Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Difficulty of learning languages

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was merge to Second-language acquisition. (non-admin closure) Sue Rangell ✍ ✉ 03:29, 5 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Difficulty of learning languages

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This article is nothing but a guide, or some advice, so WP:NOT TheChampionMan1234 02:19, 16 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note - there was a previous AfD discussion about this article at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Most difficult language to learn. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{(have a chat)} 14:16, 16 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Merge to Second-language acquisition. I'm not so sure about the current article being a guide or advice, but I agree that it doesn't really belong in Wikipedia as it is. The question of the difficulty of learning languages just doesn't seem to come up too much in the linguistics literature. Certainly it doesn't come up in the mainstream literature on second-language acquisition, where you would most expect to see such discussions. Instead of "difficulty", you see discussions of language transfer, the order of acquisition, individual variation, and the critical period hypothesis, among others. In all the examples I have found, when researchers mention "difficulty" in relation to learning languages, they are talking about the difficulty of learning a particular aspect of language, rather than the general difficulty of language-learning.
This article originally started out at the title of Hardest language, and as you can see from this talk page discussion, it was meant to cover the meme that there is such a thing as a "hardest language". I think this would be a valid subject for an article if we had the sources on it, but all I can find are sources speculating about which language(s) might be difficult, not reliable sources about the myth itself.

Because I'm not aware of any sources about the general difficulty of language-learning in the academic literature, and I'm not aware of any sources about the meme of languages being difficult, I don't think we can have a stand-alone article on this subject. If anyone can find good sources about the difficulty of language-learning in general, then I might reconsider, but otherwise I think a merge to second-language acquisition would be the best way to go. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{(have a chat)} 15:23, 16 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Note: this used to be an article on the concept of "hardest language". Yes, there was literature and the discussion was informed and academic. Then the article was wilfully destroyed by trolls. Well-meaning people turned it into what it is now, basically a cfork of "language acquisition". So, the article was destroyed, then it was "fixed" into something it was never intended to be, and now the "fixed" version is suppoed to get merged. My vote is to restore the original topic, and the original content, prior to the attack of the trolls. If this was an article about "difficulty of learning languages", obviously it should be merged. What the article was supposed to address was the question of objectively measuring how "hard" a language is (either L1 or L2). --dab (𒁳) 11:20, 17 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Language-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 22:38, 18 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, —Theo polisme 22:40, 22 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Courcelles 00:10, 29 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Merge with Second-language acquisition per Mr. Stradivarius. The article and topic aren't viable as stand-alone topics and essentially duplicate the Second-language acquisition article. Majoreditor (talk) 21:22, 29 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.