From: robin_listas@es.invalid   
      
   On 2025-12-02 15:56, Stefan Ram wrote:   
   > "Carlos E.R."  wrote or quoted:   
   >> On 2025-12-02 14:53, s|b wrote:   
   >>> We had to learn French from the age of 12 and then another 6 years. IMHO   
   >>> it's easier than German.   
   >> It is easier at that age.   
   >   
   >    I'm a late self-taught learner of French myself. I can   
   >    understand simple texts with no special vocabulary, but   
   >    can't speak nor write myself.   
   >   
   >    The "equal complexity hypothesis" claims that, in the end, all   
   >    language have the same complexity. One language might have fewer   
   >    word forms but makes up for this by a more complex grammar etc.   
   >   
   >    Measured by the number of hours of instruction required   
   >    to bring native English speakers to a certain level of   
   >    proficiency, the simplest languages are French (indeed!),   
   >    Afrikaans, Danish, Dutch, Haitian Creole, Italian, Norwegian,   
   >    Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Swahili, and Swedish.   
   >   
   >    German is in the next, more difficult, group together with   
   >    Bulgarian, Dari, Farsi (Persian), (Modern) Greek, Hindi-Urdu,   
   >    Indonesian and Malay.   
   >   
   >    But the list does not stop here, the third group has languages   
   >    that are even more difficult than German: Amharic, Bengali,   
   >    Burmese, Czech, Finnish, (Modern) Hebrew, Hungarian, Khmer   
   >    (Cambodian), Lao, Nepali, Pilipino (Tagalog), Polish, Russian,   
   >    Serbo-Croatian, Sinhala, Thai, Tamil, Turkish, and Vietnamese.   
   >   
   >    And, finally, we have the most difficult languages of all   
   >    (as far as languages were part of that survey): Arabic,   
   >    Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.   
      
   Interesting list!   
      
   >   
   >    So, how much French can I understand?   
   >   
   >    Well, I listened to TV shows, and whenever I got something,   
   >    I wrote it down. So here are some French sentences I once understood   
   >    listening to TV shows. (I would not have been able to write them down   
   >    in correct French spelling, so I used a service for the writing.)   
   >   
   > Monsieur Data, vous prenez les commandes.   
   >   
   > Vous êtes capable de rire.   
   >   
   > Vous pouvez disposer. (Here, I actually got the meaning of   
   >    "disposer" from the situation in the TV show.)   
   >   
   > Vous avez des raisons personnelles ?   
   >   
   > Ma mémoire fonctionne parfaitement bien.   
   >   
   > alimentation principale, alimentation de secours   
   >   
   > Je crois que maintenant ça marche.   
   >   
   > . . . (about 160 lines altogether)   
      
   :-)   
      
      
   I started to read "Vingt Mille Lieues sous les mers", but my teacher   
   told me to stop, because I would get a bad pronunciation. However, it is   
   what I did with English, reading first Enid Blyton then Agatha Christie.   
      
   --   
   Cheers, Carlos.   
   ES🇪🇸, EU🇪🇺;   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)