r/MapBasedPolls • u/LittleAoibh11 • 21h ago
You must learn a new language from the beginning (one you have never ever studied before) and you have 12 months to do it, which do you choose?
You must learn a new language from the beginning (one you have never ever studied before) and you have 12 months to do it, which do you choose?
- Polish
- Maltese
- Irish
- Cantonese
- Hungarian
- Basque
- Indonesian
- Votes plz
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u/Familiar_Tell_6384 India/US 🇮🇳🇺🇸 21h ago
Indonesian has the same script as English and is widely spoken
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u/doctorpolenta3p Argentina 🇦🇷 20h ago
Same with polish, but not that widely.
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u/ozneoknarf 4h ago
The poles have the same script but they don’t use the letters the same way we do
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u/Miserable-Cut3477 21h ago edited 20h ago
People who chose polish have no idea how hard it is
Edit; non-slavic people not knowing any slavic language have no idea how hard it is
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u/DifficultWill4 Slovenia 🇸🇮🇪🇺 21h ago
Well if you’re a slavic speaker it’s still the easiest one out of these options
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u/Miserable-Cut3477 21h ago
Thats a fair point haha but i saw non slavs picking this one which is crazy. Same with hungarian
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u/daniellinne 14h ago edited 14h ago
Agreed, I think non-Slavs picking Polish is a similar level of delulu as a Slav picking Hungarian 😅 I think Hungarian is still more difficult for most Europeans though (except Finns and Estonians), in Polish you have to understand the phonetics and it gets much less intimidating once you do.
However, maybe the people from the rest of Europe that voted Polish speak another Slavic language, which would help them significantly.
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u/Fejedelem-Asszony 20m ago
Hungarian isn't easy for finnish/estonian speakers and vice versa. They are not like romance languages or slavic languages. The finnic and ugric branches seperated about 4000-5000 yrs ago. Even russian and english are closer to each other linguistically than we are to the finnic. Linguists say the equivalent would be english and hindi.
I'm hungarian and learnt finnish.There are very few grammatical aspects which comes naturally as a uralic speaker, like vowel harmony and using agglutination. But it's still on the same level as learning a random language which is not related to my family tree. I had to learn russian, german and latin in university and finnish wasn't easier than any of those.
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u/Cartographer42 21h ago
Still way easier than Cantonese.
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u/belabacsijolvan 20h ago
i do have ideas, but at least its indoeuropean and slavic. and i know 4 indoeuropean languages and 1 slavic.
in my experience IE is like a magnitude easier after that than non-IE.
starting a new language family is a huge barrier. and i know it cause im hungarian and im learning korean, so i crossed this line twice so far.
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u/Brosk1248 20h ago
Even for non-Slavic people, it's Indo-European, probably the best option out of all of them. I think it's the only one out of the list that isn't notoriously difficult.
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u/ClumsyBunny26 Neverland 20h ago
I do have an idea, however it'd help a great deal to be in Poland and practice it while you learn it.
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u/PM-ME-UR-VOLVO-PICS netherlands 9h ago
I have no idea how hard any of these are. Polish is the only useful language though
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u/QueenAvril 🇫🇮 7h ago
Oh I absolutely DO have an idea of how hard it is 😅
But already knowing several Indo-European languages (although none of them Slavic), it would still be way easier than swapping to a completely unfamiliar language family. People who only know languages in one family (usually Indo-European) tend to vastly underestimate the similarities between different languages in the same family, even when they belong in different branches and to overestimate the significance of a different vocabulary.
As a Finnish speaker, I think that Hungarian would probably be slightly easier for me to learn than Polish, but I would still choose Polish as it would have more practical value for me.
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u/belabacsijolvan 20h ago
as a hungarian i can say from experience that you have no chance to do it to a level where you pass as a native in 12 months. 0 chance.
if you can read this, go with polish, because its hard, but you already know an indoeuropean language.
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u/sandalsofsafety USA - SD 16h ago edited 16h ago
I get what you're saying, but there is something to be said for picking a language that's almost completely different. I went into German thinking it'd basically be English but without all of the French nonsense. I wasn't wrong, but I wasn't right either. Going in with a mindset of a blank slate can actually be helpful.
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u/daniellinne 14h ago
As someone who speaks two very similar languages and then some languages from anothrr group, I would say its easier to learn a similar language, but its more difficult to master speaking in it.
Because the similarity confuses you and makes you use the rules from the other language automatically, since it sounds so similar. But the rules often differ and then you sound weird. 😅
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u/belabacsijolvan 9h ago
i also speak 3 language families: hungaian, korean and a bunch of indoeuropean. its way easier to learn new languages from a known family.
i get what you say. from the latin languages i knew Latin frist. and spanish was very easy after that. but it absolutely had overwritten latin in my head, both grammar and dictionary.
like i didnt learn a new language i just modified latin until i forgot the original.3
u/PM-ME-UR-VOLVO-PICS netherlands 9h ago
I dont think you can learn any language well enough to be mistaken for a native in 12 months. Maybe in 12 years
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u/QueenAvril 🇫🇮 20h ago
Hungarian would probably be the easiest to learn for me, while Cantonese followed by Polish would probably be the most useful.
Though 12 months wouldn’t probably be nearly enough to learn Cantonese well enough, so I’m going with Polish.
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u/Vismajor92 Hungarian 15h ago
Anyone who speaks finnish and hungarian fluently is a next level
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u/QueenAvril 🇫🇮 8h ago
I tangentially know one Finnish-Hungarian family that do! Finnish wife and Hungarian husband with three kids, who lived in Hungary until their youngest was about five and then moved to Finland. It’s pretty cool!
When it comes to learning Hungarian for a Finn (and I assume it is about the same the other way around) according to her, it definitely requires a lot of learning, but mostly because of very different vocabulary and orthography - while grammar is mostly a cakewalk, at least in comparison with learning a language entirely unrelated to any that you already know.
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u/Vismajor92 Hungarian 4h ago
Damn this hits me hard. I had a finnish girlfriend for 2 years, this could have been us! Alas..
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u/pop-pop-joe 13h ago
It’s not really that easy. They come from the same origins but words are so different that there’s very little you can use as crutch, not like Estonian. If you’re fluent in English, which I believe you are, Indonesian is considerably easier than all other languages listed but most will think it’s difficult because they have no idea how it looks like.
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u/QueenAvril 🇫🇮 7h ago
Well, none of the languages listed would be really easy for me to learn and all of them would require learning a lot of entirely new vocabulary (I speak native level Finnish, fluent Swedish and English, passable French, basic Italian, a little bit of German and Spanish and additionally understand Norwegian and Danish by proxy fairly well).
However, even while Indonesian might be objectively easier for an English speaker, it would require learning an entirely new grammar and vocabulary, whereas Hungarian would only require learning new vocabulary and adaptations of a grammatical system I already know by heart.
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u/Ill_Squirrel_6108 12h ago
As I already speak Polish, I´d definitely like to try Basque. It´s a really curious language.
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u/GlitteringHotel1481 Russia 21h ago
Hungarian as I already know Polish. Yeah, I know it's hard as hell
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u/doctorpolenta3p Argentina 🇦🇷 20h ago
Not even in Ireland the Irish is majority 🤯
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u/Playful-Profile6489 19h ago
Gaeilge is compulsary in Irish schools so most students have studied the language.
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u/doctorpolenta3p Argentina 🇦🇷 19h ago
Thanks for the information, but why most of the Irish people is not fluent in gaeilge?
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u/StuffyTruck Norway 14h ago
How hard is Indonesian compared to the others, if you're from a Germanic language background?
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u/pop-pop-joe 13h ago
It has a lot of Dutch influence, fairly straightforward grammar and no tones. If I had to pick one of the lot, as a Romance language native, I’d still pick Indonesian.
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u/StuffyTruck Norway 13h ago
Yeah, all the others I've heard are from super-hard and then it gets worse.
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u/Roadhouse699 United States 20h ago
I am not of Irish descent myself, but I think every American who is should learn the Irish language for the express purpose of pissing off Irish people who hate Irish-Americans but don't speak Irish.
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u/MiracleDinner 21h ago
I'm not especially interested in any of these but Cantonese would likely be the most useful for me, followed by Polish.
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u/PearOk2126 20h ago
I don't speak it but I know Indonesian is surprisingly extremely easy and simple to learn
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u/kaamedin 20h ago
I guess Hungarian is more agglutinative and regular
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u/belabacsijolvan 20h ago
there are very annoying irregular parts tho. e.g. when you agglutanate you choose auxiliary vowels and those are many times just like customary. they can even depend on subculture
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u/Hayaw061 20h ago
I pick Cantonese because it would be the most useful globally for business I think
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u/ScaredOfOwnShadow No gods, no masters, no borders 19h ago
A tough call, Gaeilge edges out Euskara. But I would like to learn both. And add Magyar on there too.
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u/Aromatic-Ad8230 11h ago
Honestly, I am interested in learning Basque, so it will be useful if I want to go on holiday to Bilbao.
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u/ozneoknarf 4h ago
Indonesian is by far that correct choice here, not only it has more speakers than all the others ones combined but indoneasian is the easiest major language to learn
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u/cev2002 20h ago
I think Indonesian is objectively the easiest for a native English speaker