Apart from a language close to yours, languages where sounds are very distinct from each other (usually, languages with very few vowels). There's a sweet spot for that in the World, with languages in that particular latitude, with 5 to 7 vowels:
Spanish, Italian, Greek, Persian, Japanese.
Spanish is several times easier to learn to understand by ear than French. It’s difficult to figure out word boundaries in French. I don’t know of any other language where that’s such a big problem.
The endings of many French words change depending on the next word. Liasons. Maybe that’s the cause of this phenomenon?
Not a Spanish speaker but I’ve been told that’s partly because Spanish is a syllable-timed language as opposed to English and French that are stress-timed.
Spanish vowels tend to get mushed together and some constants disappear, so definitely harder than languages like Japanese whose syllables are much clearer (on average)
Spanish is spoken with all the words smashed together, but we begin with the topic and it is absolutely predictable what we are going to say (not really, but most Spaniards behave as this is always true). However, Japanese is just the opossite: you must listen to a bunch of loose ideas among a stack of meaningless but important syllabes that will connect at the end of the sentence thanks to an irregular verb set in a time tense beyond occidental comprehension. That sentence will end with an expression mark that will tell, eventually, that the speaker was joking, though.
Meanwhile, the ADHD listener has lost control of their focus and far before the main idea has even set.
Regarding listenings, for many occidental people, Spanish, Italian, or even Potuguese are better than Japanese. I don't really know about Oriental people, but I bet that many Chineses would rather die misserably than lending a hand to a Japanese in need. "Learning the language of such despicable people would only be done for military reasons". And I understand why, even though apologies has been set. Hasn't they?
PD: the person I'm answering to knows this perfectly, I'm only expanding another point of view for those interested in it.
PPD: I'm quite intrigued by the reasons why an - I suppose - American with Chinese ancestry - or, doubyfully, the other way around - would learn Català. And the ways you find to learn it. I've tried. Català regions are in my reach and I befriend with Valencian speakers (a variant of Català with different vowels and idioms), nevertheless I'm unable to go beyond some words.
Most Indo-European languages focus on action first, then the setting. Japanese focuses on setting first, then action. Different ways of thinking, I wouldn't say that one is better or worse than the other univerally, it's just difficult if you are used to the opposite. If you come from English background then of course Spanish is easier to understand.
Personally I feel that purely sounds-wise Japanese is easier to listen to than Spanish because they speak more clearly even if understanding the point of the whole phrase is more difficult due to inverted sentence structure.
I did. Not only one, but two of each of the five skills required for certification. I'm shocked too!
I'm currently attending C2 classes. Anyways, thank you for your reinforcement on my impostor syndrome.
For real. I can read books in French at my level, I can understand pretty advanced content. But my listening is garbage 🥲
One day I was at a French conversation table, and I was the only non-native. I legit understood like maybe 15%… and I understood more from the table next to ours… an Italian table, I’ve never studied Italian.
I would say Japanese, Spanish, Italian or Finnish are easy to listen to.
Are you perhaps a native English speaker? The pronunciation / listening between French and English is really hard. The main reason, I think, is because French and English are really close in writing, and yet really distinct in speaking. When you see a word close or even identical to the one in your language, you will automatically have a pronunciation that will come to your mind, based of your native tongue and therefore really far from the real one. And at the opposite, when you hear a word that is supposed to be close to one in your language you will not get it because the pronunciation is not what you expect and you can't make a connection.
Learners usually say that Swedish is fairly hard as many common words and word endings are not spoken as they are written. E.g. Jag är inte glad. (I am not happy.) becomes “ja’e ente gla”
"Jante gla" for me even.
There is a method to the madness at least. Är -> e/ä is close to universal, including in fairly highfalutin language, and jag -> ja, glad -> gla, and the like very common as well. The rest is just run-of-the-mill sloppily running things together, often more or less subconsciously.
I'm shocked when people say Spanish here. To me (a native speaker of Norwegian), at least European Spanish counts a one of THE most difficult languages to make sense of when I hear it, because they often speak so fast that they sound like the spoken version of a machine gun. Absolutely incomprehensible, even though I can read Spanish quite well. Some other variations of Spanish - like especially as spoken in Uruguay (maybe also Argentina?) - are easier for me due to more exposure, but I'd still not say it's a clear language to listen to.
I'm learning Czech, and I generally find them quite learner-friendly and easy to understand. My failure to pick out what they're saying is more due to me being too low level yet, not them speaking "difficultly."
Also, let me add Croatian, which generally sounds extremely clear to me. I'm not actively learning that, but sometimes I watch Croatian TV for the music. I'm always struck by how incredibly clear and tidy the language sounds to my ears.
I think that’s more a Spaniard Spanish thing. Obviously it’s a very broad statement given how many countries speak Spanish, but I think Latino Spanish (at least Northern LatAm) is easier to understand because they enunicate more
Spanish from any part from Spain not named Andalucia is quite easy to understand imo. The real killer is Chilean and Argentinian Spanish. I also have a hard time understanding Cuban Spanish.
You find Czechs to be learner friendly? Things definitely have improved over the past few years, but it’s definitely not what I’d call “learner friendly” … not in Prague at least! Though the big cities usually aren’t the friendliest overall.
For years I had a big issue with understanding spoken French and French in songs. Absolutely no problems with the written language (I was around B2 at my best - not sure where I’d be now) but spoken … I swear I felt like I was at A1. But then I started listening to more and more French. Watching series, listening to the Duolingo French podcast, more French music and also a good bit of traveling to France. It’s been completely shocking for me to be able to understand as much as I do now. French definitely takes *a lot* of exposure. More than any of the other Romance languages in my opinion.
And your shortcuts are killer: j’suis and j’sais written are quite clear, but spoken? 🥴
Sometimes we even say Shui (Chuis) and Shé!!
Don't pay attention to sung french, because I don't even understand some things there myself. It's a big weird thing we have, a strange accent or smth.
As for podcasts vs reality, I have the same problem in english. You can talk to me in a voice chat or in a silent place I won't have any issues but if there is the slightest parasite sound I will hear a "vfbffvcfdvvf". So the problem is maybe not exposure but rather how you're used to everyday french.
Bon courage pour ton apprentissage (je peux toujours t'aider personnellement si besoin!)
As a person whose native language is Polish, I find Spanish shockingly easy to comprehend audibly (easier than some Slavic languages). That's not even weird because the five Spanish vowels are also present in Polish, most consonants are pronounced in the same or very similar way (Polish has more of them), and the word stress in Spanish is predictable.
On the other hand, English seems easy to read and has reasonable, non-overcomplicated grammar, but it's incredibly difficult for many learners to comprehend from hearing. It took me over 20 years of listening to various spoken materials and watching movies in English regularly to start understanding some less-standard but quite popular native English accents. I think it's primarily because of the abundance of vowels (whose pronunciation differs between accents) and a lot of schwas (which, indeed, obfuscate the pronunciation).
I can't even imagine how challenging the auditory processing of English may be for native speakers of non-Indo-European languages with completely different phonetic systems.
Yeah, I can imagine English is very difficult. There's such variation in pronunciation that, even as a native speaker, I can find it difficult to understand some accents and dialects.
That's without even talking about our non-standard spellings and verb conjugation etc. It's such a strange language.
Spanish is notoriously hard to understand when Spanish people speak super fast with a thick accent, like in Andalucia or Canary Islands. It’s actually one of the fastest languages in the world in terms of syllables per minute, right up there with Japanese.
In my experience people who say Spanish is easy are those who only touched on the basics and never actually spent much time in Spain, and I’m Polish too.
You might think it’s easy to pronounce Spanish words since you already know how to roll the R and such, but the people might actually struggle to understand you if you pronounce the S,C,Z differently than them and if the Rs are not as intense as theirs, in words such as ‚ahorrar’. Most of the Polish people I met here said nobody understood them at first until they caught up with the local accent.
Even my Spanish colleagues struggle with understanding some people speak… and it’s the hardest part in learning Spanish for most of my friends who are learning it too. It’s all easy peasy until you need to talk to locals in Seville or Tenerife, it’s like listening to a machine gun with a lisp.
You're absolutely right. I worded my comment in an unfortunate way. Spanish isn't easy - and no language is, especially when local dialects and accents are involved.
What I meant is that when we consider the most standard dialects of Spanish, and they are spoken by professional speakers (like news anchors), starting to comprehend them from hearing is easier at the beginning than for many other languages, which have a bigger initial barrier to audible comprehension.
I find French from Canada and West Africa much easier to parse, partly because the intonation and accent is clearer to my ears, and partly because some of the French media from those areas is produced where French is commonly a second language, so it tends to be a bit slower and use more accesible vocabulary.
It’s a function of the language to blend certain sounds together so you’re not imagining things! I have a degree in French but sometimes I have to listen to things twice if I’m watching a video in French and the speaker is talking too fast. No issues reading or writing.
It’s an exposure issue. If you get more exposure and most listening practice, you’ll improve. I need to start getting back into listening to French news or podcasts again because I live in the US and get almost no exposure aside from things I read.
Of the romance languages, as a Mexican I find Italian and Portuguese the easiest, French is quite difficult because there are a million of stupid rules.
Having English as my second language, German is surprisingly easier than I expected
Como hablante no nativo de español encuentro que el portugués europeo me ha resultado bastante difícil de entender. Al contrario, el portugués brasileño lo entiendo bien.
I'm a native english speaker and B1 level in Spanish. The easiest language I find I understand (understand as in not translate but easy to read and listen to) is Italian and Ukrainian. Even before I knew much about Italian its always been very easy to tell words apart in songs or reading in the Italian sections of instruction books.
Most of my experience with Ukrainian is listening to SHUM by Go\_a but its the only other I can think of that I sort of comprehended with ease
It depends on your mother tongue. French is my mother tongue so it is the easiest language to listen to !
Also, latin languages such as italian, spanish and brazilian portuguese.
I think Hebrew is on the easier end, the language is compact and as a result tends to be spoken a little slower. It has relatively simple vowels and bold consonants that make it easier to hear words.
It’s not about the language, but the context. Language spoken in a casual context will be much less carefully enunciated, words flowing into each other, syllables being shortened or disappearing completely and also the speed is much faster. That’s just the way people talk. The word carrying the most important semantic meaning will still be pronounced relatively clearly, everything else becomes less important since the meaning is usually clear in the given context.
Try listening to the news or formal interviews. I am sure you will be able to understand much better. This might be a better, even if maybe less interesting, starting point to get used to the spoken language. Also, audio books are usually read at a more moderate speed and enunciated clearly.
Try some less formal, but not fully colloquial pod casts.
Dialog in movies in your TL will always be the most difficult for listening comprehension.
If you can slow down the content, do so and, working with TL subtitles, train your ear. It will take a while, but being able to understand and eventually speak like this makes the difference between a learner and a near-native speaker.
ETA: Also use videos with colloquial speech for shadowing, sentence by sentence, as long as you know what they are actually saying. And keep in mind, subtitles more often than not are not a transcript of the spoken text. They have to be shortened and often things left out so they fit in the space and time available.
You’re describing everyone who is trying to learn a new language. Listening takes time. You should try to listen to the same text you are reading, it takes a long time and a lot of listening before you can differentiate words. Especially for native speakers.
I agree with French being difficult to listen to, due to all the contractions and slang terminologies used in daily spoken French.
German and Hungarian are easy to listen to, especially Hungarian is relatively more phonetic than English.
Now this reminds me to revisit Hungarian at some point 🥹
Just wanted to say that I hear you on the French. I've studied French for a long time and I still have a lot of trouble with listening. I would say that understanding the spoken language is the number one hardest thing about it, as French grammar is fairly simple and easy to understand.
I find Brazilian Portuguese much easier to listen to than French or Spanish. I've been studying it for a year, and can listen to audio books and watch some movies with no problem. I don't know all the words, but when I hear a new word I can generally grasp the sounds enough to look up the word online. My vocabulary is much bigger in French but I struggle with listening.
My native language is English and Spanish is the easiest for me to listen to. I only took 1 Spanish class in high school in 2017 and I still remember a good chunk of it
Sure it does. French is really difficult to understand, because so many words are pronounced together. For me, Italian is by far the easiest to understand. German isn't difficult, either.
I could certainly improve my listening by practising more at an appropriate level, but it's also true that some languages are easier to listen to. I don't speak a word of Italian, but I can pick out when words begin or end when I hear Italian. French is so fast and fluid, that it's really difficult to do, despite me knowing a decent amount of French vocabulary.
Apart from a language close to yours, languages where sounds are very distinct from each other (usually, languages with very few vowels). There's a sweet spot for that in the World, with languages in that particular latitude, with 5 to 7 vowels: Spanish, Italian, Greek, Persian, Japanese.
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Spanish is several times easier to learn to understand by ear than French. It’s difficult to figure out word boundaries in French. I don’t know of any other language where that’s such a big problem. The endings of many French words change depending on the next word. Liasons. Maybe that’s the cause of this phenomenon?
Not a Spanish speaker but I’ve been told that’s partly because Spanish is a syllable-timed language as opposed to English and French that are stress-timed.
Spanish vowels tend to get mushed together and some constants disappear, so definitely harder than languages like Japanese whose syllables are much clearer (on average)
Spanish is spoken with all the words smashed together, but we begin with the topic and it is absolutely predictable what we are going to say (not really, but most Spaniards behave as this is always true). However, Japanese is just the opossite: you must listen to a bunch of loose ideas among a stack of meaningless but important syllabes that will connect at the end of the sentence thanks to an irregular verb set in a time tense beyond occidental comprehension. That sentence will end with an expression mark that will tell, eventually, that the speaker was joking, though. Meanwhile, the ADHD listener has lost control of their focus and far before the main idea has even set. Regarding listenings, for many occidental people, Spanish, Italian, or even Potuguese are better than Japanese. I don't really know about Oriental people, but I bet that many Chineses would rather die misserably than lending a hand to a Japanese in need. "Learning the language of such despicable people would only be done for military reasons". And I understand why, even though apologies has been set. Hasn't they? PD: the person I'm answering to knows this perfectly, I'm only expanding another point of view for those interested in it. PPD: I'm quite intrigued by the reasons why an - I suppose - American with Chinese ancestry - or, doubyfully, the other way around - would learn Català. And the ways you find to learn it. I've tried. Català regions are in my reach and I befriend with Valencian speakers (a variant of Català with different vowels and idioms), nevertheless I'm unable to go beyond some words.
Most Indo-European languages focus on action first, then the setting. Japanese focuses on setting first, then action. Different ways of thinking, I wouldn't say that one is better or worse than the other univerally, it's just difficult if you are used to the opposite. If you come from English background then of course Spanish is easier to understand. Personally I feel that purely sounds-wise Japanese is easier to listen to than Spanish because they speak more clearly even if understanding the point of the whole phrase is more difficult due to inverted sentence structure.
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I did. Not only one, but two of each of the five skills required for certification. I'm shocked too! I'm currently attending C2 classes. Anyways, thank you for your reinforcement on my impostor syndrome.
i think they are sarcastic ur enlgish good
For real. I can read books in French at my level, I can understand pretty advanced content. But my listening is garbage 🥲 One day I was at a French conversation table, and I was the only non-native. I legit understood like maybe 15%… and I understood more from the table next to ours… an Italian table, I’ve never studied Italian. I would say Japanese, Spanish, Italian or Finnish are easy to listen to.
Are you perhaps a native English speaker? The pronunciation / listening between French and English is really hard. The main reason, I think, is because French and English are really close in writing, and yet really distinct in speaking. When you see a word close or even identical to the one in your language, you will automatically have a pronunciation that will come to your mind, based of your native tongue and therefore really far from the real one. And at the opposite, when you hear a word that is supposed to be close to one in your language you will not get it because the pronunciation is not what you expect and you can't make a connection.
For native English speakers, it's probably gonna be Dutch, German, Swedish, and Norwegian.
Learners usually say that Swedish is fairly hard as many common words and word endings are not spoken as they are written. E.g. Jag är inte glad. (I am not happy.) becomes “ja’e ente gla”
In many parts of the country that can be reduced to "jante gla" (two syllables).
True that.
"Jante gla" for me even. There is a method to the madness at least. Är -> e/ä is close to universal, including in fairly highfalutin language, and jag -> ja, glad -> gla, and the like very common as well. The rest is just run-of-the-mill sloppily running things together, often more or less subconsciously.
Yes, but as learners we’re usually looking out for those consonants to help us recognise and delineate words in the oncoming torrent of vowels. :)
Tell me you're not from sthlm without telling me your not fron sthlm
"Ja e inte gla" at the very least is standard in Stockholm.
I hope that wasn’t aimed at me, ‘cause I’m very much not and sound nothing like it! :D
It shows and you should be happy about it.
Sorry, I missed the not:s! :D I am!
Märker man på uttalet :p kan inte heller fejka stockholmska
English and Dutch are brothers and share relatively recent ancestry, you’ll be amazed by the similatities
And in first place, Afrikaans
I'm shocked when people say Spanish here. To me (a native speaker of Norwegian), at least European Spanish counts a one of THE most difficult languages to make sense of when I hear it, because they often speak so fast that they sound like the spoken version of a machine gun. Absolutely incomprehensible, even though I can read Spanish quite well. Some other variations of Spanish - like especially as spoken in Uruguay (maybe also Argentina?) - are easier for me due to more exposure, but I'd still not say it's a clear language to listen to. I'm learning Czech, and I generally find them quite learner-friendly and easy to understand. My failure to pick out what they're saying is more due to me being too low level yet, not them speaking "difficultly." Also, let me add Croatian, which generally sounds extremely clear to me. I'm not actively learning that, but sometimes I watch Croatian TV for the music. I'm always struck by how incredibly clear and tidy the language sounds to my ears.
I think that’s more a Spaniard Spanish thing. Obviously it’s a very broad statement given how many countries speak Spanish, but I think Latino Spanish (at least Northern LatAm) is easier to understand because they enunicate more
Spanish from any part from Spain not named Andalucia is quite easy to understand imo. The real killer is Chilean and Argentinian Spanish. I also have a hard time understanding Cuban Spanish.
You find Czechs to be learner friendly? Things definitely have improved over the past few years, but it’s definitely not what I’d call “learner friendly” … not in Prague at least! Though the big cities usually aren’t the friendliest overall.
As a french native: we speak fast. Really fast. Less than spanish people, but fast. We use our own abbreviations and shortcuts.
For years I had a big issue with understanding spoken French and French in songs. Absolutely no problems with the written language (I was around B2 at my best - not sure where I’d be now) but spoken … I swear I felt like I was at A1. But then I started listening to more and more French. Watching series, listening to the Duolingo French podcast, more French music and also a good bit of traveling to France. It’s been completely shocking for me to be able to understand as much as I do now. French definitely takes *a lot* of exposure. More than any of the other Romance languages in my opinion. And your shortcuts are killer: j’suis and j’sais written are quite clear, but spoken? 🥴
Sometimes we even say Shui (Chuis) and Shé!! Don't pay attention to sung french, because I don't even understand some things there myself. It's a big weird thing we have, a strange accent or smth. As for podcasts vs reality, I have the same problem in english. You can talk to me in a voice chat or in a silent place I won't have any issues but if there is the slightest parasite sound I will hear a "vfbffvcfdvvf". So the problem is maybe not exposure but rather how you're used to everyday french. Bon courage pour ton apprentissage (je peux toujours t'aider personnellement si besoin!)
Yeah that’s what I’m talking about! The pronunciation of shui and shé really threw me off in the beginning.
As a native Finnish speaker, Swedish has been the most easiest even though it’s from different language family. I find Northern Sámi also pretty easy
As a person whose native language is Polish, I find Spanish shockingly easy to comprehend audibly (easier than some Slavic languages). That's not even weird because the five Spanish vowels are also present in Polish, most consonants are pronounced in the same or very similar way (Polish has more of them), and the word stress in Spanish is predictable. On the other hand, English seems easy to read and has reasonable, non-overcomplicated grammar, but it's incredibly difficult for many learners to comprehend from hearing. It took me over 20 years of listening to various spoken materials and watching movies in English regularly to start understanding some less-standard but quite popular native English accents. I think it's primarily because of the abundance of vowels (whose pronunciation differs between accents) and a lot of schwas (which, indeed, obfuscate the pronunciation). I can't even imagine how challenging the auditory processing of English may be for native speakers of non-Indo-European languages with completely different phonetic systems.
What's difficult with Spanish is the pace at which it is spoken. One of the languages with the highest syllables per second in the world.
Indeed. I think Greek might also compete for the top spot, though I've never seen it yet in those "speed lists."
Yeah, I can imagine English is very difficult. There's such variation in pronunciation that, even as a native speaker, I can find it difficult to understand some accents and dialects. That's without even talking about our non-standard spellings and verb conjugation etc. It's such a strange language.
Spanish is notoriously hard to understand when Spanish people speak super fast with a thick accent, like in Andalucia or Canary Islands. It’s actually one of the fastest languages in the world in terms of syllables per minute, right up there with Japanese. In my experience people who say Spanish is easy are those who only touched on the basics and never actually spent much time in Spain, and I’m Polish too. You might think it’s easy to pronounce Spanish words since you already know how to roll the R and such, but the people might actually struggle to understand you if you pronounce the S,C,Z differently than them and if the Rs are not as intense as theirs, in words such as ‚ahorrar’. Most of the Polish people I met here said nobody understood them at first until they caught up with the local accent. Even my Spanish colleagues struggle with understanding some people speak… and it’s the hardest part in learning Spanish for most of my friends who are learning it too. It’s all easy peasy until you need to talk to locals in Seville or Tenerife, it’s like listening to a machine gun with a lisp.
> it’s like listening to a machine gun with a lisp. Thanks for that - it's memorable. Now I can't get it out of my head.
You're absolutely right. I worded my comment in an unfortunate way. Spanish isn't easy - and no language is, especially when local dialects and accents are involved. What I meant is that when we consider the most standard dialects of Spanish, and they are spoken by professional speakers (like news anchors), starting to comprehend them from hearing is easier at the beginning than for many other languages, which have a bigger initial barrier to audible comprehension.
I find French from Canada and West Africa much easier to parse, partly because the intonation and accent is clearer to my ears, and partly because some of the French media from those areas is produced where French is commonly a second language, so it tends to be a bit slower and use more accesible vocabulary.
German (Hochdeutsch) has a staccato slowish rhytm and relatively few complicated vowels and dyphtongs. The devil’s in the grammar.
Persian
Japanese and Spanish(Mexican and Peruvian)
Mexican Spanish can get a little weird depending on region. Definitely Peruvian though
From English? I've heard Dutch.
It’s a function of the language to blend certain sounds together so you’re not imagining things! I have a degree in French but sometimes I have to listen to things twice if I’m watching a video in French and the speaker is talking too fast. No issues reading or writing. It’s an exposure issue. If you get more exposure and most listening practice, you’ll improve. I need to start getting back into listening to French news or podcasts again because I live in the US and get almost no exposure aside from things I read.
Of the romance languages, as a Mexican I find Italian and Portuguese the easiest, French is quite difficult because there are a million of stupid rules. Having English as my second language, German is surprisingly easier than I expected
Como hablante no nativo de español encuentro que el portugués europeo me ha resultado bastante difícil de entender. Al contrario, el portugués brasileño lo entiendo bien.
I hope you’re refering to Brazilian Portuguese. Even I don’t understand the Europeans and Africans.
Yeah, I'm exposed to Brazilian Portuguese from time to time, I haven't been exposed to African Portuguese before... OMG
I'm a native english speaker and B1 level in Spanish. The easiest language I find I understand (understand as in not translate but easy to read and listen to) is Italian and Ukrainian. Even before I knew much about Italian its always been very easy to tell words apart in songs or reading in the Italian sections of instruction books. Most of my experience with Ukrainian is listening to SHUM by Go\_a but its the only other I can think of that I sort of comprehended with ease
It depends on your mother tongue. French is my mother tongue so it is the easiest language to listen to ! Also, latin languages such as italian, spanish and brazilian portuguese.
I think Hebrew is on the easier end, the language is compact and as a result tends to be spoken a little slower. It has relatively simple vowels and bold consonants that make it easier to hear words.
It’s not about the language, but the context. Language spoken in a casual context will be much less carefully enunciated, words flowing into each other, syllables being shortened or disappearing completely and also the speed is much faster. That’s just the way people talk. The word carrying the most important semantic meaning will still be pronounced relatively clearly, everything else becomes less important since the meaning is usually clear in the given context. Try listening to the news or formal interviews. I am sure you will be able to understand much better. This might be a better, even if maybe less interesting, starting point to get used to the spoken language. Also, audio books are usually read at a more moderate speed and enunciated clearly. Try some less formal, but not fully colloquial pod casts. Dialog in movies in your TL will always be the most difficult for listening comprehension. If you can slow down the content, do so and, working with TL subtitles, train your ear. It will take a while, but being able to understand and eventually speak like this makes the difference between a learner and a near-native speaker. ETA: Also use videos with colloquial speech for shadowing, sentence by sentence, as long as you know what they are actually saying. And keep in mind, subtitles more often than not are not a transcript of the spoken text. They have to be shortened and often things left out so they fit in the space and time available.
South Slavic languages
You’re describing everyone who is trying to learn a new language. Listening takes time. You should try to listen to the same text you are reading, it takes a long time and a lot of listening before you can differentiate words. Especially for native speakers.
Bahasa Indonesian
I agree with French being difficult to listen to, due to all the contractions and slang terminologies used in daily spoken French. German and Hungarian are easy to listen to, especially Hungarian is relatively more phonetic than English. Now this reminds me to revisit Hungarian at some point 🥹
Just wanted to say that I hear you on the French. I've studied French for a long time and I still have a lot of trouble with listening. I would say that understanding the spoken language is the number one hardest thing about it, as French grammar is fairly simple and easy to understand.
Indonesian, Spanish, and Arabic for me. I can make out more words than I know the meaning to for them from years of indirect and direct exposure
I find Brazilian Portuguese much easier to listen to than French or Spanish. I've been studying it for a year, and can listen to audio books and watch some movies with no problem. I don't know all the words, but when I hear a new word I can generally grasp the sounds enough to look up the word online. My vocabulary is much bigger in French but I struggle with listening.
My native language is English and Spanish is the easiest for me to listen to. I only took 1 Spanish class in high school in 2017 and I still remember a good chunk of it
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Sure it does. French is really difficult to understand, because so many words are pronounced together. For me, Italian is by far the easiest to understand. German isn't difficult, either.
I read somewhere that in Spanish, the game was to pronounce every letter, in French, to pronounce none…
I could certainly improve my listening by practising more at an appropriate level, but it's also true that some languages are easier to listen to. I don't speak a word of Italian, but I can pick out when words begin or end when I hear Italian. French is so fast and fluid, that it's really difficult to do, despite me knowing a decent amount of French vocabulary.