Hey Olly, Filipino here from the Philippines. I would say that Tagalog is just a little bit harder than Indonesian and Malay, but it's still in the category of "easy languages to learn for English speakers." I agree with everything you said about my language. Maraming salamat dahil sinama mo ang Tagalog sa video mo!
Welsh is such a beautiful language and I started learning the basics recently. I'd like to one day be able to speak my ancestral languages, and Scottish Gaelic is the one I've been focusing on the most. Being able to speak both one day would be so incredible. ❤
I feel similarly in a way, but when it's one grandparent I barely knew I kinda feel like it would bad to lmao. In one way, I shouldn't be ignoring an entire quarter of my ancestry. But in another, I don't want to be one of those people who define myself by a quarter of ancestry and a country I've never even visited.
I studied Romanian for one year during the pandemic. It's a beautiful language and I don't think it's that hard. The grammar is more difficult than Spanish because of the cases. But once you understand the cases it's not that bad.
Romanian is considered a Romance language with its roots in Latin but it's really out there compared to Italian, French, Spanish and Portuguese. It is distinctly different.
One thing that helps with language learning is the right mindset. One of the biggest hurdles is the intimidation. Bad: Chinese has thousands of characters! Good: In English, you have to memorize the spelling and pronunciation of pretty much every word and there are over 100 thousand. In Chinese, you just memorize the pronunciation and meaning of a few thousand characters and then the big words are free Bad: Turkish has vowel harmony. It'll be hard to get used to changing the vowel every time. Good: In most languages, you have to memorize which of the vowels are in each syllable, sometimes there are dozens of possibilities. With vowel harmony, you only need to remember if the entire segment is type 1 or type 2.
Standard German does have a slient letter: the H when it is used as an indicator that a preceding single vowel is to be lengthened. It's known as Dehnungs-H (the stretching H).
Maybe, but some languages are clearly easier to learn than others. For instance, my native language is one of the slavic languages. Nevertheless, for me it's easier to learn Norwegian than Polish, even tho Polish and my native language share a pretty big part of the same vocabulary. However, Norwegian is easier for me, because Norwegian is simply much less complicated than Polish.
Except for English of course but that's hardly an issue as babies are born speaking English. Of course as we grow up we may forget the English we were born speaking but it comes back easily. Right, next question please.
Most Slavic borrowings in Romanian are more likely from Bulgarian and perhaps Serbian and other related languages than from Russian or just from Russian
When I was young, I promised to myself that no matter what I did in life I would never go anywhere near German as a language because I thought it was literally impossible to learn as a non-native. Until one day, five years ago, when curiosity got the best of me and I decided to give it a try just to see if I was right. Now I'm way too into it and can confidently say that it was one of the best decisions I ever made.
I can testify first hand that Filipinos are impressed at Americans who can speak even a bit of Filipino/Tagalog. My wife is Filipina. When I first met her mother she was delighted to no end that I not only tryed to learn her language, but also had grown fond of Filipino food. When I meet Filipinos in the US and in the Philippines, they are always surprised that I can speak a little Tagalog. Many Filipino women have married American men, but most don't bother to learn a single word or to appreciate the food. I find this puzzling, to use the gentlest word I can apply. In general, though, my wife and I travel a lot, and locals are happy when English speakers at least make an effort with "hello," "please," "thank you," and "where is the bathroom." Most people from the US or the Commonwealth just repeat English questions with inccreasing volume, as if that aids in comprehension.
Do you have your own YT channel? If so, I might like your channel better than the bazillions of expat in the PH channels because you could throw in Filipino/Tagalog. Bonus points for you if you throw in Cebuano😉
Romanian is really similar to Italian, beautiful language and easy to learn. And by knowing it, you can learn any other Romance language easily. My Romanian friends can understand so much Spanish Portugese Italian just by knowing their own language😆😆
18:28 (*shrieks and hides back into my Streichholzschächtelchen*) regarding Turkish: "If aliens invade earth and try to learn the most logical language with least exceptions they'd choose Turkish". As a German I love the vowel matching. It sounds so nice, like a birds song. I've hated learning Russian as there seems to be no vowel matching whatsoever (aside the two verbs, the cases, the loads of "one year - god, two year- goda, 3-9 years - let" stuff, and the tons of exceptions, plus I HAD to learn it as my first foreign language)
I am learning a lot of Germanic languages and I find that your readers in these languages are first-rate, not not just for reading in the language at your own pace but for comparative purposes as well.
Thanks for this video, Off to Germany next month will have to had 'jein' into my limited vocabulary Quite ite like your description of Welsh, a game of Scrabble gone wrong. When the Ryder cup came to the Celtic Manor Newport, one of the Americans was asked for his thoughts of the Welsh language, he replied "something made up in a bar after 4 o'clock in the morning".
20:50 I love Tagalog, I am from Mexico and I speak Tagalog(B1) and Chavacano(A2) also some Ilonggo and a little less of Cebuano, Ilocano and Kapampangan Mostly from friends online
I have been in all south America countries include Cuba and the most clearly Spanish language is from Lima- Perú. It's the same clear vowel and consonants sound in Valladolid (Spain) which is neutral. You can understand every word from them.😊
For me, French has been the hardest language to learn so far. I’ve been learning for nigh on 17 years and I still find it difficult. That’s really saying something because I’m currently learning íslenska and I find that system, for lack of a better term, “easier”
Tagalog's VSO order and infixes and Romanian's definite article suffixes were too much for me as a native Turkish speaker. Still finding some common words with Romanian was interesting.
I’d say Turkish is a language that looks straightforward when you first start approaching it because of the factors you mentioned - no gender, no irregular verbs etc. But of all the people I met who claimed Turkish was “easy,” none of them actually spoke Turkish well. :-) Learning to put together simple sentences isn’t so bad but once you start with dependent clauses things get quite complex, and it generally takes people a long time to reach the point where they aren’t analyzing sentences like algebra equations. And putting those sentences together in translation might be straightforward according to grammar rules, but doing it elegantly is another thing altogether. Turkish “tenses” are used quite differently than in English, and many foreigners never quite get it. (Turks have issues with English tenses for the same reasons.) Turkish i̇s also quite idiomatic, and the deeper you get into it, the more of the Arabic and Persian element you deal with. I don’t say this as a reason not to learn Turkish of course! It’s a wonderful and fascinating journey. But don’t expect it to be “easy.”
I am learning German now and it seemed hard to me and French seems hard. Ironically I was bad at languages in school but I managed to learn Modern Greek fluently to a bilingual level and I don't really consider Greek as being too difficult because it is extremely easy to read, pronounce and the grammar rules are relatively simple.
German is BY FAR the most overrated language in terms of difficulty for English speakers to learn. Virtually ALL languages in Asia are WAY harder ((ALL of them, no exceptions), not to mention Arabic, Persian, and even other European languages like Finnish and the Slavic ones like Russian, or Bulgarian. German being that hard is one of the many language myths.
@@grace-yz2sr I'm Brazilian. But I'm fluent in English. So, yeah, Rammstein and Lacrimosa (German) songs don't look as scarier as Dier en Grey or Hanabie (Japanese) songs. And I SPEAK Japanese, to a high level, as well. And it's STILL scarier than German, that I don't speak at all.
19:19 sentence word reordering is also allowed in German to emphasize the word or action you want to highlight. Although there are a few incorrect word orders especially when it sounds like yoda. Yoda style is definitely wrong.
The Slavic influence on Romanian is not from Russian or Ukrainian, but more so from Bulgarian - due to them accepting orthodox Christianity alongside liturgical Old Church Slavonic (Old Bulgarian - which came alongside the newly invented Cyrillic, which Romania used for a while), and also years of shared territories
I've learned Chinese for a tiny bit on Duolingo when I was at school (not as part of school, but I stupidly liked to explore languages while doing GCSEs). It's definitely easier than it looks. Near-identical grammar to English, especially. Problem is though, I don't see all that much use for it. Not to say it's not useful, but simply that in my personal life I don't really see anything so I'm prioritising some other languages. I learn French and Japanese nowadays. :)
I'm currently studying two of these: Turkish and Romanian. You forgot to mention another aspect of Romanian that is unusual for a Romance language -the use of suffixes for the definite article. I don't know if that's a Slavic thing or particular to Romanian. I also sm finding interesting common ground with it and Portuguese that are not found in other Romance languages.😊
19:19 if the sentence starts with 'ang' there should be 'ay'. if there is no 'ay' just like in the usual conversational structure. start your sentence with the verb or adj.
I really think casual spoken Japanese isn't that hard. Just learning how to say hello, order some food, or have a basic chat about some hobbies isn't much harder than most other languages. The harder thing will be understanding people who speak quickly.
Although Welsh is mainly a VSO language, it also a SVO when you introducing yourself, i would say James ydw i literally James am I Ydw is a form of bod, while is to be, the word sy/sydd is used after the subject, the 3rd person singular of the verb is used after the noun or pronoun to emphasise the subject. There is no indefinite article There are three definite article 'r is used after vowels and come before the other two Y is used before consonants expect H Yr is used before vowels and H Mae'r plant yn chwarae: the children are playing Buodd/roedd y plant yn chwarae: the children were playing Rwyt ti'n bwyta yr afal: you are eating the apple. It is also use in measurements Miles per hour is Milltir yr awr If i wanted to say in Welsh I'm going to school in Welsh you have to insert the definite article so it be Rydw i'n mynd i'r ysgol literally Am i going to the school Depending on the the sentence structure a noun could be singular or plural Three cats is Tair cath literally three cat, same as in Turkish or tair o cathod, cathod is the plural form Five children Pum plentyn Pump o plant 5 and 6 lose their last letters so 6, chwech becomes chwe and 5, pump becomes pum There are 9 mutations in welsh and h will be added in front of vowels in some instances, they are usually split into 3 although i go 4 as ll and rh dont follow all the soft mutation rules, the first 3, C, P and T have 3 mutation, soft mutations of them give you the second three of G, B and D and you only have to know 2 of these soft mutation as G drops off, D you just add another d, which makes a dd which is a voiced Th sound B with M change to F which is a V sound. The 6 also has nasal mutations, if you are saying you are somewhere and their Welsh name starts with C, P, G or B the word yn can change to ym with P or B Ym Mhenybont ar ogwr Ym Mangor Or Yng in front of C or G Yng Nghaerdydd In Cardiff Ll and Rh only soft mutate to L and R C, P and T also have aspirated mutations by adding a h after them, h is also added before the beginning of vowels Prepositions can have personal forms. Some adjectives do come before the noun like Hen meaning old but usually come after. Although Welsh is phonetic Si does makes a sh sound as in shop Gw the w is silent and the g is said with more rounding of the lips Ng you pronounce it as in sing but you have words like dangos which is more ng-g (collins Spurrell) dictionary and place names like Llangwyngwyd and Llangrallo, unsure why Cymru is the country Cymry is the Welsh people Cymraeg Welsh language Cymreig Welsh pertaining to Wales.
German pronunciation is quite straightforward. It's phonetic.. and also the thing about big words, well, I've been speaking German for many years and it general conversations those HUGE words rarely come up. People just use them in order to scare beginners from learning German
20:55 I don't even think you need to ask them for feedback as much as saying you want to learn. Maybe it was different for me because i was dating a filipina when i was learning it. They seemed much more eager to help you learn than Spanish speakers who will not correct you almost ever as long as you talk like a two year old or more advanced. Out of the years I spent in Spanish speaking countries and with Spanish speakers in other countries i do not think i have ever been corrected besides by one friend who wanted me to help him with his English. On one hand it is really nice because they don't care if you speak Spanish horribly as long as they know what you are trying to say. On the other hand you might continue to make elementary mistakes because nobody cares.
What's most difficult for me with Romanian is that when they speak in everyday life they swallow many vowels. It's the contrary with German: it's not an intonation language in which unstressed vowels are almost inexistant such as in English or Russian. More generally, I base the difficulty of a language on understanding. Grammar or speaking are things we learn, and we can be understood even if they are not perfect. On another note: cases in Romanian are not a problem.
*Maybe I'm biased, but mastering german will give you one of the biggest satisfactory moments of your life. It's just a very fun and expressive language that can open up new doors to new languages.*
Strangely, I'd add Ukrainian to the list as an English L1 speaker. Maybe it's because I already speak German, but the case system takes some practice, but it's not the worst. There are more cases than Russian, but they all have an easier pattern to learn over Russian. You really only have to learn to apply the same vowel you already use in other cases in a slightly different usage. Still a slavic language, obviously, but the pronunciation is far more consistent than Russian with each character only carrying one sound unlike Russian vowels.
I’m surprised that Vietnamese isn’t included since it has no verb conjugations/inflections. The alphabet is also basically the same with some accent marks on top so no need to learn thousands of characters or new alphabets.
Turkish is an interesting language. If you come from an Indo-European background, it would feel alien to you, and having too many rules can be scary. But once you learn a rule, it will always be used at the exact same spot, exact same scenarios. The only time this could be changed is when another rule modifies that, and in that case, it will be the exact same change for that scenario as always. Basically, it is super consistent compared to the most languages. And the majority of the small amount exceptions in the language are from the load words. So basically, starting to learn Turkish is hard, but keep learning is easy, and becomes easier later.
could you explain why my school would not allow me to learn the german language placing french as priority over german but I was told the school would send me to learn russian when ijust wanted to learn german. I have never understood why they would not let me learn german. a language i wanted to learn.
As someone who speaks Romanian fluently, I am not sure if I agree with that 1 letter 1 sound thing... Romanian is definitely not phonetic and - albeit I don't speak the language - I have heard someone say the same about Turkish..
As a native Turkish speaker, when people say Turkish is a phonetic language, it's more of a oversimplification. But usually we have 1-to-1 ratio between sounds and letters. But there are some edge cases, especially on the loan words. Those differences are usually like "saying e in a more softer or harsher way" and it's mostly for fitting the surrounding letters. But if you use different version of the letter (trust me, there are extremely small differences), people will understood you without any problem.
Oddly enough, I moved to Germany and I'm learning it now (did my A1 Goethe test recently with a 95 score!). I also grew up speaking nothing but Welsh. Couldn't even speak English! (Not kidding there. Mum was a massive nationalist and the area where we were had zero other Welsh speakers). Imagine not being able to communicate with anyone. I didn't start learning English until I was 8 years old, when my dad insisted that enough was enough. People either didn't speak Welsh at all, or they didn't speak it because there was zero point to it. This left me, knowing near zero English, stuck. Oh, and the English lessons we had in school were basically Welsh lessons with English texts that we had to translate into Welsh on the fly if we were to ever read or quote from. Honestly though, I wish Welsh would just be forgotten. I absolutely despised it and the isolating effect it had on me, not to mention just how it has been used as a divisive political football for decades. I always wanted to learn languages that I could actually use, and German is just that! Thanks for the tips :) What I will say about the Welsh alphabet, though, is how the U sound is only that Germanic sounding thing in the North. When I grew up in the South, it was always "horse-shoe I" (I bedol, or "eee bedol"). It drove my mum mad when I just couldn't master that one, and the same sound in German is still beyond me which, oddly enough, drives my wife crazy!!!! Haha. I grew up bouncing between North and South regularly. A very weird situation.
7:20 İt's Türkiye, and in capital letters it's TÜRKİYE. İ, I, Ü, U are all distinct letters with different pronunciations in Türkçe. İf you decide to use U instead of Ü, the whole word should be changed to Turkıya due to the vowel harmony rules in Türkçe. Cool video 👍🏾
Problem is, and _every_ language does it, languages tend to change country names and spellings based on what makes sense according to their phonetics. Think France and "Les Êtats Unis", or Chinese and "澳洲". This is why it was an appalling choice to try and force every country to use _their_ spelling of their name instead of letting different names naturally develop based on what makes sense to each different language. That's what has created this sort of problem to begin with. English doesn't have ü or ç yet we're expected to use them in Turkey's new name they want everyone to use. When we write the word properly according to what is in our language, we end up with "Turk-iye". Problem is, we have no pronunciation for "iye", we just don't use that combination of letters, but we can estimate it to be "ee" or "eye". That's just how languages work, because we ideally want consistency and ease for people to speak their own language. English gets enough jokes as it is for being horribly inconsistent and confusing.
I haven’t watched the whole video but one language that I would say is PRETTY EAST, is Indonesian. Doesn’t have genders, plurals, articles, suffixes, sentences are easy, the ONLY thing is, if you don’t speak any east asian languages (well south east to be more specific) basically all the words are new, like in almost any language, you can find a couple similarities, but it’s basically like the hard part of Indonesian is that it’s not “connected” to any other languages (again, any Indo-European, or even the “holy trinity” of east asian languages), so everything is a new word. Other than that, I would say it’s a pretty easy language to learn and “add to your resume”
I agree, vocabulary is the only real problem. And this is the biggest part of every language, so in the end - not so easy. Interestingly, Tagalog is much more difficult although it seems that they are so close linguistically.
As a German native speaker and teacher I know that it is extremely difficult to learn, especially the grammar and pronunciation. But I miss Mandarin Chinese in your list. It has the easiest, most logical grammar. Definitely a language which is much easier than most people think.
Ni en pedo el Rumano es facil Inlcuso para los que hablamos lenguas romances resulta muy dificil de aprender, no tiene tantos aspectos gramaticales dificiles como otras lenguas romances pero aun asi tiene una gramatica algo tediosa A eso hay que sumarle que no hay tantos recursos para aprenderlo Para mi como un nativo del Español, es mas probable que termine hablando Ruso fluido antes que el propio Rumano
Hey, Olly. Loving the videos! Here is an idea. You should do a video on conlangs in fictional television and film like Dothraki, Valyrian, Neo-Chakobsa, Fremen, Klingon, Vulcan, Sindarin, Quenya, Khuzdul, Na'vi, Belter Creole, Trigedasleng, and analyze what languages the conlang creators used to construct those languages.
2:39 I find it interesting that the 4 cases are displayed in an unusual order. Genitive is usually the 2nd case, not the 4th (although they are not numbered), and accusative is usually the 4th, not the 2nd to display. Furthermore the genitive sentence "Die Flügel des Drachen sind riesig" is slightly incorrect. As in English, there's a possession-"s" in German as well, as the 2nd case genitive describes possession. So it is slightly more similar to English as the sentence should be "Die Flügel des Drachens sind riesig" (instead of "des Drachen"). The word "Schlagenbeschwörungsmeisterau" is unknown to me and most likely incorrect as "meisterau" or "au" itself is not a valid word. I guess the word is spelt wrongly or there are additional letters missing.
Nope, that's not correct. You're confusing "der Drachen" (the kite) with "der Drache" (the dragon). Your sentence translates to "The kite's wings are huge.". This is a typical mistake though and every German speaker could guess the meaning from context. But you're right that the case order is wrong and contrary to the first answer you have gotten I do believe that it matters. There are quite a few mnemonics that use the numbers. e.g. "Nach wegen während trotz und statt den zweiten Fall man durchweg hat." "Nach auf bei mit nach von und zu den dritten Fall musst setzen du."
@thorbenneumann2701 nein, unabhängig davon ob das Tier oder das Fluggerät gemeint ist: im Genitiv wird "des Drachens" daraus, solange das Nomen nicht weiblich ist.
The cases in the video are displayed in order of frequency: nominative is the most common case, as that is the one a subject in a sentence needs to be, after that the majority of verbs use accusative, then dative and genitive is the rarest case and seems to be diminishing. So that order actually makes much more sense and is the one in which learners of German will get to know them.
I LOVE the sound of the Nguni languages so am really enjoying learning Zulu, cos I couldn't find a free Xhosa course. And it's written using the Roman alphabet, big help.
I studied French for 4 years in elementary and middle school and German for 2 years in high school. I actually found German to be easier than French, even though we sometimes spoke French at home.
German? Useful? I am a linguist who studied German and it is the language I know best other than English and Spanish. As a linguist it does come in handy if Germans did a lot of research on a certain language I am studying and that is often the case. On the other hand as a person the only time German came in handy was answering German tourists' questions in Belgium and the Netherlands. I don't know if they mistook me for German, Dutch or Flemish but it was weird because when I was in Germany they so often switched to English when they heard the slightest accent or grammar error.
I actually like the German gramma. It has rules and the rules apply. Not like English where there are more exemptions than shit following the said rules.
for a Slavic person Romanian would not be more difficult than French or Portuguese. and Welsh speaker of English don't sound bad either. or as Jimmy Car would say, if you want to speak English with Welsh accent you just have to sound confused all the time🤣
German grammar is not overly complicated. It just takes exercises, many of them. The REAL problem with German is its huge, very specific vocabulary with no real synonyms.
German is BY FAR the most overrated language in terms of difficulty for English speakers to learn. Virtually ALL languages in Asia are WAY harder ((ALL of them, no exceptions), not to mention Arabic, Persian, and even other European languages like Finnish and the Slavic ones like Russian, or Bulgarian. German being that hard is one of the many language myths.
mandarin chinese is extremely hard for somebody not used to tones. in fact, most tonal languages are extremely hard for english speakers. as somebody who actually studied welsh for a few years, i found it to be the easiest language i had ever tried to learn, whereas i have to keep starting mandarin over and over bcuz it can't stick in my head
@@chaichapstickI’m learning Chinese, the tones are hard at first but after you get used to them Chinese isn’t complicated that much, just writing is tough for me now
try going to a cajun auction heck better yet try going to a amish auction you would think you were back in the 18 hundreds just to listen to them plus how they dress and act and they Anit got no cars there.
Something is funny, me speaking butchered up in any language to anyone is like speaking other whole language, and in Portuguese (wich is my main language) i can talk to my mother very butchered up at point is untranslatable but also only native Portuguese speakers understand but many letters are simply silent and very vogal dependended and putting it all up together like a big word like german, that actually helped me develop quick speech...
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sadly not many people outside India knows the language Malayalam, and how hard it is.
i hope you make a video about it
😀
Now try DUTCH! xD
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Your videos are put together well and they are very helpful. 🗝️💡
Hey Olly, Filipino here from the Philippines. I would say that Tagalog is just a little bit harder than Indonesian and Malay, but it's still in the category of "easy languages to learn for English speakers." I agree with everything you said about my language. Maraming salamat dahil sinama mo ang Tagalog sa video mo!
As a tagalog speaker, i am glad to see the comment. 😊
Tama!
Your country made a huge mistake forgetting your Spanish language and heritage, now you are stuck with that Tagalog dialect.
@@angelbonilla4243what? We have broken spanish here😂
Welsh is such a beautiful language and I started learning the basics recently. I'd like to one day be able to speak my ancestral languages, and Scottish Gaelic is the one I've been focusing on the most. Being able to speak both one day would be so incredible. ❤
How lovely.
I feel similarly in a way, but when it's one grandparent I barely knew I kinda feel like it would bad to lmao. In one way, I shouldn't be ignoring an entire quarter of my ancestry. But in another, I don't want to be one of those people who define myself by a quarter of ancestry and a country I've never even visited.
Welsh is actually very straight forward. The only problem I had is the sound mutations.
I studied Romanian for one year during the pandemic. It's a beautiful language and I don't think it's that hard. The grammar is more difficult than Spanish because of the cases. But once you understand the cases it's not that bad.
Romanian is considered a Romance language with its roots in Latin but it's really out there compared to Italian, French, Spanish and Portuguese. It is distinctly different.
That's because it both moved less from vulgar Latin (the parts that remainde romance) and changed more, due to a lot of loans from Slavic.
I'm currently fighting with French as a Polish guy, Turkish comes next.
I am trying to learn polish as a turkish. Kolay gelsin! :)
A same video on Hungarian😅, please!
So, we`ll be motivated towards learning Hungarian ❤
That baby kitty in Turkey is so cute I can't stand it! Absolutely adorable! Mew!
One thing that helps with language learning is the right mindset. One of the biggest hurdles is the intimidation.
Bad: Chinese has thousands of characters!
Good: In English, you have to memorize the spelling and pronunciation of pretty much every word and there are over 100 thousand. In Chinese, you just memorize the pronunciation and meaning of a few thousand characters and then the big words are free
Bad: Turkish has vowel harmony. It'll be hard to get used to changing the vowel every time.
Good: In most languages, you have to memorize which of the vowels are in each syllable, sometimes there are dozens of possibilities. With vowel harmony, you only need to remember if the entire segment is type 1 or type 2.
Standard German does have a slient letter: the H when it is used as an indicator that a preceding single vowel is to be lengthened. It's known as Dehnungs-H (the stretching H).
No language is easy to learn!
True. The amount of time needed to reach a conversational isn't for everyone and the level of consistent effort needed is definitely not easy!
Maybe, but some languages are clearly easier to learn than others. For instance, my native language is one of the slavic languages. Nevertheless, for me it's easier to learn Norwegian than Polish, even tho Polish and my native language share a pretty big part of the same vocabulary. However, Norwegian is easier for me, because Norwegian is simply much less complicated than Polish.
English is easy
Except for English of course but that's hardly an issue as babies are born speaking English. Of course as we grow up we may forget the English we were born speaking but it comes back easily.
Right, next question please.
@@Alphegoron what is your native language, please? Does the same go for the other Scandinavian languages?
Most Slavic borrowings in Romanian are more likely from Bulgarian and perhaps Serbian and other related languages than from Russian or just from Russian
When I was young, I promised to myself that no matter what I did in life I would never go anywhere near German as a language because I thought it was literally impossible to learn as a non-native. Until one day, five years ago, when curiosity got the best of me and I decided to give it a try just to see if I was right. Now I'm way too into it and can confidently say that it was one of the best decisions I ever made.
Schön zu hören, weiter so
I can testify first hand that Filipinos are impressed at Americans who can speak even a bit of Filipino/Tagalog. My wife is Filipina. When I first met her mother she was delighted to no end that I not only tryed to learn her language, but also had grown fond of Filipino food. When I meet Filipinos in the US and in the Philippines, they are always surprised that I can speak a little Tagalog. Many Filipino women have married American men, but most don't bother to learn a single word or to appreciate the food. I find this puzzling, to use the gentlest word I can apply. In general, though, my wife and I travel a lot, and locals are happy when English speakers at least make an effort with "hello," "please," "thank you," and "where is the bathroom." Most people from the US or the Commonwealth just repeat English questions with inccreasing volume, as if that aids in comprehension.
Do you have your own YT channel? If so, I might like your channel better than the bazillions of expat in the PH channels because you could throw in Filipino/Tagalog.
Bonus points for you if you throw in Cebuano😉
Romanian is really similar to Italian, beautiful language and easy to learn. And by knowing it, you can learn any other Romance language easily. My Romanian friends can understand so much Spanish Portugese Italian just by knowing their own language😆😆
Honestly any romance language becomes easy once u learn ANY one of em
Is Romanian closest to Italian or Latin?
@leviashanken7281 I'd say Romanian is closest to the Italian dialect spoken around Venice
18:28 (*shrieks and hides back into my Streichholzschächtelchen*) regarding Turkish: "If aliens invade earth and try to learn the most logical language with least exceptions they'd choose Turkish". As a German I love the vowel matching. It sounds so nice, like a birds song. I've hated learning Russian as there seems to be no vowel matching whatsoever (aside the two verbs, the cases, the loads of "one year - god, two year- goda, 3-9 years - let" stuff, and the tons of exceptions, plus I HAD to learn it as my first foreign language)
I am learning a lot of Germanic languages and I find that your readers in these languages are first-rate, not not just for reading in the language at your own pace but for comparative purposes as well.
Great video. A comment to support this awesome video and channel.
❤❤❤❤❤
Thanks for this video,
Off to Germany next month will have to had 'jein' into my limited vocabulary
Quite ite like your description of Welsh, a game of Scrabble gone wrong.
When the Ryder cup came to the Celtic Manor Newport, one of the Americans was asked for his thoughts of the Welsh language, he replied "something made up in a bar after 4 o'clock in the morning".
The Welsh dialect of English is my favorite English dialect!
20:50 I love Tagalog, I am from Mexico and I speak Tagalog(B1) and Chavacano(A2) also some Ilonggo and a little less of Cebuano, Ilocano and Kapampangan
Mostly from friends online
I have been in all south America countries include Cuba and the most clearly Spanish language is from Lima- Perú. It's the same clear vowel and consonants sound in Valladolid (Spain) which is neutral. You can understand every word from them.😊
Nobody should be put off by grammar in language learning. Far more time is invariably spent on vocabulary
Thank you mister Olly I learned so much from you God blessings
For me, French has been the hardest language to learn so far.
I’ve been learning for nigh on 17 years and I still find it difficult.
That’s really saying something because I’m currently learning íslenska and I find that system, for lack of a better term, “easier”
0:32 I’m german and I had to listen twice to understand :D
I’m learning Turkısh for one month and I’m so surprısed how easy it is
Tagalog's VSO order and infixes and Romanian's definite article suffixes were too much for me as a native Turkish speaker. Still finding some common words with Romanian was interesting.
I’d say Turkish is a language that looks straightforward when you first start approaching it because of the factors you mentioned - no gender, no irregular verbs etc. But of all the people I met who claimed Turkish was “easy,” none of them actually spoke Turkish well. :-) Learning to put together simple sentences isn’t so bad but once you start with dependent clauses things get quite complex, and it generally takes people a long time to reach the point where they aren’t analyzing sentences like algebra equations. And putting those sentences together in translation might be straightforward according to grammar rules, but doing it elegantly is another
thing altogether.
Turkish “tenses” are used quite differently than in English, and many foreigners never quite get it. (Turks have issues with English tenses for the same reasons.) Turkish i̇s also quite idiomatic, and the deeper you get into it, the more of the Arabic and Persian element you deal with.
I don’t say this as a reason not to learn Turkish of course! It’s a wonderful and fascinating journey. But don’t expect it to be “easy.”
10:07 şapka is similar to polish czapka/chapka, also a hat 😁
It actually has the same roots as the English word "cap"
Because it’s a loanword from Russian. :-)
As a native inglish speaker, I've been enjoying learning german.
*English
*Germin
*Gerwoman
*Ingles
I am learning German now and it seemed hard to me and French seems hard. Ironically I was bad at languages in school but I managed to learn Modern Greek fluently to a bilingual level and I don't really consider Greek as being too difficult because it is extremely easy to read, pronounce and the grammar rules are relatively simple.
thanks I feel like language wise. We really do have an ability to excel in anything if there’s enough passion. I don’t believe anything is hard.
German is BY FAR the most overrated language in terms of difficulty for English speakers to learn. Virtually ALL languages in Asia are WAY harder ((ALL of them, no exceptions), not to mention Arabic, Persian, and even other European languages like Finnish and the Slavic ones like Russian, or Bulgarian. German being that hard is one of the many language myths.
@ We can do it, no sweats 💪
@@JohnnyLynnLee At least from the perspective of someone with a Germanic mother tongue
@@grace-yz2sr I'm Brazilian. But I'm fluent in English. So, yeah, Rammstein and Lacrimosa (German) songs don't look as scarier as Dier en Grey or Hanabie (Japanese) songs. And I SPEAK Japanese, to a high level, as well. And it's STILL scarier than German, that I don't speak at all.
19:19 sentence word reordering is also allowed in German to emphasize the word or action you want to highlight. Although there are a few incorrect word orders especially when it sounds like yoda. Yoda style is definitely wrong.
Cool... Two heritage languages for me are in your list - German and Romanian!
Kannada is pretty approachable for English speakers. It may be from a different language family, but the grammar is pretty regular and compact.
The Slavic influence on Romanian is not from Russian or Ukrainian, but more so from Bulgarian - due to them accepting orthodox Christianity alongside liturgical Old Church Slavonic (Old Bulgarian - which came alongside the newly invented Cyrillic, which Romania used for a while), and also years of shared territories
In Romanian the words that have Slavic influence, generally, are about life on the farm.
Îmi place limba română foarte mult. 💙💛❤️ Este ușor să înțeleg😊și să vorbesc
bu kanala bayılıyorum.
I've learned Chinese for a tiny bit on Duolingo when I was at school (not as part of school, but I stupidly liked to explore languages while doing GCSEs).
It's definitely easier than it looks. Near-identical grammar to English, especially.
Problem is though, I don't see all that much use for it. Not to say it's not useful, but simply that in my personal life I don't really see anything so I'm prioritising some other languages.
I learn French and Japanese nowadays. :)
What happened to the Turkish vowel harmonies in subsequent examples??
I'm currently studying two of these: Turkish and Romanian. You forgot to mention another aspect of Romanian that is unusual for a Romance language -the use of suffixes for the definite article. I don't know if that's a Slavic thing or particular to Romanian. I also sm finding interesting common ground with it and Portuguese that are not found in other Romance languages.😊
19:19 if the sentence starts with 'ang' there should be 'ay'. if there is no 'ay' just like in the usual conversational structure. start your sentence with the verb or adj.
I really think casual spoken Japanese isn't that hard. Just learning how to say hello, order some food, or have a basic chat about some hobbies isn't much harder than most other languages. The harder thing will be understanding people who speak quickly.
私もそう思いますよ。
Although Welsh is mainly a VSO language, it also a SVO when you introducing yourself, i would say
James ydw i literally
James am I
Ydw is a form of bod, while is to be, the word sy/sydd is used after the subject, the 3rd person singular of the verb is used after the noun or pronoun to emphasise the subject.
There is no indefinite article
There are three definite article
'r is used after vowels and come before the other two
Y is used before consonants expect H
Yr is used before vowels and H
Mae'r plant yn chwarae: the children are playing
Buodd/roedd y plant yn chwarae: the children were playing
Rwyt ti'n bwyta yr afal: you are eating the apple.
It is also use in measurements
Miles per hour is
Milltir yr awr
If i wanted to say in Welsh
I'm going to school in Welsh you have to insert the definite article so it be
Rydw i'n mynd i'r ysgol literally Am i going to the school
Depending on the the sentence structure a noun could be singular or plural
Three cats is
Tair cath literally three cat, same as in Turkish or tair o cathod, cathod is the plural form
Five children
Pum plentyn
Pump o plant
5 and 6 lose their last letters so 6, chwech becomes chwe and 5, pump becomes pum
There are 9 mutations in welsh and h will be added in front of vowels in some instances, they are usually split into 3 although i go 4 as ll and rh dont follow all the soft mutation rules, the first 3,
C, P and T have 3 mutation, soft mutations of them give you the second three of G, B and D and you only have to know 2 of these soft mutation as G drops off, D you just add another d, which makes a dd which is a voiced Th sound
B with M change to F which is a V sound.
The 6 also has nasal mutations, if you are saying you are somewhere and their Welsh name starts with
C, P, G or B the word yn can change to ym with P or B
Ym Mhenybont ar ogwr
Ym Mangor
Or Yng in front of C or G
Yng Nghaerdydd
In Cardiff
Ll and Rh only soft mutate to L and R
C, P and T also have aspirated mutations by adding a h after them, h is also added before the beginning of vowels
Prepositions can have personal forms.
Some adjectives do come before the noun like Hen meaning old but usually come after.
Although Welsh is phonetic
Si does makes a sh sound as in shop
Gw the w is silent and the g is said with more rounding of the lips
Ng you pronounce it as in sing but you have words like dangos which is more ng-g (collins Spurrell) dictionary and place names like Llangwyngwyd and Llangrallo, unsure why
Cymru is the country
Cymry is the Welsh people
Cymraeg Welsh language
Cymreig Welsh pertaining to Wales.
German pronunciation is quite straightforward. It's phonetic.. and also the thing about big words, well, I've been speaking German for many years and it general conversations those HUGE words rarely come up. People just use them in order to scare beginners from learning German
8:08 the last example is wrong, it's musunuz
❤Breton, Welsh is its brother.
Make video on urdu language
20:55 I don't even think you need to ask them for feedback as much as saying you want to learn. Maybe it was different for me because i was dating a filipina when i was learning it. They seemed much more eager to help you learn than Spanish speakers who will not correct you almost ever as long as you talk like a two year old or more advanced. Out of the years I spent in Spanish speaking countries and with Spanish speakers in other countries i do not think i have ever been corrected besides by one friend who wanted me to help him with his English. On one hand it is really nice because they don't care if you speak Spanish horribly as long as they know what you are trying to say. On the other hand you might continue to make elementary mistakes because nobody cares.
What's most difficult for me with Romanian is that when they speak in everyday life they swallow many vowels. It's the contrary with German: it's not an intonation language in which unstressed vowels are almost inexistant such as in English or Russian.
More generally, I base the difficulty of a language on understanding. Grammar or speaking are things we learn, and we can be understood even if they are not perfect.
On another note: cases in Romanian are not a problem.
honestly slavic words being hard to remember i agree on as a polish learner
*Maybe I'm biased, but mastering german will give you one of the biggest satisfactory moments of your life. It's just a very fun and expressive language that can open up new doors to new languages.*
German sooo many suffixes and prefixes
Strangely, I'd add Ukrainian to the list as an English L1 speaker. Maybe it's because I already speak German, but the case system takes some practice, but it's not the worst. There are more cases than Russian, but they all have an easier pattern to learn over Russian. You really only have to learn to apply the same vowel you already use in other cases in a slightly different usage. Still a slavic language, obviously, but the pronunciation is far more consistent than Russian with each character only carrying one sound unlike Russian vowels.
I’m surprised that Vietnamese isn’t included since it has no verb conjugations/inflections. The alphabet is also basically the same with some accent marks on top so no need to learn thousands of characters or new alphabets.
Mmh i thinks the pronounciation
All those tones.
I'm keen on continuing to learn tiếng việt.
vietnamese pronunciation and tones are harder than mandarin
Still waiting for a dedicated video on Finnish... 😅
8:07 The translation of "Are you happy" should be "Mutlu musunuz" not "müsünüz"😅
Turkish is an interesting language. If you come from an Indo-European background, it would feel alien to you, and having too many rules can be scary. But once you learn a rule, it will always be used at the exact same spot, exact same scenarios. The only time this could be changed is when another rule modifies that, and in that case, it will be the exact same change for that scenario as always. Basically, it is super consistent compared to the most languages. And the majority of the small amount exceptions in the language are from the load words.
So basically, starting to learn Turkish is hard, but keep learning is easy, and becomes easier later.
could you explain why my school would not allow me to learn the german language placing french as priority over german but I was told the school would send me to learn russian when ijust wanted to learn german. I have never understood why they would not let me learn german. a language i wanted to learn.
As someone who speaks Romanian fluently, I am not sure if I agree with that 1 letter 1 sound thing... Romanian is definitely not phonetic and - albeit I don't speak the language - I have heard someone say the same about Turkish..
As a native Turkish speaker, when people say Turkish is a phonetic language, it's more of a oversimplification. But usually we have 1-to-1 ratio between sounds and letters. But there are some edge cases, especially on the loan words. Those differences are usually like "saying e in a more softer or harsher way" and it's mostly for fitting the surrounding letters. But if you use different version of the letter (trust me, there are extremely small differences), people will understood you without any problem.
@@kofteistkofte Thought so, and don't forget the soft G sound. :)
Oddly enough, I moved to Germany and I'm learning it now (did my A1 Goethe test recently with a 95 score!). I also grew up speaking nothing but Welsh. Couldn't even speak English! (Not kidding there. Mum was a massive nationalist and the area where we were had zero other Welsh speakers). Imagine not being able to communicate with anyone. I didn't start learning English until I was 8 years old, when my dad insisted that enough was enough.
People either didn't speak Welsh at all, or they didn't speak it because there was zero point to it. This left me, knowing near zero English, stuck.
Oh, and the English lessons we had in school were basically Welsh lessons with English texts that we had to translate into Welsh on the fly if we were to ever read or quote from.
Honestly though, I wish Welsh would just be forgotten. I absolutely despised it and the isolating effect it had on me, not to mention just how it has been used as a divisive political football for decades.
I always wanted to learn languages that I could actually use, and German is just that! Thanks for the tips :)
What I will say about the Welsh alphabet, though, is how the U sound is only that Germanic sounding thing in the North. When I grew up in the South, it was always "horse-shoe I" (I bedol, or "eee bedol"). It drove my mum mad when I just couldn't master that one, and the same sound in German is still beyond me which, oddly enough, drives my wife crazy!!!! Haha.
I grew up bouncing between North and South regularly. A very weird situation.
I've been holding off on German until I don't know when I should resume it. That said, I'd say mahirap talaga mag-aral ng languages 😅
7:20 İt's Türkiye, and in capital letters it's TÜRKİYE.
İ, I, Ü, U are all distinct letters with different pronunciations in Türkçe.
İf you decide to use U instead of Ü, the whole word should be changed to Turkıya due to the vowel harmony rules in Türkçe.
Cool video 👍🏾
Problem is, and _every_ language does it, languages tend to change country names and spellings based on what makes sense according to their phonetics. Think France and "Les Êtats Unis", or Chinese and "澳洲".
This is why it was an appalling choice to try and force every country to use _their_ spelling of their name instead of letting different names naturally develop based on what makes sense to each different language. That's what has created this sort of problem to begin with.
English doesn't have ü or ç yet we're expected to use them in Turkey's new name they want everyone to use. When we write the word properly according to what is in our language, we end up with "Turk-iye". Problem is, we have no pronunciation for "iye", we just don't use that combination of letters, but we can estimate it to be "ee" or "eye".
That's just how languages work, because we ideally want consistency and ease for people to speak their own language. English gets enough jokes as it is for being horribly inconsistent and confusing.
Four cases PLUS the genders, & f/m make German harder than i think it needs to be. I wish they would make a grammatical change or 2, as the Dutch did.
I haven’t watched the whole video but one language that I would say is PRETTY EAST, is Indonesian.
Doesn’t have genders, plurals, articles, suffixes, sentences are easy, the ONLY thing is, if you don’t speak any east asian languages (well south east to be more specific) basically all the words are new, like in almost any language, you can find a couple similarities, but it’s basically like the hard part of Indonesian is that it’s not “connected” to any other languages (again, any Indo-European, or even the “holy trinity” of east asian languages), so everything is a new word.
Other than that, I would say it’s a pretty easy language to learn and “add to your resume”
Many people say that. If had a desire or need to learn it I definitely would. They say the grammar is very easy.
I agree, vocabulary is the only real problem. And this is the biggest part of every language, so in the end - not so easy. Interestingly, Tagalog is much more difficult although it seems that they are so close linguistically.
"Welsh has words with no vowels". Poles: "N prblmsz!..."
As a native Italian speaker, Romanian sound a bit like Portuguese.
süper
Wait! If you don’t get German cases, you might as well be speaking GREEK!? Surely you jest! 😂
Make an episode on HINDI or more Asian Languages
God, I wish they ranked all the languages, not just the more interesting countries to spies.
As a German native speaker and teacher I know that it is extremely difficult to learn, especially the grammar and pronunciation. But I miss Mandarin Chinese in your list. It has the easiest, most logical grammar. Definitely a language which is much easier than most people think.
X: turkish is easy
W: why?
X: everything is a affix
What about burmese?
Douăzeci? What happened to veinte? And all the numbers from 11 to 19 are calqued from Slavic.
Ni en pedo el Rumano es facil
Inlcuso para los que hablamos lenguas romances resulta muy dificil de aprender, no tiene tantos aspectos gramaticales dificiles como otras lenguas romances pero aun asi tiene una gramatica algo tediosa
A eso hay que sumarle que no hay tantos recursos para aprenderlo
Para mi como un nativo del Español, es mas probable que termine hablando Ruso fluido antes que el propio Rumano
Hey, Olly. Loving the videos! Here is an idea. You should do a video on conlangs in fictional television and film like Dothraki, Valyrian, Neo-Chakobsa, Fremen, Klingon, Vulcan, Sindarin, Quenya, Khuzdul, Na'vi, Belter Creole, Trigedasleng, and analyze what languages the conlang creators used to construct those languages.
Hate it how everybody plays clips of people speaking Bavarian instead of speaking normal German…
Swahili
2:39 I find it interesting that the 4 cases are displayed in an unusual order. Genitive is usually the 2nd case, not the 4th (although they are not numbered), and accusative is usually the 4th, not the 2nd to display. Furthermore the genitive sentence "Die Flügel des Drachen sind riesig" is slightly incorrect. As in English, there's a possession-"s" in German as well, as the 2nd case genitive describes possession. So it is slightly more similar to English as the sentence should be "Die Flügel des Drachens sind riesig" (instead of "des Drachen"). The word "Schlagenbeschwörungsmeisterau" is unknown to me and most likely incorrect as "meisterau" or "au" itself is not a valid word. I guess the word is spelt wrongly or there are additional letters missing.
You're right -- If they're not numbered, then it makes no difference whatsoever what order they're displayed in.
Nope, that's not correct. You're confusing "der Drachen" (the kite) with "der Drache" (the dragon). Your sentence translates to "The kite's wings are huge.".
This is a typical mistake though and every German speaker could guess the meaning from context.
But you're right that the case order is wrong and contrary to the first answer you have gotten I do believe that it matters. There are quite a few mnemonics that use the numbers.
e.g.
"Nach wegen während trotz und statt den zweiten Fall man durchweg hat."
"Nach auf bei mit nach von und zu den dritten Fall musst setzen du."
@thorbenneumann2701 nein, unabhängig davon ob das Tier oder das Fluggerät gemeint ist: im Genitiv wird "des Drachens" daraus, solange das Nomen nicht weiblich ist.
The cases in the video are displayed in order of frequency: nominative is the most common case, as that is the one a subject in a sentence needs to be, after that the majority of verbs use accusative, then dative and genitive is the rarest case and seems to be diminishing. So that order actually makes much more sense and is the one in which learners of German will get to know them.
I took German in high school and noticed the sound shifts.
Have you ever looked at a foreign language and said there is no way I could learn that?
Yes, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Thai, Zulu, Khosa, Hungarian.
I LOVE the sound of the Nguni languages so am really enjoying learning Zulu, cos I couldn't find a free Xhosa course. And it's written using the Roman alphabet, big help.
Why is the Welsh English accent so sing songy? Sounds like English thigh a Norsk or Minnesota accent😅
I studied French for 4 years in elementary and middle school and German for 2 years in high school. I actually found German to be easier than French, even though we sometimes spoke French at home.
German? Useful? I am a linguist who studied German and it is the language I know best other than English and Spanish. As a linguist it does come in handy if Germans did a lot of research on a certain language I am studying and that is often the case. On the other hand as a person the only time German came in handy was answering German tourists' questions in Belgium and the Netherlands. I don't know if they mistook me for German, Dutch or Flemish but it was weird because when I was in Germany they so often switched to English when they heard the slightest accent or grammar error.
I actually like the German gramma. It has rules and the rules apply. Not like English where there are more exemptions than shit following the said rules.
İki hafta Türkçe çalışıyorum. O, çok kolay.
for a Slavic person Romanian would not be more difficult than French or Portuguese. and Welsh speaker of English don't sound bad either. or as Jimmy Car would say, if you want to speak English with Welsh accent you just have to sound confused all the time🤣
Romanian sounds like a mix between Spanish and Russian.
German grammar is not overly complicated. It just takes exercises, many of them.
The REAL problem with German is its huge, very specific vocabulary with no real synonyms.
German is BY FAR the most overrated language in terms of difficulty for English speakers to learn. Virtually ALL languages in Asia are WAY harder ((ALL of them, no exceptions), not to mention Arabic, Persian, and even other European languages like Finnish and the Slavic ones like Russian, or Bulgarian. German being that hard is one of the many language myths.
Turkish is easier than you think.
Turkish is a beautiful language. How could anyone ask why anyone would want to learn it?!
German is too hard for me
Romanian sounds like portuguese hehe
Instead of mentioning Chinese, a very analytical language, you actually chose one of the hardest languages possible.
Chinese and Japanese very hard
mandarin chinese is extremely hard for somebody not used to tones. in fact, most tonal languages are extremely hard for english speakers. as somebody who actually studied welsh for a few years, i found it to be the easiest language i had ever tried to learn, whereas i have to keep starting mandarin over and over bcuz it can't stick in my head
@@chaichapstickI’m learning Chinese, the tones are hard at first but after you get used to them Chinese isn’t complicated that much, just writing is tough for me now
Chinese, I can speak on a middle level. But the signs give me a hard time. 使 便
He guess he stuck with languages that are non tonal.
try going to a cajun auction heck better yet try going to a amish auction you would think you were back in the 18 hundreds just to listen to them plus how they dress and act and they Anit got no cars there.
the most terrifying thing about German is the grammar police
even natives are scared of them
German is not difficult if you are french native speaker
Ja schwiizerdütsch sind sehr einfach, sagen chuchichastli
Lol I speak French and I'm learning Ukrainian, so I should probably learn their lovechild, Romanian, next. 🤓
German: the perfekt with week verbs is not easy
Something is funny, me speaking butchered up in any language to anyone is like speaking other whole language, and in Portuguese (wich is my main language) i can talk to my mother very butchered up at point is untranslatable but also only native Portuguese speakers understand but many letters are simply silent and very vogal dependended and putting it all up together like a big word like german, that actually helped me develop quick speech...
Que legal!