New CBB

Oooh. Ok. You mean you can count to 10 in Native American. I can too!

1 like the buffalo
2 like the buffalo
3 like the buffalo
4 like the buffalo
5 like the buffalo
6 like the buffalo
7 like the buffalo
8 like the buffalo
9 like the buffalo
10 like the buffalo

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♀♥♀
Dotjen
Kotanese

I can count to ten in lakota.

Waŋží
Núŋpa
Yámni
Tópa
Záptaŋ
Šákpe
Šakówiŋ
Šaglóǧaŋ
Napčíyuŋka
Wikčémna

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そうだ。死んでいる人も勃起することが出来る。
俺はその証だ。

Sanskrit is the oldest language in the world. This seems to be a popular religious fringe theory among Indian linguists..

and one I was taught in Russian school and saw a Russian lady talking about it on Facebook:

Sanskrit is the forerunner to all European languages, including Russian. It might be a Russia-specific myth, though...

And the greatest myth(s) ever:

[insert random language here] is obviously related to [insert random, non-related language here] based on this totally coincidental vocabulary list of terms! I have long stopped facedesking when I see theories like these. Too much blunt trauma.

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sup

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have some lessons

No, it's (definitely!) not Russian-specific; not even east-of-the-Ural-mountans, east-of-the-Caucasus-mountains, east-of-the-Bosphorus-strait, east-of-the-Ural-river, east-of-the-river-Don, east-of-the-Caspian-sea, specific.

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I am not responsible for the accuracy of my sources; they're responsible for their own mistakes, if any, and also responsible for defending their own statements if you disagree with them.

It was repeated in Russian For Dummies. I could say more, but I'm currently experiencing facepalm-induced amnesia.

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Wa mnew yiHegolech.

It's quite commonly held by people from India. They even boast about it. I had a protracted IRL debate over it (I didn't even bring it up, I just quipped that 'uhm, that's not the linguistic consensus' and he launched into a long tirade, where I occasionally tried explaining where he was wrong. Most of the friends present probably ended up thinking he was right.) His main arguments against my counterclaim - viz. Sanskrit is a relatively early off-shoot of the language from which all Indo-European languages come were:
1) It's obvious from the name "Indo-European" that it's Sanskrit
2) If it's not Sanskrit, then tell me the name of that language!

Shit like this convinces people

How do you know you're debunking a myth, here? Specifically, what evidence is there that some languages are not more difficult to learn than any others? Have there been any studies done? It's a devil of a hypothesis to actually test!

Of course, it may be that most natural languages have turned out to have roughly similar levels of difficulty overall, and I can even think of a good reason for this: because roughly similar creatures (humans) speak them. For instance, it's commonly noticed that English has a massive vocabulary but makes up for this fewer features like grammatical gender to be learned and applied.

But I strongly suspect natural languages do indeed differ in their absolute level of difficulty. At the very least, two conlangs could theoretically be designed from one language as a base, with one conlang having its vocabulary, phoneme set, number of cases and tenses, exceptions, etc. reduced, and the other increased. Would the former not be easier to learn, and the latter, harder to learn, irrespective of one's L1? That was the whole notion behind Basic English.

The obligation isn't to prove the negative, so until someone does come out with the evidence for the claim, it's still a myth.
If language (A) lacks a feature that language (B) has, then language (A) needs to compensate with something else if it is required to convey the same things, which you may or may not find easier than the method used by (B).

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I speak English and a touch of Gàidhlig.
I am creating a conworld, which I refer to as the Carrion Series, that will contain three languages, Iriex, Dvoen and Maxna.

If you understand Swedish, you can read this thread where some guy claims that Hungarian is Proto-World.

Regarding the absolute simplicity or difficulty of languages, one method to measure this could be to see how fast children acquire their respective L1s.

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constructedlanguages.net

Oh Flashback, you never cease to amaze with your stupidity .

There are a handful of golden eggs there, but most of them are rotten...

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Proto-Hyảlim | Bjarmish

Ón gráti sem jett barn kvéner jag syggji jett lag um deiðan...
[oʊ̯n ˈgɾaːtɪ sɛmː jɛtː baɾn ˈkʰʋɛːnɛɾ jaː ˈsʏd͡ʑːɪ jɛtː laː ʊmː ˈdɛɪ̯an]

The number of cases, the number of tenses, etc etc isn't a reasonable measurement of difficulty.

Seriously, no matter what measurements we come up with, they'll be so flawed as to be nearly useless, or they won't measure anything that actually has to do with the difficulty the individual learner will have to wrestle with.

What... How... Why...

...

Does not compute.

...

Error.

...

Errorerrorerrorrewtdghhgkfgj.......

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| | | (Nahuatl) | (Sanskrit & Pali) (Yaghan) | (Antregabua)
CrazyEttin's Lair

The following are paraphrases of things I have heard people say or have had said to me over the years.

- 'Does anyone speak Hindu?' - Because apparently the Hindu religion is a language now, so I'm curious to see what Hindi has turned into - I'm guessing some sort of fast-food chain or car manufacturer. I'm just waiting for somebody to talk about speaking 'Muslim'.
- 'Do you speak [ethnic slur for 'Pakistani'], Parminder?' - Said to an Indian (Punjabi) friend of mine.
- 'Chinese and Japanese are the same, aren't they?' - Said by a girl who earlier in the same conversation had been amazed to learn that the Japanese people aren't fundamentally different anatomically to the rest of the world in a way that doesn't bear repeating on a civilised forum.
- 'The [ethnic slur for 'Chinese'] just draw pictures instead of writing.' - From the same girl who made the Chinese-Japanese error.
- 'Of course English and French aren't related.' - Although this may have been more motivated by racism (Tristan despised the French) than ignorance, but that only makes it worse.
- 'English is obviously the best language in the world, because so many people speak it.' - The guy who said this was offended when I laughed because I assumed he was joking. Which, apparently, he wasn't.
- 'Why would you want to learn another language?' - So many times.

Sometimes the stupid burns so very hard.

Dan

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Valar morghulis.

Zidhgebzhail Orthography

This one makes me sad

I don't know that that is a myth so much as an opinion.

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♀♥♀
Dotjen
Kotanese

Reminds me of the time I got called racist for criticising Islam's creation story... :|
This wouldn't happen to be 'Paki', would it? For a long time I thought that meant 'person from Pakistan' only to discover it was a slur against 'middle-Easterners'. Oddly though, an Indian man who runs a local shop describes himself as such...

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A related one; "English decends from Latin." It even seems that a number of past linguists tried to create/perpetuate this myth.

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I speak English and a touch of Gàidhlig.
I am creating a conworld, which I refer to as the Carrion Series, that will contain three languages, Iriex, Dvoen and Maxna.

"paki" is a slur against all Middle-easterners? I didn't know that, I thought it was only a slur against people from Pakistan and India and thereabouts.. Like Lodhas I originally thought it was just a word for Pakistanian.

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КЕРВЕНСКИЙ

That's the thing about racial slurs, they tend not to be specific. Of course, it might be a Glasgow specific thing.

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I speak English and a touch of Gàidhlig.
I am creating a conworld, which I refer to as the Carrion Series, that will contain three languages, Iriex, Dvoen and Maxna.

We could measure this by the average age at which a child learning the language as their L1 achieves full mastery of all the language's structures. I believe I read on Wikipedia at some point that the language with the honor of being the "most difficult" by this measure being Korean.

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♀♥Ø

No language is more difficult than any other. The average age of mastery for a child is when their brain splits (literally) in two, which means 7-8 years old. Once it's done, the child has totally unconsciously acquired the grammar of its language and can't acquire another one, unless they willingly study it.