western Europe" doesn't share common characteristics. Culturally either.

"Western Europe" is a concept that have mostly been popularized by The US during the cold war in opposition to the eastern parts of Europe under USSR domination. It is a geographical and political definition but not a linguistic or cultural one.
For exemple, in France we share with Romania (a eastern European country) the same linguistic/cultural group, but we don't with the British or the Dutch, even if they are located in western Europe as we.

The question of the definition of the regions of Europe is shown in Wikipedia, in "regions of Europe". We understand quikly that any geographical grouping is extremely subjective and not easy to do, and, in the other hand, the cultural grouping doesn't correspond to the geographical concepts.

Simple, replace "vocabulary" above with "etymological".

" Simple, replace "vocabulary" above with "etymological". "

Between Romance and Germanic languages the etymology is not the same. These linguistics groups may have a common "ancestor", but it would be "indo-European". Germanic and romance languages are not closer together than with Slavic languages, Persan, Hindi or Greek.
Being influenced by french in some of its vocabulary, english may have etymological connections with both latin and germanic languages - but these two groups remain very different from each other.
On its side latin languages (and in a lesser extend germanic ones two) have a lot of etymology from Greek (wich is geographically situated in eastern Europe)