LL-L "Language perception" 2006.05.31 (02) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L * 31 May 2006 * Volume 01
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From: "Pat Reynolds" <pat at caerlas.demon.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Language acquisition" 2006.05.29 (06) [E]

In message <00b401c6836a$fe0154f0$77b88e8c at D5SYLB51>, Lowlands-L
<lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net> (i.e. Ben) writes
>I'm afraid that the reputation of a language being easy or difficult to
>acquire tends to be base upon cursory assessment at first glance, and that
>this is assessment will inevitably turn out to be wrong in one way or
>another.

I'm interested in the assertion 'this language is difficult to learn',
too.  Do you have any references that I can follow up - I'm trying to
understand what people mean by this, and why they say it.

Cheers,

Pat

-- 
Pat Reynolds
pat at caerlas.demon.co.uk
   "It might look a bit messy now,
                    but just you come back in 500 years time"
   (T. Pratchett)

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Language acquisition

Hello, Pat!

Unfortunately, I do not know of scientific references that deal with this.
 What I said was based on years of personal observation.  Whenever people
say things such as a language is/seems difficult, easy, ugly or beautiful,
I ask people why they feel that way.  So this is informal research.  I
have come away with the following broad categorizations (as seen from the
perspective of speakers of West European languages):

"Difficult":
* associated with an "exotic" culture
* written with a script not based on Roman letters
* having unfamiliar sounds or sound combinations
* having a perceived abundance of consonant clusters
* having "long words" (as in agglutinative varieties)
* having "a lot of grammar" (complex morphology)
* being tonal

"Easy":
* associated with a familiar or closely related culture
* written with Roman letters and few or no "special"symbols
* having mostly familar sounds or sound combinations
* being perceived as more "vocalic" than "consonantal"
* having short or "manageable" words
* having "little grammar" (simple morphology)
* not being tonal

"Ugly":
* having a perceived abundance of consonant clusters
* having "lots of gutteral sounds"
  (esp. for English and Romance speakers)
* having "lots of nasal sounds"
  (though some like it, perhaps due to the image of French)
* sounding "choppy" (esp. frequency of glottal stops)
* being associated with disliked or low-prestige cultures
  ethnicities or nations (i.e., negative cultural and
  political prejudice)
* being associated with disliked activities (e.g., English
  as a medium of rock music)

"Beautiful":
* being perceived as more "vocalic" than "consonantal"
* having no "gutteral sounds"
  (esp. for English and Romance speakers)
* being non-nasal
* sounding "soft" and "smooth" (e.g., due to liaison
  and palatalization)
* being associated with liked, low-prestige cultures
  ethnicities or nations (i.e., positive cultural and
  political prejudice)
* being associated with liked activities (e.g., Italian
  as a medium in opera)

"Funny":
* having "peculiar" intonation (with or without tonality)
* using sounds associated with "cute," tolerable speech
  defects
* using cognate words and expressions with different meanings,
  especially those that seem "silly" or "naughty"

As to "ugly" and "funny," there is a lot going on with associations with
speech defects in one's own language.  For instance, interdental
fricatives tend to be heard as making for a lisp by speakers whose
languages lack such sounds.  The Welsch <ll> (whose sound also abounds in
Native American languages) is associated with another sort of defective
pronunciation of /s/.

Overall, I believe that predominance of CV-type syllable structure is
perceived as "beautiful" and "easy."  This is interesting in that it is
widely believed to be the "original" structure.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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