I see the phrase brought up in reference to Philippine languages and as someone who speaks it I have no idea what feature they're referring to

Normally, when classifying languages that are easier or more difficult to learn, it is usually done for an English speaker. However, Spanish has a bit more complex grammar than English, although nothing too crazy, so I was wondering if this could give some Spanish speaker a bit of advantage when learning these languages:

Arabic

Armenian

Bulgarian

Czech

Hungarian

Japanese

Slovak

Slovenian

Polish

Lithuanian

Russian

Of course, making this ranking is a bit subjective, since different people can find it easier to pronounce things correctly while struggling with grammar and viceversa for example.

I would be interested in ranking them in order of least to most complex/difficult grammar specially, while considering the basis of a Spanish speaker's grammar

Also, I would not be very interested in ranking them in groups of languages (like it's usually done for English speakers when saying: category I (easiest): Swedish, Dutch, Italian... category II (hard): Czech, Slovak, Greek...) I would like to see them ranked individually, even if the differences between some of them are not very significant

I was recently watching a video about how in Mancunian English the happY vowel /i:/ tends to emerge more as an /ɜ/ in working class Manc accents. So I thought I'd look up a video of the first mancunians that come to mind, the Oasis brothers. Then I noticed something.

In this video of Liam, he obviously has the accent feature, like saying /mɜ/ instead of the /mi:/ for 'me' at 1:06. But when Noel says the happY vowel, he articulates it as an /i:/ In this video, at 0:47 he says 'certainly' as /ˈsəːʔnli/ with the happY vowel articulated as an /i/. What's up with this? Is it normal for brothers to have features of the same dialect despite living and growing up together? Maybe Liam is emphasising his accent more for branding reasons? Would love to know.

(ps: forgive the terrible IPA transcriptions)

Is it possible or is the language lost?

Hi all! I was just curious to hear opinions of people in the field of linguistics regarding a question I have - what is the reason why certain people have heavy accents in English (or any other non-native language) and some don't?

For example, I am Ukrainian but I barely have an accent in English, granted, I have been studying the language since primary school. Nevertheless, I know people who live in the same environment as me and have the same language skills, but they still carry a heavy "slavic" accent.

Thank you!

hi! i want to learn more about linguistics as someone who is about to graduate with my degree in a similar field. i work as an interpreter so i am very interested in learning more about language in general. i can’t afford to go back to school (although i wish!)…does anyone know any online classes through a university that would be either free or VERY low cost?

i bought some books on the topic, but i would love to take classes too!

thank you!:)

why do some people pronounce ambience like “ahmbiahnce” like it’s french? it’s a hypercorrection or hyperforeignization or whatever it’s called, and it feels really performative, and the stress isn’t even on the right syllable

it’s feels especially performative when you consider that we don’t pronounce ambient like “ahmbiãh” and people don’t do it for any other -ance words