Introduction - བཀྲ་ཤིས་བདེ་ལེགས། /tashi delek/ (TIB)

Do you want to know what is the most difficult language I've been learning so far? Well, yes, it's Tibetan. It has complicated grammar, orthography, pronounciation... Completly new alphabet and lots of rules to remember. I'm giving it... 4,5/5 on the difficulty scale. That's one of the reasons why you should be even more motivated to learn it! Satisfaction guaranteed. 

Tibetan comes in many varying dialects used in different parts of the country but we're going to focus on Lhasa dialect (also called Central Tibetan dialect) which dominates in Central Tibet.

Tibet and it's regions

A'Gee's Tibetan issues list:

1. Alphabet: Uchen script is used to write in Tibetan. Basically, there are 30 letters and some more additional symbols and it's not difficult to remember those. However, it's more difficult when it comes to ...

2. Pronuniation: Usually you write a word in one way and read it in another way. There are many rules for that and we'll look at them later. There is also good news - most of the sounds in Tibetan are similar to English so you shouldn't have problems with that.

3. Orthography: Many word that have different meanings are pronunced in the same way and you need a context to understand them. It's worth to note that often even Tibetans don't know how to write properly - only the most educated people can do it and there are not much of them. 

4. Grammar: Well, it seems really complicated at the beggining: there are different cases, the sentence structure is completely different from English and so on but when you get used to it you may even find it easy.

4. Tones: Don't be scared- there are only 2 tones in Tibetan: high and low. In fact, if you make a mistake and use the wrong tone you should still be understood by the Tibetans ;)

Summing up, I wouldn't say that Tibetan is easy but it certainly is pleasurable. If you listen to the song below, you'll get the hint! ;)

Introduction - Сайн байна уу? (Sain bain uu?) (MN)

The Mongolian language is used by over 8,5 million of people, mostly by the residents of Mongolia and Inner Mongolia (autonomous region of the People's Republic of China). It has many dialects, but the most commonly used one is the Khalkha dialect and that's the one that we'll be talking about.

That's where most of people speak Mongolian.

Is Mongolian language difficult? Well, I would say that it's exactly  2,5/5. The biggest difficulty could be its grammar. Also, you'll need to learn the Cyrillic alphabet if you don't know it already but it's not that difficult and you should quickly get used to it.

'A'Gee's Mongolian issues list':

1. Alphabet. As I said, Mongolian is written in Cyrillic alphabet. In fact, originally Mongolian alphabet looked like this: 

Classical Mongolian (written from up to down)

However, in 1950's, along with comunism, Russians introduced Cyrillic alphabet to Mongolia. To help express some sounds they've added 2 more letters to it (ө and ү). We'll discuss all the letters in the next lesson so don't worry about that yet.

2. Pronounciation. It might cause some problems at the beggining as many words in Mongolian are not pronounced exactly as they are written. In most of the words the last vowel is not pronounced at all. The stress in Mongolian is put always on the first syllable of the word. Usually, only the first vowel and the long vowels (like 'aa', 'uu') are pronouned clearly. The rest of the word sound like a cluster of consonants. We'll look closer at this problem later on.

3. Grammar. Basically, Mongolian sentence has a structured order. There has to be an object in the begining and the verb is always at the end, for example: I to school go. Sounds like Yoda xD It's not that difficult but might cause more trouble when the sentence is longer and more complicated. 

However, other grammatical issues might not be as pleasant as Yoda's talk. There are eight cases in Mongolian (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, ablative, instrumental, comitative and directional, bla bla bla). The verbs also need to be conjugated according to tenses and so on.

Still, you shouldn't be discouraged be those little difficulties. Mongolian is such a fantastic language! And it's one of te best languages for hip hop music - take a look!

Introduction - Cześć! (PL)

Some would ask: why should I learn Polish? Even a native speaker would probably find many more reasons for NOT learning it. You might have heard that it is a very hard language, with hard pronunciation and extraordinarily hard grammar. Well, yes, it is quite hard, I would give it 4,5/5 (while English is 1/5 - you can check my subjective classifications in each language's 'Introduction' part ;)). But it's not something you cannot do.

'Mila's Polish issues list':

1. Polish pronunciation is rather easy and it has strict rules. I personally don't think it's hard, but it might be a problem for some nations - for example for English and French people, since their own accents are so specific themselves. Finnish or Italian users, on the other hand, should find it very easy, because for them it would sound almost just like it's written.

In general, I wouldn't make a big deal out of it. Ą, ę, ć, cz, ś, sz, dz, dż, dź, ż and ź look strange, but the sounds are pretty easy to make.

One funny thing is that CHINESE pronunciation has some huge similarities with the Polish one and I have noticed that Chinese people often have a good Polish accent and vice versa.

2. Polish grammar IS a big thing. That is the only reason why it really deserves such a high note as 4,5/5, or even 6/5 - as Poles would proudly claim ;) But that's why you shouldn't start learning Polish from the grammar. The grammar will be much easier to understand if you first provide yourself with some vocabulary/typical expressions basis.

3. The spelling. Just like in French and Finnish, you have to memorise which way you have to write things: "ż" or "rz", "ó" or "u", "ą" or "on/om", "ę" or "en/em" - because you will not be able to just hear it. Here are some examples of what mistakes you could make if you tried to write down some words by ear:

1. ŻÓŁW - rzułf (ŻÓŁW means a turtle)

2. CHRZĄSZCZ - hszonszcz (or even worse, if you tried harder!) (a beetle)

3. WSCHÓD - fzhut (East)

These are obviously just some jokes that begginers or little children create - it's not possible that one would make so many mistakes in one word ;). There are SOME rules for Polish spelling, but not for everything - and there are also many, MANY exceptions. 

Conclusion: EXCEPTIONS, EXCEPTIONS, MY LOVE! <3

Bright sides of learning Polish:

Poland is quite a big country as for the European standards. The good thing is that once you learn Polish, you will be able to communicate with the whole country - the accent is almost the same for each place, with an exception of some parts of highlands. 

There are also lost of Polish immigrants around the world. If you live in the USA, you surely know some people with Polish roots. Maybe you have such roots as well - and this reason is good enough to start learning Polish as soon as possible.

I just found this link, it's kind of interesting: http://www.linguatrek.com/tags/things-i-love-about-poland

...And if you have such a romantic heart and nonsensical mind as mine, the only reason to convince you to learn Polish might be its' melodic, yet rough, dark and hissy sound! <3

(Btw. this song's lyrics are soooo magical that even just the need to understand them would be a good reason to learn the language!)

Introduction - 你好! (Nǐ hǎo!) (ZH)

Before you ask - ZH is the ISO-something for the language, not for the country. China is CN. ZH is Zhōngwén (中文), which basically means Chinese language. And it refers to Mandarin, the most commonly used language in China. The problem is that 'Mandarin' does not always mean the same Mandarin. 

What is nice about Chinese is that when you once learn the Hànzì (汉字) - chinese characters - you will understand the whole China. You will also be able to read some Japanese - Japanese kanji is based on Chinese hànzì. Here's an example of a word that means 'Japan': 

日本 - Rìběn (Chineses)

日本 - Nippon (Japanese)
日本 - Ilbon (Korean. Hangul for 日本 is 일본, it obviously reads the same way)

So these have another pronunciation, but the same meaning.

There are two types of chinese characters - simplified and traditional. Traditional ones are still used on Taiwan. I can teach you both of these, but if you aren't planning to visit Taiwan, then you won't really need them. But it's always good to at least recognize them.

Okay, so - some ignorant people say that Chinese is the hardest language on Earth. Well, it is DEFINITELY NOT! What's more - it is almost as easy as English, or at least that's what I think... I would classify it's difficulty as 2/5 (and English in my opinion is 1/5). I wanted to give it 1/5 as well, but it would be too shocking for ignorants...


'Mila's Chinese issues list':

(not too long, in fact!)

1. Pronunciation. Chinese is a tonal language, which means that you can say one syllable 5 ways, for example: mā, mǎ, má, mà and ma - and each of these would mean something different. I will explain this later.

Well, you need to spend some time to deal with this matter - it might take a few weeks, but it's not something unobtainable. However if you try to speak without the tones or with the wrong ones - for example 'Zhongwen' istead of 'Zhōngwén' - then it might happen that you will not be understood.

2. Hànzì, the Chinese writing system. You probably imagine that is't really complicated - and it is a little bit, but it's also much fun to learn it! You have to know about 4500-6000 characters to understand Chinese in everyday life, which isn't much when you think of them as of words, not the alphabet. Most people really like to write hànzì, because it's like drawing!

And that's it! 


What's good about Chinese is that it's grammar is nice and even less complicated than the English one.

'If you speak Chinese, you will find friends all over the world!' - it's the most commonly used languaged on Earth! And if you don't speak Chinese, you definitely won't have ANY Chinese friends - even if they claim to know English, it's some other kind of English than the English one xD For example: some people say "pandar" instead of "panda" (btw. panda is 熊猫 - Xióngmāo).

Conclusion: Chinese is really worth learning and not hard at all!

Here's an example of Englishmen speaking Zhōngwén ;) (The band is from Taiwan, that's why hànzì in subtitles are traditional).

Introduction - Salut! (FR)

If I were to classify French by it's difficulty, it would be 3/5 (while English would be 1/5... 'Ah, just 1! That's why you still make so many mistakes in English, right Mila?' -.-). So it's not that bad.

'Mila's French issues list':

1. It has got quite a complicated pronunciation, but it's not something that you wouldn't be able to deal with. The rules of French pronunciation are at least strict, unlike those in English. The problem might be - for example - this famous 'r', but even if your pronunciation is poor, there is still a slight chance that you would be understood. ;)

2. Comparing to English, French grammar is much more extended. For example: while in English you have 'to know: I know, you know, he/she/it knows, we know, you know, they know' - so the terminal changes just once - in French the same verb would be like this:

Savoir (notice that it's the same word as in 'Savoir-vivre'):

je sais

tu sais

il/elle/on sait

nous savons

vous savez

ils/elles savent

Good news is that 'savoir' is an exception. Bad news is that many basic verbs in French are... xD But these exceptions often form some rule.

Conclusion: try Polish grammar with all of it's exceptions - you will love French!

3. I don't quite understand how does English spelling work, but the most typical example of a mistake seems to be 'heroe' instead of 'hero'. Google translator tells me that there is another word for spelling in English, which is 'ortography'. And this word sounds much more seriously. And French 'ortographe' is a much more serious case than English spelling. There are all these è, é, à, ç stuff and it might be kind of hard to memorise how to write some words. But then again - worse things may happen in life. Like devanagari - hindi writing system...

4. The articles - le, la, les, un, une etc. This should actually be number 1 on my list of French issues. It's something that one can never fully understand, unless he's a native speaker. Well, but you can at least know the rules ;)

So these were the bad news. Now the good ones:

English and Chinese wikipedias say that French is the 18th most commonly used language when it comes to native speakers. By the way, the list is kind of surprising, take a look: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers

French wikipedia says it is 16th xD

Finnish wikipedia says it is 7th when it comes to French speakers in general. Polish wikipedia says it is 6th.

These scores are quite good, aren't they?

Some say that French people don't speak English at all - and even if they do, they act as if they didn't. Well, it's up to where you go and to whom you speak. At the stores in Paris they will probably understand quite well, so if you only wish to buy some Prada, then you won't need French xD But otherwise you should at least know some basics.

Here's a short story: once I wanted to buy something with curry in McDonald's. It wrote "chicken with curry" on the board, they didn't translate it - they never do that in McDonald's. I used French of course, but I pronounced 'curry' the English way. And the guy didn't understand. He asked some of his friends for help - but they also din't get what I'm talking about. I had to point it with my finger and then they were like "aaaah, /küree/!"

But that wasn't in Paris, so you can check yourself if they would understand that in the capital...

I could also say something about the beautiful sound of la langue française, but you have to decide yourself...