TOK+Q3+Week+3+Commentaries

=TOK Q3 Week 3 COMMENTAIRIES=

1. Place your commentary at the top of this page (newest posts should always be on top) 2. Write your name, date and time on the line above your commentary. 3. Write an intelligent comment about the article. 4. Include a responce to another student's post on this article 5. Insert a divider (click the "insert horizontal rule" button in the menu bar above) below your post

NEWEST POST ON TOP

Camille Lopez 1/31/13 11:15 PM

After seeing the chart, I wasn't completely taken aback which languages were considered as the easiest and hardest to learn. In fact, it does make sense especially when people compare alphabets and symbols. However, I just realized that I've been exposed to the basic level of both easy and hard languages. Since Tagalog is relatively similar to Spanish, I'll consider it as an easy language. Also, German and English are about in the same difficulty level. So those are the 'easy' languages I've been exposed to currently. As for the hard language, I was in Mandarin Chinese 1 last year and Korean is on top of my "Want To Learn" list (so I try listen to it daily). I know how Mandarin can be Challenging (yes with a capital C), because of the four tones, characters, vocabulary, and sentence structure. However, it's not impossible to learn if you're willing to put lots of effort on it.

The main message that I got from this topic is: The word 'difficulty' can vary on people. I saw this last year in my Chinese class. When Tang Laoshi introduced new characters to everyone, I'll get it quickly, but my friends don't. They would ask me how I know so much and all I can say is that it stays in my head. I didn't know how to explain it. This often leads me to question myself on why I'm not grasping German as fast as Chinese when Chinese is a hard language and German an easy language. I guess I'm just learning backwards?? Also, when I video chat with the Chinese students last year they told me that English was difficult to learn and then I told them, "No it's not. Chinese is HARD!" So again, it just depends on the person and their abilities to comprehend languages quickly.

@Ashley: Mandarin Chinese is not THAT hard... However, learning the language may be a little useless when you go to China because people have so MANY dialects that Mandarin Chinese is only spoken by few people. Learn at your own risk? (hahaha)

@Leila: Is Bosnian in the Medium section?

@Ana: I completely agree with you! My stepdad wasn't planning on bringing me and my sister here in the US until we were 18 years old, but he realizes that he didn't want us to go through the same experience he went through (learning English at a later age). He told us that he went through a lot of struggles to learn English in the army (his first language was Tagalog too).

Ana Luisa Rivas 1/31/13 8:08

First of all, I want to say that learning a language depends mostly on the age. There’s a greater possibility for a little kid to learn a language than an adult. For example, I started learning English when I was three years old and I’m sure that at the age of four I could understand the basic words at school cause that’s where I learned it while at my house I spoke only Spanish. After three more years I could speak the language perfectly but to give you another example, my dad just started learning English three years ago and I can positively say that his English isn’t as good as mine when I was 4 years old and he’s been taking daily classes and it’s scientifically proven that it’s harder to learn a language when you’re older.

Secondly, it also depends on the language. I must say that in the chart, Spanish and English are in the same level while I believe that German could be in the middle section. Why? Because of the different rules that are in the language, for example, the cases and the different genders and it all becomes harder to learn. Also, let’s compare Spanish, English or German with Arabic or Chinese. What’s the difference? In our perspective we can definitely see that the major difference is that first, we have a different alphabet and second, the language uses different tones. There is definitely a difference and it becomes more and more obvious as we look at the language and the way people speak it.

@Leila I agree with the fact that to learn a language you have to depend on what you know already to see if you can learn other languages in an easier or harder manner. For example, I speak Spanish and I’m sure that if I tried to learn Italian or Portuguese it would all be much easier than learning other of the simple languages.

Leila Becirevic 1/31/13 6:05 PM This chart and article were both interesting to read. Sometimes when I am doing my German grammar or writing the essays I think of how hard the language is because of the grammar rules. Looking at this chart, I have realized that German is probably one of the easier languages to learn because of how similar it is to English and many other languages. Since I can speak another language, I feel that some of these other languages that were on the "medium" section of the chart would be the same level of difficulty to me that German is. Compared to certain languages such as Arabic and Chinese, I feel that German is a reasonable language to learn. Whenever one is learning a new language it will be difficult, but there are always harder languages and it depends on which language(s) you are already fluent in.

@Ashley I agree with your comment about German's place on the chart, even though it is difficult to learn some of the grammar rules. Like you said, there are harder languages out there and they will all take time to learn. Everbody is different in learning and for some people, the languages on the "difficult" section of the chart will not be as hard as languages on the "medium" section.

Ashley Vastag 1/29/13 9:05 I thought that the chart was very interesting, and I liked that it included the number of hours that it takes to learn the language. I thought that spanish being considered an easy language was accurate, although I think the "4.4 years" varies based on the rigor of the environment the language is being learned in. I have been studying spanish for almost six years, and with only one true year of rigorous coursework I am nowhere near fluent. This makes me wonder how long it would take to learn each of these languages when immersed in the country. It would take much less time, yes, but how much? I think that German would still be placed in the "easy" category. To me, the grammar in german is very difficult, but the symbols of languages such as Hindi and Mandarin are daunting. I found it very interesting however that once someone gets through the beginner stage of learning mandarin it gets much easier. @Ana I'm really glad you mentioned age! I think that is a very important factor to consider when looking at varying difficulty of languages. I think it would be interesting to see if it is more different for a child to learn two very different languages, such as Arabic and English for example, compared to more similar languages like Spanish and English.