Review on “Some languages are harder than others”

In the article of “Some Languages are harder than others”, the writer tried to compare different languages to show their linguistic simplicity. The writer concluded that “some languages appear to be harder than others, but it is hard to explain exactly how and to what extent” (page 56 line 36 and page 57 lines 1-2). It is because the writer claimed that “simplicity in one part of the language may be balanced by complexity in another part” (page 56 lines 16-17). Although the writer used different scales like word constructions (morphology) and sound systems of languages to compare the difficulty of a language, the conclusion who made is reasonable and to me, I totally agree that we cannot measure the simplicity for a language by using a specific scale.
Personally, I do always believe some languages are harder than others because as a language learner, I can see the difficulties or obstacles when the languages compared. Sometimes, therefore, I did judgments to the languages I know. “People do not usually talk about their mother tongues as being easy or difficult for them as native speakers to use” (page 50 lines 2-4), claimed by the writer. To this claim, I think I cannot agree with. Since I think it is subjective point of view and when people try to analyze their mother languages, they may still feel frustrated in the linguistic level. Just, having ability to use their mother tongues fluently does not resemble feeling easy or difficult for them. When I tried to study Chinese in linguistic level, what all I can conclude is I am so glad I understand Cantonese (and Putonghua) to be my mother language. It is because just like what the writer suggested, when I put the scales of sound system and morphology to Chinese, it totally showing their difficulties to most of other languages.
The next idea the writer suggested I would like to discuss is “a language with few words should be easier to learn than one with many” or oppositely “we need words to express our thoughts, and with fewer words some thoughts will be harder to express” (page 51 lines 26-29). To this idea, actually I much prefer the first suggestion. We need to understand that the word productions of a language are closely related to the cultural differences. For example, an Eskimo language has hundreds of word to describe the snow or snowing. I think it is unnecessary and difficult to the learner who are living in the areas where do not snowing. When talking about learning a language, I think when you are able to communicate in different situations of daily life, is enough for that language. So when a language with few words means that language does not need too many words to express their living environment. Thus, what I suggest is when you want to use that language to express your thoughts, you need to fit the environments and cultures of the areas where speak that language. It is also why translation of two different languages usually comes with the problems of cultural differences.
The last idea I would like to suggest is also my conclusion. Actually, when we say “some languages are harder than others”, it must be subjective. Objectively, we need many scales to measure the simplicity of languages. However, do we need to measure it? I think we do not have to do so. A group of people who created their languages must subjectively think that the others are difficult to them in the way of pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar or so on. When we go back to the history, for instance, Korean and Japanese were already admitted that Chinese was not suitable for their people to use and to learn, it is also what I want to point out that some languages are harder than others, obviously and must subjectively and unable to measure.

Reviewed on Myth 7, Pages 50-57, Bauer, L. and Trudgill, P. (eds.) (1998) Language myths London: Penguin Books, 1998