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Do students from countries that teach native languages considered to be quite difficult (e.g. Japanese) generally take longer to master that language? Or does the power of being surrounded by a particular language at home and in society overcome the difficulty of said language? Are there simply too many factors that influence how well one student learns their native language compared to others?

Another thing: Is the 'difficulty' of a certain language considered completely relative to whatever languages someone already knows, or are some languages universally more difficult?

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    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is not about Linguistics. Also, questions on language learning have greater chance to receive good answers at Language Learning.SE Beta site.
    – Be Brave Be Like Ukraine
    Commented Jul 9, 2016 at 12:52
  • Oh Thanks, I wasn't aware of the language learning site. I'll see what they have to say there
    – Lachy Vass
    Commented Jul 9, 2016 at 13:10
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    @bytebuster Many linguists work in language acquisition.
    – Ink
    Commented Jul 9, 2016 at 18:54
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    It's usually held that all children acquire their mother tongue with (roughly) equal ease. Languages vary in how difficult they are to acquire as a second language, but the level of difficulty depends on the first language.
    – Gaston Ümlaut
    Commented Jul 9, 2016 at 23:54

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All native speakers possess knowledge of at least spoken form of the language. But of course there can be difficult areas especially in written form. In Russian for instance, native speakers often experience problems with punctuation: where should or should not be placed a comma. This is quite difficult topic even for the well educated. Another difficult (but less difficult than punctuation) area is single vs. double "н" in spelling.

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