For a certain demographic in our society, it seems it proper English is the most difficult language to learn.
ebonics has always thrown me. although I admit I haven’t tried to learn it.
I can’t believe Portuguese is number 1.
Very, very difficult.
1. Mandarin Chinese
2. Arabic
3. Japanese
4. Hungarian
5. Korean
6. Finnish
7. Russian
Real score by me.
1. English
2. Mandarin Chinese
3. Russian
4. all the rest
“The list of difficult to learn languages seems to correlate well to math proficiency. of course, this article relates to non-native speakers, but the discussion of mandarin, other character written languages at least superficially relates to the question of why those kids do better in math proficiency, with this wstern language also seeming to correlate.”
I don’t think the good math scores in the countries with the “difficult to learn languages” correlates to their languages.
I think the correlation is to their social emphasis on good math skills and how THAT works in their education system.
I have some proficiency in Hungarian, as I grew up around older relatives who spoke it. As was noted in the article, it’s a tough language to learn from scratch.
And now a joke about learning Hungarian:
Rosetta Stone has finally put out a two-part Hungarian language course. Part 2 has the actual lessons. Part 1 lists all the reasons why you shouldn’t try to learn Hungarian.
Assembly language was rough.
Basic fixed a lot of Fortran.
Um.... how many native Finnish speakers are there? Less than ten million. And ninety-five percent of them speak English, and probably German. And a good number Russian too. So I disagree with the premise.
In my personal experience, Czech was impenetrable. I only learned 'Good Day' and 'Please' and 'Thank You'.
That would certainly explain why the Finnish are the fed up people who finally said, "Enough already!" 15 cases? How much more are they supposed to take?
The fact that Å is a common letter in Swedish while having no native use in Finnish has led to it being used as a concise symbol for the Swedish language in Finland, as in this campaign to rid Finnish schools of Mandatory Swedish. The phrase reads "Away with enforced Swedish".
The list of difficult to learn languages seems to correlate well to math proficiency.
And just like that, a tenth of a nanometer is tossed away, as if it's nothing of significance. 🤓
What about Engrish?
Preferred learning Russian to learning French. Major problem was remembering that letters that looked like English were pronounced COMPLETELY differently. Remember my Russian instructor cringing every time I had to recite. Thank goodness it was a research university and only interested in our being able to read research articles.
“Learning Finnish can enhance your experience if you plan to travel or work in Finland,”
I’m sure 90% of Finns are fluent in English, so as far as travel is concerned there is no need to learn Finnish.
-PJ
The same thought occurred to me. And it’s not just math, it’s overall intelligence (IQ).
And "higher education" can mean what the manifesto of a feminist wordcrafter in wokeducation examples, in warring against what God ordained,
"...intersections with race, ethnicity, coloniality, class and ability, the sex/gender system of oppression has long served as a taxonomizing apparatus. And yet, the literary, in league with anticolonial, civil rights and LGBTQ social movements,...animates the liberatory potential of imagining embodied relations otherwise... representations of gender and sexuality can leverage critiques against normativity...Taking our transnational cue from subjugated knowledges and intersectional epistemologies, we’ll constellate the diverging genealogies and methodologies...
Against the traffic of binary opposition, we’ll index the possibilities of intimacy and performativity... As a class collective, our aim is to read and reread as well as write and rewrite texts that interrogate and complicate how gender and sexuality, as contested sites of pleasure and pain, are embodied and experienced."
This counts toward the methods requirement for the major. Prerequisite: ENGL 103 or 104. Open only to first-year and sophomore students.
Author is Brianna Thompson, who teaches courses in American women’s literature, queer theory and utopias/Afrofuturism at Kenyon college (founded by Episcopal Bishop in 1824). Course is Reading and Writing Gender and Sexuality ENGL 214, https://www.kenyon.edu/academics/departments-and-majors/english/academic-program-requirements/courses-in-english/
Author is employed from a college founded in 1824 by Episcopal Bishop Philander Chase, which now has a potential candidate ("Brianna Thompson") for the office of implementation of WOKE policies under the auspices of a Council of Transexuality:
Hebrew
