which text is considered hardest?

Guest   Mon Dec 24, 2007 4:44 am GMT
In terms of difficulty, which form of the language is the hardest one to comprehend in English.

1. Novels

2. Newspapers

3. Magazines(all types are included)

4. University level text books.

5. Postings on forums.

6. Reader Digests.

If possible, can you rate them according to their actual difficulty?
Guest   Mon Dec 24, 2007 7:06 am GMT
Porno magazines are quite difficult for me, due to strange slang words impossible to find in dictionary. The only way to find their meaning is google image search.
Guest   Mon Dec 24, 2007 3:47 pm GMT
Each individual text has its own level of difficulty.

I suppose *most* newspapers, magazines, and textbooks would be in the same ballpark. Novels (and literature in general) would vary widely, especially older works. Consider Beowulf, Canterbury Tales, Shakespeare, Moby Dick -- notice how they get easier as the English becomes more modern.

Forum postings will be all over the place, depending on who wrote them. Some are full of those acronyns and emoticons, too, and these may be hard to fathom unless you're really into texting.

This particular forum post is trivial, BTW.
which text is considered   Mon Dec 24, 2007 4:16 pm GMT
7. Bush speeches
Guest   Mon Dec 24, 2007 5:07 pm GMT
Not that it makes it harder to understand, but newspapers in English are much more likely to invert word order than in speech or books. So you're far more likely to see constructions like:

'Among those injured in the accident were five women' or

'Accompanying him to the United States was his brother'
K. T.   Mon Dec 24, 2007 8:27 pm GMT
Easiest: Comic books, books for children, magazines targeted at women (not kidding)

1. Postings on forums/Reader's Digests (also easy in another language)

2. Newspaper articles (depends on the topic, though)

3. Magazines (National Geographic, The Atlantic, will be harder)

4. University level text books/Novels

Novels depend on too many factors to discuss. Some authors are easy, some are difficult to read. Textbooks are a toss-up. I can read technical texts related to fields I understand in other languages without difficulty and I imagine that it is the same for people who have a certain understanding of the material already since the vocabulary is specific and limited, imo.

For example, an engineer or chemist may be able to handle a chemistry or engineering textbook if knowledge of the subject matter was already familiar. Are we looking at symbols, formulas and equations and only a limited amount of text? It may be very "doable" This is definitely true in Medicine and Music as well. I think an intermediate vocabulary in the language would be best, though.

Happy Reading!
Guest   Tue Dec 25, 2007 2:57 am GMT
Porn magazines are difficult for me too. I try to find the words in the dictionary, but I cant find rien.
Xie   Tue Dec 25, 2007 3:33 am GMT
>>Easiest: Comic books, books for children, magazines targeted at women (not kidding) [...]

Thx. Yet, actually I find university textbooks to be even easier than newspapers, because readers are supposed to know the subjects. For laymen, every textbook is as difficult as a new foreign language.

And sometimes comic books could be even harder than "textbooks" - in ??social science subjects?? or foreign language or linguistics. At least for me, academic English is meant to let one (me) write essays properly in English, and in the simplest language. I (we) am (are) never "trained" to read comic books, unfortunately.
Guest   Tue Dec 25, 2007 9:37 am GMT
I think UNIX/Linux man pages are the hardest to read and understand.