Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Most difficult language to learn

Most difficult language to learn

 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   KEEP. Please continue move/merge discussion on talk page or with a request for move/merger. — kwami (talk) 17:57, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
 * – ( View AfD View log )

The logic used in this article is odd - it said “the hardest languages for outsiders to learn would be those that are currently unknown by outsiders”, so why don't you say “the hardest languages for outsiders to learn would be those that was extinct with few records”??? ––虞海 ( Yú Hǎi )  ✍  13:53, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
 * that's because the article has been vandalised, by trolls. Check its history, preferably back when it was still "hardest language", and restore the last good revision. Article deterioration isn't a reason for deletion. It's a reason for a deep revert. So, keep and deep-revert. --dab (𒁳) 13:56, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Disagreeing with you about a content issue doesn't make someone a vandalizing troll... r ʨ anaɢ (talk) 15:02, 10 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep. While this article isn't a typical subject for Wikipedia, it serves three useful functions.  1) It answers a common question asked by Wikipedia readers.  When I was active at Yahoo! Answers, it was probably the most common question asked in the Languages category.  2) It serves as a useful wikilink in places where the issue of "X language is the hardest" comes up.  3) It serves as a useful centralized location for the (admittedly few) references that are actually relevant to the question, such as the DoD classification.  --Taivo (talk) 14:01, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Clearly there're too many standards concerning the question “what is the hardest language to learn”, so it'll never be neutral. ––虞海 ( Yú Hǎi )  ✍  15:45, 10 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep per Taivo, it's definitely a useful subject, regardless of the title it currently has (and it has switched a number of times in throughout the years I think). Miacek and his crime-fighting dog (woof!) 14:05, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
 * WP:IINFO. ––虞海 ( Yú Hǎi )  ✍  15:45, 10 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep Even if nominator is right, one inaccurate statement is not a reason to delete an article; all that's necessary is to fix the inaccuracy. r ʨ anaɢ</b> (talk) 15:02, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
 * The other parts, tell the reader what the hardest language for English speakers, does not match the notability policy. ––<Span xml:lang="zh-Hant-CN" lang="zh-Hant">虞海</Span> ( Yú Hǎi ) <Big> ✍ </Big> 15:45, 10 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Merge & redirect/delete. This article speaks mostly to second language acquisition and would make a formidable and deserving section on that page. Although there is a section on "objective difficulty," it is short and uncited in the current revision. Regarding the arguments above to keep as is/was, 1) Wikipedia and Y! Answers serve different purposes, and the most commonly asked language question, while noteworthy enough to appear somewhere on Wiki, doesn't necessarily make "most difficult to learn" subject matter for an encyclopedic stand-alone article; 2) the usefulness as a wikilink doesn't make the content any more or less deserving of a stand-alone article; and 3) the second language acquisition would serve as a more centralized location since it is the article for the general topic. About prior versions, is there this one that seems to predate the most recent spate of apparent vandalism, and this one just before the move. I did notice apparent copyvios and essays, which I avoided. I didn't look very long, but I didn't think the differences were substantial. Was there a better version further back? I don't mind being wrong or changing my mind, so if that should be, just point me in the right direction. JFHJr (㊟) 15:48, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
 * An encyclopedia serves two functions: 1) it is a place to organize knowledge and 2) it is a place for people to go to find answers to their questions.  Do not downplay the second of these functions.  --Taivo (talk) 17:04, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't think I've downplayed anything. To me it seems the answer(s) to this particular question would logically be found somewhere prominent in second language acquisition. If there is reference material out there on difficulty of primary language acquisition, (as opposed to how hard it is to be literate – kanji example below) that would make the subject matter something other than a discussion entirely within second language acquisition. Then I could see a reason for a stand-alone article on the topic of what language is the most difficult to learn. JFHJr (㊟) 03:02, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
 * About primary language acquisition not including literacy - does this mean we are talking purely about the acquisition of spoken language, and not of written language? I can see a reason for separating the two, as all children (apart from feral children) learn their first language, whereas literacy is far from guaranteed. However, to me, it seems a little disingenuous to leave written language out, when it is such a big part of what makes languages like Chinese and Japanese difficult for L1 and L2 learners alike. — Mr. Stradivarius  ( drop me a line ) 05:17, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
 * (edit conflict) You are correct. There's no reason to leave it out of "learning language" – a much wider net than I was thinking. My apologies on that. Might some "keep" proponents be willing to expand the scope of referenced material beyond second language acquisition? JFHJr (㊟) 05:36, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Mr Stradivarius, most linguists treat written language as the ugly stepsister of real linguistics, which treats spoken language. Thus, the focus of this article is on the acquisition of spoken language only, since spoken language fluency can be acquired without ever touching the written form.  Learning writing systems is an entirely different issue from learning another language as evidenced by the many preliterate societies that were commonly multilingual as well as many individuals today who are perfectly multilingual and perfectly illiterate.  Perhaps a small paragraph on the difficulty of learning another writing system would be in order, but the primary focus should remain on spoken language, because that is where the real difficulties lie.  --Taivo (talk) 06:11, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree that a great deal of linguistics only deals with spoken language. However, Wikipedia doesn't necessarily use definitions from academia - rather, the guidelines are to use definitions that are in common use, as documented by reliable sources. Definitions of language usually include written language, so it seems reasonable to assume that language learning includes learning written language. If there are reliable sources documenting the relative difficulty of learning to read and write across different languages, I can see no reason for excluding this information from the article. Also, the article doesn't have to treat spoken and written language as a dichotomy - see my comments on the different aspects of language below. — Mr. Stradivarius  ( drop me a line ) 13:41, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
 * As for including this in second language acquisition, I think that yes, it absolutely deserves a mention. However, it can't be a very big one due to space concerns in that article. I just finished splitting out sections of second language acquisition to try and keep the size down to a reasonable level, and in fact there was a section on language transfer which I deleted and replaced with a short mention in the section on interlanguage. If there is going to be a lot of material moved across it should probably be to language transfer instead. We could reinstate a short section in second language acquisition that ties together language difficulty and language transfer as well. — Mr. Stradivarius  ( drop me a line ) 05:29, 11 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Keep & rename/copy edit. The article title as posed doesn't seem very useful to me. For second languages, the answer to the question "what is the most difficult language to learn" is "it depends on what languages you speak already". To me it would seem better to move the article to Language difficulty and include more information on the theory behind this idea of difficulty. The most relevant article here is probably Language transfer, which already discusses positive and negative transfer. The two concepts are closely interrelated - the more positive transfer there is between a language and your native language, the easier that language is to learn. If this was all the article was about, then I would agree with a merge/redirect/delete with Language transfer. However, there is some content in here about the difficulty of native languages, where language transfer isn't a factor. For example, I remember hearing somewhere that relative to schoolchildren in English-speaking countries, Japanese schoolchildren spend the equivalent of an entire extra year learning their writing system, because of the thousands of kanji they have to learn. I'm sure this has been studied in the academic literature, and the article hints that this is indeed the case. If we can dig up some actual references, then I think notability for a page like Language difficulty shouldn't be hard to prove. — Mr. Stradivarius  ( drop me a line ) 16:46, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
 * The talk page for this article has several pretty in-depth suggestions (including, but not limited to, one from me) about how the article can be redefined and rewritten to be more encyclopedic and useful. That might be a good place to start in this direction. <b class="IPA">r ʨ anaɢ</b> (talk) 21:59, 10 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Ok, I've read the talk page (and there's certainly a lot of it). I noticed that language difficulty has been proposed for a title and criticised because in the academic literature it refers to language impairment, not to the difficulty of learning languages. This certainly makes the case for that title weaker, although ultimately it should depend on the most widely-used term rather than the scholarly term - assuming we can prove notability at all. I'm open to suggestion here. More thoughts on this later, I have to go for now. — Mr. Stradivarius  ( drop me a line ) 02:57, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Another promising avenue I found from the talk page was listing the difficulty of the various aspects of language.　This article linked by User:Rjanag uses this approach, with paragraphs on the hardest sounds, the hardest word ordering, the hardest word structure, etc. This might be a good direction for the article if it is kept. — Mr. Stradivarius  ( drop me a line ) 06:52, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
 * That is, indeed, a promising approach. Pawnee has 8 consonants and three vowels, but has words that are up to 30 syllables long.  That type of difficulty is quite different from a language like some of the Khoisan languages with 80 or more clicks and laryngealized vowels, but no word longer than two or three syllables.  --Taivo (talk) 08:42, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I seem to remember there was an explanation for this in the Competition model of language learning (or was it processability theory?). It went roughly along these lines: humans only have a limited capacity for processing information, and if a language evolves complexity in one area, these processes ensure that other areas stay relatively simple. This implies there is an upper limit to how difficult a language can be in general. Of course, it doesn't imply that all languages reach this limit - languages like Esperanto that are designed to be easy to learn come to mind. I don't think an upper limit would apply to written language, though, as it isn't processed in real time. I need to check all of this as it's just coming from memory - this might have to wait until I have access to more books. — Mr. Stradivarius  ( drop me a line ) 14:23, 12 March 2011 (UTC)


 * (Change my vote to) Merge & redirect/delete per JFHJr's original idea. ––<Span xml:lang="zh-Hant-CN" lang="zh-Hant">虞海</Span> ( Yú Hǎi ) <Big> ✍ </Big> 15:04, 11 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I finally found some academic works about the relative difficulty of langauges. It took some creative googling, but I found this review of the book Language Complexity (ISBN 9789027231048), a collection of papers from the symposium Approaches to Complexity in Language held in Helsinki in August 2005. A Google Book search turns up a few more books on this subject. In light of this I'd suggest changing the title of the article to language complexity and a major rewrite to include this information. — Mr. Stradivarius  ( drop me a line ) 00:35, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I would oppose renaming the article to "language complexity", since "complexity" doesn't necessarily imply "difficulty". The purpose of this article is to present issues related to the difficulty of acquiring a second language, not theoretical issues of language complexity, although looking at difficulty from different angles (syntax, phonology, etc.) is certainly important.  --Taivo (talk) 02:44, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
 * But then, can you demonstrate that "language difficulty" or "the hardest language" are notable topics? All we have proving the notability of these so far is the Economist article and questions at Yahoo Answers. — Mr. Stradivarius  ( drop me a line ) 03:00, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I'd also like to point out that these concepts are not chalk and cheese - they are closely related and have been studied together. I quote from the book review: "Eva Lindström (Language complexity and interlinguistic difficulty pp. 217-242) explores the relation between language complexity and the difficulty a learner may experience during its acquisition, basing her study on the non-Austronesian language Kuot and its three Austronesian neighbors spoken in New Ireland (Papua New Guinea)." I'm not definitely set on a title though - as I said before, we should use the title in common use, not necessarily ones used in academia. Actually, I think I've just argued myself in a circle. We could use Lindström's chapter above plus the common-use guidelines to make a good case for the article title being language difficulty. In either case, it's not so much the title that bothers me, as the content. — Mr. Stradivarius  ( drop me a line ) 03:15, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
 * It's already clear from the initial responses here, that keep was the prevailing feeling about this article. We've already agreed that some sections describing the different types of difficulty relative to whether a language is difficult for speakers of a language to learn is a good idea, whether there are references proving its notability or not.  The very fact that most of the comments here support "keep" means that it is notable enough.  --Taivo (talk) 09:34, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I understand your intentions, but saying we should keep an article because it is useful is an argument to avoid in deletion discussions. Notability requires verifiable evidence. As far as I can tell at the moment, we have proved notability for the topic of language complexity/language difficulty, and I think the DoD guidelines prove notability for the topic of the hardest language to learn for native English speakers. However, I have yet to find evidence of notability for the topic of the hardest language to learn in general. That doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, and I think the academic studies on language complexity I linked to would be a good place to start looking. However, it would make much more sense to make an article about language complexity in that case. Another good lead would be the objective difficulty of writing systems, as in the kanji example I gave above. Even so, that would also seem to go better in an article on language complexity/language difficulty. How about splitting this topic into two articles - one on the hardest language to learn for native English speakers and one on the more academic subject of language complexity? That way I think we get the best of both worlds. — Mr. Stradivarius  ( drop me a line ) 11:09, 14 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Comment: If we imply the "difficulty" of languages in this article, article named most difficult language to learn for Chinese speakers, most difficult language to learn for Japanese speakers, most difficult language to learn for Bantu speakers will be created as well. ––<Span xml:lang="zh-Hant-CN" lang="zh-Hant">虞海</Span> ( Yú Hǎi ) <Big> ✍ </Big> 08:29, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
 * No, Yu Hai, this is the English Wikipedia, so an article that focuses on general issues of what makes a language difficult to learn with examples from English is all that is needed. --Taivo (talk) 09:34, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Actually, I don't see a problem with this happening. The notability policy would prevent us being inundated with such articles, as they would need to show reliable sources to justify being included. — Mr. Stradivarius  ( drop me a line ) 11:14, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
 * This is the English Wikipedia, but it does not assume that everyreader are the native-speakers of English. If it does, we may nominate the article English language for deletion. ––<Span xml:lang="zh-Hant-CN" lang="zh-Hant">虞海</Span> ( Yú Hǎi ) <Big> ✍ </Big> 12:18, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Yú, are you suggesting the English language article exists by virtue of non-native speakers' interest? That it is not notable otherwise to native speakers? I'm afraid I don't follow you there. Generally encyclopedias publish articles based on notability and reliability of information. Is your comment essentially that an article focused on second-language acquisition by native English speakers is a violation of WP:NPOV? If so, I certainly don't agree with that contention in light of relevance, but I'd like to understand what you're talking about. Regarding your comments on other articles: if there is academic work fit to be referenced regarding, for example, how Bantu speakers are singularly unable to learn Vietnamese, the information would likely be notable enough to appear wherever difficulty of learning language is discussed. JFHJr (㊟) 16:10, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I know an answer from me isn't really useful compared to one by Yú Hǎi, but I think you're right - he was just trying to point out that the article, as it is, is rather English-centric. I agree with this - if we have a section on the hardest language to learn for English speakers, then I think we should have sections on the hardest language to learn for speakers of other languages to reduce Anglo-American bias. The same goes for stand-alone articles. Of course, any such section/article will need to have reliable sources if we want to include it. — Mr. Stradivarius  ( drop me a line ) 00:18, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
 * To clarify, I am also in agreement that an article on the hardest language to learn for native English speakers would not be against WP:NPOV. I think any point of view problems could easily be solved by adding articles for native speakers of other languages and making it easy to navigate between them. — Mr. Stradivarius  ( drop me a line ) 00:47, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
 * This is the English Wikipedia, so any proliferation of "hardest language for Swahili speakers", etc. is ridiculous. This article should 1) discuss what "hardest language" means in overall terms, 2) include different categories of "hardest" in terms of level of complexity of phonology, syntax, morphology, etc., and 3) list "hard languages" for English speakers based on reliable sources such as the DoD list.  If a Chinese speaker wants to know the POV of a Chinese speaker, then they will normally be looking at the Chinese Wikipedia, not here.  --Taivo (talk) 02:33, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
 * (Inserted): No, I don't think "hardest language for Swahili speakers" is ridiculous. ––<Span xml:lang="zh-Hant-CN" lang="zh-Hant">虞海</Span> ( Yú Hǎi ) <Big> ✍ </Big> 15:31, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
 * But can you prove notability for the topic of "hardest language"? I haven't seen any reliable sources giving this topic significant coverage. Topics that are not notable should not have articles on Wikipedia. — Mr. Stradivarius  ( drop me a line ) 06:00, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, Mr. Stradivarius, if nothing else the fact that the DoD has a ranked list of languages based on difficulty satisfies your notability need. But besides that, there is a clear WP:CONSENSUS for keep demonstrated here.  A consensus in Wikipedia for keeping an article is quite sufficient to keep it.  --Taivo (talk) 10:56, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm not so sure that there is consensus yet. If I have been counting correctly we have 3 keeps (from you, Miacek, and Rjanag), two Merge & redirect/deletes (from JFHjr and Yú Hǎi) and one Keep & rename/copy edit (from me). Consensus means working out common ground between our viewpoints, and I don't think we have managed that yet. As I have argued above, I think we must distinguish between the topic of "the hardest language" in absolute terms, and "the hardest language for native English speakers". The DoD ranking is proof of notability for the latter topic, but not, I would argue, for the former. The difficulty of second languages heavily depends on your native language, and the DoD is very definitely listing difficulty for native English speakers. Chinese is listed as one of the most difficult languages to learn by the DoD, and Spanish one of the easiest, and yet for Japanese speakers a language like Spanish is much harder to learn than Chinese. Is there such a thing as a "hardest language" in absolute terms? Maybe some languages take longer for native speakers to learn than others? This is what the article title implies, but I haven't found any evidence for this yet. (And as you should see from my links to books on language complexity, I have been looking.) If you know of any evidence, please post it here. To tell you the truth, I am fascinated by this idea, and I would love to see evidence for it. I think it would make a great article -- if there are sources for it. My comments here simply reflect what I have found so far. — Mr. Stradivarius  ( drop me a line ) 14:24, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Consensus isn't always unanimity, but it is more than simple majority. Here, out of six individuals expressing an opinion, four are in favor of keeping the article (renaming is a separate discussion).  --Taivo (talk) 17:34, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I am not in favour of keeping the article as it is. Please read my first comment again - I think you have misinterpreted my position. Plus, saying we should keep the article because four out of six people voted keep is using the argument of the simple majority. This is another argument to avoid in deletion discussions. — Mr. Stradivarius  ( drop me a line ) 21:56, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
 * At this point, you seem to ignore the needs of our readers and what they will be looking for in Wikipedia. That is an error.  Wikipedia doesn't exist in a readerless vacuum.  It exists to provide them with reliable information to answer their questions.  While you focus on some level of notability before you will accept this article, you ignore the readers.  There is at least one reliable source, that is enough.  And, it should go without saying, this is the English Wikipedia, so the focus is naturally on the needs of English-speaking readers.  Thus, a focus on the difficulties in learning another language with English as the starting point is absolutely natural here without 6000 articles detailing every other language in the world as a starting point.  --Taivo (talk) 00:05, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree that the information would be useful to readers. It is just a question of where we want to put it. Am I correct in thinking that you consider the "hardest language in absolute terms" and "the hardest language for native English speakers" to be in effect the same topic? That seems to be the central issue on which we are not agreeing. — Mr. Stradivarius  ( drop me a line ) 00:28, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
 * There should be one article with two "sections"--one section describes how one measures difficulty of acquisition based on phonology, syntax, morphology, etc. and the other section describes how that relates to English. --Taivo (talk) 01:50, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, I had gathered that that was your position from the comments you left above. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, do you consider there to be a difference between the concepts of "hardest language in absolute terms" and "hardest language for native English speakers"? — Mr. Stradivarius  ( drop me a line ) 01:59, 17 March 2011 (UTC) (edited to change "native speakers" to "native English speakers" - —  Mr. Stradivarius  ( drop me a line ) 02:56, 17 March 2011 (UTC))
 * There is no such thing as "hardest language in absolute terms", it always depends on what language you are coming from. That's why we discuss different reasons why a language may or may not be difficult to acquire in different areas of grammar.  --Taivo (talk) 06:22, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

Good, it seems we are agreed on that point. This is also the prevailing opinion in linguistics research as far as I can see. It sounds like the article you are talking about creating is on the topic of the "hardest language for native English speakers". I agree that we should have an article on this topic, and I think we should structure it exactly as you described above. I merely suggest that we rename the article to properly identify its subject, thereby neatly avoiding all the arguments over scope, adding additional languages etc. that can be seen on the current article's talk page. Someone can make an article on language complexity later if they want - that shouldn't affect us here. I don't think we can stop people from writing articles on the hardest language to learn for speakers of other languages, as we still need to avoid Anglo-American bias, but they still need sources and I don't know how many people will actually try and write them, so I doubt it will actually affect things that much. That way we have a good article that has proven notability, and doesn't invite people with agendas so much. Does this sound like a reasonable compromise to you? — Mr. Stradivarius  ( drop me a line ) 08:09, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Keep. Articles can be edited, rearranged etc. But the question is keep or delete. The level of interest here suggests keep.  Tchicken7 (talk) 05:51, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Hi Tchicken, and thank you for commenting. Actually, the level of interest in a subject isn't a good argument to use in a deletion discussion. A much stronger argument to use would be one that is based on the notability guidelines. All the best. — Mr. Stradivarius  ( drop me a line ) 06:19, 19 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Although it can confuse people during deletion discussions, would anyone object to me moving the article during the debate? That would change my !vote to a straightforward keep. My suggestion is Difficulty of learning foreign languages for native English speakers, but I admit it is a bit cumbersome. If you have a better wording, please let me know. — Mr. Stradivarius  ( drop me a line ) 07:09, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
 * No move until keep discussion is over. I object to moving this article while the deletion discussion is active. Once this discussion is over then a move discussion can begin. It is always best to complete one discussion before initiating another. --Taivo (talk) 13:43, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Ok, I'll leave it as it is until the discussion is over. If the article stays as it is, then my suggestion is to delete and redirect/merge with Language transfer, as outlined above. — Mr. Stradivarius  ( drop me a line ) 15:43, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

“Off”-topic comments

 * Could we evalute distances between any 2 languages, so that the difficulty of conversions between any two languages may be compared? ––<Span xml:lang="zh-Hant-CN" lang="zh-Hant">虞海</Span> ( Yú Hǎi ) <Big> ✍ </Big> 15:31, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
 * There is no such linguistically accurate heuristic. The variables in play between any two languages are far to complex for some sort of numerical indicator of difficulty.  --Taivo (talk) 16:25, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Any multiple evaluation? For example, phonemic distances and grammatical distances, etc. That may forms vectors. ––<Span xml:lang="zh-Hant-CN" lang="zh-Hant">虞海</Span> ( Yú Hǎi ) <Big> ✍ </Big> 16:39, 18 March 2011 (UTC)
 * There are no heuristics for any aspect of comparing language X to language Y in terms of acquisition difficulty. There are simply too many variables for precise measurement.  --Taivo (talk) 13:44, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.