Top 10 Hardest Languages To Learn In the World
According to Ethnologue, there are more than 7,105 known living languages across the globe. Language learning is a way to connect with individuals from all over the world. People always wanted to learn a new language. But they never started to learn it because, people think that learning a new language is just too Difficult. Also they don't have enough free time or energy. Learning a new language is never an easy thing to do. Because learning any language to a level that allows fluent communication with native speakers takes a lot of time and effort. Learning a new language is always hard and requires a lot of practice and persistence. Most of the learning is in new vocabulary and grammar. So which language you should choose among many options. But there are some languages that are much easier to learn than others, especially for English Speakers. Should you go for a more widely spoken language like Spanish or Mandarin or you want to learn language to travel to a new country and understand the people around you and their culture. Different languages have different levels of difficulty to master. There are couple of factors that decide difficulty of language. Vocab, verb conjugations and all that other stuff takes precious time to learn. It could be said that the most difficult language to learn is your first. Once you learn the skill of language learning, your next language tends to come easier.
Languages from the different family tree from which your mother language originated are easier to learn. Languages that are part of the same family share similar characteristics like roots, usages, and pronunciations. People finds language easy, when the languages share the same writing system--languages that have an alphabet similar to the their native alphabet. The language tree diagram shows what languages are related. For Spanish and English speakers, it could be easier to learn Portuguese, Italian, Dutch and German. They share same language family. But for both English and Spanish speakers, it could be difficult to learn Chinese or Korean. Because they have complicated relations with spelling and pronunciation and all those exceptions to grammar rules. From Korean to Arabic to Hindi, some of these languages not only incorporate parts of the tongue and mouth in exotic ways, but they also have a written language that looks extremely different. Different alphabets, characters, writing styles and new sounds makes any language difficult. Languages like Hungarian, Navajo or Thai contains an alphabet comprised of a staggering 44 consonants and 32 different vowels.
Languages from the different family tree from which your mother language originated are easier to learn. Languages that are part of the same family share similar characteristics like roots, usages, and pronunciations. People finds language easy, when the languages share the same writing system--languages that have an alphabet similar to the their native alphabet. The language tree diagram shows what languages are related. For Spanish and English speakers, it could be easier to learn Portuguese, Italian, Dutch and German. They share same language family. But for both English and Spanish speakers, it could be difficult to learn Chinese or Korean. Because they have complicated relations with spelling and pronunciation and all those exceptions to grammar rules. From Korean to Arabic to Hindi, some of these languages not only incorporate parts of the tongue and mouth in exotic ways, but they also have a written language that looks extremely different. Different alphabets, characters, writing styles and new sounds makes any language difficult. Languages like Hungarian, Navajo or Thai contains an alphabet comprised of a staggering 44 consonants and 32 different vowels.
As a Slavic language, Polish is one of the most difficult languages for native English speakers to learn. The average Polish speaker becomes fluent in their language after age of 16. Pronouncing them appears very tricky. Pronouncing individual letters can seem like a challenge too. Two different words sound exactly the same. Letters like ‘sz’, ‘ś’, ‘ź’, and ‘dż’ are very common, and understanding the difference between them takes time. Consonant clusters are very common in the Polish language.
Polish grammar is very difficult. Polish uses a case system. Word order in Polish is also usually different than English with the almost reversed from English. Polish sticks to the standard of subject-verb-object. Polish has Seven cases, Seven genders and very difficult pronunciation. There are 14 different ways to say a noun counting singular and plural forms together. In Polish, there are the nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, locative, and vocative cases for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives.
Icelandic is an Indo-European language, belonging to Germanic roots, and is also closely related to Norwegian and Faroese. Because of its geography, Icelandic vocabulary is all unique. For around two hundred years, Iceland has a policy of linguistic purism in Icelandic. The adoption of new loanwords into the language is actively discouraged, instead using Old Norse or Old Icelandic roots to craft new words. Sometimes the exact same letters in the exact same word can have very different meanings.
The words are extremely long, the specific syllables are pronounced completely different from your typical English syllables. The correspondence between the Icelandic alphabet and sounds may seem rather intimidating. Mastering the grammar of Icelandic takes lot of time. Icelandic nouns, adjectives and pronouns have four cases, three grammatical genders, and two numbers; adjectives inflect for gender; and verbs have three persons, two numbers, two morphological tenses, and two finite moods.
Finnish is often considered as one of the most difficult languages to learn. Finnish, belonging to the Uralic language family, differs from many Indo-European languages. Finnish has no relation to Latin or Germanic language groups. Finnish is full of long words. In theory, it’s possible to create massive word by combining any number of words. The smallest change in the end of the word can significantly change its meaning. Finnish vocabulary is brand new to English speakers, as is the grammar.
Its verb conjugation, case system, consonant gradation, and clitics makes language difficult to learn. New grammatical forms, new vowels and unique consonants, all add challenges to new learners. Verb conjugation is another thing that can make the Finnish language hard to learn. In Finnish, there are six main types of verbs that all behave somewhat differently. There are 15 grammatical cases in Finnish, which make it a difficult language to learn. Finnish have a choice of seven different clitics.
Korean is hard to learn because of its vast vocabulary. It will require you to remember an entirely new vocabulary.
Word order in Korean is also usually different than English. Korean language has a lot of difficult pronunciation rules. The word order of Korean language can be really difficult to grasp. Verbs coming at the end with conjugations, particles instead of prepositions etc. It become tricky to understand. Korean language has a lot of connectors and sometimes the sentences can get really lengthy with so many connectors. Korean has many verb ending forms depending upon the context. They make learning Korean more difficult.
Hungarian is an almost perfectly phonetic language. Hungarian is a very expressive language that relies on idioms. It seems like a secret code to beginners. The words themselves are nightmares of unfamiliar appearance. Word order is often flexible, and can even create an independent word from just a prefix and a suffix, or from two suffixes. Hungarian has 35 distinct cases. Many of these cases apply solely to prepositions, which are then attached to the words themselves. There are also 14 different vowels, nearly twice as many in English, and this makes spelling and comprehension difficulties.
The hardest part of learning Hungarian for beginners is possibly the pronunciation. Words that appear to be similar can mean completely different things. Hungarian is difficult to speak and understand. The sounds are difficult for people to mimic and painful to replicate at first. This happens when an accent which is indicated by one or two little dots or lines above a vowel like a-á, e-é, o-ó-ö-ő, etc, causes a slight change in sound. These slight differences carry great value both in writing and in speech. If you mispronounce a vowel, the word could be mean something completely different than the word speaker intended to use.
Japanese can be terrifying to people. Learners have to learn all these brand new characters, grammatical structures. It has words that don’t even exist in English. It sounds pretty. It’s a unique language. There are many regional dialects, though the most standard version spoken in Tokyo. The written language of Japanese presents hard challenges to those coming from more alphabetic languages. There are too many “alphabets,” that the sentence structure is too different from English. The first thing a learner of Japanese would notice is the different phonetics of Japanese compared to English. Some of the sounds are different. Japanese grammar, is one of the most difficult things for English speakers. In Japanese, the verb goes at the end of the sentence.
In Japanese Writing System, there are the three writing systems: katakana, hiragana, and kanji. Hiragana and katakana are phonetic alphabets. Phonetic alphabets are always written and pronounced in one specific way. Hiragana is the first Japanese writing system that children learn. It’s the most basic writing system in Japan. Hiragana alphabet are in rounded shapes. Katakana, on the other hand, is sharper in appearance. Unlike hiragana and katakana, kanji is pictographic. Each symbol stands for a concept rather than a sound. Japanese has about 2,000 kanji that are considered common use.
The hardest language to learn is also the most widely spoken native language in the world. Mandarin is beautiful, mysterious, ancient and tremendously hard to learn. Reading and writing Chinese characters is perhaps the most difficult aspect of learning Chinese. Mandarin Chinese is challenging for a number of reasons. One of the things learners find the hardest is mastering the tones of Mandarin Chinese. There are four basic tones, plus a fifth neutral tone. One word can be pronounced four different ways, and each pronunciation has a different meaning.
The writing system of Mandarin Chinese is extremely difficult for English speakers. It is needed to memorize thousands of special characters to learn Mandarin. Another major difficulty for foreigners in learning the language are the tones. Chinese words requires learning a completely new skill to pronounce. The tonal nature of the language makes speaking it very hard as well. There are several Chinese dialects, which have different written characters and pronunciations, and are also very difficult to learn. Mandarin Chinese has four tones.
Hardest languages to learn for English speakers is Arabic, which is also in the top five most spoken world languages. There are dozens of varieties of the Arabic language classified by the country in which they’re spoken that can be radically different from one another. Arabic has an alphabet that’s different from English. The Arabic alphabet is both beautiful and challenging to master. It belongs to new writing system. The Arabic alphabet has 28 script letters that can be difficult to learn. Arabic is also written from right to left instead of left to right. Arabic uses a lot of sounds that require using the back of the throat in a way that most English speakers are not familiar. Some of the sounds used don’t exist in other languages or are simply unfamiliar to English speakers.
The thing that makes reading and writing in Arabic particularly challenging for beginners is the exclusion of most vowels in words. You have to learn a dual form of words in addition to the singular and plural forms. The sentence structure can be very different, because verbs tend to come before the subject.
Arabic has a lot of grammatical features that are very different from other languages. Letters change shape based on whether they’re in the beginning, the middle, or the end of a word. English and Arabic share very few common words. There are not many opportunities to get immersed in the language outside Arabic speaking countries
Navajo has had a reputation for being a difficult language to learn for a long time. The Navajo language is so complex and unique, that during World War II it was used as a code language by the U.S. military to secure communications in their efforts to win the war. Japanese code breakers were never able to decipher the transmitted messages. Another thing that makes Navajo really difficult to learn is that there are not that many resources out there for Navajo. There are no written grammatical rules or published dictionary of Navajo words. Navajo has very few loan words from other languages which also makes it difficult to learn. The Navajo language doesn't have many words of Germanic or Latin influence.
Navajo is also a tonal language. In tonal languages, pitch is used to make words different from each other. Navajo contains many sounds that do not exist in the English language. Pronouncing words in Navajo will be difficult at first. Navajo grammar is very different to English. Word order in Navajo is also usually different than English. The general rule for word order in Navajo is Subject-Object-Verb. Additionally, Navajo is a verb-centered language. It does not use adjectives and relies on verbs heavily.
Russian is widely believed to be one of the most difficult languages to learn.
Russian is a Slavic language, the 7th most spoken language in the world by the total number of speakers. Many learners struggle with the pronunciation. Russian alphabet serves as yet another obstacle for many people who would like to learn the language. Most of Europe uses an alphabet that descended from Latin, the Russian alphabet is Cyrillic. There are a few similar letters and entirely new alphabet. Russian has a lot of words that have multiple meanings, and many more words that all mean the same thing. Russian have some words that are dedicated to certain functions to make a point in a sentence.
The grammar rules in Russian are very complex and have numerous exceptions. All Russian nouns are one of three genders: masculine, feminine, or neuter. There Are Fewer Prepositions in Russian. Russian speech often omits the articles. Learner will need to memorize the gender, but using the articles will be less of a problem. The Russian language has perfected the free-flowing sentence. Russian places words at different parts in a sentence to emphasize certain aspects. Every part of speech can be moved to any part of the sentence without losing the point.
Polish grammar is very difficult. Polish uses a case system. Word order in Polish is also usually different than English with the almost reversed from English. Polish sticks to the standard of subject-verb-object. Polish has Seven cases, Seven genders and very difficult pronunciation. There are 14 different ways to say a noun counting singular and plural forms together. In Polish, there are the nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, locative, and vocative cases for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives.
Icelandic is an Indo-European language, belonging to Germanic roots, and is also closely related to Norwegian and Faroese. Because of its geography, Icelandic vocabulary is all unique. For around two hundred years, Iceland has a policy of linguistic purism in Icelandic. The adoption of new loanwords into the language is actively discouraged, instead using Old Norse or Old Icelandic roots to craft new words. Sometimes the exact same letters in the exact same word can have very different meanings.
The words are extremely long, the specific syllables are pronounced completely different from your typical English syllables. The correspondence between the Icelandic alphabet and sounds may seem rather intimidating. Mastering the grammar of Icelandic takes lot of time. Icelandic nouns, adjectives and pronouns have four cases, three grammatical genders, and two numbers; adjectives inflect for gender; and verbs have three persons, two numbers, two morphological tenses, and two finite moods.
Finnish is often considered as one of the most difficult languages to learn. Finnish, belonging to the Uralic language family, differs from many Indo-European languages. Finnish has no relation to Latin or Germanic language groups. Finnish is full of long words. In theory, it’s possible to create massive word by combining any number of words. The smallest change in the end of the word can significantly change its meaning. Finnish vocabulary is brand new to English speakers, as is the grammar.
Its verb conjugation, case system, consonant gradation, and clitics makes language difficult to learn. New grammatical forms, new vowels and unique consonants, all add challenges to new learners. Verb conjugation is another thing that can make the Finnish language hard to learn. In Finnish, there are six main types of verbs that all behave somewhat differently. There are 15 grammatical cases in Finnish, which make it a difficult language to learn. Finnish have a choice of seven different clitics.
Korean is hard to learn because of its vast vocabulary. It will require you to remember an entirely new vocabulary.
Word order in Korean is also usually different than English. Korean language has a lot of difficult pronunciation rules. The word order of Korean language can be really difficult to grasp. Verbs coming at the end with conjugations, particles instead of prepositions etc. It become tricky to understand. Korean language has a lot of connectors and sometimes the sentences can get really lengthy with so many connectors. Korean has many verb ending forms depending upon the context. They make learning Korean more difficult.
Hungarian is an almost perfectly phonetic language. Hungarian is a very expressive language that relies on idioms. It seems like a secret code to beginners. The words themselves are nightmares of unfamiliar appearance. Word order is often flexible, and can even create an independent word from just a prefix and a suffix, or from two suffixes. Hungarian has 35 distinct cases. Many of these cases apply solely to prepositions, which are then attached to the words themselves. There are also 14 different vowels, nearly twice as many in English, and this makes spelling and comprehension difficulties.
The hardest part of learning Hungarian for beginners is possibly the pronunciation. Words that appear to be similar can mean completely different things. Hungarian is difficult to speak and understand. The sounds are difficult for people to mimic and painful to replicate at first. This happens when an accent which is indicated by one or two little dots or lines above a vowel like a-á, e-é, o-ó-ö-ő, etc, causes a slight change in sound. These slight differences carry great value both in writing and in speech. If you mispronounce a vowel, the word could be mean something completely different than the word speaker intended to use.
Japanese can be terrifying to people. Learners have to learn all these brand new characters, grammatical structures. It has words that don’t even exist in English. It sounds pretty. It’s a unique language. There are many regional dialects, though the most standard version spoken in Tokyo. The written language of Japanese presents hard challenges to those coming from more alphabetic languages. There are too many “alphabets,” that the sentence structure is too different from English. The first thing a learner of Japanese would notice is the different phonetics of Japanese compared to English. Some of the sounds are different. Japanese grammar, is one of the most difficult things for English speakers. In Japanese, the verb goes at the end of the sentence.
In Japanese Writing System, there are the three writing systems: katakana, hiragana, and kanji. Hiragana and katakana are phonetic alphabets. Phonetic alphabets are always written and pronounced in one specific way. Hiragana is the first Japanese writing system that children learn. It’s the most basic writing system in Japan. Hiragana alphabet are in rounded shapes. Katakana, on the other hand, is sharper in appearance. Unlike hiragana and katakana, kanji is pictographic. Each symbol stands for a concept rather than a sound. Japanese has about 2,000 kanji that are considered common use.
The hardest language to learn is also the most widely spoken native language in the world. Mandarin is beautiful, mysterious, ancient and tremendously hard to learn. Reading and writing Chinese characters is perhaps the most difficult aspect of learning Chinese. Mandarin Chinese is challenging for a number of reasons. One of the things learners find the hardest is mastering the tones of Mandarin Chinese. There are four basic tones, plus a fifth neutral tone. One word can be pronounced four different ways, and each pronunciation has a different meaning.
The writing system of Mandarin Chinese is extremely difficult for English speakers. It is needed to memorize thousands of special characters to learn Mandarin. Another major difficulty for foreigners in learning the language are the tones. Chinese words requires learning a completely new skill to pronounce. The tonal nature of the language makes speaking it very hard as well. There are several Chinese dialects, which have different written characters and pronunciations, and are also very difficult to learn. Mandarin Chinese has four tones.
Hardest languages to learn for English speakers is Arabic, which is also in the top five most spoken world languages. There are dozens of varieties of the Arabic language classified by the country in which they’re spoken that can be radically different from one another. Arabic has an alphabet that’s different from English. The Arabic alphabet is both beautiful and challenging to master. It belongs to new writing system. The Arabic alphabet has 28 script letters that can be difficult to learn. Arabic is also written from right to left instead of left to right. Arabic uses a lot of sounds that require using the back of the throat in a way that most English speakers are not familiar. Some of the sounds used don’t exist in other languages or are simply unfamiliar to English speakers.
The thing that makes reading and writing in Arabic particularly challenging for beginners is the exclusion of most vowels in words. You have to learn a dual form of words in addition to the singular and plural forms. The sentence structure can be very different, because verbs tend to come before the subject.
Arabic has a lot of grammatical features that are very different from other languages. Letters change shape based on whether they’re in the beginning, the middle, or the end of a word. English and Arabic share very few common words. There are not many opportunities to get immersed in the language outside Arabic speaking countries
Navajo has had a reputation for being a difficult language to learn for a long time. The Navajo language is so complex and unique, that during World War II it was used as a code language by the U.S. military to secure communications in their efforts to win the war. Japanese code breakers were never able to decipher the transmitted messages. Another thing that makes Navajo really difficult to learn is that there are not that many resources out there for Navajo. There are no written grammatical rules or published dictionary of Navajo words. Navajo has very few loan words from other languages which also makes it difficult to learn. The Navajo language doesn't have many words of Germanic or Latin influence.
Navajo is also a tonal language. In tonal languages, pitch is used to make words different from each other. Navajo contains many sounds that do not exist in the English language. Pronouncing words in Navajo will be difficult at first. Navajo grammar is very different to English. Word order in Navajo is also usually different than English. The general rule for word order in Navajo is Subject-Object-Verb. Additionally, Navajo is a verb-centered language. It does not use adjectives and relies on verbs heavily.
Russian is widely believed to be one of the most difficult languages to learn.
Russian is a Slavic language, the 7th most spoken language in the world by the total number of speakers. Many learners struggle with the pronunciation. Russian alphabet serves as yet another obstacle for many people who would like to learn the language. Most of Europe uses an alphabet that descended from Latin, the Russian alphabet is Cyrillic. There are a few similar letters and entirely new alphabet. Russian has a lot of words that have multiple meanings, and many more words that all mean the same thing. Russian have some words that are dedicated to certain functions to make a point in a sentence.
The grammar rules in Russian are very complex and have numerous exceptions. All Russian nouns are one of three genders: masculine, feminine, or neuter. There Are Fewer Prepositions in Russian. Russian speech often omits the articles. Learner will need to memorize the gender, but using the articles will be less of a problem. The Russian language has perfected the free-flowing sentence. Russian places words at different parts in a sentence to emphasize certain aspects. Every part of speech can be moved to any part of the sentence without losing the point.
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